Abstract
Ficino’s mission, the original aim of the Platonic revival, was not simply to create a fusion of the Platonic and Christian traditions. It is also to transfigure us, and then, through our agency, achieve a renovatio of our world. The Phaedran Charioteer drives his chariot back towards the arch of the heavens. There our soul will see the world of Forms spread out before it. It will catch a glimpse of Beauty, Truth and Justice. With that knowledge, we are transformed. With that knowledge, we can transform the world around us.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Si res quaeque suam originem repetunt, unde percutiens terram solis radius in solem inde reflectitur, quid mirum has quoque umbratiles similitudines idearum occulto quodam instinctu pristinam puritatem requirere, atque radium ipsum earum fictorem, postquam descendit, vicissim ad ascendendum ardenter anniti?’ Theologia Platonica, V, pp. 256–7.
- 2.
Letters, I, p. 43, Letter to Peregrine Agli.
- 3.
‘Moralis quidem finis, animam a corpore divisibili purgare atque seiungere; speculativae autem incorporeas universalesque rerum rationes a dividuis corporibus procul positas comprehendere.’ Theologia Platonica, II, pp. 292–3.
- 4.
‘… the intuitive apprehension, not the rational actualization of the eternal values is practically the only road to temporal beatitude’. E. Panofsky (1972) Studies in Iconology: Humanistic Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (New York, Evanston, San Francisco: Harper & Row), p. 140.
- 5.
Letters, I, p. 81, Letter to Giovanni Cavalcanti.
- 6.
‘Philebus’, p. 46.
- 7.
‘Redire quippe ad unum animus nequit nisi et ipse unum efficiatur; multa vero effectus est lapsus in corpus, in operationes varias distributus respiciensque ad singula....’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Ion’, pp. 196–7.
- 8.
‘Est autem furor divinus illustratio rationalis animae, per quam deus animam, a superis delapsam ad infera, ab inferis ad supera retrahit (or retrabit?).’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1: , ‘Ion’, pp. 194–5.
- 9.
‘Deinde poeticis quibusdam ambagibus artem a furore secernit. Furorem in divinum dividit et humanum: divinum in quatuor scilicet in vaticinium, mysterium, poesim atque amorem.’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Phaedrus’, p. 43.
- 10.
‘Sed curnam poesim gradu furorum tertio numeravit? Primo enim vaticinium, secundo mysterium, tertio poesim, quarto amorem commemoravit. Quoniam vaticinium quidem ad cognitionem praecipue pertinet, mysterium ad affectum (mysterium igitur sequitur vaticinium), poesis autem ad auditum praeterea iam declinat.’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 50–1.
- 11.
‘...accedit ergo mysterium, quod expiationibus sacrisque et omni deorum cultu omnium partium intentionem in mentem, qua deus colitur, dirigit...’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Ion’, pp. 198–9.
- 12.
‘...ex quo partes eius superiores pene obdormiunt, inferiores aliis dominantur: illae torpore, istae perturbatione afficiuntur, totus vero animus discordia et inconcinnitate repletur. Poetico ergo furore in primus opus est....’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Ion’, pp. 196–8.
- 13.
‘Primus itaque furor inconcinna et dissonantia temperat; secundus temperata unum totum ex partibus efficit; tertius unum totum supra partes; quartus in unum, quod super essentiam et totum est, ducit.’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Ion’, pp. 198–9.
- 14.
‘Primus bonum equum, id est rationem opinionemque, a malo equo, id est a phantasia confusa et natura, distinguit; secundus malum equum bono, bonum aurigae, id est menti, subiicit; tertius aurigam in caput suum, id est in unitatem mentis apicem, dirigit; postremus caput aurigae in caput rerum omnium vertit....’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Ion’, pp. 198–9.
- 15.
‘Quatuor ergo species divini furoris existunt, primus quidem poeticus furor, alter mysterialis, tertius vaticinium, quartus amatorius affectus. Est autem poesis a Musis, mysterium a Dionysio, vaticinium ab Apolline, amor a Venere.’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Ion’, pp. 196–7.
- 16.
Letters, IV, p. 59, Letter to Filippo Carducci.
- 17.
See ‘Symposium’, pp. 171–2.
- 18.
‘Est enim preterea et furor aliquis per quem animus alienatur raptus super hominem elevatus’, ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 142–3.
- 19.
