Iamblichus

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 o…