Giovanni Pico della Mirandola  (1463-1494)
and Renaissance Philosophy

Paul Richard Blum

[Presented at Istituto Italiano di Cultura, New York, 11 November 2014]

 

A presentation on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola should have at least nine hundred chapters – but I will reduce it to four or five.[1]

1. Pico contributed to the discovery of the human being as the center of the world.

Let me start with a quotation about philosophy:

“Philosophy is man's knowledge of himself. … Man, if he acquires a true knowledge of himself, viz. of his own spirituality and corporeality, comprises the knowledge of everything ....”[2]

If I had let you guess the author, you certainly would have come up with Pico or some other Renaissance thinker. For it makes philosophizing a feature of humanity that expands on everything there is. However, it is from Isaac Israeli in the early Middle Ages. Closer to   that matches our expectations of medieval pessimism is this famous saying of Pope Innocent III:

“Indeed man is shaped like an upside down tree. His hair forms the roots; his head and neck the trunk; the breast and stomach the stock; the arms and legs the branches. Man is a plant tossed to and fro by the wind and, like straw, dried out by the sun.”[3]

It was the humanist Giannozzo Manetti who opposed this view by saying:

“…the fruits proper to man are not those shameful and incidental kinds of filthiness … mentioned above; rather our human fruits are to be deemed the many operations of intelligence and will.”

To the humanists, man is man in action. And Pico will elaborate on that and drive it to near exhaustion. In order to show that, I simply quote one of his most famous statements in his Oration on the Dignity of Man:

“[God] … took man, … set him in the middle of the world, and said to him: ‘We have given you, Adam, no fixed seat or form of your own, no talent peculiar to you alone. … Once defined, the nature of all other beings is constrained within the laws We have prescribed for them. But you, constrained by no limits, may determine your nature for yourself, according to your own free will ... We have set you at the centre of the world so that from there you may … easily gaze upon whatever it contains. … you may, as the free and extraordinary shaper of yourself, fashion yourself in whatever form you prefer. It will be in your power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Alternatively, you shall have the power … to be reborn into the higher orders, those that are divine.’ …”[4]

Here we see the specific humanist take on humanity: after the medieval thinkers and theologians had realized that the essence of human beings and of being human consists in reflecting upon oneself and thus experience life as misery, the humanists say: to be miserable does not exclude thinking about it, and human awareness of filthiness is the mother of invention. Now in a giant leap, Pico concludes that the status of being human utterly depends on the spiritual powers of the individual. He clothes it in this speech of God to Adam saying that humans have no predetermined position in the hierarchy of things. A human being can ascend to the level angels or degrade to the baseness of beasts, depending on how one uses one’s mind.

The progress from the image of man as an uprooted tree to that of the individual intellect as the center of the world was life-changing. Giordano Bruno, about 100 years later, would extend it to the theory of the cosmos, claiming that the center  of the world is, wherever one happens to stand. And yet, when Descartes would say, another 50 years after that, the “I think” is the only thing that is certain, he is still banking on Pico’s discovery: Man is man in action, and the world is the place where man is at the center.

2. Pico was probably the first encyclopedist, that is, he believed it is impossible to know too much, and all there is to know is worth knowing.

The quotation from the Oration on the Dignity of Man is the most popular. But in this speech that apparently elevated the appreciation of humanity there followed a second part, in which Pico calls for a universal system of knowledge that includes all disciplines and traditions. Since no place in the chain of being is assigned to him, man is a Divine afterthought after the completion of the universe, a being meant to oversee, and thus to appreciate, the perfection of God’s masterwork; and that requires appropriate skills. Therefore he called upon the world of learning to embrace all intellectual achievements of the ancients and of his contemporaries. Truth is contained in all sciences, and it is the call for humanity to find and unfold it. Pico’s syncretism is condensed in the formula: “I am not sworn into the words of any one.”

I should now mention that this famous Oration was intended as the opening speech of a mammoth disputation to be held in 1487 in Rome.[5] Pico invited the entire world of learning and even promised to pay the expenses for those who attended. For this disputation Pico had prepared no less than nine hundred theses, which he promised to be able to defend.

Within parentheses, it should be stated that such publication of theses for public discussion was academic practice and as an event nothing out of the ordinary. We might also remember the famous 95 theses that Martin Luther nailed at the church gate in Wittenberg, merely 30 years later in 1517. Again, he did not intend to start a religious war, but just posted his program inviting everyone to challenge his ideas.

Still, the number 900 sounds somewhat exaggerated. Even more, Pico said, he could easily have expanded the number by elaborating even more on details. Those 900 theses are grouped by schools of thought, including scholasticism, Platonism, Cabala, and many others. The message is this: human thought is one for all and it evolves and diversifies indefinitely. If man is at the center of the world, the world is worth knowing as far as possible.

Pico was in agreement with the Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa who discovered the coincidence of contraries in the power of the human mind.[6] Nicholas died one year after Pico was born. Indeed, Pico planned to pay a visit to the Cardinal’s legendary library in Germany. But more importantly, Pico’s project of an all-encompassing debate triggered the projects of producing an encyclopedia of all that can be known. Most of these projects were pursued in the 17^th and 18^th centuries and came to a completion with the Encyclopedia Britannica and present day’s Wikipedia.

3. As a syncretist (that is one who combines virtually all schools of thinking), Pico was against dogmatism, including that of the Renaissance Platonists.

To pay every branch of learning its due comes with a price: Does it mean that everyone has his or her own mind and everyone is right? In a way yes, but also no. First of all, not to be sworn into any one’s school is the necessary condition for intellectual curiosity. On the flip side, it means that understanding a school of knowledge does not entail endorsing it. Therefore, Pico was able to present theses of some scholastics that he did not endorse; and to ‘defend’ them in the great disputation would have meant explaining their validity without endorsing them.

Most importantly, intellectual curiosity – to be a polymath or an intellectual omnivore, as Anthony Grafton had it – is the opposite of dogmatism. Pico wanted to know all dogmas of the world without being dogmatic. And here was his enemy: the meanwhile popular Platonism of the Renaissance.

Frequently, Giovanni Pico was associated with Marsilio Ficino[7] as one of the Florentine Platonists. But the story is more complicated.

In 1438-39 a council was held in Florence, sponsored by the Medici trust, that was to reconcile the Byzantine and the Roman Christian Churches. For some obscure reason, a neo-pagan scholar, who called himself Plethon, so as to sound like “Platon”, was part of the Greek delegation.[8] And during his stay in Florence he published a book in which he attacked the Western Christians for being Aristotelians. He advocated a return to Platonism. Of course Platonism had dominated Christian thought from St. Paul on; but lately, thanks to the rediscovery of Aristotle, theology was basically Aristotelian. Plethon now blamed Aristotelianism to be heretic and – shrewdly – suggested returning to Platonism, which in his own agenda, was paramount to ancient wisdom. This idea was picked up by the banker and ruler of Florence, Cosimo de’Medici, who appointed Ficino to translate works by Plato and the Neo-Platonists from Greek into Latin. Ficino also commented on all those works, among others on Plato’s Symposium.[9] In doing so, Ficino denounced Aristotelian scholasticism as un-Christian and created his own system that should reconcile dogmatics with ancient wisdom.

This Renaissance Platonism vexed the young friend Pico. He got interested in Plato while he stayed with Ficino in Florence, but he saw in Plato only the advocate of the reconciliation of all philosophies rather than a dogmatic system. For Pico, the major danger, in very few words, is this:

First: every interpretation of Christian thought in terms of pagan Greek philosophy runs the risk of making Christian revelation superfluous.

Second: Ficino aligned Plato’s theory of Forms or Ideas with the notion of God; and this interpretation disturbs the balance between rational philosophy and revelation. One important example is the notion of God as the one that transcends every being. Ficino elevated God to a level that detached God from His Creation. Against this theory Pico protested fiercely in his De ente et uno.[10] He did the same in a comment on a love poem written by a friend in the footsteps of Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s Symposion.[11] On the same occasion he criticized the Byzantine scholar Plethon for his misinterpretation of Greek mythology.  

