Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index Isidore of Alexandria, Greek philosopher and one of the last of the Neoplatonists, lived in Athens and Alexandria towards the end of the 5th century AD. He became head of the school in Athens in succession to Marinus who followed Proclus. His views alienated the chief members of the school and he was compelled to resign his position to Hegias. He is known principally as the preceptor of Damascius whose testimony to him in the Life of Isidorus presents him in a very favourable light as a man and a thinker. It is generally admitted, however, that he was rather an enthusiast than a thinker; reasoning with him was subsidiary to inspiration, and he preferred the theories of Pythagoras and Plato to the unimaginative logic and the practical ethics of the Stoics and the Aristotelians. He seems to have given loose rein to a sort of theosophical speculation and attached great importance to dreams and waking visions on which he used to expatiate in his public discourses. Damascius Life is preserved by Photius in the Bibliotheca, and the fragments are printed in the Didot edition of Diogenes Laėrtius. See Agathias, Hist. ii. 30; Photius, Bibliotheca, 181; and histories of Neoplatonism. Reference This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.