Platonism

Platonism is a family of philosophical doctrines associated with the ancient Greek thinker Plato and his followers that holds that non-physical abstract entities, often called Forms or Ideas, constitute the highest level of reality. The sensible, changing world is seen as a less real, imperfect copy of these eternal, universal Forms. Central to classical Platonism is the theory of Forms: perfect exemplars such as Beauty, Justice, and Equality that individual things imitate. Knowledge, for Platonists, is not sensory opinion but recollection or discovery of these immutable Forms through reason, a process often described as anamnesis.

Over the centuries, Platonism evolved from Plato’s own writings through Middle Platonism and then Neoplatonism. Neoplatonists like Plotinus proposed a hierarchical metaphysic with the One at the top, from which emanates the Intellect (Nous) and the World Soul; the goal of human life is to turn from the sensible toward the One and achieve unity with the divine. Through its emphasis on ascent and contemplation, Neoplatonism deeply influenced early Christian, Jewish, and Islamic thought.

In later antiquity and the medieval period, Christian and Jewish thinkers integrated Platonic ideas with theology, giving rise to Christian Platonism and related traditions refined by figures such as Augustine. In Renaissance and modern philosophy, Platonic themes resurfaced in discussions of mathematical realism and the existence of abstract objects. Contemporary Platonism appears in debates about universals, truth, and knowledge, with some positions treating abstract entities as real and causally inert.