Platonism is the sole theoretical “background” of Latin-speaking philosophy between fourth and twelfth century. Such “scenery” includes, and is confused with, the Aristotelian, Stoic and Neopythagorean elements that the sources of medieval thought transmit to Latin learned circles, in accordance with the forms of the Neoplatonic usage of the classical and Hellenistic philosophical tradition. The purpose of this paper is to point out the changes in the late antique model of philosophy as science of being and in the relationship between this science and mystical theology, linking this movement of ideas to the civil and religious contexts and to the knowledge of new philosophical texts, as, even though Plato’s dialogues aren’t known, said contexts and knowledge allow to use both his image and some ideas that are indirectly related to him in current culture. The analysis of texts and issues that are representative of the “early” (sixth to tenth centuries) and “halfway” (eleventh and twelfth centuries) Latin medieval philosophical tradition enables to understand the historical meaning and the theoretical significance of the adaptations of the ancient philosophical “legacy”. These adaptations are increasingly distant from said legacy, but they also express a culture that is increasingly characterized by intense original debates (ranging from the ecclesiastical, but fraught with philosophical implications, controversies on predestination and on the Eucharist to the “problem of universals”, from the quarrel between the dialecticians and the so-called “anti-dialecticians” to the harsher “theological clash” of the twelfth century) and that is “marked” by incisive processes of knowledge rationalization and social “modernization”.weiterlesen