The origins of Platonists' dogmatism

John Dillon (Trinity College, Dublin) again turns to the problem of the origins of platonic dogmatism in the Ancient Academy. See also Rus. trans. his books The heirs of Plato (St. Petersburg, 2003) and the Middle Platonists (St. Petersburg, 2001). School controversy and rivalry between schools, initially between the Academy and Peripat, and then between Platonists, Stoics and Aristotelians, led to the fact that Platonism eventually became more formal than it was at the time of Plato, with Xenocrates primarily responsible for this development, which, in a number of treatises of a general and a private nature, laid the foundation for a new integral doctrine. It can not be asserted that the Platonists were inclined to monolithic orthodoxy. The teachings of Plato did not seem to them as something that came from above. Most likely, the school was a self-regulating system in which everyone as a whole understood what it meant to be a Platonist (and later a Pythagorean) and, from his point of view, passionately polemicized both with his colleagues and with representatives of other schools.