ABSTRACT
By around 200 ce we hear very little about active Stoic philosophers. Galen, a Platonist, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, a Peripatetic, were deeply engaged with Stoic theory but hardly at all with any contemporary Stoics. By the middle of the third century, the dominance of the Platonic school meant that only there would there be found critical scrutiny of Stoicism. It is to Plotinus that we owe the most extensive and penetrating account of where Stoicism went wrong, at least from a Platonic perspective. His arguments more or less set the tone for all of the later so-called Neoplatonists. Although within two generations or so after Plotinus, some sort of rapprochement with Stoicism was beginning, particularly in the gradual incorporation of Epictetus’ Handbook into the Platonic curriculum, Plotinus’ reasons for rejecting Stoicism remain the standard ones. That, at any rate, is my justification for devoting most of this chapter to him.