4. On his search for unity of knowledge, Pico explored new methods of interpreting the Bible.

One anecdote from his life needs to be told. Pico as a man of action worked simultaneously on his 900 Theses and the introduction, the Oration on the Dignity of Man, and on this commentary on the love poem. On his way to Rome in early May 1486, he found time and energy to kidnap Margherita, the wife of Giuliano Mariotto dei Medici. However, after a fight and his humiliating arrest that ensued, he seems to have had a conversion and concentrated all his vigor on studies of Hebrew, the Qur’an, and other reading. While preparing his great event in Rome, he met for further briefings with his teacher of Averroist Aristotelianism, Elia del Medigo. From their exchange of letters we learn that Pico paid Elia with a horse, but also infected him with scabies. More importantly, Elia was one of the sources for Pico to learn about Cabala.[12]

Here is, how Elia del Medigo explained this system of Jewish mysticism:

“[The cabalists] believe that in this world there are beings of a lower degree than the degree of the glorious God, who is called the Infinite, and these flow – that is: they are not made nor produced – from Him, who is named the Infinite. … The order in which the produced beings are produced and maintained within the order is this, namely by the [ten] Sephiroth, i.e. numberings. Thus they call these 'flowed from the Infinite'. … According to [the cabalists], the order we find in the world is that of the Sephiroth.”[13]

We should notice that Elia does not endorse this theory, being an Aristotelian. But Pico kept learning and had texts of Jewish mysticism translated for him.

Now, following his idea that as a human being one is invited, if not urged and obliged, to get to know as much of the world as possible, and in doing so to elevate oneself above the realm of the beasts, Pico understood, as Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida in the 20^th century did, that being human means interpreting the world, reading the world like a book. We all know that famous adage of Galileo Galilei that the book of the world is written in the language of mathematics. On hearing that we see Einstein writing formulas on the blackboard. This notion, that the world can be read in the language of numbers, was actually an old idea. In Greece it was formulated by Pythagoras. And among the Jews of the Middle Ages it was expressed in their reading of the Holy Writ. As in other languages, in Hebrew every letter represents also a numerical value. Therefore it offered itself to wise people that God’s creation is achieved through that flow, mentioned by Elia del Medigo, that proceeds in 10 Sephirot and from there structures the world according to occult numbers. Now, as for the Christians, so even more for the Jews, the Bible is the primary text that helps reading the book of the world. Consequently, Jewish sages started discovering numerical hidden messages in the word of God.

This was what interested the young scholar. For Pico, Cabala gives access to the secret of divine creation through the alphabet. The letters of the Bible are nothing but a numerical reconfiguration of God's word and work. This he elaborated in his commentary on Genesis, by the title Heptaplus - Sevenfold.[14]

His method of interpretation of the Creation story in the Bible is as follows. First Pico establishes these two assumptions:

(1) Moses must have spoken adequately and in a learned manner, even though he addressed an uneducated audience;

 (2) Moses cannot have said anything "alien to the nature of things" since the Holy Spirit speaks through him.

Therefore, the nature of things as created by God must necessarily be the very message of the story of Genesis.  For all those whom we now term literalists: it is not so that the Bible is a source of a scientific interpretation of the world; rather, the other way round: for Pico, the world is the expression of God’s power and plans; therefore the structure of the world is necessary for an understanding of the Word of God. Both have the language and their hidden meaning in common.

As an example we may see Pico’s cabalistic interpretation of the first word of the Bible, “In the beginning” (in Hebrew bresit or bereshit): After describing a series of dissections and re-compositions of its letters, Pico discloses the meaning that was implied in this single word:

“The Father, in the Son and through the Son, the beginning and end or rest, created the head, the fire, and the foundation of the great man with a good pact.”

If that sounds mysterious – it is. The point is that by way of numerical relations, the name of Jesus is implied in the very beginning of the world.

5. Pico reconciled the humanist, theological, and philosophical trends of Renaissance philosophy.

In searching for new methods of interpreting texts, and specifically the Bible, Pico continued the efforts of humanists like Giovanni Boccaccio and Giannozzo Manetti; and he bestowed on the history of ideas what can be called Christian Cabala; a reconciliation of Jewish and Christian piety. That attempt at reconciliation did not remain uncontested: Giordano Bruno ridiculed it,[15] others mixed it up with magic and astrology; eventually, a version of it appeared in Baruch Spinoza in the 17^th century, who then was accused of atheism.

But reconciliation was Pico’s long term project. By his family estate, he had the title Prince of Concordia, and he planned to write a book on the concord of Plato and Aristotle from a higher point of view. His aim was syncretism, as we heard, that is, the freedom to apply various methods depending on the matter at hand. Therefore he defended the scholastic style of argumentation after having studied not only with Ficino but also in Paris, the most important scholastic university.[16]

This came handy in his most ambitious project, that great disputation in Rome. The great event was cancelled, because censors had found 13 out of the 900 propositions to be suspicious of heresy. Pico defended himself with a long Apology, in which he argued like a scholastic theologian. However he points out that there are various schools, and he refers to the history of theology, which is a typical humanist move. Another humanist argument Pico applied was to say that all dogmas are expressed in language, and language is always open for interpretation – even the words of God, as we saw.

In conclusion we may observe that Pico absorbed all trends of humanism and philosophy. Some people think that humanism has nothing to do with philosophy and that in the Renaissance philosophy took shape only with Ficino’s new Platonism. Pico, who was 30 years younger than Ficino but died 5 years earlier, Pico proves to the contrary: Renaissance philosophy was as much indebted to Aristotle as to Plato and all their medieval Christian interpretations; and the new turn was made possible through the humanist emphasis on the central perspective of man on the world and the role of language in it. Pico achieved much less, personally, than his ambition pursued, but he handed over to the following generations the insight that knowledge is hard to come by but worth having.

---

[1] Only references to primary sources are given. For Pico’s biography and philosophy see, among others,  Dougherty, M. V., ed. Pico Della Mirandola: New Essays. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008., 2008. Stéphane Toussaint, “Giovanni Pico” in Paul Richard Blum, ed., Philosophers of the Renaissance, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010, 69-81.

[2] Isaac Israeli (ca. 832-ca. 932), Book of definitions, in: Alexander Altmann and S. M. Stern, Isaac Israeli a Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century: His Works Translated with Comments and an Outline of His Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 27.

[3] Bernard Murchland (ed.). Two Views of Man: Pope Innocent III [1161-1216] On the Misery of Man. Giannozzo Manetti [1396-1459] On the Dignity of Man. New York: F. Ungar Pub. Co, 1966.

[4] Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Oration on the Dignity of Man: A New Translation and Commentary. Ed. Francesco Borghesi, Michael Papio, and Massimo Riva. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

[5] Farmer, S. A. Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486); Conclusiones Nongentae; English & Latin., Tempe, Ariz. : Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998.

[6] Nicholas of Cusa [1401-1464]. On Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia, trans. Jasper Hopkins, Minneapolis: A.J. Benning Press, 1981, http://jasper-hopkins.info/DI-I-12-2000.pdf.

[7] Marsilio Ficino [1433-1499]. Platonic Theology, ed. James Hankins, trans. Michael J.B. Allen et al., I Tatti Renaissance Library 2, 4, 7, 13, 17, 23, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001-2006.

[8] C. M. Woodhouse. George Gemistos Plethon [c. 1355 – 1452/1454]: The Last of the Hellenes Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.

[9] Ficino, Marsilio. Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love. Translated by Sears R. Jayne. Dallas, Tex.: Spring Publications, 1985.

[10] Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Of Being and Unity; (De Ente et Uno), trans. Victor M. Hamm. Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 1943.

[11] Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Commentary on a Canzone of Benivieni. Translated by Sears R. Jayne. New York: P. Lang, 1984.

[12] On Cabala [Kabbalah] see Busi, Giulio, and Ebgi, Raphael. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: mito, magia, qabbalah. Torino: Einaudi, 2014.

[13] Elia's [1458-ca. 1493] letter to Pico in: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. De hominis dignitate; De ente et uno; e scritti vari. Edited by Eugenio Garin. Edizione nazionale dei classici del pensiero italiano. Firenze: Vallecchi, 1942, pp. 68-71.

[14] Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Heptaplus: Or, Discourse on the Seven Days of Creation. Translated by Jessie Brewer McGaw. New York: Philosophical Library, 1977.

[15] Bruno, Giordano. The Cabala of Pegasus. Translated by Sidney L. Sondergard and Madison U. Sowell. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.

[16] Breen, Quirinus. “Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola on the Conflict of Philosophy and Rhetoric.” Journal of the History of Ideas 13, no. 3 (June 1, 1952): 384–412. doi:10.2307/2707604. Barbaro, Ermolao, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Filosofia o eloquenza? Edited by Francesco Bausi. Sileni 2. Napoli: Liguori, 1998.

Wonder and Wondering in the Renaissance

Wonder and Wondering in the Renaissance

Elisabeth Blum and Paul Richard Blum

Now available in:

Michael Funk Deckard and Péter Losonczi (eds.), Philosophy Begins in Wonder. An Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy, Theology, and Science. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick, 2010, pp. 1-42.

