Abstract
In the collection of poems entitled Psychodia Platonica (‘The Platonic Song of the Soul’, 1642; 1647), and in particular in the poem entitled Psychozoia (‘The Life of the Soul’), Henry More laid the groundwork for his life-long inquiry into the nature of the human self. He provided a poetic commentary of Plotinus’s Enneads in which three ontological dimensions – the life of nature, animal perception and the intellect – created an allegorical background against which one could articulate a systematic analysis of the individual human self in its relationships with God and created reality. Psychozoia ended with a conversion, in which the soul of a Platonic pilgrim (Mnemon) was released from its condition of ‘autaesthesia’ (the kind of self-consciousness that fails to disengage from selfishness) so that it was finally able to reach a state of ‘anautoaesthesia’ (the awareness that true happiness can only lie in surrendering one’s will to the One, i.e., God). Significantly, More characterized this crucial shift from self-perception to the annihilation of the individual self as a motion towards ‘self-senslessnesse’ and ‘self-deadnesse’. Regardless of its aesthetic merits, More’s poem dramatizes key philosophical notions, while bringing to the fore the prodigious effervescence of his linguistic skills. In this sense, Psychozoia remains an important document to understand the evolution of More’s thought.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
The complete title of the collection reads: ΨΥΧΩΔΙΑ Platonica: or A Platonicall song of the soul, consisting of foure severall poems; viz. ΨΥΧΟΖΩΙΑ, ΨΥΧΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΨΥΧΟΠΑΝΝΥΧΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΜΟΝΟΨΥΧΙΑ. Hereto is added a paraphrasticall interpretation of the answer of Apollo, consulted by Amelius, about Plotinus soul departed this life. The title-page of the 1647 edition is friendlier to the reader: A Platonick song of the soul, treating of, the life of the soul, her immortalitie, the sleep of the soul, the unitie of souls, and memorie after death. On Psychozoia, see Bullough (1931), xli–lxxiv; Crocker (2003), 17–27; Fouke (1997), 18–49; Hoyles (1971), 6–10; Jacob (1985); Jacob (1998), 27–37; Nicolson (1922); Staudenbaur (1986).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 366–67.
- 7.
On nullibism, see now Reid (2012).
- 8.
- 9.
This is how More recapitulates the emanative setting: ‘These three are Ahad, Aeon, Uranore: /Ahad these three in one doth counite. / What so is done on earth, the self-same power / (which is exert upon each mortall wight) / is joyntly from all these. But she that hight / fair Uranore, men also Psyche call’ (I, xxxix, 1–6).
- 10.
On Mnemon’s vicissitudes as an example of conversion narrative and identity change, see Bergemann (2016).
- 11.
More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 362.
- 12.
More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 357.
- 13.
More, ‘Notes upon Psychozoia’, in More (1647), 342.
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
More, ‘The interpretation of the more unusuall names or words’, in More (1642), Q3r; More, ‘The interpretation generall’, in More (1647), 428. See also Phychathanasia Platonica, I, iii, xxiv, 1–4: ‘That last [Hyle] is nought but potentiality, / which in the lower creature causeth strife, / destruction by incompossibility / in some, as in the Forms Quantitative’.
- 18.
On early modern psychopannychism, see Hamilton (2001).
- 19.
See also Psychathanasia, II, iii, ix, 5–9: ‘Imagination / that takes its raise from sense so high ascent / can never reach, yet intellection / or higher gets, or at least hath some sent / of God, vaticinates, or is parturient’.
- 20.
- 21.
Psychathanasia, III,iii, ii. Cf. Dante’s notion of alta fantasia in Paradiso, 30, 142.
- 22.
Psychozoia, I, vi, 1; I, xv, 7; I, xvi, 8; II, v, 5; II, lxviii, 9; III, xx, 9.
- 23.
- 24.
- 25.
Psychathanasia, I, ii, xvi, 4; I, ii, xxxv, 9; I, iv, iv, 3; II, i, i, 7; II, i, v, 8; II, i, vi, 3; II, i, xvi, 3; III, ii, xlvii, 4; III, iii, xvi, 9; III, iii, xlv, 1; III, iii, lxviii, 1.
- 26.
See, for instance, Robert Southey in Omniana: ‘The allegory in Spenser is the worst part of his poem, but the worst allegory in Spenser is far better than the best in Henry More’ (Southey and Coleridge 1812, II, 157).
- 27.
- 28.
On this particular tension in More’s philosophy, see Hutton (2013).
- 29.
On the verb ‘spie’, see Psychozoia, I, xvi, 2; I, xxxi, 1; xxxxi, 2.
- 30.
Spenser (1978 [1590, 1596, 1609]), 15–16.
Bibliography
Bergemann, Lutz. 2016. Aufstieg in die Tiefe – Bekehrung, Konversion und Transformation in der Psychozoia Henry Mores. In Zwischen Ereignis und Erzählung: Konversion als Medium der Selbstbeschreibung in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Julia Weitbrecht, Werner Röcke, and Ruth Bernuth, 85–106. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Bland, Jay. 2010. The generation of Edward Hyde: The animal within, from Plato to Darwin to Robert Louis Stevenson. Oxford: Lang.
