Concepts in Late Antiquity

This chapter offers a survey of the views on concepts held by Greek philosophers from ca. 250 CE to 550 CE. The first section explores how late antique accounts of ordinary concepts are based on the Stoic view of common notions (koinai ennoiai) and how, for Neoplatonists, common notions are connected with Platonist recollection. The second section focuses on abstract concepts and universals. It is argued that Porphyry conceives of abstraction and universals along Peripatetic lines. Porphyry, however, supplements abstraction with Platonic innatism: the relation between abstractionism and innatism is problematic both for Porphyry and for later authors such as Hermias of Alexandria. The third section explores Plotinus’s view of innate concepts and recollection. These issues raise the question of how experience and innatism interact in Plotinus’s account of concept acquisition. The fourth section explores late Neoplatonist views of innate concepts as psychic forms, or logoi.