Epistemologie seit Ficino: Ist Erkenntnis ein mind-body-Problem?

Paul Richard Blum
Epistemologie seit Ficino: Ist Erkenntnis ein mind-body-Problem?
[Ungarisch: Episztemológia Ficino óta: test-lélek probléma-e a megismerés? [
, in Gábor Boros (ed.), Reneszánsz filozófia, Budapest: Német-Magyar Filozófiai Társaság, 2009, pp. 31-47.]
Der Hintergrund meines Themas ist die Beobachtung, daß die cartesische Erkenntnistheorie, wie sie in der Logik von Port Royal dargestellt wird, annimmt, daß Begriffe (Ideen) durch äußere Anreize der Sinne ausgelöst werden, aber – daher der Name Rationalismus – exklusiv im Inneren des Verstandes gebildet werden, ohne daß – wie dies in der aristotelisch-scholastischen Epistemologie dargestellt wurde – irgendwelche körperlichen Bilder im Verstand verarbeitet werden müßten. Damit wurden nach allgemeiner Interpretation die Bereiche des Körpers und des Geistes klar getrennt und somit auch die Paradoxien der geistigen Verarbeitung körperlicher Einflüsse umgangen. Nachteil war allerdings, daß bei Wegfall der Annahme einer res cogitans, d.h. irgend eines geistigen Bereichs, genau diese Produktion von Begriffen zurückprojiziert werden muß auf den Körper, genauer: das Gehirn, so als würde ein Körperteil durch sich selbst zur Bildung von etwas angeregt, nämlich Bewußtsein, das zwar wesensgleich mit dem Körper ist, und dennoch unterschiedlich ("transzendent" würden Scholastiker sagen, "supervenient" oder "emergent" sagen heutige Mind-Body-Philosophen ). Genau diese Frage der selbsttätigen Aktivität in Richtung auf Transzendenz wurde von Marsilio Ficino dargestellt, als er die Unsterblichkeit der Seele beweisen wollte.
Um mein Thema überschaubar zu halten, beschränke ich mich hier auf eine Interpretation von Ficinos Epitome zu Platons Phaidon. Dabei verzichte ich aus demselben Grund auch auf einen Vergleich mit dem originalen Phaidon und mit anderen Interpretationen, etwa der durch Moses Mendelssohn. Ficinos Übersicht über den Dialog beginnt mit Rückverweis auf seine Schriften De religione Christiana und den Brief über Socrates und Christus. Zudem sagt er, er könne sich kurz fassen (saltu celeri pecurremus, S. 1390), weil die Sache ausführlich in der Theologia Platonica abgehandelt sei. Er erweckt also die Erwartung, daß auch der Phaidon von jener Parallele des Sokrates/Christus handelt. Da aber im weiteren Text der Einleitung davon nicht mehr die Rede ist, müssen wir umgekehrt schließen, daß für Ficino nicht so sehr der Tod des Sokrates als vielmehr die Unsterblichkeitsthematik das Christliche am Platonismus ausmacht. Es ist in der Tat auffällig, daß diese Epitome aus einem epistemologisch-metaphysischen und einem ethischen Teil besteht. Im folgenden werde ich mich auf das epistemologisch-metaphysische Thema beschränken mit der Absicht, entsprechend meinem angekündigten Thema, zu zeigen, daß die Unsterblichkeitsfrage eine Frage der Erkenntnistheorie ist; denn das ist der historische Ort der Spannung zwischen Leib, Seele und Erkenntnis.
Ficino legt wert darauf, daß im Phaidon das Argument für die Unsterblichkeit nicht aus der Selbstbewegung der Seele stammt. Als Grund behauptet er, daß diese Beweisart für alle Seelenarten gilt, nicht nur die menschliche, sondern auch himmlische und dämonische Seelen. Das ist aus verschiedenen Hinsichten wichtig. Die Selbstbewegung der Seele ist ein Theoriestück, das nur selten verwendet wird, jedenfalls in der Moderne. Es ist auffällig, daß in der neueren mind-body-Diskussion die Psyche selten als aktive Kraft interpretiert wird. Sie ist zumeist nur ein Aggregat von Zuständen oder Anzeiger davon. Dabei wird zwar diskutiert, ob psychische Zustände identisch sind mit dem was sie bedeuten (z.B. Schmerzen oder Freude), daß aber die Psyche selbst Urheber von Zuständen sein könnte, kommt nicht vor. Dabei müßte es kritisch unumgänglich sein zu fragen, in welchem Theorie-Rahmen Selbstbezüglichkeit oder Selbst-Einwirkung möglich ist, falls es als wahrscheinlich angesehen werden kann, daß so etwas wie Denken oder Geist entweder aus irgendwelchen physikalischen Umständen hervorgeht (was nur durch Einwirkung von Materie auf Materie darstellbar ist), oder wenn Denken von Materie unkontaminiert sich mit sich selbst beschäftigen kann. Ich vermute, daß als einer der letzten Bewußtseinstheoretiker Franz Brentano in seiner empirischen Psychologie das Bewußtsein als eine aktive Kraft aufgefaßt hat, aber auch das ist nicht unkontrovers.
Wenn nun für Platon/Sokrates/Ficino in der Selbstbewegung einerseits ein starker Beweis für die Immaterialität und Ewigkeit der Seele liegt, andererseits aber sie diese mit allen spirituellen Seienden gemeinsam hat, insofern die Seele spirituell ist, dann ist die Unsterblichkeit zunächst einmal nicht als Tatsache oder Wahrheit des Lebensvollzugs gesichert, sondern 'nur' ontologisch. Andererseits wird aber diese Selbstbewegung von Platon im Phaidros und in Nomoi X sowohl als das Wesen der Seele verstanden als auch die Selbstbewegung als Denken interpretiert. Somit ist auch die menschliche Seele genau identisch mit Selbstbewegung und mit Denken. Das heißt, man darf sich die Selbstbewegung nicht als Attribut oder gar akzidentelle Eigenschaft vorstellen, sondern muß versuchen, die Seele als Denken zu denken. Das ist es, worauf Ficino hinweist, wenn er sagt, "animam scilicet esse principium motionis unde, sequatur eam per se perpetuoque moveri, semperque vivere." (S. 1390) Denn das Prinzip der Bewegung ist nicht ein der Bewegung Äußeres, sondern selbst Bewegung und daraus folglich selbstbewegend, daraus folglich dauernd und daraus folglich ewig lebendig, i.e. unsterblich. Der Phaidon bringt dementsprechend spezifische Argumente der menschlichen Perspektive bzw. der epistemologischen Anthropologie (nobis magis propriae).
Die Einteilung des Dialogs ist nach Ficino folgende:
1) Sokrates tröstet seine Freunde.
2) Er interpretiert seine Träume, auch im Hinblick auf Unterscheidung der Geister.
3) Der Mensch steht unter dem Schutz und der Aufsicht Gottes und darf daher nicht ohne seine Zustimmung 'auswandern' (hinc emigrare).
4) Die Aussicht auf Konversation mit Göttern und anderen guten Wesen:
a) unter 'andere Götter' sind Engelsgeister zu verstehen.
