PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA: 1463-1494 A Study of an Intellectual Pilgrimage BY THE REV. DR. PHILIP EDGCUMBE HUGHES (continued from last issue) VI THE HARMONY OF PLATO AND ARISTOTLE

In view of the fact that ARISTOTLE had been PLATO's pupil and had absorbed and reinterpreted his master's tenets, it was not altogether vain to expect that there should be points of affinity and indeed identity between their systems of philosophy. The task of forging a synthesis had already in some measure been undertaken by ALEXANDRIAN scholars of the third and fourth centuries PLOTINUS (c. 204-270 A.D.), the father of Neoplatonism, had produced a system in which important Platonic and Aristotelian themes were fused. PORPHYRY (c. 233-302 A.D.), PLOTINUS' pupil and biographer, besides composing an introduction (Isagoge) to ARISTOTLE's Categories and numerous commentaries on the writings of PLATO and ARISTOTLE, al~"' published a treatise the precise object of which was to demonstrate that the thought of the two great philosophers was essentially one ( 'l!Epl -roO f!lcommentaries on PLATO and ARISTOTLE which are now lost. PROCLUS (410-485 A.D.), who studied under the Peripatetic scholar Olympiodorus at Alexandria and under the Neoplatonists Plutarch and Syrianus at Athens, was a thinker whose great dialectical ability is shown in his writings on Platonic and Aristotelian subjects, in which he also offered a synthesis of Greek philosophical thought. This line was carried on by BOETHIUS (480-524 A.D.), excepting that BOETHIUS was reputedly a professing Christian, whereas the others we have mentioned were either indifferent or antagonistic to Christianity. He translated into Latin and commented on much of ARISTOTLE as well as PORPHYRY's Isagoge, and also composed a number of original philo­ sophical works, including the De Consolatione Philosophiae which has never ceased to be read with admiration. It was largely thanks to his labours that the knowledge of ARISTOTLE's writings, incomplete though it was, became available to the scholars and thinkers of the early Middle Ages. We have already seen how PICO referred to the intention of BOETHIUS 18 DR. PHILIP EDGCUMBE HUGHES

to demonstrate that between PLATO and ARISTOTLE there exists a philosophical accord. Another line of communication was that of the Moslem philosophers. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries translations of certain of ARISTOTLE's works and also of PORPHYRY's Isagoge were made into Syriac and Persian, and subsequently the Syriac versions were rendered into Arabic. At Baghdad during the ninth century translations not only of ARISTOTLE but also of some of the works of PLATO were undertaken. Included in these translations were writings of PLOTINUS and PROCLUS which were mistakenly attributed to the two Greek masters. Thus it came about that through the medium of the Arabian philosophers of the tenth to the twelfth centuries-notably ALFARABI, AVICENNA, and AVERROES-a sort of Neo­ platonic Aristotelianism was developed and ultimately passed on to the Western world. PICO, as his works clearly show, was an eager student of these Arab thinkers; but they had been exerting a not inconsiderable influence on Italian thought well before his day: DANTE, for instance, who was born almost two centuries before PICO, gives strong evidence of acquaintance with their doctrines. During these two centuries, indeed, Averroism with its strange complex of ideas gained a remarkably finn footing in learned circles. AVERROES himself was a Spanish Mohammedan, and not very long after his death his works were translated into Latin and won for him adherents in the European universities, notably at Paris where for so many yeas the Averroistic controversy raged, and at Padua where it is likely that PICO first encountered his doctrines. It should be remembered too that even THOMAS AQUINAS (1224-1274 A.D.), who is not without reason regarded as the chief "christianizer" of Aristotelianism, was by no means uninfluenced by Platonic and Neo­ platonic modes of thought, as is frequently apparent in his works; but, as was the case with his teacher ALBERT THE GREAT, the Aristotelian ingredient was dominant in the constituency. Of course, with the founding by COSIMO DE'MEDICI in the fifteenth century of the Platonic Academy in Florence, the system of PLATO was to come right to the fore again after having suffered a partial eclipse and being discernible hitherto in the main in its somewhat shadowy Neoplatonic guise. PICO's interest in the reconciliation of all philosophy, and in particular of PLATO and ARISTOTLE, was not a passing phase which disappointment at the failure of his project for a grand debate was allowed to smother. His personal and intellectual qualities were such as to rise superior to temporary frustrations. On the 20th of March, 1490, some three years after the fiasco at Rome, he writes from Florence to BAPTISTA MANTUANO: "I am working on assiduously at my harmony of PLATO and ARISTOTLE. Every day I devote the whole morning to it" 122• It was a work at which he continued right up to the time of his death in 1494, and was intended to be one of his magna opera; but as such it was destined to remain an opus imperfectum, together with his work "against the enemies of the Church" and his expositions of Holy Scripture. On March 23, 1495, a few months after his death, FICINO wrote to GERMANO DE GANAI: "Every day

122 Opera Pici, p. 358. "Cancordiam Platonis et Aristotelis assidue TIWlior. Do illi quotidie iustum matutinum".