Platonists

Platonists are adherents of Platonism, the philosophical tradition inspired by Plato that emphasizes the existence of abstract, non-material realities called Forms or Ideas. These Forms are thought to give being and intelligibility to the changing objects of the physical world, and true knowledge is knowledge of these eternal Forms rather than sensory opinion.

Key features include the distinction between the sensible world and the intelligible realm, the idea that universals exist independently of particular things, and a view of the soul as capable of turning toward knowledge of the Forms. Ethics and politics are often interpreted through the ordering of the soul and the realization of the good.

Historically, the term covers the range from Plato and his immediate followers in the Academy to later developments. In late antiquity, Neoplatonists such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus developed a monistic system in which all reality emanates from the One through a hierarchy of Reality. During the medieval and Renaissance periods, Platonist ideas influenced Christian, Jewish, and Islamic thought; Latin Platonists like Marsilio Ficino helped revive and reinterpret Plato, sometimes in a Christianized framework. In the modern era, Platonic themes have persisted in debates over mathematical realism and the status of abstract objects, sometimes under the label mathematical Platonism.