b) 'gute Menschen' – offenbar wagt Platon nicht zu behaupten, daß Menschen so gut sein können wie Götter.
5) Philosophieren ist Trennung vom Körper - in gewissem Sinne. (798 b D)
a) Reinigung von Leidenschaften (a perturbationibus per moralis disciplinae purgationem – S. 1390-91).
b) Kontemplativ gesteuerte Ablenkung von den Sinnen und der Phantasie (a sensibus atque ipsa imaginatione per contemplationis ipsius intentionem – S. 1391).
6) Daraus folgt, daß der Philosoph in dem Maße wie er seinen Verstand von körperlichen Begriffen befreit, ihn mit unkörperlichen Begriffen und Ideen verbindet (incorporeis rationibus ideisque coniungere).
7) Darin liegt die Gefahr einer Täuschung, nämlich abgelenkt zu werden, so daß die Imagination in körperlicher Art denkt (fallaciam illam, qua imaginatio mentem ad incorporea se elevantem, interim ad imagines quasdam corporum saepissime distrahit, cogiturque ipsa modo quodam corporeo cogitare).
8) In einem Disjunktionsschluß folgt daraus (per disiunctionem inferit): Erkenntnis abstrakter Ideen ist nur mit dem Körper oder ohne möglich, und da nicht mit dem Körper, dann also, wenn der Körper von der Seele getrennt ist (aut nunquam, aut post mortem).
9) Ausgeschlossen ist die Frustration, weil jeder Geist die Erkenntnis anstrebt (ab omni mente perpetuo appetitur).
10) Es folgen einige moralische Konsequenzen: Tugend um des Genusses willen entfällt; Reinigung geschieht immer um der Weisheit willen; Vereinigung mit Gott resultiert nicht aus ethischem Habitus sondern aus der Reinigung.
11) Erster Beweis der Unsterblichkeit aus dem Übergang von Gegensätzen; Vorhersehung der Auferstehung der Toten (mortuorum resurrectionem vaticinari).
12) Weiter über Auferstehung als Vertrauen (ingenti quadam fiducia).
13) Erinnerung metaphysisch: Leben der Seele vor und nach dem Körper (animam et ante corpus vivere, et post corpus).
14) Erinnerung epistemologisch
a) Die Fähigkeit Fragen richtig zu beantworten, ohne daß Lernen vorausgesetzt werden muß. (Primo, quia recte interroganti, saepe vera de his quae nunquam didicimus, respondemus.)
b) Abstraktion: Sinneseindrücke führen zum Aufstieg zu Ideen, nämlich vom Gleichen zum Begriff der Gleichheit. (Deinde quoniam ex notitia eorum, quae sentiuntur, subita quadam abstractione ad notitiam ascendimus idearum, ceu cognoscendo haec aequalia in ipsius aequalitatis cognitionem.)
15) Ideenlehre:
a) Was gleich genannt wird, kann weniger gleich werden – Gleichheit selbst dagegen kann nicht ungleich werden oder auch erscheinen. (Aequalitas autem nequit unquam inaequalitas, vel fieri, vel videri.)
b) Gleiches kann an Ungleichheit teilhaben – Gleichheit selbst nicht (aequalia … inaequalitatem participiant, aequalitas vero ipsa nequaquam).
16) Ideen sind identisch mit dem Wesen des Menschen (idearum essentiam esse nostram), denn der Verstand bezieht Einzelnes auf die Ideen und muß daher mit ihnen gleich-ewig sein. (Atque cum animus noster singula refert ad ideas, ipsum ostendere se una cum idearum essentia sempiternum esse, atque eam agnoscere tanquam suam. S. 1391-139[2])
17) Zweiter Beweis für die Unsterblichkeit, nämlich aus der Proportion des Verstandes zum Erkannten (a proportione intellectus ad intelligibile). Das Erkennbare, die Idee, ist ewig. Da dieses das objectum proprium (scholastische Terminologie) des Verstandes ist, muß dieser auch ewig sein. Verständnis und Verstand (intellectus, mens) stehen zur Idee in einer Proportion, weil der Verstand sich immer dann damit befaßt, sofern er nicht gehindert wird (quotiens [non] impeditur, ad eam se confert, eiusque commercio gaudet, et perficitur – S. 139[2]) .
18) Hilfsargument aus Timaios: Auch die Sterne sind an sich nicht unvergänglich (denn das steht nur Gott zu), sind es aber de facto. Das führt zur essentiellen Annäherung der Seele an Gott. (Animae igitur tam nostrae quam divinae indissolubili Deo proquinquae sunt, … dissolvendae nunquam.)
19) Unauflöslich ist vor allem, was keine Teile hat. Der Verstand hat essentiell keine Teile, wohl aber sind seine Aktionen aufteilbar. Daraus folgt:
20) Reine Seelen werden zu Gott, unreine zu Erde.
21) Folgt, im Anschluß an Proklos, Lehre von den ätherischen Körpern.
22) Einige Gegenargumente: Die Seele ist nichts als die consonantia der Körperteile. Antwort
a) Falls die anamnesis-Theorie stimmt, dann können die Seelen nicht vor-existieren, wenn sie die Harmonie der Körper sind.
b) Da eine Harmonie nicht harmonischer sein kann als eine andere, schließt eine solche funktionale Interpretation der Seele die (seelische) Differenz der Individuen aus. (Temperans igitur anima nihilo plus consonabit, quam intemperans. – S. [1393])
23) Exkurs gegen Naturalismus (damnat illos qui rerum causis assignandis ad materias quasdam, et instrumenta confugiunt):
a) Naturgeschichte kann nicht durch Natur erklärt werden (totam historiam naturalem insufficienter per eadem naturalia confirmari).
b) Eine Erklärung aus materiellen Gegebenheiten ist nicht eine aus Wirkursachen (haec omnia omniumque motus a divinis causis efficientibus finalibus idealisque omnino dependeant).
c) Die Idee des Guten ist eine Finalursache, die zum Ersatz dafür dient, daß die effektiven Wirkursachen nicht gekannt werden können. (Sokrates wünscht: finalem cuiusque rei causam atque universi, id est, bonum cuiusque, et universi bonum cuius quidem boni potestatem causam esse dicit efficientem. Quoniam vero ipsam boni amplitudinem comprehendere nequit, secundo eligit loco ideales divinae intelligentiae rationes, ad quarum similitudines in mundi materiam expressa sunt omnia.)
d) Deshalb ist bonitas konvergent mit veritas, auf beide bezieht sich die Erkenntnis des Endlichen, bzw. Erkenntnis setzt Endliches in Beziehung zur idealen bonitas und veritas. (Neque posse veritatem rerum haberi, nisi ad ideas confugiamus.)
24) Insofern ist Wahrheit/Güte als (regulative) Idee dem Verstand eingeboren zum Zweck der Erkenntnis von Einzelnem (formulas idearum inesse mentibus nostris ad quarum congruitatem, vel contra singula vera esse, vel contra censentur).
25) Abschließendes Argument für die Unsterblichkeit: Die rationale Seele ist die forma corporis, insofern sie nicht bloß Erkenntnis leistet, sondern auch Leben gibt, denn der Verstand ist gewissermaßen die Idee des körperlichen Lebens (quasi quaedam vitae corporalis idea).

