FICINO, MARSILIO
(1433–1499)

Marsilio Ficino, the founder of the Florentine Academy, was born the eldest son of a physician in Figline, near Florence. He studied the humanities, philosophy, and medicine in Florence but apparently did not obtain an academic degree. About 1456 he began to study Greek. In 1462 he received from Cosimo de' Medici a house in Careggi, near Florence, and several Greek manuscripts; this is regarded as the date the Platonic Academy of Florence was founded. Having earlier taken minor orders, Ficino was ordained in 1473; he held several ecclesiastic benefices and became a canon of Florence Cathedral in 1487. After the expulsion of the Medicis from Florence in 1494, Ficino, who had been closely associated with several generations of the family, apparently retired to the country. He was honored after his death in a funeral oration delivered by a chancellor of the republic of Florence.

Ficino became interested in Platonist philosophy at an early age, presumably through studying Augustine. His earliest extant writings also show familiarity with Aristotle and his commentators and with Lucretius. Among Ficino's Latin translations from the Greek, the first that attained a wide circulation was his version (1463) of the works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. Ficino's translation of Plato, the first complete rendering of all his dialogues in any Western language, was begun in 1463, probably completed in 1469, subsequently revised, and first printed in 1484. His influential commentary on Plato's Symposium was written in 1469; the other Platonic commentaries, some of them extensive, belong to different periods of Ficino's life. The translation of and commentary on Plotinus was begun in 1484 and printed in 1492. Translations of Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, and other philosophers appeared in 1497. Ficino's chief philosophical work, Theologica Platonica de Immortalitate Animarum (Platonic theology—on the immortality of the souls) was written between 1469 and 1474 and was printed in 1482. Aside from this work and his commentaries, the most important source for Ficino's philosophy is his letters, which he began to collect around 1473 and finally published in 1495. Important also are his apologetic treatise De Christiana Religione (1474) and his work on medicine and astrology, De Vita Libri Tres (1489), which is often wrongly referred to as De Vita Triplici.

Ficino's work as a translator of and commentator on Plato and the Neoplatonists, and his avowed intention of reviving Platonism, led many older historians to treat his doctrine merely as a repetition of ancient Neoplatonism. More recently, however, a closer study of his known and unpublished works has shown that in restating the doctrines of Plato and his ancient followers, Ficino showed a good deal of originality. In addition, his writings show the influence of medieval and Byzantine Platonism, early Italian humanism, and also the tradition of scholastic Aristotelianism, which had a strong impact upon his terminology and method. He was familiar with Dante Alighieri and other Italian poets and wrote or rewrote several of his own works in the Tuscan vernacular.

Ficino was the founder and for many years the head and guiding spirit of the Platonic Academy of Florence, which has remained famous as a symbol and institutional center of Renaissance Platonism. The academy was not a firmly established institution in the manner of later academies but a rather loosely organized spiritual community of friends. We hear of informal discussions between the older members of the circle and of philosophical banquets celebrated on Plato's birthday. There were recitals of edifying orations before a small audience, private readings of Plato and other texts given by one or a few younger disciples, and public lectures on Plato and Plotinus delivered in a church or auditorium. Distinguished visitors from other Italian cities and abroad called upon Ficino or participated in the meetings, and Ficino's correspondence served as a vehicle both for maintaining contact with the members of the academy and for arousing the interest of strangers in the academy's activities. The catalog of his pupils, which he gives in one of his letters, and the list of the persons with whom he was in correspondence, whom he mentions, or who owned the manuscripts and printed editions of his writings are ample evidence of the wide influence he exerted during his lifetime.

Ficino's writings present a highly complex system of ideas, embroidered with similes, allegories, and lengthy quotations from his favorite authors. We can mention but a few of his more important and influential doctrines.

