The Critical Comparison Between Platonism And Neo-Platonism's Aesthetics

Plato (C.428-C.347 B.C) is a famous philosopher, aesthete and poet in ancient Greek times. He has set up the first huge objective idealism system in the history of western philosophy which is called Platonism. Neo-Platonism is one of the philosophical schools. The ideas and theories of Neo-Platonists follows Plato's in a large degree and it should be said that they have done new interpretation of Plato's theories. On the basis of analyzing Platonism and Neo-Platonism's literary works and theories, this thesis does the comparison between the two trends of literary thoughts dialectically.This thesis attempts to analyse Neo-Platonism's inheritance, development and innovation of Platonism and discusses the dialectical development of western theories, especially the aesthetics. Both Platonism and Neo-Platonism put forward penetrating views which have close relationship to the scholars' class statuses and social backgrounds. So we can find some limitations of the class and the times in their theories. By means of analyzing the similarities and differences between Platonism and Neo-Platonism's aesthetic theories, we can see Platonic aesthetics' great achievements with the development of social culture. The important positions in the history of aesthetics, great influences and the new values in modern times of Platonism and Neo-Platonism's aesthetics are also analyzed in this thesis.