Die erste epistemologische Aussage von Belang ist Nr. 5: Philosophieren, und das heißt wohl Denken überhaupt, besteht in der doppelten Tätigkeit der Reinigung von Leidenschaften und der Weglenkung des Denkens von den Sinnen und der – scholastisch zu interpretierenden – Phantasie als dem Gefäß von sinnlich aufgenommenen Bildern. In dem existentiellen Kontext des Todes fungiert die Reinigung zunächst als ethisches Abbild einer metaphysischen Situation, nämlich der Ablösung vom irdischen Leben. Wenn man nun in ontologischer oder auch in epistemischer Absicht die Situation nicht existentiell sondern erkenntnistheoretisch betrachtet, dann sind Reinigung von Leidenschaften und Kontemplation durch Absehung von Sinnlichkeit dasselbe, so wie Sinne zwischen Empfindung und Einsicht stehen. Die grundsätzlich epistemologische Aussage von Ficinos Exposition des Dialogs ist also, daß Begriffe an sich immateriell sind, denn nur dann lohnt es sich metaphorisch von Reinigung zu sprechen. Begriffe an sich können nicht mehr oder weniger materiell sein, wohl aber gibt es ein mehr oder weniger im Verstehen (s. Nr. 6).
Eine wichtige Leistung jeder Epistemologie ist es zu erklären, wie Irrtümer zustande kommen. (Nr. 7) Typisch für die gegenwärtige mind-body-Diskussion ist, daß heftige Empfindungen und überragende Leistungen des Verstandes als Argumente angeführt werden, es wird aber nicht erklärt, wie falsche Meinungen überhaupt ontologisch-epistemologisch möglich sind. Beispielsweise gilt es für unmöglich zu behaupten: "Du hast keine Schmerzen", es wird auch erklärt, wie Phantomschmerzen etwa entstehen, worin aber das Mißverständnis als solches besteht, das wird nicht erklärt. Was denkt ein Mensch, der Höhenangst hat? Was ist es, was er denkt, und denkt er wirklich? Und wie unterscheidet sich solches Denken von dem Denken einer Primzahl oder von dem Denken an die Telefonrechnung? Der Turing-Test setzt wenigstens die Rahmenbedingungen, unter denen ein denkender Mensch von einem nichtdenkenden Apparat, der wiederum von einem Denker entworfen wurde, getäuscht werden kann. Aber was findet statt, wenn ein Mensch einer Maschine Denken zutraut? Die Antwort ist, was anderswo Schwärmerei, okkulte Qualitäten, Hypostasierung , Verdinglichung, misplaced concreteness oder auch Kategorienverwechslung heißt: man unterschätzt zunächst die Immaterialität des Gedankens und unterstellt deshalb den Gedanken körperliche Eigenschaften. Wenn man – in den genannten Beispielen – jemandem den Schmerz bestreitet, denkt man den Schmerz als ein Ding, welches da oder nicht da ist. Wenn jemand Phantomschmerzen hat, dann glaubt er, dem Schmerz müsse eine physische Gegebenheit entsprechen. Diese zwei Irrtümer sind zwar entgegengesetzt in der Sache, in der Form aber beides Verdinglichungen von Empfindungen. Phobien wie Höhenangst lassen sich bekanntlich nicht wegreden, das liegt daran, daß Gefühle zwar einen körperlichen Anlaß signalisieren, selbst aber an sich unkörperlich sind.
Ficinos vordergründig moralische Bemerkung, daß die Imagination den Verstand vom Denken des Unkörperlichen ablenken kann berührt also den Kern der Epistemologie der Erfahrung. Im scholastischen Kontext wurde das Problem unter dem Titel diskutiert, ob der Intellekt sich selbst als einen Gegenstand denkt und ob die Gedanken-Formen identisch sind mit den Formen von Gegenständen. So behauptet etwa der Jesuit Hieronymus Dandinus: "Der Verstand begreift nicht sich selbst als sich selbst, sondern in der Weise des Gekanntseins. Erkenntnis ist in diesem Falle seine Erkenntnisform. Deshalb [gilt die Analogie, daß] so wie der primäre vom sekundären Akt und die reale und natürliche Form von der gekannten Form verschieden ist, so ist auch die Natur des Intellekts von allen Erkenntnissen und aufgenommenen Erkenntnisformen verschieden."
Gefühle, Phobien, Irrtümer usw. sind – in einer anderen Terminologie – entia rationis von der Art, daß es ontologisch irrelevant ist, ob ihnen ein extramentales Objekt entspricht. Primzahlen, Universalien, oder auch Platonische Ideen sind Gedankendinge derselben Art. Und aus der angeführten Irrtumsfähigkeit von Imagination und Denken folgt: Die Ontologie von Gedanken ist epistemisch. Um so mehr ist es für wahre Gedanken irrelevant, daß es eine physikalische Welt gibt. Davon ganz unabhängig ist die formale Logik von Aussagen.
Nun muß es in der Natur abstrakter Gedanken, welche nicht in körperlichen Kategorien gedacht werden, liegen, daß auch ihr Träger unkörperlich ist, oder zumindest verlangt die formale Beschreibung von Gedanken, daß sie nicht von einem Träger abhängig sein können, sofern dieser materiell ist. Andernfalls müßte geklärt werden, wie dieser Übergang zustande kommt, wenn denn, wie gerade erst gezeigt, Gedanken qua gedacht immateriell sind. Das ist übrigens noch nicht der erste Beweis für die Unsterblichkeit, wohl aber für die Immaterialität des Erkennens, was impliziert, daß Immaterialität notwendige Bedingung aber nicht hinreichend für Unsterblichkeit ist. (Nr. 8)
Aus der Tatsache, daß es Irrtümer gibt, wird – nachdem die Ursache von Mißverstehen aufgedeckt ist – gefolgert, daß Verstehen als solches nicht frustriert werden kann. (Nr. 9) Die übliche Formulierung dieses Arguments ruft Gottes Güte und Gnade zum Zeugen und hat daher – spätestens seit Suárez – zur Zwischenschaltung eines voluntaristischen Gottes genötigt, bzw. zu der einschränkenden Formulierung 'natural immortality' sei möglich oder auch nicht (so z.B. Berkeley). Das ist aber nicht, was Ficino sagt. Vielmehr sagt er, daß es die Natur des Geistes ist zu erkennen, solange er nicht gehindert wird: "Daß der Geist [die Wahrheit] niemals erreicht, kann nicht angenommen werden, weil sie von jedem Geist beständig angestrebt wird." Man beachte: es ist nicht kontingenter Weise so, daß allerlei Geister dauernd nach Wahrheit herumsuchen, sondern es liegt in der Definition und im Wesen von Intellekt Wahrheit anzustreben, und das schließt Vergeblichkeit aus: die Frustration wäre nicht eine faktische, sondern eine konzeptuelle – ein Widerspruch in der Sache. Frustration im einzelnen ist möglich aber nicht im Wesen. Am theoretischen Ausschluß von Frustration sieht man, daß wir es mit einer formalen Beschreibung von Geist zu tun haben, wie es sich für die Philosophie geziemt: Geist ist Streben zu immateriellen Begriffen. Auch in diesem Sinne koinzidieren Epistemologie und Ontologie, weil nämlich der Gegenstand der Ontologie ein Verstehen ist.
Der erste Beweis für die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Nr. 11) lautet also epistemologisch gedreht: Auferstehung und die Erhaltung von Gegensätzen in ihrer Ablösung ist die kosmologische Variante der Abstraktionslehre, wobei Abstraktion soviel ist wie die Umkehrung der Konkretion von endlichem und unendlichem, ohne daß das Endliche zu Nichts erklärt wird. Das wird später noch erläutert. Danach ist Ficinos Interpretation der Anamnesis-Lehre (Nr. 14) unspektakulär, obwohl er sie ausdrücklich als 'bloß pythagoräisch' bezeichnet und damit hervorhebt, dass das folgende seine eigene Auslegung ist, welche ich für strikt epistemologisch halte: Die sokratische Methode zeigt zwar vielleicht nicht, daß die Seelen wirklich vor den Körpern existiert haben, wohl aber daß das Verstehen über Operationen verfügt, die vom Lernen unabhängig sind. Natorp hatte bei seinem Versuch einer kantianischen Platon-Interpretation der Präexistenz der Seele nichts abgewinnen können, denn er mißverstand Erkenntnistheorie als eine Form von Subjektivität. Ficinos Interpretation zeigt aber, daß die pythagoreische Präexistenz auch so gelesen werden kann, daß Erkenntnis einen ontologischen Status hat, der möglicherweise unabhängig von den Sinnen und von der – substantiell zu denkenden – Existenz eines zweiten Seinsbereichs der Ideen ist. Damit schleicht Ficino sich aus einem Problem, das aufkommen muß, wenn Sensualismus und Unsterblichkeit zugleich vertreten werden (etwa bei Thomas von Aquin), nämlich ob die Seele etwas lernt, was ihr auch im Jenseits zu denken gibt. Das brauchen wir hier nicht zu verfolgen. Die Seelenwanderung bereitete noch Franz Brentano Kopfzerbrechen, während die Philologen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts wie Eduard Zeller und Erwin Rohde sich nicht um einen Origenismus-Verdacht scherten und daher aus literarhistorischen Gründen Platons Bezug auf Pythagoras wörtlich nehmen konnten. Für Ficino ist das Verbot der Seelenwanderung und damit der Präexistenz der Seelen glücklicher Anlaß dafür zu betonen, daß wir die Seelen nicht nach Art von Objekten behandeln dürfen: Denken ist die Natur der Seele, gleichgültig, wann und wie sie entstanden ist. Ideen sind selbstverständlich Gedanken – für Thomas und andere: Gedanken Gottes – und das ist ihr essentielles Sein. Epistemologisch ist das klar, ontologisch ist dem nichts – wirklich nichts – hinzuzufügen.
Mit unausgerichteten Grüßen von Nicolaus Cusanus erläutert Ficino das nicht mit den vielgefürchteten Ideen von Tischen und Betten, nicht einmal mit der Idee des Guten, sondern mit der Idee der Gleichheit, welche aus dem Akt des Vergleichens gewonnen wird. Ideen und Konzepte sind in dieser Perspektive die Koinzidenz von ewiger Wirklichkeit und zeitlicher Instantiierung. Da die Erinnerung nicht als Reminiszenz von zeitlich vorangehendem gedacht zu werden braucht, ist sie so etwas wie das Innewerden der Prinzipien von Erkenntnis. "Dann steigen wir aus der Kenntis des sinnlich wahrgenommenen, indem wir eine Art Abstraktion durchmachen, zur Kenntnis der Ideen auf …" Abstraktion ist eine Distraktion, eine Erfahrung der Weglenkung vom Anlaß der Erkenntnis. Zugleich wird die scholastisch-sensualistische Abstraktion umgedeutet von der Kollektion der Eindrücke in Vorstellung und Gedächtnis (vgl. oben Nr. 5) zur Aufsuche von Begriffen/Ideen. "… der Ideen, d.h. zur Kenntnis von Gelichheit an sich angesichts partikulärer gleicher Objekte." Deutlicher kann man im 15. Jahrhundert nicht sagen, daß die Ideenlehre eine Kritik der irdischen Vernunft ist.
