Platonopolis: Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity. By Dominic O’Meara. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003; 2005. Pp. xii + 249. $99.95 (cloth, 2003), $35.00 (paper, 2005).
Gregory Shaw Dominic O'Meara has written an important book with two aims: (1) to correct the conv... more Gregory Shaw Dominic O'Meara has written an important book with two aims: (1) to correct the conventional view that Neoplatonists had little or no interest in politics, and (2) to outline the development of Neoplatonists' political science in their own circles and explore its influence on Christian and Muslim theories of governance. O'Meara succeeds in both tasks, but the first is the most challenging, and the impact of this well-written and well-researched book will be measured by his skill at revealing the practical political theories of Neoplatonists that have, heretofore, 'remained largely invisible to the modern reader' (5). It is a daunting task to introduce a new paradigm for viewing familiar material, and O'Meara's argument that scholars have failed to see something right before our eyes could have been presented with a far more polemical edge. It is to the author's credit that his thesis is presented clearly and in strong terms-all the arguments of a polemic are employed-but with a voice that is both dispassionate and authoritative and therefore all the more persuasive. O'Meara eloquently lets the facts speak for themselves, and he begins by addressing the conventional view most readers hold: that Neoplatonism is a 'Plato without politics' (4). The conventional view holds that Neoplatonists' attitude toward politics is accurately represented by passages in Plotinus that encourage the soul to 'escape' from the world, renounce all political ambitions, and return 'alone to the Alone', to the One above and beyond the material realm. It is in this sense that scholars have seen Neoplatonists inheriting the spiritual goal of Plato's philosophy: assimilation to god, homoiôsis theô (Theaet. 176b), to the neglect of the rich and complex political context in which the dialogues occur. Neoplatonism has been evaluated as a kind of disembodied Platonism, a 'Plato by half' (4). Through his careful analysis of the extant writings of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Damascius, and following this trajectory in Christian and Muslim authors, O'Meara shows that while Neoplatonists put central emphasis on the divinization of man, the assimilation to god was imagined only through a full engagement in one's community. The itinerary for divinization begins with a development of civic virtues that gradually assimilate the soul to god, and once divinized, the soul continues to engage the community, bringing with it the divine measures of the Creator that it now embodies. This is not a world-denying escape but an embodying of the divine in one's community, a twofold process that serves as the framework for O'Meara's study. Part 1 (chapters 3-6) focuses on the ascent, 'The Divinizationof the Soul'; part 2 (chapters 7-11) examines the descent, 'The Divinization of the State'; and part 3 (chapters 12-14) examines this spiritual and political itinerary in Christianity and Islam.
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