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Ficino, Plato's Second Letter, and Its Four Epistolary

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Ficino, Plato's Second Letter, and Its Four Epistolary MICHAEL J. B. ALLEN SENDING ARCHEDEMUS: FICINO, PLATO’S SECOND LETTER, AND ITS FOUR EPISTOLARY MYSTERIES Though now relegated to the status of being a spurious, or at best, a dubious text of Plato’s, the Second Letter has had a distinguished history,1 particularly and predictably so among the ancient Neoplatonists and those they inspired in the Renaissance.2 Most notably Plotinus’s Enneads invoke its enigma at 312DE three times (1.8.2, 5.1.8, 6.7.42); and Proclus glosses it in detail in his Theologia platonica 2.8-9, as does Marsilio Ficino, their Florentine disciple, on several occasions. For a mere letter it has made a signal contribution and this in itself should give us pause: perhaps our whole notion of a letter as a medium for philosophical formulation is in need of some revision, and par- ticularly when we recall the extraordinary contributions in antiquity of St. Paul’s and Seneca’s letters (real and spurious) and in the Quattrocento of Ficino’s letters, not to mention those of Leibniz and of many other thinkers subsequently. This paper dedicated to Eckhard, our distinguished peripatetic colleague and friend, is going to examine Ficino’s introduction (argumentum) for his translation of Plato’s Second Letter. There are several reasons it deserves our scrutiny: first it not only takes up the most famous enigma in the canon (or certainly one of the most famous), but also identifies three other enigmas or mysteries in the same letter. Next it provides us in the process with four per- 1 Scholars now seem agreed on its inauthenticity; see Norman Gulley, “The Authenticity of the Platonic Epistles,” in Pseudepigrapha 1, Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique 18 (Vandoeuv- res-Geneva, 1972), pp. 103-143; and Luc Brisson, Platon: Les Lettres (Paris: Flammarion, 1987), introduction. Even so, some have pointed to its being a valuable witness to the ancient context, e.g. J. Stannard, “Plato, Epistle II, 312A,” Phronesis 5 (1960), 53-55; R. S. Bluck, “The Second Platonic Epistle,” ibid., 140-151; and J. M. Rist who has argued for its Neo- pythagorean origins, “Neopythagoreanism and ‘Plato’s’ Second Letter,” Phronesis 10 (1965), 78-81. In the past some distinguished scholars have argued for its authenticity, e.g. L. A. Post, “The Date of the Second Platonic Epistle,” The Classical Review 41.2 (1927), 58-59. The Quattrocento bore witness to the same debate. Among those who translated some, or in Ficino’s case all, of Plato into Latin, Leonardo Bruni thought it and the other letters genuine, holding them in greater esteem than the dialogues because “they were far from irony and phantasy (figmentum)”; Ficino thought it genuine (even as he ascribed the first and fifth of the other letters to Dion); while Pier Candido Decembrio thought it and all the other letters false. See Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Norton, 1968), pp. 2-3. 2 For its lustrous Neoplatonic history, see the long introductory section in the second volume of H. D. Saffrey & L. G. Westerink’s splendid six volume edition of Proclus’ Theologia Platonica (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1968-1997), pp. xx-lix, with an array of further references. 406 MICHAEL J.B. ALLEN fect instances of Neoplatonic interpretative over-reading, long sanctioned though that over-reading may be, and is therefore methodologically interest- ing. And thirdly it underscores Ficino’s twin beliefs that only in the Letters and the Laws was Plato speaking in propria persona, rather than through the mouths of Socrates or of a Pythagorean such as Parmenides or Melissus; and that only in these texts of his old age was he sanctioning what he had to say about matters divine.3 The argumentum would seem to have a straightforward function. Ficino wrote it as an epitome of the letter as it appeared in his great Latin translation of Plato, the 1484 Platonis Opera Omnia volume; and it is in line with all his epitomes for the dialogues and other letters. It is therefore meant to be a prefatory essay for the general learned public and not the occasion for an ab- struse or speculative scholarly analysis, or for pleading a difficult special case or exploring a recondite methodology or hermeneutics. None the less, he man- aged to cull a tetrad of mysteries (and one cannot dismiss the possibility of there being an evangelistic or a numerological significance to this) from what would at first sight appear to be just a covering letter which Plato had sent, along with a defective orrery, to Dionysius the Younger, ruler of Sicily, by way of Archedemus, a Pythagorean disciple of Archytas of Tarentum,4 who was to act as the intermediary. *** The first mystery concerns the complementary relationship, the interdepend- ence even, of wisdom — and hence of the vita contemplativa — and of power — and hence of the vita activa — the interdependence in other words of the philosopher and the ruler. For “immense power seeks out wisdom with a natural instinct, and wisdom in turn seeks out power so that they may consort together [310E].” In the very beginning, Ficino argues, God’s measureless wisdom accompanied His infinite power; and Plato recognized this. Witness his decision here to link together the names of Jupiter and Prometheus [311B], Jupiter being power, and Prometheus being the wisdom that underlies God’s providence.5 Plato argues that “the fountain of divine understanding” has power as its reflecting mirror image. Having the power to understand, it does understand, and in understanding it understands the power it has to under- 3 See the preface to his Plato translation, Opera, p. 766.2, and his Platonic Theology 17.4.14, and on the Eleatics as Pythagoreans 17.4. 4, 10 (ed. and tr. in six volumes by Michael J. B. Allen & James Hankins, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001-2006). See also Allen, “Marsilio Ficino on Plato’s Pythagorean Eye,” Modern Language Notes 97 (1982), 174-175, now in Plato’s Third Eye: Studies in Marsilio Ficino’s Metaphysics and Its Sources (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995) as No. VII. 4 Archytas was the recipient, incidentally, of the ninth and twelfth Platonic letters. 5 Ficino has already linked them together in his Philebus Commentary 26 (ed. Allen, Berkeley, 1975, pp. 240-247). .
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