Abstract

While Platonists are generally committed to a non-materialist worldview and the idea that human happiness is attained by caring for the immortal soul, they show less agreement on how the founding texts of their tradition, the Platonic dialogues, should be interpreted. After a discussion of Proclus’ philosophical sources and of the curriculum of the later Neoplatonists, the author tackles the question as to Proclus’ place in the Platonic tradition first by showing how Proclus himself regarded his predecessors, before pointing to the limitations of Proclus’ own perspective. The author argues that Proclus indeed belonged to the strand of Platonism ready to go beyond the Plato’s words, but that his exegesis of Plato was much more inspired by Numenius’ allegorical interpretation and by Porphyry’s and Iamblichus’ project of reconciling Plato with Orphism and the Chaldean Oracles than Plotinus’.