‘Solus certe nos amor patriae caelesti restituit copulatque cum deo....’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 3–4.
- 20.
‘Phaedrus’, p. 140. As Allen suggests, ‘Ficino’s most frequent definitions of beauty call it either the “splendour” of manifest goodness, that is, “the complete unfolding of the intelligible light and the intelligible species”; or the “circumference” of which goodness if the center; or the “ray” of God; or one of goodness’ “flowers”; and goodness and beauty together, while retaining their ontological status as Ideas, become the inner and outer aspects respectively of perfection, goodness being beauty in its internalized form.’ M.J.B. Allen (1980) ‘Tamburlaine and Plato: a Colon, a Crux’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, XXIII, p. 25.
- 21.
‘... hoc caelestis ipsa Venus per amorem, hoc est divinae pulchritudinis desiderium bonique ardorem, explet.’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1 ‘Ion’, pp. 198–9. Beauty is here associated with the good.
- 22.
‘The Symposium’, p. 66.
- 23.
In Phaedrus, this is a young boy and an older man. The older man is then inspired to write about the philosophy of love, whilst the young boy is inspired to become a philosopher. U.I. Aasdalen (2011) ‘The First Pico-Ficino Controversy’ in S. Clucas, P.J. Forshaw and V. Rees (eds) Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence (Leiden and Boston: Brill), p. 77.
- 24.
Letters, I, p. 42, Letter to Peregrina Agli.
- 25.
‘Symposium’, p. 66.
- 26.
Letters, I, p. 91.
- 27.
Theologia Platonica, IV, pp. 16–7.
- 28.
‘In speciei naturalis ceu pulchritudinis cognitione, primo quidem descriptionem pulchritudinis aliquam singulis rebus pulchris communem excogitamus. Addimus statim proprietates aliquas pulchritudinis a descriptione deductas. Has notiones forsitan concedemus posse per formulam pulchritudinis menti innatam excogitari. Sed quando in hac ipsa consideratione diutius immoramur, invenimus eam naturam pulchritudinis quam definivimus, quia mera sit, esse infinitam, et quia infinita sit, esse deum. Nullus autem sanae mentis concesserit per formulam terminatam et infra deum intervallo longissimo, immo incomparabili, existentem apprehendi naturam infinitam ipsumque deum. Igitur mens, per formulam suam ex habitu eductam in actum, ideae divinae quadam praeparatione subnectitur; cui subnexa supra se surgit. Nulla enim res supra se umquam attollitur, nisi a superiore trahatur.’ Theologia Platonica, IV, pp. 16–7.
- 29.
Letters, VI, p. 58, Letter to Filippo Carducci.
- 30.
Letters, VI, pp. 58–9, Letter to Filippo Carducci.
- 31.
There is a suggestion in Ficino’s work that the philosopher can indeed go beyond the world of Ideas and approach the One by using the via negative, Allen Synoptic Art, p. 181. We have to learn how to ‘unjoin’ what we join in dialectics to follow this route, Synoptic Art, p. 189.
- 32.
‘Id autem non ipsum simpliciter bonum, sed essentiale et intelligibile bonum. Illud enim super sapientiam pulchritudinemque existit. Hoc autem et bonum est simul et sapiens atque pulchrum.’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1, ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 78-9.
- 33.
‘Finally, when the soul has been turned into its one—into the one, I say, which is present in the soul’s very essence—it remains for it to be converted thence into the One which is above essence.’ (‘Demum cum anima unum facta est—unum, inquam, quod in ipsa essentia animae inest—restat ut ilico in unum quod est super essentiam convertatur….’) Commentaries on Plato vol 1, ‘Ion’, pp. 198–9.
- 34.
This might connect to the second form of human love: ‘a peculiarly human frenzy midway between the divine and the bestial; it is enkindled in the rational soul of the man who is busy admiring bodily shape, but who neither surrenders the divine form entirely to oblivion nor recalls it entirely.’ (‘Describit rursus humanum quendam furorem inter divinum atque ferinum, in eius accessum animo, qui admiratione formae corporeae occupatus, neque oblivioni divinam tradit omnino, neque penitus recordatur.’) Commentaries on Plato vol 1, ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 44–5.
- 35.