Hierarchy

In his description of the universe, Ficino took from Neoplatonic and medieval sources the conception of a great hierarchy in which each being occupies its place and has its degree of perfection, beginning with God at the top and descending through the orders of the angels and souls, the celestial and elementary spheres, the various species of animals, plants, and minerals, down to qualityless prime matter. In spite of Ficino's indebtedness to earlier schemes, it appears on closer examination that his hierarchy differs in significant details from those of his predecessors. It is arranged in a final scheme of five basic substances: God, the angelic mind, the rational soul, quality, and body. This scheme comes fairly close to that of Plotinus but differs from it in various ways. Above all, quality did not constitute a separate level of being for Plotinus, who instead assigned separate places to the sensitive and vegetative faculties of the soul. It can be shown that Ficino intentionally revised the Plotinian scheme, partly to make it more symmetrical and partly to assign the privileged place in its center to the human soul, thus giving a kind of metaphysical setting and sanction to the doctrine of the dignity of man, which he had inherited from his humanist predecessors. The soul is truly the mean of all things created by God, Ficino tells us. It is in the middle between higher and lower beings, sharing some of its attributes with the former and some with the latter.

Ficino was not satisfied with a static hierarchy in which each degree merely stands beside the others and in which the relationship of degrees consists only in a continuous gradation of attributes. He was also convinced that the universe must have a dynamic unity and that its various parts and degrees are held together by active forces and affinities. For this reason, he revived the Neoplatonic doctrine of the world soul and made astrology part of a natural system of mutual influences. Since thought for Ficino has an active influence upon its objects, since love is an active force that binds all things together (as in Plato's Symposium ), and since the human soul extends its thought and love to all things, from the highest to the lowest, in Ficino's writing the soul becomes once more and in a new sense the center of the universe. The soul is the greatest of all miracles in nature because it combines all things, it is the center of all things, and possesses the forces of all things. Therefore the soul may rightly be called the center of nature, the middle term of all things, the bond and juncture of the universe.

Contemplation

Ficino's cosmology, which was very influential during the sixteenth century, offers some points of intrinsic interest; however, it constitutes only one side of his thought. The other and even more profound component is his analysis, based on direct inner experience, of the spiritual or contemplative life, and analysis that links him with some of the medieval mystics and, again, with Neoplatonism. In the face of ordinary daily experiences, the mind finds itself in a state of continuous unrest and dissatisfaction, but it is capable of turning away from the body and the external world and of concentrating upon its own inner substance. Thus purifying itself of things external, the soul enters the contemplative life and attains a higher knowledge, discovering the incorporeal world that is closed to it while it is engaged in ordinary experience and in the troubles of the external life. Ficino interpreted this contemplative life as a gradual ascent of the soul toward always higher degrees of truth and being, an ascent that finally culminates in the immediate knowledge and vision of God. This knowledge of God represents the ultimate goal of human life and existence—in it alone the unrest of our mind is satisfied—and all other modes and degrees of human life and knowledge must be understood as more or less direct and conscious preparations for this end. In accordance with Plotinus, Ficino was convinced that this highest experience could be attained during the present life, at least by a few privileged persons and for a short while, although he never explicitly claimed to have attained this state himself.

In describing the various states and the ultimate goal of inner experience, Ficino used a twofold terminology, and in this he was influenced by St. Augustine and by the medieval philosophers. The ascent of the soul toward God is accomplished with the help of two wings, the intellect and the will; accordingly, the knowledge of God is accompanied and paralleled on each level by the love of God; and the ultimate vision, by an act of enjoyment. Ficino also considered the question of whether intellect and knowledge or will and love are more important in this process, and although he seemed to come to different conclusions in different parts of his writings, in general he leaned toward the superiority of will and love over intellect and knowledge. Yet the question was not so important for him as might be expected, since he regarded the knowledge of God and the love of God as merely two different aspects or interpretations of the same basic experience—namely, the contemplative ascent of the soul toward its ultimate goal.

This experience and the manner in which it is interpreted hold the key to both Ficino's metaphysics and his ethics. It is the inner ascent of contemplation, through which the reality of incorporeal things—of the ideas and of God himself—is discovered and verified. Since this inner ascent constitutes the basic task of human existence, Ficino was not interested in specific moral precepts or in casuistry, but only in the general identification of the human good and man's moral excellence with the inner life. His whole moral doctrine, as expressed in his letters, may be said to be a reduction of all specific moral rules to a praise of the contemplative life. He who has attained this life is exempt from the blows of fortune; and, animated by his inner certainty and insight, he will know and do the right thing under any given circumstance.

