Opinions about his philosophical seriousness vary from the declared and consistent, if not always orthodox Platonism attributed to him by Donald
Russell, to the dismissive 'tea-table transcendentalist' of E.R. Dodds. A good example of this alleged incoherence is in his attitude to Stoicism. On the
one hand he was sharply critical of much that the Stoics stood for. This is clear from two books of his Moralia, Stoic Self-contradictions and On
Common Conceptions. So, for example, in the former book he argues that the Stoics believed that 'whatever is, is right', while believing at the same time
that God chastises the wicked. On the other hand Plutarch owes a good deal of his belief in a benign providence to the Stoics, and to them also he,
indirectly, owes his conviction that it is possible to know.
Plutarch's own attitude to the possibility of accounting for the existence of evil in a divinely ordered universe is not without its difficulties. His
explanation of the origin of evil is not quite the same as Plato's, though he adduces passages in The Laws and Timaeus in defence of his own account. In
his treatise On Isis and Osiris, an allegorical discussion of the Egyptian pantheon, he argues that there are two independent and eternal principles: Osiris,
the principle of good, and Typhon, the principle of evil. This assertion of the existence of an eternal evil principle may be attributed to the influence of
Xenocrates and could owe something to Iranian dualism, the eternal struggle between good (Ahura-Mazda), and evil (Ahriman); but it is at variance with
the general tendency of Plato to deny to evil any place among the forms, and it is in clear conflict with the optimism of the Stoics and of Plotinus. In
another treatise, On the Obsolescence of Oracles, Plutarch produces a slightly different explanation, attributing evil to the demons that exist between the
divine world and that of the visible universe. Here we can see clear echoes of Plato's Symposium, with again the significant difference that Plato's
demons are good or neutral, Plutarch's are evil.
In one final respect Plutarch's Platonism was modified by his Pythagorean teacher Ammonius, whose interpretation of the mysterious E at Delphi is
related for us by Plutarch in his treatise of that name. According to Ammonius the purpose of the inscription is to identify the supreme principle of the
universe with the utter simplicity of oneness that stands at the summit of the Pythagorean system. He concludes as follows: 'Under these conditions,
therefore, we ought, as we pay Him reverence, to greet him and to address Him with the words, "Thou art"; or even ... as did some of the men of old
"Thou art One".' This Pythagorean influence enables Plutarch to go beyond the other Middle Platonists; and in his insistence on the unity and simplicity
of the supreme principle he closely approximates to the One of Plotinus.
Of all the Middle Platonist writers known to us the most characteristic and the most easily available is Albinus, sometimes called Alcinous. Of his life
next to nothing is known, except that he lived in the middle of the second century A.D. and that he wrote two Introductions to the philosophy of Plato,
both of which survive. His particular interest for us is that, unlike Philo and Plutarch, he seems to have been untouched by non-Hellenic influences. His
work is decidedly eclectic in tone and marks a deliberate attempt to schematize his inherited Platonism on hierarchical principles. At the summit of the
pyramid is the first God or Mind, ineffable, perfect, eternal, father of all. He fills the whole universe with himself because of his will. Beneath him comes
second Mind: Mind, that is, in its active and passive side. After him comes the third principle, Soul. It should be noted that for Albinus the supreme God
is both ineffable and personal and shares certain features in common with the first Mind of Aristotle, though differing from Aristotle in attributing to him
both ineffability and personal involvement in the universe. Again, exalted though the God of Albinus is, he is not so utterly simple as the Pythagorean
Monad of Philo and Plutarch, or the One of Plotinus. It is not surprising, therefore, to discover that he makes no use in his writings of the passage in
Republic 509 b, on the source and nature of Being, of which later Platonists made so much.
From what has been said it is clear that Albinus, in common with Celsus and Maximus of Tyre, but unlike Plutarch and Atticus, believed in the
fundamental harmony between Plato and Aristotle. This is clear not only from the willingness to treat the ideas of Plato as thoughts in the mind of
Aristotle's god, but also from the extensive use made of Aristotle's logical works. On one further point of major importance the Aristotelianizing
Platonists were at one. They all thought that the account of creation contained in Plato's Timaeus demanded an allegorical rather than a literal
interpretation. The natural sense of Plato is that the making of the world took place in time. For Albinus such a suggestion implied some sort of change
in God and must therefore be ruled out. It is of interest to note that on the three occasions when Plotinus discusses the problem of the making of the