‘Symposium’, p. 154. Further Socrates ‘describes the frenzy opposite to this as bestial, not ascending from the body’s shape to divine intuition but descending shamefully to sexual union.’ (‘Sed contrarium huic describit furorem quasi ferinum, a forma corporis non ad divinum intuitum ascendentem sed ad venereum congressum turpiter descendentem.’) Commentaries on Plato vol 1, ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 44–5.
- 36.
Letters, IX, p. 57, ‘A fable on Pleasure’.
- 37.
‘Post haec Pluto rex terrae, videns sublatam sibi escam detinendarum apud inferos animarum, cogitavit saltem escam fingere aspectu similem voluptati. Acceptis ergo vestibus fucisque a voluptate relictis quibus in terras solebat uti, in coelum enim abiit pura, subornare et substituere alium pro voluptate decrevit. Neque tamen subornavit daemones, ministri enim necessarii sunt; neque animas, adiudicatae enim sunt; sed aliquam furiarum.’ ‘Marsilio Ficino’s account of the triple life and the triple end’ in ‘Philebus’, pp. 478–9. Ficino also tells a ‘Christianized’ version where God draws all things to himself including Pleasure, so that all things we think of as being good are in Heaven. ‘Philebus’, p. 58.
- 38.
‘From Ficino’s concept of a Socratic friendship emerges a blend of Platonism and Christianity where the relation between man and the divine realm is generally eroticized. Ficino’s Eros is based on the usual Platonic definition of love as desire for beauty, but in Ficino’s adaptation, desire for male beauty in a Socratic friendship becomes a kind of foretaste of divine beauty. His Eros is fuelled by desire.’ Aasdalen, ‘The First Pico-Ficino Controversy’ p. 84.
- 39.
‘Post haec descendit ad divinum legitimi amoris furorem, quem accendi putat in animo, quando, pulchram aspiciens corporis formam, divinae pulchritudinis quam quondam contemplatus fuerat facile recordatur, illiusque recuperandae desiderio inflammatur et furit.’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1, ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 44–5.
- 40.
‘In Ficino’s philosophy there is a continuity between earthly and heavenly beauty, and man’s intuition is able to follow a chain of beauty from the lowest to the highest, whereas in Pico’s view there is a discontinuity.’ Aasdalen, ‘The First Pico-Ficino Controversy’, p. 84.
- 41.
Pico also emphasizes that erotic desire should be towards women rather than the older male to younger male ‘friendship’ model of Plato.
- 42.
Aasdalen argues that Ficino’s mixing of friendship with ideal love ‘lies at the conceptual heart of… [his] project,’ ‘The First Pico-Ficino Controversy’, p. 82.
- 43.
‘Symposium’, p. 54.
- 44.
‘Symposium’, p. 58.
- 45.
Ficino’s commentaries on Phaedrus and The Symposium ‘together constitute the most coherent, detailed and influential presentation of Renaissance and not just Ficinian attitudes to these two themes [love and beauty]’. They are ‘the age’s standard analyses of abstract beauty’, Allen, ‘Tamburlaine and Plato’, p. 24.
- 46.
Letters, I, p. 65, Letter from Lorenzo de’ Medici.
- 47.
‘Quamobrem furor quilibet, sive fatidicus sive mysterialis seu amatorius, dum in cantus procedit et carmina, merito in furorem poeticum videtur absolvi.’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1, ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 2–3.
- 48.
‘Quicunque numine quomodolibet occupatur, profecto propter ipsam impulsus divini vehementiam virtutisque plenitudinem exuberat, concitatur, exultat, finesque et mores humanos excedit. Itaque occupatio hec sive raptus furor quidam et alienato non iniuria nominatur. Furens autem nullus est simplici sermone contentus, sed in clamorem prorumpit et cantus et carmina.’ ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 84–5.
- 49.
Ficino, Letters, I, p. 98, Letter to Antonio Pelotti and Baccio Ugolini.
- 50.
‘Eiusmodi poesim divinitus nobis infusam Plato etiam philosophiae praeponit, humanam vero procul ex urbe propulsat.’ Commentaries on Plato vol 1, Phaedrus, p. 116–7.
- 51.
Allen Icastes, p. 139.
- 52.
Allen Icastes, p. 117.
- 53.
See also Ronald Levao for a discussion of ‘making’ in Platonic thought and later literature, Renaissance Minds and their Fictions: Cusanus, Sidney, Shakespeare (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1985), p. 105.
- 54.
