Ann Usacheva - Y. A. Shichalin. The Traditional View of Late Neoplatonism as a Self-contained System

Over the last two centuries the vast majority of late platonic texts have been subjected to philological and philosophical analysis as historically and substantially independent from Christian tradition. On the other hand, scholars have repeatedly pointed out the dependence of Christian theological and literary production on pagan sources. But while the image of Basilius Magnus plotinizans created in XIX century turned out to be invalid in the XX century, no attempt whatever has been taken of revising such an approach when it comes to pagan authors. This report aims at highlighting some epochs, authors and texts that might shed more light on philosophic and literary interaction between the late Platonism and early Christianity. We are going to focus on the following authors: St. Justin the Philosopher, his contemporary Numenius, members of Plotinus’ circle (Aemelius), Porphyry, Iamblichus, Julian and others. Besides, we plan to consider the Athenian School of Proclus’ times without which the Corpus Areopagiticum would be inconceivable. We suppose that the genre of Proclus’ “Platonic Theology”, as well as some passages from “On the first principles” of Damascius can be adequately interpreted only against Christian background.