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The Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino —the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of the golden age. His Platonic evangelizing was eminently successful and widely influential, and his Platonic Theologytranslated into English for the first time in this edition, is Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance. Fall Reading List. Fall is the perfect time to settle in with a good book for our Executive Editor for Science, Janice Audet. Here she suggests some recent and forthcoming books she finds informative and fascinating. The fall season shepherds in the beginning of a new school season, a time to begin or resume routines and learn new things. The fall season can Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 be a time to take stock …. Allen Edited by James Hankins. Buy Elsewhere Bookshop. Black lives matter. Black voices matter. Subscribe to E-News. Platonic Theology, Volume 1 - Marsilio Ficino, James Hankins - Bok () | Bokus

Ficino set out to show that the ancient Neoplatonic philosophy embodied a "gentile theological tradition," one that complemented the Mosaic revelation to the Jews and prepared its devotees for the final truths of Christianity. Ficino worked in full knowledge of the internal complications of Neoplatonism. He wrote and argued in styles that ranged from the logical and Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 to the poetic and evocative, as he struggled to find ways to prove that the universe was orderly and governed by a Creator and to lay out the place within it of the immortal human soul. Allen and Hankins have begun a Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 of scholarship of the highest calibre, whose continuation is eagerly awaited. One has merely to look at the very recent begun inrigorous and elegant humanistic series of Harvard University, with the original Latin text, English translation, introduction and notes. It seems certain that the I Tatti Renaissance Library will serve a similar purpose for Renaissance Latin texts, and that, in addition to its obvious academic value, it will facilitate a broadening base of participation in Renaissance Studies These books are to be lauded not only for their principles of inclusivity and accessibility, and for their rigorous scholarship, but also for their look Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 feel. Everything about them is attractive: the blue of their dust jackets and cloth covers, the restrained and elegant design, the clarity of the typesetting, the quality of the paper, and not least the sensible price. This is a new set of Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 well worth collecting. Michael J. He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy and Renaissance Civic Humanism and is widely regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on humanist political thought. Du kanske gillar. The Letters of Marsilio Ficino: v. Platonic Theology, Volume 1 Books I? Inbunden Engelska, Spara som favorit. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation initiate a spiritual Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 and return of the golden age. His Platonic evangelizing was eminently successful and widely influential, and his "Platonic Theology", translated into English in this edition, is one of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance. Virtue Politics James Hankins. Recensioner i media. Platonic Theology, Volume 1 : Marsilio Ficino :

Books I—IV. Volume 2. Volume 3. Books IX—XI. Volume 4. Volume 6. Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 is six-volume edition and translation of Ficino's eighteen-book Platonic Theology. Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 in the previous volumes, Michael Allen is responsible for the English translation and notes, and James Hankins for editing the Latin text, though each has gone over the other's work. They gave us the courage to begin what we knew would be a long and arduous climb up one of the loftiest peaks of Renaissance thought. The result for us at least has been an alpine view of horizons as far as Mt. Our hope now is that others will explore this whole magnificent terrain. As the structure of the Platonic Theology is only partly reflected in its book and chapter divisions, so the translators provided an outline of the work's overall plan in the 6 th final volume, following for the most part cues given in the text itself. Each volume will contain its own notes and index of names, and the final volume will include a comprehensive index of names and subjects, an index of sources, and a concordance to the Basel edition of and the edition of Marcel. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, Ficino was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and a return of the golden age. The great philosopher and "doctor of souls" Marsilio Ficino was the most important intellectual figure in the circle of Lorenzo de'Medici during the apogee of the Florentine Renaissance. After studying medicine and philosophy and preparing for the priesthood, he undertook to learn Greek. With encouragement from the Italian banker and statesman Cosimo de'Medici, Lorenzo's grandfather, Ficino made the first complete translation of Plato's writings into Latin and translated as well other central works of ancient Platonism, including the works of Plotinus and Dionysius the Areopagite. Ficino devoted his life to reviving the philosophy of Plato and gathered around him a group of distinguished disciples and devotees sometimes referred to as the "Florentine Academy. Written in the early s, it was the first major system of