Intimately related to the doctrine of the contemplative life are two other theories of Ficino's, both of great historical importance: his theory of the immortality of the soul and his theory of Platonic love.

Immortality

Ficino's main work, Theologia Platonica de Immortalitate Animarum, consists for the most part of a series of arguments in support of the soul's immortality. It appears from a famous passage twice repeated in Ficino's writings that, in direct contrast with the teachings of the Aristotelian philosophers of his time, he considered this doctrine the central tenet of his Platonism. It is true that the immortality of the soul had been defended by Plato and Plotinus, by Augustine and many other Christian writers, and that Ficino borrowed many specific arguments from them. It may also be granted that Averroes's doctrine of the unity of the intellect in all people, which had been widely discussed and often accepted by Aristotelian philosophers from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, made a defense of individual immortality imperative. In addition, the humanists had attached great importance to the individual human being, his experiences, and his opinions; and the belief in personal immortality was, as it were, a metaphysical counterpart of this individualism and an extension of it into another dimension.

Yet it seems evident that for Ficino the doctrine of immortality was a necessary complement and consequence of his interpretation of human existence and of the goal of human life. If it is our basic task to ascend, through a series of degrees, to the immediate vision and enjoyment of God, we must postulate that this ultimate goal will be attained, not merely by a few persons and for a short while but by a great number of human beings and forever. Otherwise, man's effort to attain this ultimate end would be in vain, and the very end for which he had been destined would remain without fulfillment. Thus, man would be unhappier than the animals, which do attain their natural ends, and this would be inconsistent with the dignity of the place man occupies in the universe. Moreover, if a natural end corresponding to a natural desire implanted in all men could not be attained, this would contradict the perfection of the order of nature and the wisdom of God, who created that order. In his "Platonic Theology," and in other parts of his writings, Ficino never tired of repeating these and similar arguments. It seems obvious that they reflect the real intent and motivation of his thought, for his whole interpretation of human life as a contemplative ascent toward God would lose its meaning unless this ascent were to find its permanent fulfillment in the eternal afterlife of the immortal soul. This alone would explain why the doctrine of immortality assumed such a central place for him. All other arguments are merely auxiliary to this central one.

Ficino's doctrine of immortality, and his arguments for it, made a profound impression on many thinkers of the sixteenth century; and it may very well be due to his indirect influence that the immortality of the soul was formally pronounced a dogma of the Catholic Church at the Lateran Council of 1512.

Theory of Love

Of equal historical importance, although different in character, is Ficino's doctrine of human love. In this doctrine, as in many of his others, Ficino combined elements from several different sources and traditions. He took over and reinterpreted Plato's theory of love as expressed in the Symposium and Phaedrus, and combined it with other ancient theories of friendship that were known to him primarily through Aristotle and Cicero; he also tried to identify it with the Christian love (caritas ) praised by St. Paul. He even added some touches from the tradition of medieval courtly love as it was known to him through Guido Cavalcanti, Dante, and other early Tuscan poets. This doctrine of love, which exercised a tremendous influence during the sixteenth century, and for which Ficino himself coined the terms Platonic love and Socratic love, was first expressed by him in his commentary on Plato's Symposium and further developed in many of his letters and other writings. The term Platonic love means love as described by Plato, according to Ficino's interpretation; more frequently, he spoke of it as divine love. The basic point is that he regarded love for another human being as merely a preparation, more or less conscious, for the love of God, which constitutes the real goal and true content of human desire and which is turned toward persons and things by virtue of the reflected splendor of divine goodness and beauty that may appear in them. Ficino insisted that true love or friendship is always mutual. A genuine relationship between two people is a communion founded on what is essential in man, that is, it is based in each of them on his original love for God. There can never be only two friends; there must always be three—two human beings and one God. God alone is the indissoluble bond and perpetual guardian of any true friendship for a true lover loves the other person solely for the sake of God. True love and friendship between several persons is derived from the love of the individual for God; it is thus reduced to the basic phenomenon of the inner ascent, which constitutes the core of Ficino's philosophy.

