Alcinous

Alcinous was a 2nd-century Greek Middle Platonist philosopher. Little is known about his life, but he is recognized as the author of 'The Handbook of Platonism' (Ἐπιτομὴ τῶν Πλάτωνος δογμάτων), a surviving epitome of Middle Platonism. This work, comprising 36 chapters, covers logic, physics, and ethics and was likely intended as a manual for teachers. The handbook is dated to the mid-2nd century AD. While some scholars, like Jacob Freudenthal, have suggested Alcinous might be the same person as Albinus, this view has been largely countered by subsequent scholarship, notably by John Whittaker. Alcinous's philosophical system posits the world and its animating soul as eternal, with the soul being divinely awakened to contemplate intellectual forms. He distinguished between the 'ideas' residing in God's mind and the 'forms' of sensible things, influencing later Platonic thought. His philosophy integrates elements from Plato and Aristotle, with possible influences from Pythagoreanism and Eastern thought.