theology in the Western tradition constructed primarily around the study of the soul. A product of its Renaissance Italian and, in particular, Florentine context, it is a bold, sophisticated attempt to appropriate the therapeutic tradition in ancient philosophy for the intellectuals, the forward wits of the Florentine Republic, and its governing elites. In forming an extended argument for the immortality of the human soul, Platonic Theology is a complex Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 of medieval scholastic philosophy, Augustinianism, and late ancient Platonism, and draws as well upon more esoteric magical and astrological sources such as Hermes Trismegistus. Ficino considered Platonic Theology to be his magnum opus and it is considered by many modern scholars to be the most characteristic work of Renaissance philosophy. The turn to metaphysics thus made Florentine Platonism a phenomenon unique in the history of philosophy. Of the factors that led to this development, the weightiest was perhaps the need to formulate a religious creed which was broader than that of medieval Latin Christianity. This need was felt at Florence in a special way. From the time of Cosimo de' Medici the horizons of the city were no longer limited to the Italian peninsula. Her growing fleet and profitable Turkish trade made her increasingly a challenge to Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 interests of Venice in the Levant. The traditional scholastic metaphysics of being, which had experienced a rebirth because of the outcome of the Council of Basle, was incapable of meeting this challenge. The victory of the papacy over conciliarism was accompanied by a narrowing of the Catholic vision and a return to an official metaphysics meant to supply a guarantee for the Latin clergy, view of itself as the unique interpreter of revelation. At the same time, t Averroist Aristotelianism that had grown up in Italy had a secular character and tended to disregard the religious dimension in philosophical problems. Although the professors in the arts faculties had come increasingly to concern themselves with questions like that of man's immortality, the orientation of their Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 was towards the study of medicine and paid little attention to ecclesiastical concerns. Furthermore, their treatment of the problem of the soul was not able to meet the exalted demands of the Renaissance idea of man's transcendent dignity since the doctrine of the soul belonged, in accordance with the Aristotelian classification of the sciences, not to the science of immaterial reality but to physics. An approach was needed which avoided the fideism of the nominalists, the secularism Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 the Averroists and the clericalism behind the Christian Aristotelianism of the Thomists. For Ficino God is the One beyond being. He is the perfect Truth who collects into the ineffable simplicity of his own nature the endless multiplicity of the ideal archetypes of things. He is the infinite Good Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 diffuses himself in all things and remains present, more interior Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 them than they are to themselves. The universe that emanates from God constitutes a hierarchy in which each being has its place according to its degree of perfection, a hierarchy descending through the orders of angelic minds and rational souls to corporeal forms and unformed matter. God pours the ideas of all things into the angelic mind. Mind generates the reasons for governing things in Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1. Soul generates forms in matter. The entire cosmos is Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 active, living being. Its Soul possesses as many seminal reasons as there are ideas in Mind. By way of these reasons Soul generates the forms of material things. Through spirit the divine power passes from the celestial spheres to the sublunar world. The human soul, thus situated between time and eternity, participates in the nature of the universal soul. Man is a microcosm, imitating God with unity, the angels with mind, soul with reason, brute animals with sensation, plants with nutrition and inanimate things simple being. Ficino's attempt to formulate a Platonic metaphysics which would support the Christian doctrine of God ran counter to the Thomistic apologetics which the papacy had made its own after the Council of Basle, Ficino's diffidence saved him from condemnation. Not only did he take a great Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 of time to complete his translations and commentaries, but the publication of his works was often long delayed after their completion. He seems especially to have wanted to have his project seen not as something new, but rather as continuing a long tradition of Platonism. Towards the end of his life, in a letter to a friend who had requested instruction about Platonic philosophy, he sought to relate his writings to a distinguished line of Latin Platonists: Augustine, Boethius, Chalcidius and Macrobius in the patristic period; Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus among the medievals. He presented his versions of Plato and Platonist authors as supplementing the medieval translations of Pseudo-Dionysius, the Liber de causis, Avicebron and Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1, as well as the translations of Proclus made by Moerbeke in the thirteenth century. The omissions he makes in the letter lead to the same conclusion. No mention is made of Origen or Pletho, of Lull or the writers of the School of Chartres, no