It appears from Ficino's letters that he considered true friendship in this sense to be the bond that united the members of his academy with each other and with himself, their common master, and that he liked to think of the academy not merely as a school but as a community of friends. This conception of Platonic love was to exercise a strong influence on Italian and European literature throughout the sixteenth century. Many lyric poets spoke of their love in terms that reflected the influence of Ficino, as well as that of the old Tuscan poets and Petrarch; and there was a large body of treatises and lectures on love that derived much of their inspiration, directly or indirectly, from Ficino's commentary on the Symposium. In this literature the concept of Platonic love was separated from the philosophical context in which it had originated with Ficino, and so it became more and more diluted and trivial. For this reason, the notion of Platonic love has acquired a slightly ridiculous connotation for the modern reader. Yet we should try to recapture its original meaning, remembering that the true meaning of an idea is best understood in the context of the thought in which it originated and which, in a sense, made its formulation necessary. If we trace Platonic love back to its origin in Ficino—back to the context of an individual's love of God—it may still seem a strange and remote concept, but we shall at least understand that it had a serious content and that it was related to the central ideas of his philosophy.

A further aspect of Ficino's thought that requires mention is his conception of religion and of its relationship to philosophy. Ficino was a priest and a canon of Florence Cathedral; he had an adequate knowledge of Christian theology; and he even wrote an apologetic treatise on the Christian religion as well as several other theological works. There is not the slightest doubt that he intended to be orthodox, although some of his doctrines may seem to have dubious implications and although he was in danger of an ecclesiastical condemnation for the views on astrology and magic expressed in his work De Vita (1489). He insisted on his Christian faith and submitted to the judgment of the church. He was even willing to abandon the opinions of his favorite Platonist philosophers when they seemed to contradict Christian doctrine. Thus, we are not surprised to find that he regarded Christianity as the most perfect of all religions.

At the same time, he saw some merit in the variety of religions and insisted that any religion, however primitive, is related indirectly to the one true God. In his implicit tolerance toward other religions, Ficino came very close to a concept of natural religion, a position that made him a forerunner of Herbert of Cherbury, the deists, and other advocates of a universal religion. Divine worship, he said, is almost as natural for men as neighing is for horses or barking is for dogs. A common religion of all nations, having one God for its object, is natural to the human species. This religion, which is again based on man's primary knowledge and love of God, is not shared by the animals but is peculiar to man, a part of his dignity and excellence and a compensation for the many defects and weaknesses of his nature.

As to the relation between religion and philosophy, Ficino was convinced that true religion (that is, Christianity) and true philosophy (that is, Platonism) are in basic harmony with each other; and he was inclined to treat them as sisters instead of trying to make one subservient to the other. He believed that it is the task of Platonic reason to confirm and support Christian faith and authority, and he even considered it his own mission, assigned to him by divine providence, to revive true philosophy for the benefit of true religion. He believed that those who will not be guided by faith alone can be guided toward truth only through reason and the most perfect philosophy.

In the light of this relationship, the continuity of the Platonic tradition assumed a new significance for Ficino. Since this tradition was thought by him to go back to Hermes and Zoroaster, whose apocryphal writings Ficino treated as venerable witnesses of early pagan theology and philosophy, he considered the tradition to be as old as the religious tradition of the Hebrews. Thus, the religious tradition of the Hebrews and Christians, and the philosophical tradition of the Hermetics and Platonists, seemed to run a parallel course in human history from the early beginnings through antiquity and the Middle Ages down to the modern period. It is in accordance with this view of Ficino's that Augustinus Steuchus, a Catholic theologian of the sixteenth century, wrote his De Philosophia Perenni (On the perennial philosophy; 1542).

