Italian Neo-Platonism and Marsilio Ficino

CHAPTER 7 Italian Neo-Platonism and Marsilio Ficino 1 The Platonic Academy of Florence The Florentine Academy , founded in 1462 by Cosimo De Medici , became the center of humanistic studies and of intellectual life, expressing the new values and interests of the Renaissance . The Academy was not an official institution like a university or a school but rather a gathering of friends interested in art, philosophy, literature and religion. They were suspicious of the universities and condemned them because of their formalism, their interest in Aristotle and their anti-classical attitude. In the Academy, without any formal con- straints or hierarchical structure, artists and scholars discussed Greek, Latin, and Hebrew culture, Platonism, Neo-Platonism , Gnosticism and other less academic traditions like magic, Orphism and theurgy. Their general attitude was a religious syncretism, an intellectual eclecticism and a broad interest in ancient traditions, since they were persuaded that all past religions were differ- ent forms and manifestation of the same truth, the truth fully expressed only by the Christian religion. Granted that the final truth is the Christian revelation, the scholar of the Academy took a great interest in literary, religious and philosophical texts from classical culture and even from eastern traditions. The Academy became the place of the rediscovery of ancient culture and marked the beginning of the Renaissance and the Modern Age; in this way it proposed the model of the modern intellectual and a new image of the human being. The Florentine Academy was founded on the suggestion of Gemistos Plethon , a Greek Neo-Platonic philosopher. Plethon accompanied the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople to Italy in 1438, for the council aimed at reuniting the Roman and Orthodox churches (the schism or separation of the Orthodox Church of Constantinople from the Roman Catholic Church dates back to 1054). The council failed and Plethon went to Florence, taking with him (as did many other Byzantine scholars) new classical texts to the Western philosophical debate. He suggested to Cosimo De Medici that he found the Pla- tonic Academy in Florence with the ideal task to continue, two thousand years later, the research and activity of the Platonic Academy of Athens, spreading Platonic thought all over Western culture. Actually Plethon aimed to contrast the presence of Aristotle in the universities and the prevalence of Aristotelian philosophy in Western culture. But the Platonic philosophy proposed and © koninklijke brill nv, leideN, 2019 | DOI:10.1163/9789004409231_007 42 chapter 7 sponsored by Plethon was not true Platonism. It was rather a complex mix of Platonic theories and Neo-Platonic interpretations from Byzantine debate intermingled with religious interests. Nevertheless, the rediscovery of Plato ’s dialogues and the Neo-Platonic tra- dition (that is to say the rediscovery of Plotinus , Proclus , Porphyry and other Hellenistic philosophers) had great consequences for Western culture and, above all, the interpretation and development of art in the Renaissance and in the Modern Era. The heritage of the Platonic Academy of Florence was decisive since it boosted Platonic or, more precisely, Neo-Platonic philosophy in the Western world and had a great influence on Renaissance art. From then on, the presence of Platonism in the Western debate will be indelible. Furthermore, the Academy shifted research and the cultural debate from the universities (more or less controlled by traditional political powers) and the Church to a new institution. The Academy was more free and open because it reflected the interests of a new and more ambitious power, the seigniory. The freedom of research and discussion created a new kind of scholar, interested in classical culture and even in non-traditional sources, deeply situated in Christian culture but open to religious syncretism and new suggestions. Then in the Academy artists like Leon Battista Alberti , an architect and a philosopher, meditated and worked together with scholars and philosophers like Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola , who shared a common intellectual ground, to create a new kind of synergy. 2 Marsilio Ficino : Beauty and Materiality One of the greatest and most influential scholars of the Italian Renaissance was Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) appointed the director of the Platonic Acad- emy by Cosimo De Medici on the advice of Plethon . In 1459, Cosimo De Medici asked Ficino to translate Plato ’s dialogues into Latin, and in 1482, Ficino pub- lished the first complete translation of Plato’s work. He also translated into Latin Plotinus and other Neo-Platonic philosophers and wrote the Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animorum, translated as Platonic Theology, an essay on Plato (or, more precisely, on Neo-Platonic philosophy). Thanks to Ficino , Neo-Platonism became a dominant trend in European Renaissance culture, and aesthetics and art won a special position in the system of knowledge. Ficino stated that beauty is external perfection, whereas good is internal perfection. In the wake of Plato , Ficino wrote that love is desire for beauty and .

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