Iamblichus
Syrian Neoplatonist philosopher (c. 245 - c. 325) · Academics · Died at 80
Iamblichus is read about 244 times a day, in 46 languages.
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Something wrong?He pulled Neoplatonism toward ritual and the divine, insisting philosophy needed more than thought - it needed gods. A Syrian who wrote the life of Pythagoras and saved fragments of a sophist no one else remembered.
Also in Deutsch
Photos 5
In their own words 9
, Wait for the appointed hour.
It is irreverent to the Gods to give you this demonstration, but for your sakes it shall be done.
What appears to us to be an accurate definition of justice does not also appear to be so to the Gods.
About this person
Iamblichus lived from around 245 to 325, a Syrian Arab working in the wake of Plotinus. He took Neoplatonism in a new direction, one that would shape the tradition for centuries: where earlier Neoplatonists prized contemplation, he argued that theurgy - ritual practice, invocation of the divine - was essential to the philosophical life. He wrote a biography of Pythagoras, cementing the mystic mathematician's legend for later ages. His Protrepticus, a work encouraging the study of philosophy, preserved about ten pages from an otherwise lost sophist now called the Anonymus Iamblichi. That accident of preservation makes the text valuable to scholars of the sophistic movement. He left Neoplatonism more religious, more ritualized, and more concerned with the mechanics of ascent to the divine.
Academics born in the 240s 2
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