RE: Why Middle East?
April 10, 2012 at 11:00 pm
(This post was last modified: April 10, 2012 at 11:02 pm by mediamogul.)
(April 10, 2012 at 10:52 pm)Minimalist Wrote:Quote:Plotinus lived around 204-270CE and traveled the Middle East.
Doesn't that merely make him the beneficiary of 6-7 centuries of earlier Greek thought? Pythagoras goes back to the 6th century BC.
Absolutely. He is, without a doubt, standing on the shoulders of many great thinkers but I think that he is the essential link between Platonism and christianity. Many of those concepts that worked their way philosophically into christian theology but don't have a basis in the bible can be traced here. He may not have been original but he certainly was influential. This was also the same period where the modern bible as we know it was being solidified and all the crazy gnosticism was weeded out.
"A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything." -Friedrich Nietzsche
"All thinking men are atheists." -Ernest Hemmingway
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -Voltaire
"All thinking men are atheists." -Ernest Hemmingway
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -Voltaire
