The term "Platonism" is so widely used in modern scholarship that it is difficult to determine its meaning precisely as applicable either to a particular group of thinkers or to a specific collection of doctrines. Ancient sources frequently describe "Platonists" as those philosophers who further developed the known or presumed teaching of Plato himself and "Academics" as those who pursued the skeptical methodology believed to have been initiated by the Socrates of Plato's earlier dialogues. However, the substantive "Platonism" seems first to occur in scholarly literature only around the beginning of the eighteenth century when it was used to characterize doctrines that were not only derived from but also combined with Plato's own teaching by later exegetes.

In order to apply this relatively modern usage of the term "Platonism" legitimately to the history of Western philosophy in general, it is...