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Note Thomas Taylor As an Interpreter of Plato: an Epigone of Marsilio Ficino?

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Note Thomas Taylor As an Interpreter of Plato: an Epigone of Marsilio Ficino? The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 5 (2011) 303-312 brill.nl/jpt Note Thomas Taylor as an Interpreter of Plato: An Epigone of Marsilio Ficino? Leo Catana [email protected] Thomas Taylor (1758-1835) publishedThe works of Plato in 1804. This pub- lication contained his own and Floyer Sydenham’s (1710-1787) English translations of Plato’s dialogues and letters, as well as Sydenham’s and Taylor’s introductions and notes to these texts and Taylor’s ‘General introduction’ to the entire publication.1 Taylor’s Works of Plato was reviewed in 1804 in The literary journal and in 1809 in The Edinburgh reviewby an anonymous reviewer, criticising Taylor’s hermeneutic approach to Plato as being indebted to Neoplatonism—or Alexandrian eclecticism, as it was also dubbed—Pro- clus in particular.2 Over the last decades, the two scholars John Glucker and Myles Burnyeat have argued that James Mill (1773-1836) was the author of both reviews.3 James Mill is now known for his dissemination of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism and as the father of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), the philosopher who advanced empiricist and liberal ideas, that was consid- erably influential in the 19th century. 1) This 1804 publication has been reprinted by the Prometheus Trust, 1995-96. In this recent publication we find orthographic changes, corrections of grammatical errors and spelling, and some re-arrangement of the notes. Below I refer to the original 1804 publication and to this reprint; I refer to the latter in square brackets. This applies to the texts of Plato and to the texts of Taylor in these two publications. For Taylor’s life and work, see Raine 1969 and Louth 2004. For his influence upon the English romantic movement, see Raine 1968. 2) See [Mill] 1809/2001: 153-154. 3) Glucker 1996: 395-397, holds that James Mill was the author of both reviews. Burnyeat 2001a: 65 n. 41 and 2001b agrees. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/187254711X589750 304 L. Catana / The International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 5 (2011) 303-312 Burnyeat edited Mill’s two reviews in 2001, adding his own assessment of the Taylor-Mill controversy, and he summed up the two approaches to Plato. According to Burnyeat, Mill, the anonymous reviewer, was an origi- nal and singular thinker, whereas Taylor was a mere epigone of Ficino: Because he [ James Mill] was on his own, he had the luck to fall in love with a Plato unencumbered by the NeoPlatonic interpretation which had prevailed since Ficino and the Renaissance. He read Plato and he read Cicero, and found the second an attractive guide to the first. Later he read Taylor, a mere epigonous of Ficino.4 These are strong contentions, which I should like to consider over the fol- lowing pages. Let me begin with the first claim. Was James Mill really “on his own” in his interpretation of Plato, using Cicero as his guide? It depends on what is meant by “on his own”, but there are some circumstances that suggest something else. As is made clear in Burnyeat’s own edition of Mill’s 1809 review, Mill cited Johann Jacob Brucker’s Historia critica philosophiae extensively in his attacks on the Neoplatonists on whom Taylor was said to rely. This work of Brucker came out in five volumes in 1742-44, to which an appendix was added in 1767. In 1791, William Enfield’s abbreviated English translation of this work appeared. Mill cited three “grunts”, as he called them, from Brucker’s Latin opus, vilifying the interpretation of Plato advanced by Proclus and other Neoplatonists.5 In addition to these, Mill cited a series of “squeaks” targeting the morality of the Neoplatonists favoured by Taylor: Plotinus, Porphyry, Appollonius, Proclus, and Hiero- cles.6 In this respect, Mill was not “on his own”; he was clearly accompa- nied by Brucker. Mill may still have been “on his own” in his use of Cicero as a key to understand Plato’s thoughts. It turns out, however, that Brucker had also made use of Cicero in the work cited extensively by Mill. Here Brucker had used Cicero as a pivotal figure in his interpretation of Plato: Cicero, according to Brucker, predated Neoplatonism and its interpretation of Plato. For this reason Cicero could be used as a pure and uncontaminated source to Plato’s philosophy: 4) Burnyeat 2001b: 105. 5) [Mill] 1809/2001: 157-158. 6) [Mill] 1809/2001: 158-163..
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