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The Influence of Plotinus on Marsilio Ficino's Doctrine

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THE INFLUENCE OF PLOTINUS ON MARSILIO FICINO‘S DOCTRINE OF THE HIERARCHY OF BEING by Nora I. Ayala A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida May 2011 THE INFLUE CE OF PLOTINUS ON MARSILIO FICINO'S DOCTRINE OF THE HIERARCHY OF BEING by ora 1. Ayala This thesis was prepared under the direction ofthe candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Marina Paola Banchetti, Department of Philosophy, and has been approved by the members of her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree ofMaster ofArts. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: J) ~'S{L~=-~ Clevis R. Headley, Ph.D. ~> (L.. ~-=--~ Clevis R. Headley, Ph.D. Director, Liberal Studies ~; .~.Q. L ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my sincere thanks to those who were, have been, and are a part of my life. I am who I am because of their unique gifts. iii ABSTRACT Author: Nora I. Ayala Title: The Influence of Plotinus on Marsilio Ficino‘s Doctrine of the Hierarchy of Being Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Marina Paola Banchetti, Ph.D. Degree: Master of Arts Year: 2011 Marsilio Ficino provides the ground to consider Renaissance Platonism as a distinctive movement within the vast context of Renaissance philosophy. Ficino‘s Platonism includes traces of earlier humanistic thought and ideas from Neoplatonic philosophers such as Plotinus, Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite. Ficino was able to rebuild a traditional philosophy that, from the ancient Greeks to Plotinus, had established the harmony between paganism and Christianity. Neoplatonism, characterized by complex metaphysical, ethical, and psychological canons, provided the grounds for Ficino‘s cosmological challenge to merge the cyclical aspect of the universe with the religious notion of the soul, in order to secure its cosmic position. Ficino adopted Plotinus hierarchy of being as a dominant component of his own thought. His formulations on the iv three hypostases and the movements of the soul allow him to develop his own hierarchy of the universe, in which soul anchors the metaphysics of the structure and reaffirms its ontological nature as immortal. v THE INFLUENCE OF PLOTINUS OF MARSILIO FICINO‖S DOCTRINE OF THE HIERARCHY OF BEING INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1 CHAPTER I ....................................................................................................................6 Neoplatonism as a Philosophical Movement ................................................................6 Plotinus as a Neoplatonist: The Enneads .................................................................... 11 The Three Primary Hypostases (Enneads V. 1) .......................................................... 17 Soul ....................................................................................................................... 21 Intellect .................................................................................................................. 24 The One ................................................................................................................. 26 The One and the Theory of Emanation ....................................................................... 28 CHAPTER II ................................................................................................................. 35 Neoplatonic Heritage and Pseudo-Dionysius.............................................................. 35 CHAPTER III ................................................................................................................ 51 Renaissance Platonism ............................................................................................... 51 Marsilio Ficino as a Renaissance Platonist ................................................................. 53 The Hierarchy of Being ............................................................................................. 54 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 78 BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................... 82 vi INTRODUCTION If each of us, essentially, is that which is greatest within us, which always remains the same and by which we understand ourselves, then certainly the soul is the man himself and the body but his shadow. Whatever wretch is so deluded as to think that the shadow of man is man, like Narcissus is dissolved in tears. You will only cease to weep, Gismondo, when you cease looking for your Alberia degli Albizzi in her dark shadow and begin to follow her by her own clear light.1 Marsilio Ficino, a Florentine priest who has been described as a combination of scholar, philosopher, and magus, not only revived Plato for Renaissance thought but also introduced into his own philosophy several Neoplatonic philosophers such as Plotinus, Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite. His profound understanding of their metaphysics provided him with a better understanding of pagan ideas, thereby facilitating his reconciliation of Platonism with Christianity. His own vision of unity, however, surpassed that of his philosophical ancestors in that it is a totalizing unity, in which the universe is seen as a manifestation of the One, God, or the Good. His Platonic evangelization has influenced European thought to the present time, most fundamentally through his teaching that: 1 Marsilio Ficino, Meditations on the Soul: Selected Letters of Marsilio Ficino, trans. from the Latin by members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, (Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1997), 15. 1 The human soul was immortal and unlimited, [which] links directly with the unshakeable confidence and creative genius that so many of the giants of the Renaissance expressed in so many fields. His view that the whole creation was moved by love and inspired to return to God through His beauty was reflected in the intense beauty of physical form that the masters of the Renaissance manifested with such skill. His emphasis on the importance of human nature and the virtues that lie within it gave support to a new direction in education. Ultimately it is the practice of these virtues that leads to the discovery of the divine in man.2 Of all his commentaries, letters, writings, translations, and interpretations of Plato, Plotinus, and other Neoplatonists, his own Platonic Theology is the most influential work because it played a central ―role in the Lateran council‘s promulgation of the immortality of the soul as a dogma in 1512.‖3 The Platonic Theology was written at the beginning of the 1470s, a time during which Ficino finished the first epic translation of Plato‘s works, entered the priesthood, and tried to draft a ―unitary theological tradition, and particularly a theological metaphysics.‖4 It can be described not only as a summa theologica, but also as a summa philosophica, and a summa platonica, an audacious, sometimes problematic, endeavor to re-emerge ancient and late ancient philosophy for an intellectual and governing elite, who were the Florentine equivalents of Socrates‘ most intelligent audience, with a style which imitates in Latin what Plotinus did in Greek, 2Marsilio Ficino, Meditations on the Soul, xix. 3 Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, trans. by Michael J. B. Allen with John Warden, Latin text edited by James Hankins with William Bowen, Volume I, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), viii. 4 Ibid., ix. 2 approaching sublimity in a manner that is both, simple and ―rhetorically challenging.‖5 Ficino considered his Platonic Theology his major and longest philosophical toil, his masterpiece in which he developed his search for the existence of an afterlife and which included notions of the mind, spirit, and body, reserving for the human soul a privileged place in the hierarchy of God‘s creation, appealing to medieval and scholastic theories but mainly reviving ―ancient theosophical themes‖6 which will foresee the predominantly cosmological theories characteristic of the late Renaissance philosophers and astronomers. Ficino formulates a hierarchy which is unity within plurality, ―an ordered song which is both inside and outside the soul both as unitary self and as all things – a part becomes the whole, a whole of parts and in parts, in the world and yet in God as God.‖7 Since Ficino is considered a Renaissance Platonist, the Platonic Theology includes references to Plato and Plotinus but, as the name‘s similarity to Proclus‘s Theologia Platonica insinuates, it is also a tribute to this last Neoplatonist, who carried Plato into the Middle Ages. The subtitle On the Immortality of the Soul is exactly the same subtitle as that of Plotinus‘s Enneads 4.7 which marks the clear indebtedness to both Plotinus and Marius Victorinus, who translated Porphyry‘s compilation of the Enneads into Latin. In his letter to Besarion, the Greek cardinal of Sabina, Ficino describes Plato‘s discussion on beauty in Phaedrus as referring to the beauty of the soul, required from God, that is called wisdom and is compared with gold. ―When this gold 5 Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, ix. 6 Ibid., x. 7 Ibid. 3 was given
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