Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Renaissance Thought and its Sources. New York : Columbia UP, 1979.

3

Renaissance Platonism

…the history of Western philosophy may be characterized as a series of footnotes to Plato

…only during the last 150 years or so that modern scholarship has attempted to cleanse the genuine thought of Plato from the mire of the Platonic tradition.

since Plato rarely speaks in his own name, it seems difficult to identify his own definite opinions, or to separate the from those of Socrates, Parmenides, and his other characters.

…not only on his dialogues which were generally available to the reading public, but also on the school which he founded and which continued as an institution for many centuries until 529 A.D…

…Plato left no systematic writings

…subject to much greater changes and fluctuations than in the other philosophical schools of antiquity.

…during the third century BC the Academy turned towards a more or less radical skepticism…for more than two hundred years.

…beginning of our era, a popular and somewhat eclectic kind of Platonism that borrowed various elements from Aristotle and especially from Stoicism had replace Skepticism in the Athenian Academy, had established a kind of school in Alexandria…

Middle Platonism…

[2]

…that the transcendent ideas or intelligible forms are concepts of a divine intelligence…

…elements in common with…Neopythagoreanism…

…and with the Hermetics…Alexandria…Egyptian divinity Hermes Trismegistus

[3]

[4] …Philo the Jew, and after him the Alexandrian Church Fathers Clement and Origen [Origen (182-251)], made the first attempts to combine the teachings of Biblical religion with Greek philosophy…

[5]

…ground was well prepared both among pagans and Christians when philosophical Platonism was revived during the third century and in Alexandria by Ammonius Saccas and by his great pupil, Plotinus.

[6]

Plotinus added a more explicit emphasis on a hierarchical universe that descends through several levels from the transcendent God or One to the corporeal world, and on an inner, spiritual experience that enables the self to reascend through the intelligible world to that supreme One….

[7] 53

In Proclus…Elements of Theology and Platonic Theology…Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics, divested of their specific and concrete reference, are used as elements of a highly abstract and comprehensive ontology

…Neoplatonism supplied practically all later Greek Church Fathers and theologians with their philosophical terms and concepts, most of all that obscure father of most Christian mysticism who hides under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite.

[8]

Byzantine East…Plato and of the Neoplatonists were always available…combined with that of the ancient Greek poets and of Aristotle. [9]

The prevalence of Plato over Aristotle within a synthesis of both was justified by Neoplatonic precedent, and the tendency to harmonize Plato rather than Aristotle with Christian theology was amply sanctioned by the Greek patristic authors.

[10]

…eleventh century, Michael Psellos…combining with it the Chaldaic Oracles, attributed to Zoroaster, and the corpus Hermeticum[11] .

…fourteenth and fifteenth…Gemistus Pletho…allegorical explanation of the Greek divinities[12]

Plato…representative of…old pagan theology…Hermes Trismegistus and Zoroaster, Orpheus and Pythagoras, and which parallels both in age and content the revelation of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures

Among the Arabs, Plato’s position was inferior to that of Aristotle

[13]

…the arabs derived many Platonist conceptions from the Aristotelian commentators, and they possessed at least two Aristotelian apocrypha, the liber de causis and the Theologia Aristotelis,…based entirely on Proclus and Plotinus

[14]

[15] Under the influence of the Arabic tradition, medieval Jewish thought included a strong Neoplatonic current.[16]

…medieval jewish mysticism known as the Cabala ocntains sevral ideas derived from Neoplatonic and other late ancient philosophies.

..astrology, alchemy, and magic were cultivated…

These pseudo sciences also derived…from …later phases of Greek antiquity…became associated with Platonist and Hermetic philosophy…shared such notions as the world soul …affinities and antipathies of all things natural[17]

…not only the skepticism…but also the first phases of that eclectic or Middle Platonism

Middle Platonic ideas appear in Apuleius,…Neoplatonism…basis Macrobius, and for Boethius;…consolation of Philosophy

…most important representative of Platonism…St. Augustine

[18]

Typical Platonist doctrines, such as the eternal presence of the universal forms in the mind of god, the immediate comprehension of these ideas by human reason, and the incorporeal nature and the immortality of the human soul

…combined with different Biblical or specifically Augustinian conceptions or because Augustine rejected other Platonic or Neoplatonic doctrines

…early Middle Ages, when philosophical studies were not much cultivated in western Europe

Dionysius the Areopagite,…identified with the patron saint of St. Denis near Paris[19] .

