Xenocrates

Xenocrates of Chalcedon took the helm of the Platonic Academy around 339/8 BC and held it until his death in 314/3. Where Plato had kept mathematical objects and eternal Forms distinct, Xenocrates merged them: the Ideas were numbers, the soul itself a number that moved. He carved reality into three tiers—the sensible world, the intelligible realm, and a hybrid third—each accessed by sense, intellect, or opinion. Unity and duality he named gods ruling the universe; between the divine and mortal he placed daemonical powers, which were really just states of the soul. In ethics he granted that vir…