ABSTRACT
George Gemisttos Plethon begins his philosophical quest with the question of human happiness, which is, however, impossible to achieve without the knowledge of the nature of man and of the universe of which he is necessarily a part. Plethon bases his version of philosophia perennis on the ‘Magian’ Oracles and Plato’s philosophy, which, according to him, mutually agree with each other and contain the same truth because the structure of the world described by them is the same. Plethon attempted to explain the degressive differentiation and pluralization of reality by a multiplication of the main ontological distinctions on each level of it. Plethon identifies the former Forms with the Olympian gods and the latter with the Titans, the god of Tartarus. According to Plethon, the sensible world in its entirety is derived from the intelligible Forms that are the cause of everything in it, including even matter.