Eriugena…strongly imbued with Neoplatonic conceptions

…Timaeus was apparently used as a textbook [20] in natural philosophy

…Augustinian or Neoplatonic notions even in the thought of many Aristotelian philosophers of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

Augustinian tradition persisted…speculative mysticism of master Eckhart…inspiration from the Areopagite, Proclus

The Augustinian trend in theology and metaphysics went on without interruption; the increasing religious literature for laymen contained strong Augustinian elements, and even [21] some of the Platonizing works written in Chartres during the twelfth century still found attentive readers

[22]

Petrarch…attack on the authority of Aristotle among the philosophers of his time, he used at least Plato’s name…then…by his humanist successors.[23]

Renaissance Platonism…not merely as a scholarly or literary, movement; it is connected both with the Augustinian and Aristotelian traditions of medieval philosophy;

[24]

Marsilio Ficino,…Greek Platonism…brought together in a novel synthesis.

…Platonic Theology…authoritative summary of Platonist philosophy,…immortality of the soul is emphasized, reasserting…Thomist position against the Averroists

[25]

…human soul the central place in the hierarchy of the universe,…metaphysical expression to a notion dear to his humanist predecessors;

[26]

…coined the term Platonic love,…most popular concepts of later Renaissance literature.[27]

…inner ascent of the soul towards god through contemplation…

[28]

…doctrine of the unity of the world brought about by the soul…

…younger contemporary, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

…attempt…synthesis between Platonism and Aristotelianism.

[29]

…also Arabic and Hebrew language and thought

…first Western scholar who became acquainted with the Jewish Cabala,…

[30]

…reconcile the Cabala with Christian theology and to associate it with the Platonist tradition. His Oration on the dignity of man…most famous expression of that humanist credo…

academies—a new type of institution, half learned society and half literary club[31] ,…Italy throughout the century…

…lectures and courses on the so-called philosophy of love,…based on Platonizing poems…influenced by Plato’s Symposium…Florence

[32] …sixteenth century Platonism…ubiquitous presence,…combined with humanism or Aristotelianism…

…ancient Platonists,…Orpheus and Zoroaster, to Hermes…Pythagoreans…printed and reprinted

[33]

…Paracelsus, Telesio, or Bruno,…indebted to the Platonic tradition

Bruno is a Platonist…heroic Enthusiasts,…theory of love derived from the Symposium[34] …concept of the world soul from Plotinus…

…astrological and alchemical literature…increased during the sixteenth century, also presupposes such notions as a world soul or the inner powers and affinities of things celestial

John Colet…impressed by the Areopagite…in touch with …Ficino. Sir Thomas More translated the life and a few letters of Pico into English…Utopia,…hardly have been conceived without the reading of Plato’s Republic. Erasmus…Praise of Folly,…diluted form of Platonism…opposed the higher folly of the inner spiritual life to the lower folly of ordinary existence,…

[35]

…Pico apparently affected Zwingli, and his Christian cabalism was adopted by Reuchlin

Ficino’s notion of Platonic love, that is, of the spiritual love for another human being that is but a disguised love of the soul for God[36]

…found favor with…Lorenzo de’Medici…

…this Platonizing poetry…successors in the sixteenth century Michelangelo and Spenser,…[37]

…not correct to say,…Dante,…Guido Cavalcanti, or Petrarch were poets of Platonic love, but they were thus interpreted by Ficino, Landino, and others…

[38]

their imitators in the sixteenth century…merge their style and imagery with those of the genuine Platonist tradition

[39]

Ficino’s doctrine of Platonic love…many sonnets…of the sixteenth century,…[40] prose literature…around the literary academies

…trattati d’amore…discuss in different forms the nature and beneficial effects of spiritual love in the Platonist manner, …immortality of the soul or the existence and knowledge of the pure Ideas.