Das wird gleich noch weiter bestätigt (Nr. 15): Der Maßstab ist gerade deshalb das Maß, weil er selbst kein Mehr-oder-weniger kennt. Teilhabe versteht Ficino hier übrigens nicht nur als steuernde Oberleitung, sondern auch als Beimischung oder vielleicht Verdünnung. Endliche Dinge haben etwas, was reine Gedanken nicht haben, nämlich Unreinheit.
Im Sinne eines Unsterblichkeitsbeweises folgt erst danach (Nr. 16) eine Ungereimtheit, nämlich der Schluß vom Gegenstand des Denkens auf das Denken im Sinne einer essentiellen Identität. Da es eine Differenz zwischen dem erkennenden Organ und dem, auf das hin es das Gedachte zurückführt, muß diese Differenz sofort wieder verneint werden, um sagen zu können, Verstand und Idee seien gleich-ewig. Andererseits kann das aber auch implizieren, daß die Differenz nicht zwischen dem Verstand und den Ideen liegt, sondern nur zwischen dem Endlichen, welches auf ewiges reduziert wird, und dem Ewigen. Also wenn es eine Reihe gibt Ding-Verstand-Idee, dann liegt der Schnitt nicht Ding-Verstand/Idee, sondern Ding/Verstand-Idee.
Dieses Problem geht Ficino im Sinne einer Proportionalanalogie an (Nr. 17). Dadurch wird der willkürliche Schnitt vermieden. Verstehen ist demnach die natürliche Selbstbewegung des Verstandes. Wir haben es also mit einer Kongruenz zu tun, die sich der Identität (wie oben angedeutet) annähert. Auch der Verstand ist offenbar der Beimischung fähig, aber diese Beimischung tangiert nicht sein Wesen: Denken als die Bewegung zwischen dem Sinnlichen und der Idee ist nur in sofern ein Körperproblem, als dieses immer dann überwunden wird, wenn es stattfindet.
Die Identifikation von Denken und Gedachtem ist noch nicht notwendig ein monistischer Idealismus, auf den Ficino offensichtlich hinauswill. Es ist sehr wohl denkbar, Wissen und Gegenstand des Wissens zu identifizieren und doch im Rahmen einer reinen Epistemologie zu bleiben, welche dem Denken keinen ontologischen Status zubilligt, wie das im Kantischen Kritizismus durchgeführt wurde. So sagt etwa Paul Natorp: "Etwas, ein Gegenstand, erscheint mir, und: Ich habe davon ein Bewußtsein, dies ist in der Sache eins und nicht zweierlei. Weder darf ich sagen: der Gegenstand erscheint mir so, z.B. als Einheit, weil ich mich so vorstellend zu ihm verhalte, z.B. vereinigend; noch auch: ich verhalte mich so zum Gegenstande, weil er mir so erscheint; keines ist vom andern abhängig, weil beides vielmehr wirklich Eines ist." Aber an diesem Zitat wird auch deutlich, daß wir es bei Ficino ebenso wie bei Natorp mit Formen von Reduktionismus zu tun haben, nur daß Reduktionismus nicht notwendigerweise Vereinfachung und Physikalisierung bedeuten muß, sondern auch als Idealisierung funktioniert (vgl. Nr. 20).
Ein Standardargument für oder gegen die Existenz und Unsterblichkeit der Seele betrachtet die Seele als eine cartesische spirituelle Substanz. Die Frage kann so formuliert werden: Ist Denken wirklich aus einem Guß oder vielmehr ebenso teilbar wie ausgedehnte Materie? In einer materialistischen Hirnlehre ist die Antwort klar. Aber wie wir gesehen haben, ist das Denken ja Bewegung und insofern auch aus Teilen bestehend, selbst wenn man die Unreinheit körperlich behinderten Denkens als unwesentlich ausklammert (Nr. 19): "Obwohl sie nach ihren konstitutiven Teilen nicht ausgedehnt ist, breitet die Seele sich durch die Teile ihrer Tätigkeit aus." Ausdehnung und Diffusion sind hier die Gegensätze, oder Raum und Zeit, denn: "In der Zeit und beweglich agiert sie." Die Teilbarkeit der Seele ist zwar zuzugeben, aber nicht als materiell-räumliche sondern als temporale Bewegung oder Diskursivität. Das kann wiederum mit der Seelenwanderungslehre metaphorisch dargestellt werden (Nr. 20), wonach die reinen Seelen zum Reinen und Zeitlosen, die erdverhafteten Seelen erdhaft aussehen. Oder anders gewendet: Die epistemologische Zwitterhaftigkeit des Verstandes löst sich nach dem Tod in Dualismus auf. Materialismus ist demnach pythagoreisch gesagt Strafe für falsches Denken.
Aus den Gegenargumenten (Nr. 22) gegen eine Unsterblichkeit der Seele lernen wir, daß uns nicht gedient ist, die Seele aristotelischer Definition als Harmonie-Begriff auszulegen. Um die ontologische Frage kommen wir nicht herum. Man könnte consonantia mit Funktion übersetzen, dann läuft die Annahme der Existenz eines vom Körper unbeschadeten Erkenntnisorgans auf die Hypostasierung von Funktion hinaus. Die Seele auf Funktion zu reduzieren löst also nicht das Problem, daß Denken offenbar ohne Körperlichkeit stattfindet – zumindest in manchen Manifestationen – bildlich ausgedrückt: in einer Vor-Existenz. Seele als Harmonie und Funktion zu interpretieren geht also nur, wenn man einen Substanzbegriff denkt, der nicht in Analogie zur materiellen Substanz gewonnen worden ist.
Ein theologisch-anthropologisches Argument besteht in dem Unterschied zwischen Funktion qua Funktion und diesem Denken qua individuell. Im Hintergrund lauert der Averroismus, gegen den Thomas geantwortet hatte: Dieser Mensch denkt. Aber auch epistemologisch ist das Argument wirksam, denn aus dem Verstand als Funktion des Körpers ist nicht erklärbar, daß geringere oder größere Erkenntnis (Annäherung an Wahrheit) möglich ist. Auch hier ist Irrtumsfähigkeit ein Prüfstein der Theorie. Verstand als Funktion des Gehirns macht Individuation ausschließlich an der – wie auch immer naturalistisch interpretierten – Materie fest.
Da nichts unter der Sonne neu ist, hat Ficino auch Argumente gegen den Physikalismus zu bieten (Nr. 23). Rein formal ist Physikalismus (Naturalismus, Materialismus) eine Theorie, die ihre Objekte aus ihren Objekten erklärt (totam historiam naturalem … per eadem naturalia confirmari – S. [1393]), so daß die Theorie nicht ihren Gegenstand transzendiert, also im Grunde auf Erklärungsleistung verzichtet. Aber eine physikalische Interpretation rekurriert letztlich auf Wirkungskausalität. Im materiellen Bereich funktioniert das nur in einem vorläufigen Sinne oder im Sinne einer Konzeptualisierung von Beobachtung. Das ist für einen Metaphysiker nicht genug. Denken als Leistung oder Funktion des Körpers darzustellen heißt, auf eine Erklärung zu verzichten zugunsten von Beschreibung. Falls Erkenntnis auf die wirkliche Ursache aus ist, muß sie die Wirkursachen aufsuchen, die vor-materiell oder außer-materiell sind. Das ist Ficinos platonisch-metaphysisches Argument in methodischer Absicht. Methodisch gesehen ist daher die Idee des Guten die Zweckursache, die als Wirkursache effektiv ist. Und insofern konvergiert sie mit Wahrheit, und um Wahrheit ist es dem Denken zu tun.
Gemäß der implizit dargestellten regulativen Idee ist die Denkbarkeit von Erkennbarkeit, Güte und Wahrheit die metaphysische Bedingung der Möglichkeit von Leben, welches wiederum nicht nur ein anderes Wort für Organismus ist, sondern individuelles und idealiter notwendiges Leben.
Um also zur Titelfrage zurückzukommen: Ficino übersetzt Platons Seelenlehre in eine solche Epistemologie, in der nicht nach der Richtigkeit von Sätzen oder nach der Geltung von Aussagen gefragt wird, sondern Erkenntnis als Leistung dargestellt wird, ohne die es nicht lohnend wäre, Metaphysik zu treiben. Während seine Theologia Platonica im ganzen, zumindest aber in den ersten Büchern als ein neuplatonisch-kosmologischer Traktat erscheint, noch dazu als ein dogmatischer, legt gerade seine Auslegung des Phaidon eine epistemologische Interpretation nahe, so sehr, daß die einleitenden Frömmigkeitsbezeugungen als Ablenkung erscheinen könnten, würden sie nicht im letzten Teil der Zusammenfassung, wenn es um Lebensführung geht, wieder aufgenommen. Innerhalb der Renaissancephilosophie hat Ficino die Unsterblichkeitsdoktrin zum Kampfthema gemacht. Er hat aber – anders als kirchliche Dogmatiker – nicht metaphysische, sondern epistemologische Argumente vorgetragen in der Einsicht, daß die Seele nur dann wert ist diskutiert zu werden, wenn sie essentieller Träger von Erkenntnis ist. Die gegenteilige Auffassung ist die von Pietro Pomponazzi bis heute übliche, nämlich Erkenntnis am Gegenstand des Erkannten so festzumachen, daß das erkannte Objekt der empirische Gegenstand ist. Dabei lag es dann nahe, auch die Substanz des Denkens mit dem materiellen Träger zu verschweißen, so daß Epistemologie bzw. empirische Psychologie und Hirnphysiologie verschmelzen. Natürlich hat es auch gegenteilige Ansätze gegeben, nämlich in der Phänomenologie und im Pragmatismus, die wiederum die materiellen Rahmenbedingungen des Denkens ausklammern und daher, auf dem Umweg über die Seele als reine Funktion, zu der Auffassung gelangen, daß Denken und Gedachtes so sehr identisch sind, daß es erlaubt ist, dem Denken einen ontologischen Status zuzubilligen, ohne in okkulte Qualitäten zu verfallen. Das heißt, gerade die neuplatonisch-epistemologische Interpretation der Seele überwindet das mind-body-Problem der Erkenntnis.