The sublunar demiurge of Plato’s Timaeus is a ‘maker’ and could be called the founder of the makers. Such makers would include, in Plato’s time, the sophists.
- 55.
Letters, I, p. 98, Letter to Antonio Pelotti and Baccio Ugolini.
- 56.
Ficino, Letters, I, p. 46.
- 57.
Letters, I, p. 46.
- 58.
R. Falco (2007) ‘Marsilio ficino and vatic myth’, Modern Language Notes, CXXII, 1, pp. 101–111. Proquest 2015c, http://search.proquest.com/ accessed 3 January 2015.
- 59.
R. Klibansky, E. Panofsky, F. Saxl (1964) Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons), p. 245. Allen relates genius as attendant daemon, to ingenium, which is connected, in turn, to those ingeniosi (golden wits), and also gignere—to beget or create. Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 88.
- 60.
Allen Commentaries on Plato vol I, p. xxxvii.
- 61.
‘Memento vero cantum esse imitatorem omnium potentissimum. Hic enim intentiones affectionesque animi imitatur et verba, refert quoque gestus motusque et actus hominum atque mores; tamque vehementer omnia imitatur et agit, ut ad eadem imitanda vel agenda tum cantantem, tum audientes subito provocat. Eadem quoque virtute quando coelestia imitatur, hinc quidem spiritum nostrum ad coelestem influxum, inde vero influxum ad spiritum mirifice provocat.’ Three Books on Life, Kaske and Clarke, pp. 358–9.
- 62.
The myth can be found in Plato’s Timaeus, 28a–30c.
- 63.
Demiurge is ‘Plato’s authoritative image for a mind thinking or contemplating ideas and then employing them as models to fashion a lower world’ and it is therefore ‘an image… for paradigmatic man who must fashion ex ideis’, Allen, ‘Plato’s Timaeus’, p. 437.
- 64.
‘… his own visionary account of perfected and perfecting man, of the human demiurge as the “face” of the universe, as the “chain” or “succession” of the created world’, Allen, ‘Plato’s Timaeus’, p. 438.
- 65.
Allen, ‘Plato’s Timaeus’, p. 401.
- 66.
See K.B. Moore (2010) for an interesting discussion of the development of ‘bird’s eye’ architectural sketches around Ficino’s time as a way for the mind to see everything simultaneously about a building. ‘Ficino’s idea of architecture: The ‘mind’s-eye view’ in quattrocento architectural drawings’, Renaissance Studies, XXIV, 3, pp. 332–52. Wiley Online Library 2015, http://DOI:10.1111/j.1477-4658.2009.00591.x. accessed 2 January 2015.
- 67.
S. T. Coleridge (1984) Biographia Literaria, George Watson (ed.), rpt (London: Dent), p. 167. Coleridge is talking about a ‘finite’ mind here, which implies a different view of the soul, but I think he is simply drawing a distinction between the human and God.
- 68.
Letters, I, pp. 98–9, Letter to Antonio Pelotti and Baccio Ugolini.
- 69.
Coleridge, Biographia, p. 167.
- 70.
Allen Icastes, p. 132.
- 71.
Klibansky Saturn and Melancholy, p. 247. Klibansky, Panofsky and Saxl also note Ficino’s use of an Aristotelian doctrine linking melancholy with great men, Saturn and Melancholy, p. 247.
- 72.
T. Walkington (1607) The Optick Glasse of Humors cited in Klibansky Saturn and Melancholy, p. 250.
- 73.
‘Dialectic thus depends on a god-filled mind, on absorption, however transitory, into something divine, given its origin as a spark of the divine fire which Prometheus had stolen from heaven long ago to give to men as the supreme ‘skill’ they needed in order to return to their primal condition, to the airiness of the good daemons philosophizing in the voices of the cicadas in the moonlight of the Good along the banks of the Ilissus.’ Allen Synoptic Art, p. 181.
- 74.
Allen Synoptic Art, p. 181.
- 75.
Allen Synoptic Art, p. 191.
- 76.
‘Nomen sane, ut a Platone describitur in Cratylo, rei ipsius vis quaedam est mente concepta primum, voce deinde expressa, litteris demum significata.’ ‘Philebus’, pp. 138–41.
- 77.
I am using Ernst Gombrich’s discussion of Platonic metaphor here where he describes it as ‘a restructuring of the world’. Symbolic Images, p. 166.
