Not another history of Platonism. The role of Aristotle's criticisms of Plato in the development of ancient Platonism

The conventional historiography of ancient Platonism follows patterns that ultimately go back to Antiquity itself.

While these traditional doxographical accounts are not per se inaccurate, they do overlook continuities across different phases of this thousand-year history as well as some unexpected discontinuities. The reason for these shortcomings lies in the fact that certain philosophical debates are being ignored.

Some omissions could be detected by searching for the philosophical reasons explaining doctrinal developments.

This project chooses an unorthodox approach in that it does not try to reflect the issues emphasised in the sources, but instead selects one particular angle of approach: Aristotle’s critical discussion of Platonic views.

By analysing Platonic responses to Aristotle’s criticisms and using these as a heuristic tool, the project pursues a twofold aim: to uncover debates that have hitherto not been picked up in scholarship; and to examine the philosophical reasons for doctrinal varieties and developments.

The research hypothesis guiding this project is that Aristotle’s criticism of Platonic philosophy was a driving force for many developments in Platonism.

The aims of the project can only be achieved through a large-scale investigation spanning the entire history of Platonism, searching for Platonic responses in all relevant philosophical domains.

Since scholarship has been selective in its choice of topics, it cannot be predicted whether we can find sufficient traces of pertinent discussions in all subdomains.

Despite the methodological difficulties and the uncertainty of the results the project is more than worth pursuing, as the pay-off is highly significant: it will radically change the way in which we understand the history of Platonism and add a whole new dimension to our historiographical accounts.

If successful, it will uncover new debates and allow us to understand philosophical justifications for many philosophical developments.