Ficino's Praise of Georgios Gemistos Plethon

Paul Richard Blum

Et nuper Plethon – Ficino's Praise of Georgios Gemistos Plethon and His Rational Religion

Draft

For the published version see: 

Laus Platonici Philosophi
Marsilio Ficino and his Influence
Edited by
Stephen Clucas
Peter J. Forshaw
Valery Rees
Brill: Leiden and Boston
2011

Most authors who refer to Marsilio Ficino's famous Prooemium to his translation of Plotinus' works, addressed to Lorenzo de'Medici, discuss the alleged foundation of the Platonic Academy in Florence, but rarely continue reading down the same page, where – for a second time – Georgios Gemistos Plethon is mentioned. The passage reads as follows:

Nowadays, few have interpreted his [sc. Aristotle's] thought – apart from our complatonicus Pico – with the same faithfulness (pietate) as once did Theophrastus and Themistius, Porphyrius, Simplicius, Avicenna, and recently Plethon.[1]

This statement contains more than one surprising claim:

- Plethon is a reliable interpreter of Aristotle.

- Plethon and Pico are the most recent Aristotelians; more precisely, they are the latest candle-bearers of true Aristotelian tradition.

- Plethon, along with the other authors mentioned, is religiously orthodox.

The three claims are surprising because they are outright wrong. So the question is: Whom or what is Ficino praising in eulogizing Plethon? I propose to examine the three statements in reverse order.

I.

Plethon's religious orthodoxy is suggested by the fact that the sentence quoted was copied and pasted by Ficino into the Plotinus preface from his letter to Johannes Pannonius (de Varadino[2]) of 1484/85. Then and later, Ficino chastised the Alexandrist and Averroist schools for destroying religion at large, negating divine providence, and for misrepresenting Aristotle anyway. Consequently, these good Aristotelians succor true religion. Because, as Ficino continues, "whoever thinks that an impiety so widely diffused … can be vanquished by mere simple preaching of faith will be immediately and manifestly proved wrong and terribly mistaken. For this task requires much greater power. It entails … at least that philosophers, after they have listened gladly to a philosophic religion at some point will be persuaded by it."[3] No doubt Ficino suggests that Pico and Plethon are representatives of such "philosophic religion" that eventually might convert – but convert to what? Well, to the same piety that unites Pico, Plethon, and the Platonizing interpreters of Aristotle.

Plethon qualifies as an Aristotelian for having criticized Aristotle, and Averroes and Alexander on matters of philosophic theology in his famous treatise De differentiis (i.e. On where Aristotle is at variance with Plato). Specifically he suggested that Aristotle's concept of the Prime Mover was located in one celestial sphere among others, which would contradict a divinity that transcends all finite beings.[4] Plethon maintained, in matters of nature, that Aristotle was too much influenced by Anaxagoras, a philosopher who seemed to advocate some logos beyond all things, but ultimately tended to atheism. Aristotle had the same tendency: talking about various divinities, but eventually fostering atheism. [5] Plethon concluded his pamphlet with an extended refutation of Aristotle's refutation of the Platonic theory of Forms/Ideas, which all comes down to the fact that Aristotle missed the most important doctrine because he denied the creation of eternal substances and the wellspring of all things in one source of being. On the other side are Plato and the Platonists, who understand God as "the universal sovereign over all existing things, and assume him to be the originator of originators, the creator of creators, and refer everything without exception to him".[6]

This all sounds pretty orthodox, and we would be happy to incorporate Plethon in the Patrologia Graeca (as Migne actually did), had not Plethon started his defense of Plato and attack on Aristotle by saying: "Our, both the Greeks' and the Romans', ancestors esteemed Plato much more highly than Aristotle." [7] The message of this exordium is not that some distant people preferred Plato, but that we all, Greek and Romans alike, should do so, because our common ancestors did it. As is well known, Plethon wrote this pamphlet during the Council of Florence in 1439 and the Greek and Romans were not the ancients but the audience present: Eastern and Western scholars. Behind this captivating address stands Plethon's agenda of restoring ancient pagan wisdom in order not to enhance Christianity, east or west, but to supplant it. This casts a twilight on Ficino's protest against unreligious Aristotelianism and his call for a "religion that pleases philosophers", i.e. a "religionis genus" fostered by divine providence, when he employs Plethon as his ally. I am not intending to prove Plethon's heterodoxy here because it is well known, even to Ficino himself, as Monfasani has shown from the marginalia to De fato, [8] but I want to take up the motive of ancestry because this leads us to the second claim in Ficino's remark about Plethon.

In his Nomon syggraphe, which obviously drew upon the book of "Nomoi" by Plato, Plethon invoked a pageant of pagan sages and legislators – mythical and real alike – that connected Zoroaster with Plato, Plutarch, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Jamblichus.[9] In doing this he certainly bestowed a classic formula and apparent logic on a form of thought, effective in humanism ever since Francesco Petrarch and Coluccio Salutati, namely that of a consistent and continuous genealogy of wisdom, the spell of which binds all well thinking men up to and including the present speaker, known as prisca theologia. As for Plethon, his basic creed draws its legitimacy from eternal (aei) succession of divine men.[10] Ficino's device to counter corrupt Aristotelianism is exactly to create a counter-tradition that parallels Platonism, namely the pious reading of Aristotle in a genealogy that runs from Theophrastus through "nuper Plethon" to Giovanni Pico. For this argument to be valid, one should demonstrate

- that Pico and Plethon deliberately followed Theophrastus, Themistius, Porphyrius, Simplicius, and Avicenna

- that these in point of fact form something like a prisca philosophia peripatetica, and

- that these can be seen as serious defenders of a religious philosophy.

If we say, well, Ficino used a makeshift genealogy for the sake of argument and rhetoric, his argument collapses. And at any rate, the question arises: What genus of religion are these authors apt to defend?

Now, there is no evidence that Ficino ever read the full Nomoi, except for its part, De fato, nevertheless a look at Plethon's philosophy of religion is revealing. There, Gemistos discussed the basic tenets of what he suggested to be a theology that may have political and moral meaning.[11] In a move that tastes of humanism, the book starts with stating that a variety of opinions haunts humanity as to what are the most important issues in life. No doubt, beatitude is what all men are seeking, but the means and meaning of it seem to be controversial: pleasure, wealth, glory, and virtue are the favorites. Of course we recognize a plethora of ethical treatises which are repeated with this assessment, and once for all, I will take no pride in mentioning Gemistos' sources. The consequence Gemistos draws from this diversity is notable: we need to know the nature of man, and in order to do this, we need to study the nature of things, which leads directly to the nature of the Divine.[12] After this initial chapter follows a chapter on the major authorities in theological matters, which are a key to Plethon's lasting influence and, perhaps, his intentions and shall be discussed more extensively later. After a refusal of skepticism the main treatment of the subject initiates with a prayer:

Come to us, O gods of learning, whoever and however many ye be; ye who are guardians of scientific knowledge and true belief; ye who distribute them to whomsoever you wish, in accordance with the dictates of the great father of all things, Zeus the King. For without you we should not be able to complete so great a task. But do you be our leader in our reasonings, and grant that this book may have all success, to be set as a possession for ever before those of mankind who wish to pass their lives, both in private and in public, established in the best noble fashion.[13]

This is quite remarkable a confession of a philosopher: his gods are the gods of learning, theoi logioi. Logios can have the meaning of: logical, reason-guided, erudite and eloquent, or oracular. The choice is ours. However, Plethon is evidently praying to those who control both science and opinion (episteme and doxa) that they may guide the rational discourse of this book, which is, by its title, a syggraphe, a covenant of general Law.