[41]

[42] 62

Bembo and Castiglione, for whom Platonist philosophy was but a passing fancy[43] ,…Tasso, whose philosophical prose writings have not yet been sufficiently studies,

Plato’s doctrine of divine madness as expressed in the Ion and Phaedrus appealed to many poets and literary critics [44] who would either add this Platonic doctrine to an otherwise Aristotelian system of poetics, or use it as the cornerstone of an anti-Aristotelian theory, as was done by Patrizi

…analogy between the conceptions of the artist and the ideas of the divine creator which appears in Cicero, Seneca, Plotinus, and other Middle and Neoplatonic authors

…iconography of …Botticelli, Raphael, and Michelangelo.

…musical proportions in Plato’s Timaeus, together with Ficino’s extensive commentary on them,

…in medicine, astrological and alchemical theories exercised a good deal of influence.. medical writings of Ficino,…read, especially in Germany…main impact of Platonism…mathematical sciences,…most cultivated and respected by Plato and his followers.

Kepler,…cosmology is rooted in Renaissance Platonism,…mathematical conception of the universe…notion of cosmic harmony…

…positive scientific discoveries of the past were never unrelated to the theoretical and philosophical assumptions the investigating scientist,

Cambridge Platonists,…constitute the most important phase of professed Platonism after the Florentine Academy.[45]

8

Byzantine and Western Platonism in the Fifteenth Century

150[46]

…no modern history of the controversy about the superiority of Plato or Aristotle

151

[47] …textbooks of the history of philosophy,…contrast between medieval and Renaissance thought in the West may be roughly described as a contrast between Aristotelianism and Platonism[48] . Medieval scholastic thought was dominated by ‘the master of those who know,’ whereas the Renaissance discovered ‘Plato who in that group came closest to the goal that may be reached by those whom heaven favors.

[49]

..also during the middle ages a more or less continuous Platonist current…

Renaissance Platonism remains,…an established fact,…we are still confronted with the task of understanding and explaining it. Cusanus, Ficino, and Pico were the most vigorous thinkers of the fifteenth century,

‘Platonism,’…under this label we may expect to find in each instance a different combination of ideas and doctrines…

152

…Platonic and Platonist influences in…Cicero,…translated a part of Plato’s Timaeus…

…philosophical treatises of Apuleius…sources for that school of ancient philosophy…Middle Platonism…

Apuleius…also…translator of the dialogue Asclepius,…only complete source of Hermetism known to Western readers…

…Calcidius…Victorinus…Macrobius…Augustine…Boethius

Compared with these strong elements of Platonism, the traces of Aristotle in the philosophical literature of Latin antiquity are rather meager.

…certain acquaintance…Aristotelian logic…Cicero…Augustine…Boethius

…medieval philosophy and theology up to the twelfth century followed a strong Neoplatonic trend, whereas the influence of Aristotle was felt almost exclusively in the field of logic,…

…twelfth century….beginning of that intellectual revolution that was to bear fruit during the following two centuries. In the vast number of philosophical and scientific texts which were than translated for the first time from Greek and Arabic into Latin, the most important philosophical texts were those of Aristotle and his commentators.

…almost the entire, Corpus

…new universities in the thirteenth century introduced a systematic instruction in the philosophical disciplines and especially in logic and natural philosophy, the writings of Aristotle were naturally adopted

153

despite…gradually diminishing importance, through the Renaissance down to the eighteenth century…academic and scientific philosophy of the Latin West during the later Middle Ages was dominated by the writings of Aristotle in a manner that had its precedent among the Arabs

…preoccupations of the new humanist movement that asserted itself in contrast to the scholastic tradition were in part literary and scholarly,…part also philosophical and, especially, moral…

.Petrarch…rebellion against scholasticism…praising Plato above Aristotle ...

…lead to …Bruni…Ficino’s first complete translation

…new interest in Plato ..turn…toward Byzantium, where the original texts of Plato and of his school had been preserved and studied during those long centuries…

…Marsilio Ficino was able to say…impression made by Plethon on Cosimo de’Medici that led to the founding of his own Platonic Academy and to the revival of Platonism brought about by the activities of that Academy.

Following the precedent of Proclus, Psellos included as a part of the Platonic tradition the writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus and the Chaldaic Oracles. The Corpus Hermeticum, as it has come down to us in Greek, is perhaps an edition or anthology due to Psellos, and also the collection of Chaldaic Oracles as we have it goes back to Psellos, who added a commentary to it. This commentary was known to Ficino,…

155

It is often asserted that the philosophical and theological tradition of the Byzantine East was predominantly Aristotelian or anti-Platonist...