“Now We Must Consider That Some of the Ancients Discovered the Truth”: Reception and Antiquity in Ancient Neoplatonism

Abstract

This chapter explores attitudes to the reception of philosophy in two Greek Neoplatonist philosophers of late antiquity: Plotinus (204/5–270 CE) and Simplicius (c. 490–560 CE). It examines a possible tension between two approaches to the reception of philosophical views: in one approach, the philosopher already knows which views are true, and philosophical practice is a matter of correctly excavating and explaining those views; in a different approach, the philosopher makes a business of carefully exploring every reputable view on a question, and maintains that truth emerges from this exploration. The chapter suggests that these views are not necessarily in direct tension at all, if we follow the Neoplatonists in treating philosophical reception as analogous to language learning.