Dictionary

Platonist en · NOUN

Etymology

From Latin Platonista, from Plato + -ista, equivalent to Plato + -ist.

Meanings

1. A member of the philosophical school of thought established by Plato; a believer in Platonism.
   • [St Augustine of Hippo] became of a Maniche, and of a platoniste a good christian. 1549, Hugh Latimer, The Seconde Sermon... Preached before the Kynges Maiestie:
2. One who holds similar beliefs, particularly that abstract ideas are real.
   • I suspect that in their hearts most working mathematicians are Platonists, in that they take it as a matter of unassailable if unprovable fact that mathematical reality stands apart from the world, and is at least as real as the world, and possibly gives shape to the world, as Plato suggested. 1992 March 2, Richard Preston, “The Mountains of Pi”, in The New Yorker:
3. (obsolete, rare) A platonic lover.

Forms

Deriveds

Neoplatonist

Synonyms

Platonician

Translations (7)

cs platonik (follower of Plato; holder of similar ideas) · el Πλατωνίστης (follower of Plato; holder of similar ideas) · ru плато́ник (follower of Plato; holder of similar ideas) · pl platończyk (follower of Plato; holder of similar ideas) · pl platonik (follower of Plato; holder of similar ideas) · fi platonikko (follower of Plato; holder of similar ideas) · io Platonisto (follower of Plato; holder of similar ideas)