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  • Chapter 18 - Concepts in the Neoplatonist Tradition

  • Edited by Gábor Betegh, University of Cambridge, Voula Tsouna, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book:
    Conceptualising Concepts in Greek Philosophy
    Published online:
    25 April 2024
    Print publication:
    02 May 2024, pp 404-426

  • Summary

    Péter Lautner’s chapter ‘Concepts in the Neoplatonist Tradition’ expands the scope of the enquiry by discussing Platonist theories of concept formation in Late Antiquity. Generally speaking, the philosophers belonging to the so-called schools of Athens and Alexandria believe that the articulation of our rational capacity and the acquisition of knowledge somehow derives from the senses as well as the intellect, and they mostly agree that some elements of concept formation, notably generalisation, occur on the basis of sense-perception. They disagree, however, as to whether or not such generalisations are full-blown concepts. While all the philosophers under consideration endorse some version of the view that the main source of concepts is our intellect, which essentially contains fully fledged concepts, their accounts vary in respect of the intellect’s ability to project concepts onto the lower cognitive faculties. The problem of how the two kinds of concepts mentioned above are related to each other occupies the Platonists through the entire period under examination and constitutes the focus of Lautner’s analysis.