Damascius was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher and the last in the succession of scholars at Plato’s Academy in Athens. He served as head of the Academy until 529, when it and other “pagan schools” were closed by Emperor Justinian. His major work,
Problems and Solutions About the First Principles, though based upon the system of
Proclus, promoted a more comprehensive and authentic mysticism than generally found among the Neoplatonists. By emphasizing the ultimate unknowableness of the divine reality, which he felt he could not acknowledge by its customary name “the One,” Damascius anticipated the Christian mystics of the middle ages.