- 78.
‘Hinc Plato scribit in Phaedro [its] philosophorum mentes praecipue alas quibus ad divina vola(n)tur recuperare, quia videlicet semper divinis incumbant. Et alibi quidem divinos, alibi vero dei filios nominat, quia quodammodo renascantur ex deo.’ Theologia Platonica, IV, pp. 122–3.
- 79.
Ficino, cited by Allen Synoptic Art, p. 35, n. 74.
- 80.
‘Neque rursum de donis agere credas, quae stellae sint electione daturae, sed influxu potius naturali. Ad quem profecto multiplicem et occultum ita nos expuisitis studemus modis accommodare, sicut quotidie ad manifestum Solis lumen caloremque salubriter excipiendum nos ipsos accommodamus.’ Three Books on Life, Kaske, pp. 356–7.
- 81.
Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 97.
- 82.
Letters, VIII, p. 39, Appendix B to the three Peters, Nero, Guicciardini and Soderini.
- 83.
Gordon argues that the magus ‘participates in the divine will and communicates with God alone, requiring no mediating angels. Magic is the magus enacting the divine will in the world’, ‘The Renaissance Angel’, p. 61.
- 84.
Allen ‘Philebus’, p. 46.
- 85.
‘Ideo quando soluta ab hoc, emergit in amplum, deo iam plena, animalis huius grandioris humores, id est quatuor elementa maioris mundi, movet et sua.’ Theologia Platonica, IV, pp. 202–3.
- 86.
Cody argues that the emphasis on the rural or pastoral is symptomatic of the Platonists’ desire ‘to comprehend in a single formula the dualism of a “delight in the sensible universe” and a “beatific vision of divine perfection”’, Cody Landscape of the Mind, p. 7. See also Cody p. 8.
- 87.
‘For Petrarch, landscape becomes the living mirror of the Ego…precisely in this function of reflecting the soul, nature itself possesses only a mediate and, as it were, reflected reality. Nature is not sought and represented for its own sake; rather, its value lies in its service to modern man as a new means of expression for himself, for the liveliness and the infinite polymorphism of his inner life.’ Cassirer Individual and the Cosmos, pp. 143–4.
- 88.
A. Patterson Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to Valery (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), p. 65.
- 89.
Patterson Pastoral and Ideology, p. 4.
- 90.
‘Plato, though never a pastoral writer in the strict sense, seems to have been its originator’, Adam Parry, ‘Landscape in Greek Poetry’, cited by Allen The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, p. 5.
- 91.
‘Among the ingenious aspects of the dialogue are the following: the description of the spot stands allegorically for the Academy; the plane tree for Plato; the agnus castus bush for the chastity of Platonic and Socratic love; the fountain for the overflowing of the wisdom to be shared; and the rest of the embellishments stand for the oratorical and poetic flowers that fill Plato’s Academy.’ (‘Inter hec artificiosissima loci descriptio allegorice signat Academiam, platanus Platonem, castum arbustum amoris platonici et socratici castitatem, fons in communicanda sapientia largitatem, ornamenta cetera oratorios poeticosque flores quibus Academia Platonis abundat.’) ‘Phaedrus’, pp. 72–3.
- 92.
Not the exteriorization of the internal world of Piers the Plowman. The key here is that God is both transcendent and immanent in the Platonic pastoral landscape: we are in a Pathetic Fallacy but also in an other-worldly space. Exterior and interior co-exist in what I have been calling a ‘fusion’ (not synthesis but semi-union).
- 93.
Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 136.
- 94.
Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, pp. 133 and 134.
- 95.
‘Indeed, the power of the myth of the golden age over Ficino and his Medicean contemporaries lay in the belief that it might be made actually to come again; that it could be reinvoked and captured from the heavens by certain “divine” or “daemonic” men who would effectively be magicians over, as well as prophets of, time.’ Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, pp. 134–5.
- 96.
Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 124.
- 97.
I will only develop a few themes here. Other areas, such as architecture, have been explored, see for instance, Moore, ‘Ficino’s idea of architecture’. Writers on architecture were able to use a variety of Platonic Ideas, such as the Idea in the mind of the architect (Idea as blueprint), or the question of ‘ornament’ in Alberti’s work.
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Howlett, S. (2016). The Second Creation. In: Marsilio Ficino and His World. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53946-5_5
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