Bullough, Geoffrey. 1931. Introduction. In Henry More, Philosophical poems, ed. Geoffrey Bullough, xi–lxxxi. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Clucas, Stephen. 1991. Poetic atomism in seventeenth-century England: Henry More, Thomas Traherne and ‘scientific imagination’. Renaissance Studies 5: 327–340.
Crocker, Robert. 2003. Henry More, 1614–1687: A biography of the Cambridge Platonist. Dordrecht: Springer.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1962 [1576]. Opera omnia, 2 vols. Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo.
Fouke, Daniel. 1997. The enthusiastical concerns of Dr. Henry More: Religious meaning and the psychology of delusion. Leiden: Brill.
Giglioni, Guido. 2011. Coping with inner and outer demons: Marsilio Ficino’s theory of the imagination. In Diseases of the imagination and imaginary disease in the early modern period, ed. Yasmin Haskell, 19–51. Turnhout: Brepols.
Hamilton, Alastair. 2001. A ‘sinister conceit’: The teaching of psychopannychism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment’. In La formazione storica dell’alterità: Studi di storia della tolleranza nell’età moderna offerti a Antonio Rotondò, 3 vols, vol. 3, ed. Henri Mechoulan, Richard H. Popkin, Giuseppe Ricuperati, and Luisa Simonutti, 1107–1127. Florence: Olschki.
Henry, John. 1986. A Cambridge Platonist’s materialism: Henry More and the concept of soul. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 49: 172–195.
Hoyles, John. 1971. The waning of the Renaissance 1640–1740: Studies in the thought and poetry of Henry More, John Norris and Isaac Watts. The Hague: Nijhoff.
Hutton, Sarah. 2007. Henry More, Ficino and Plotinus: The continuity of Renaissance Platonism. In Forme del neoplatonismo: Dall’eredità ficiniana ai Platonici di Cambridge, ed. Luisa Simonutti, 281–296. Florence: Olschki.
———. 2013. The Cambridge Platonists and Averroes. In Renaissance Averroism and its aftermath: Arabic philosophy in early modern Europe, ed. Anna Akasoy and Guido Giglioni, 197–211. Dordrecht: Springer.
Jacob, Alexander. 1985. Henry More’s Psychodia platonica and its relationship to Marsilio Ficino’s Theologia platonica. Journal of the History of Ideas 46: 503–522.
———. 1998. Introduction. In Henry More, A Platonick song of the soul, ed. Alexander Jacob, 1–136. Lewisburg/London: Bucknell University Press/Associated University Presses.
Leech, David. 2011. Ficinian influence on Henry More’s arguments for the soul’s immortality. In Laus Platonici philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his influence, ed. Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw, and Valery Rees, 301–316, Leiden: Brill.
———. 2013. The hammer of the Cartesians: Henry More’s philosophy of spirit and the origins of modern atheism. Leuven: Peters.
More, Henry. 1642. ΨΥΧΩΔΙΑ Platonica; or, A Platonicall song of the soul, consisting of foure severall poems; viz. ΨΥΧΟΖΩΙΑ, ΨΥΧΑΘΑΝΑΣΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΨΥΧΟΠΑΝΝΥΧΙΑ, ΑΝΤΙΜΟΝΟΨΥΧΙΑ. Hereto is added a paraphrasticall interpretation of the answer of Apollo, consulted by Amelius, about Plotinus soul departed this Life. Cambridge: Roger Daniel.
———. 1646. Democritus Platonissans, or, an essay upon the infinity of worlds out of Platonick principles. Hereunto is annexed Cupids conflict together with the philosophers devotion. Cambridge: Roger Daniel.
———. 1647. Philosophical poems. Cambridge: Roger Daniel.
———. 1660. An explanation of the grand mystery of godliness; or a true and faithfull representation of the everlasting gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the onely begotten Son of God and sovereign over men and angels. London: James Flesher.
———. 1694. In Letters on several subjects, ed. Edmund Elys. London: John Everingham.
———. 1931. Poems, Comprising Psychozoia and Minor Poems, ed. Geoffrey Bullough. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Nabokov, Vladimir. 2012 [1973]. Strong opinions. London: Penguin.
Nicolson, Marjorie H. 1922. More’s Psychozoia. Modern Language Notes 37: 141–148.
Rees, Valery. 2009. Ficinian ideas in the poetry of Edmund Spenser. Spenser Studies 24: 73–134.
Reid, Jasper. 2012. The metaphysics of Henry More. Dordrecht: Springer.
Southey, Robert, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1812. Omniana, or Horae otiosiores, 2 vols. London: Longman.
Spenser, Edmund. 1978 [1590, 1596, 1609]. The Faerie Queene, ed. Thomas P. Roche, Jr, with the assistance of C. Patrick O’Donnell, Jr. London: Penguin.
Staudenbaur, Craig A. 1986. Galileo, Ficino, and Henry More’s Psychathanasia. Journal of the History of Ideas 29: 565–578.
Ward, Richard. 2000 [1710]. The life of Henry More: Parts 1 and 2, ed. Sarah Hutton, Cecil Courtney, Michelle Courtney, Robert Crocker, and A. Rupert Hall. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Giglioni, G. (2019). Plotinus in Verses: The Epic of Emanation in Henry More’s Psychozoia. In: Hedley, D., Leech, D. (eds) Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 222. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22200-0_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-22199-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-22200-0
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)