Influence

Ficino's influence was considerable, both during his lifetime and for a long time afterward. As a metaphysician in the proper sense of the word, Ficino added an element to Florentine culture that had been largely absent from it before and left a new imprint on that culture that was to last for several generations. Among his associates and pupils we find Cristoforo Landino, author of the Camaldulensian Disputations and of an influential commentary on Dante's Commedia, and Lorenzo de' Medici, famous not only as a statesman but also as one of the best Italian poets of his century. Whereas Giovanni Pico della Mirandola developed an independent position, another pupil, Francesco da Diacceto, carried the Platonic tradition of Ficino into the first decades of the sixteenth century; and later in that century, Platonic philosophy was cultivated both at the new Florentine Academy of 1540 and at the University of Pisa. This Platonist climate of opinion in Florence and Pisa accounts for some of the opinions and preconceptions of Galileo Galilei. In the rest of Italy, poets and prose writers drew on Ficino's theory of love, and theologians and philosophers upon his doctrine of immortality as well as some of his other ideas. His influence appears in the works of such leading philosophers as Francesco Patrizi and Giordano Bruno: Even thinkers who opposed his views, such as Pietro Pomponazzi, were impressed with his learning and acumen.

During his lifetime, Ficino's influence was already growing, through his correspondence and through the circulation of his writings, in most European countries. His admirers included Johannes Reuchlin and John Colet, Gaguin and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples. During the sixteenth century his writings were reprinted, collected, read, and quoted all over Europe. His medical and astrological treatises were especially popular in Germany. In France, he was repeatedly quoted and plagiarized by Symphorien Champier, and admired in the circles of Queen Marguerite of Navarre and of the Pléïade. There, some of his writings and his Latin translations of Plato were translated into French. Elements of his Platonism appear in Carolus Bovillus and Postel, and not so much in Peter Ramus as in his mortal enemy Jacques Charpentier. Even in René Descartes there are strong elements of Platonism. Outside of France, Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, Sebastian Fox Morcillo, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, and finally Johannes Kepler exemplify the importance of Platonism in sixteenth-century thought, an importance that is closely linked with the writings, translations, and commentaries of Ficino.

In the seventeenth century, after Galileo and Descartes, the speculative cosmology of the Renaissance was no longer possible within the framework of a natural science based on experiments and mathematical formulas. The influence of Platonism persisted, however, in the metaphysics and epistemology of Benedict de Spinoza and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Nicolas Malebranche and George Berkeley; and it gained a new life in the school of Cambridge Platonists. And, since the authority of Plato himself remained a powerful force with many thinkers, we find even in Immanuel Kant and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe several theories associated with the name and prestige of Plato (and Plotinus) that actually belong to his Florentine translator and commentator. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in his autobiography that as a youth he read Plato and Plotinus, together with the commentaries and the Theologia Platonica of the illustrious Florentine. It was only in the nineteenth century that Ficino lost even this anonymous or pseudonymous influence, after a new school of philological and historical criticism had begun to make a rigorous distinction between the genuine thought of Plato and that of his successors and commentators in late antiquity and during the Renaissance. On the basis of this distinction, it has become possible again to understand Ficino's thought in its own right—to appreciate its indebtedness to sources other than Plato, its close connection with the thought and scholarship, art and literature of its time, and its own peculiar style and originality.

See also Florentine Academy.

Bibliography

Of Ficino's main works, only the commentary on Plato's Symposium has been reprinted in modern editions. See Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Symposium, translated and edited by Sears R. Jayne, Vol. XIX, No. 1, in The University of Missouri Studies (Columbia, MO, 1944), and Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon, edited by Raymond Marcel (Paris, 1956). For the others, the Basel editions of his collected works, Opera Omnia, 2 vols. (1561 and 1576), are still the only source; the second edition is slightly more complete and has been reprinted more recently (Turin, 1959). Also see Supplementum Ficinianum, edited by Paul Oskar Kristeller, 2 vols. (Florence, 1937), with lists of manuscripts and editions and a chronology of Ficino's works, and P. O. Kristeller, Studies in Ficino's Thought and Letters (Rome, 1956), with a number of papers discussing Ficino's life, sources, influence, and thought. Aside from the commentary on the Symposium, only the short Five Questions concerning the Mind (from Ficino's Letters ) has been translated into English, by Josephine L. Burroughs, in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, edited by Ernst Cassirer and others (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 193–212.