doubt because of scholastic Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 about their teaching. It was certainly Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 a different reason that Ficino made no reference to Thomas Aquinas in this history. In his Theologia platonica he had used Thomas' Contra gentiles extensively and extended, as Thomas had done, the Aristotelian notions of act and potency to explain the finitude of participated being. Both he and Thomas wanted to show the fundamental agreement between philosophy and Christian doctrine, but their approaches differed radically. Although Thomas had made much use of Neoplatonic sources, he tended increasingly to distance himself from the platonici as the incompatibility between Platonic philosophy and the apologetics he had based on Aristotle became clear to him. He had sought to show that revelation was necessary because, although philosophy could demonstrate the existence of God and man's immortality, knowledge of God's essence and man's true destiny was beyond its comprehension and belonged to the realm of supernatural theology. Plato was the Attic Moses who inherited Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 pristine theology. Far from separating philosophy and religion, Plato brought together in his own person both the philosopher and the priest. Although he remained on the level of the Mosaic law, his teaching foreshadowed Christian revelation. He was able, moreover, to support his teaching with Pythagorean and Socratic reasons accessible to all men. The Platonic theology was therefore a religious doctrine inherent in man's nature. Because they did not recognize the equality of the word with God, they Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 unable to understand the myth of the Phaedrus. Behind Plato's charioteer was Christ himself, leading angels and Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 to God. It is his Incarnation that makes man the knot, the link, holding the world together. Ficino concluded with a new dynamic understanding of the idea that man is the imago Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 God became man so that man might become God. Nevertheless, Ficino made profound changes in this Platonic theology. His God is not the absolutely impersonal One, who, blessed in his solitude, cares not for the world which proceeds from him. Ficino's God is a personal God who knows himself and all things in himself as their first cause. Although he saw an anticipation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity to Plato's triad of unity, truth and goodness in the act of creation, Ficino rejected any attempt to assimilate Plotinus' first three hypostases to the Father, Son and Spirit Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 Christian theology. In his view, the status of Mind as supreme thinker and supreme thought and as creator of the universe belongs to the One. Moreover, Ficino does not devaluate finite being as Neoplatonic metaphysics does. Although he speaks of things as emanating from God, he thinks of emanation as an act that has its roots in God's free goodness. God has created the world not by necessity of nature, but in accordance with a certain purpose of his will. God's relationship to things is not subject to the determinism implied Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 emanation, but is contingent on his love of the world. Love not only ascends from man to God, but also descends from on high. God loves the world as his creature and, as such, the world is worthy of love. Ficino's hierarchy of being is, accordingly, not static in the sense that an ontological gulf separates its spheres. For the philosopher of the Florentine Academy, all things are interrelated. The universe has a dynamic unity and its various degrees and parts are bound together by active affinities. As the universal bond of things, Soul has the role of mediating between the ideal and material worlds. Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 forms are conveyed from the celestial spheres to the sublunar world by the spirit of the world. The seminal reasons in things are conceived as active powers, as individual spirits or deities ruling the celestial signs. The signs are the reservoirs in which these powers are stored. To this purpose, he can make use of the seminal powers in things. The arts he has invented are founded on the universal harmony that exists in the world. They seek to exploit the natural affinities and occult qualities in things. The physician, for example, seeks to bring together Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 influences in the medicines he prescribes in order to effect favorable physical dispositions in the human body. The influences transmitted by the signs and planets can Also work on man's imagination and enable him to produce poetry, music and works of art. The arts thus give man magical power over nature. They have been bestowed on him by the spirits ruling the heavens. By listening to God's voice in the seminal powers of things, man is able to transform the world. This type of magic works through the spirit of the world and is good. There is another magic that is illicit, because it seeks to operate through the soul of the world and involves demons. But natural magic ministers to the powers of nature Platonic Theology: Books 1-4 v.1 wants to assist the world in its tendency to perfection. It is, therefore, the most sublime part of natural philosophy. Ficino's conception of the power of Soul over nature enabled him to give a systematic place to the Renaissance theme of man's dignity. Like that of Nicholas of Cusa, his praise of man is founded on human creativity.