Homoiôsis Theôi (Plato, Theaetetus 176b1) in Late Neoplatonism

The platonic prescription of escape from the world as ὁμοίωσις θεῷ that we read in Tht. 176a5-b2 but present also in many other dialogues, issue that received great attention by the scholars in the last twenty years, has been identified by the Medioplatonic philosophers with the telos of human life and therefore with happiness. With these connotations it becomes a issue debated by Neoplatonic philosophers from Plotinus to the epigones of Alexandrian school. The problems these philosophers propose to clarify are many: to what God Plato prescribes to assimilate; if the escape prescripted by Plato implies a total leaving from political activity; in what measure the man can to assimilate himself to God; if God assimilates himself to the man since the man assimilates himself to God; what Plato intends when he speaks of justice, piety and intelligence and what relation these virtues have each others. With Philoponus, as with Philon, the issue of ὁμοίωσις θεῷ ends by crossing the boundaries of Platonic ethics and metaphysics and thus becomes destined to permeate Christian reflection in the centuries of Byzantium. In this paper, after presenting the issue of ὁμοίωσις θεῷ in his general lines and antecedending Late Neoplatonism, I try to analyze the problems and the solutions offered by late Neoplatonic philosophers in their interpretation of Tht. 176a5-b2