For Ficino's life and the history of the Platonic Academy, see Arnaldo Della Torre, Storia dell'Accademia platonica di Firenze (Florence, 1902), which is still indispensable, and Raymond Marcel, Marsile Ficin (Paris, 1958).

For discussions of Ficino's philosophy, see Giuseppe Saitta, La filosofia di Marsilio Ficino (Messina: Principato, 1923; 3rd ed., Bologna: Fiammenghi and Nanni, 1954); Sears R. Jayne, John Colet and Marsilio Ficino (London: Oxford University Press, 1963); Paul O. Kristeller, II pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino (Florence: Sansoni, 1953), translated by Virginia Conant as The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943)—the Italian edition is superior because of its additional indexes and original text quotations.

Also see Michele Schiavone, Problemi filosofici in Marsilio Ficino (Milan, 1957), and Ernst Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance (Berlin and Leipzig: Teubner, 1927; reprinted Darmstadt, 1962), translated by Mario Domandi as The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).

Ficino's influence on the theory and iconography of Renaissance art has been discussed by Erwin Panofsky—Idea (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1924; 2nd ed., Berlin: Hessling, 1960) and Studies in Iconology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939; reprinted, New York: Harper and Row, 1962)—and by E. H. Gombrich and others; see especially André Chastel, Marsile Ficin et l'art (Geneva: Droz, 1954). For a discussion of Ficino and magic, see D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1958).

Literature on the influence of Ficino's theory of love includes A. M. J. Festugière, La philosophie de l'amour de Marsile Ficin et son influence sur la littérature française du XVIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1941); John C. Nelson, Renaissance Theory of Love (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958). See also Nesca A. Robb, Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance (London: Allen and Unwin, 1935), and Raymond Klibansky, The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition during the Middle Ages (London: Warburg Institute, 1939 and 1950).

other recommended titles

Allen, Michael J. B. "The Absent Angel in Ficino's Philosophy." Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975): 219–240.

Allen, Michael J. B. "The Ficinian Timaeus and Renaissance Science." In Plato's Timaeus as Cultural Icon, edited by Gretchen Reydams-Schils. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.

Allen, Michael J. B. "Marsilio Ficino on Significatio." Midwest Studies in Philosophy 26 (2002): 30–43.

Allen, Michael J. B. The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino: A Study of His Phaedrus Commentary, Its Sources and Genesis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Collins, Ardis B. "Love and Natural Desire in Ficino's Platonic Theology." Journal of the History of Philosophy 9 (1971): 435–442.

Collins, Ardis B. "The Secular Is Sacred: Platonism and Thomism in Marsilio Ficino's Platonic Theology. " The Hague: Nijhoff, 1974.

Devereux, James A. "The Object of Love in the Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino." Journal of the History of Ideas 30 (1969): 161–170.

Fogarty, Anne. "Mystical Modernism: Yeats, Ficino and Neoplatonic Philosophy." Accademia 3 (2001): 131–147.

Gandillac, Maurice de. "Neoplatonism and Christian Thought in the Fifteenth Century." In Neoplatonism and Christian Thought, edited by Dominic J. O'Meara. Norfolk, VA: International Society for Neoplatonic Studies, 1981.

Hendrix, John. Platonic Architectonic: Platonic Philosophies and the Visual Arts. New York: Peter Lang, 2004.

Jacob, Alexander. "Henry More's 'Psychodia Platonica' and Its Relationship to Marsilio Ficino's 'Theologia Platonica.'" Journal of the History of Ideas 46 (1985): 503–522.

Kuczyanska, Alicja. "The Third World of Marsilio Ficino." Dialectics and Humanism 15 (1988): 157–171.

Mojsisch, Burkhard. "The Epistemology of Humanism." Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch 1 (1996): 127–152.

O'Rourke Boyle, Marjorie. "Pure of Heart: From Ancient Rites to Renaissance Plato." Journal of the History of Ideas 63 (1) (2002): 41–62.

Paul Oskar Kristeller (1967)

Bibliography updated by Tamra Frei (2005)