Middle Platonism is the modern name given to a stage in the development of
Platonic philosophy, lasting from about 90 BC – when
Antiochus of Ascalon rejected the
scepticism of the
New Academy – until the development of
Neoplatonism under
Plotinus in the 3rd century. Middle Platonism absorbed many doctrines from the rival
Peripatetic and
Stoic schools. The pre-eminent philosopher in this period,
Plutarch (c. 45-120), defended the freedom of the will and the immortality of the soul. He sought to show that God, in creating the world, had transformed matter, as the receptacle of
evil, into the
divine soul of the world, where it continued to operate as the source of all evil. God is a
transcendent being, which operates through divine intermediaries, which are the gods and
daemons of popular religion.
Numenius of Apamea (c. 160) combined Platonism with
Neopythagoreanism and other eastern philosophies, in a move which would prefigure the development of Neoplatonism.