Chapter I 5 informs the reader about the general dogmas (dogmata, nomoi) of Plethon's theology:

- The Gods are more blessed than men.

- They provide (pronoein) for any good and no evil.

- There is a plurality of Gods that admits for degrees.

- Zeus is the highest and mightiest of the Gods.

- He is unbegotten (agenetos) and self-engendered (autopatros).

- Poseidon is his first son and head of all other Gods.

- There is a hierarchy among the lower gods, manifest in the importance of their actions.

- There is even bisection among the Gods, those who stem from Zeus, and illegitimate ones; the former living on Olympus, the latter dwelling as Titans in Tartarus.

- The Gods of Olympus and of Tartarus form a grand and holy One.

- On the lowest level there are demons that operate on earth.

- Nevertheless all of the Gods are outside of time and space.

- They are begotten (genetoi) from the one cause of all, and in duration without beginning and end.

- In Zeus, essence and existence (ousia, praxis) are identical.

If this system were found in some middle Platonic fragment, we would be tempted to relate it to Plato, Plotinus, Proklos and similar sources, together with ancient Greek theogonies. But Plethon wrote this around the year 1400 or in the first half of the 15^th century. We also recognize Peripatetic, if not scholastic, rationality, such as the identification of essence and existence, and the differentiation of time and duration, not to speak of the intricacies of the unbegottenness of the Father and the generation of a preferred Son of God.

As is well known, Plethon's Nomoi was in part destroyed posthumously by his friend and former student, Georgios Gennadios Scholarios, now Patriarch of Byzantium, who believed the whole theology to be a reinstating of ancient polytheism. But Scholarios was also one of the Byzantine scholars who introduced scholastic philosophy into the Greek world: in 1435/36 he had translated Petrus Hispanus' Logic.[14] As Arnold Toynbee convincingly argued, Plethon's work marks an interesting option within the tribulations of the Byzantine Church, which was about to dissipate between the millstones of the pressing Ottoman empire and the Roman Church. It seems Plethon suggested to save Greek identity by restoring the ancient, unique Greek culture. Scholarios' solution was, as actually happened, to preserve the Eastern Orthodox Church at the mercy of the Turks, and, indeed, he had been appointed Patriarch of Constantinople, after 1453, by Mehmet the Conquerer. Kardinal Bessarion, another student of Plethon's, opted for the Roman Church, in which he made his career as a Cardinal.[15]

But this scenario leaves open the question of whether or not Gemistos Plethon actually believed what he was teaching. This question had been raised by Scholarios himself. Bessarion, in a letter of condolence, did not hesitate to assume that Plethon would "join the Olympian gods" and – supposing the Pythogorean doctrine was acceptable – that Plato's soul had been reborn in Plethon.[16] If we take Bessarion's witness as an indication that Gemistos' Nomoi were to be taken metaphorically we may absolve him easily of heresy, against Scholarios' rage. Still, one has to ask: what is the purpose of such metaphors? From the perspective of Greek national identity, Bessarion would take sides with the sage of Mistra, and conveniently so, since his letter was addressed to the defunct's sons. On the other hand, if we believe that in the eyes of the Roman Cardinal there was nothing wrong with Olympic gods, then he must have reconciled such parlance with Roman Christian dogmatics. The humanist Janus Pannonius, for example, had no qualms to see Plato reincarnated in Marsilio Ficino, as confirmed by Pythagoras.[17] This interpretation leaves us with the task to understand Gemistos's intentions when he incorporated recognizable Christian theology in a theogony of pre-Christian outlook.

I am not giving into the temptation to compare Plethon's or Bessarion's words with Marsilio Ficino, who also never hesitated to refer to Greek mythology in order to promote his Platonizing theology, because Ficino might have depended on Gemistos' inspiration, and referring to Ficino would be begging the question. Rather, I hope that a clearer understanding of Plethon might afford a key to understanding Ficino and other Renaissance Platonists of the West.

Three things should be addressed, here. First, Plethon's theogony, in drawing upon Greek gods, is only remotely in concordance with ancient mythology as known from Homer and the other sources. Second, it appears to be a treatise that can be labeled as systematic, not much different from Christian scholasticism. And third, it is presented not as a quaestio, nor as an apology or as an exhortation, but clearly as a work of instruction, as an outline of social, political, and moral order, as Laws.

If Gemistos had intended to spread belief in the Ancient Olympic deities, he might have set to work like a 19^th or 20^th century classicist by harmonizing and ordering the ancient upper- and underworld, and he would have tried to make his readers believe that Zeus had quite a powerful command over the affairs of this world, etc. Let us just recall the legend that Wolfgang Schadewaldt used to pray to the Greek Gods, or the fact that Werner Jaeger sincerely hoped to restore ancient "Paideia" in Weimar Germany. The Byzantine sage also probably should have established a system of virtues, identified with any of these deities, like Giordano Bruno would do in his Spaccio de la bestia trionfante. Plethon's work would have been to some extent a restoration and Renaissance of Ancient creed, but since he only picked part of the mythologies of the Ancients and rearranged them around a theological system that cares much about systematic issues like the ontological status of the gods, he effectively closed the door to the historical past by pretending to reopen it. In the same way as it can be argued that Petrarch rediscovered antiquity when he was writing personal letters to ancient authorities like Cicero and Livy, but that he – at the same time – created the awareness that they were really past, in the same way we have to acknowledge that Gemistos' message to any learned reader of his Nomoi must have been that they were done with the ancients and should brace for a new religion, contrived from the spoils of the Greeks. The question is: what kind of religion? This becomes clear by a subordinate question to the puzzlement over his mythology, namely the authorities he evokes for his work.

As already mentioned, the variety of understanding of the meaning of life was the initial question that opened the Nomoi. This lead to the question: which were the best possible guides in the quest for the divine? In chapter 2 of book 1, Plethon dismisses the poets and the sophists: the poets aim at pleasing their readers, while the sophists don't care about truth but strive to elevate themselves above the humans. "Both drag the divine down to the more human level and elevate the human to the more divine level according to the human measure." Better than any man, the legislators (nomothetoi) and philosophers are able to pronounce soundly (pythoit' an tis ti hygies) on these matters, because they deal with the common good and with truth as basis of well-being.[18] Therefore, Plethon adduces as his authorities Zoroaster in the first place, followed by Eumolpos[19], because he had introduced the Eleusinian mysteries to Athens, which taught the immortality of the soul. To this follow the legislators Minos, Lycurgus, the Argonaut Iphitus, and Numa. Then Plethon refers summarily to the Brahmans of India, the Mages of Medians, i.e., Persians, and the Curetes, who distinguished themselves for having taught some of the major tenets listed above, namely the ranking of second and third order deities and the immortality of the creation and offspring of Zeus. Plethon mentions further sources, among others the priests of Dodone as interpreters of the oracles, one prophet Polyeidos, then Teiresias, who taught metempsychosis, Chiron, and the Seven Sages: Chilon, Solon, Bias, Thales, Cleobulus, Pittacus, and Myson. This list is rounded up by some more familiar authorities, namely, Pythagoras, Plato, Parmenides, Timaeus, Plutarchus, Plotinus, Porphyry, and Jamblichus.[20]

How should one read this list? Gemistos hastens to affirm that he is not at all intending to say anything new (oud' …neoterioumen), as the sophists do,[21] a claim that will be one of the points of criticism for Scholarios who insistently reproached Plethon's inventive innovations. What distinguishes these sages from the sophists, according to Plethon, is their universal concordance to the effect that "never their truth was newer than what has wrongly been stated".[22] Innovation, indeed, is the ambition of the Sophists, and ambition leads to innovation. A brief look at Plethon's more famous writing, his dissection of Aristotle's dissent from Plato, reveals who the sophists might have been: the Aristotelians, because vanity was the major cause responsible for Aristotle's apostasy from Platonism.

Plethon's authorities also exclude the poets, as has been said. He does not dwell upon them in this place, but the very title page of his Nomoi gives an important clue. He announces:

This work comprises: Theology according to Zoroaster and Plato, using for the gods recognized by philosophy the traditional names of the gods known to the Hellenes, but restoring them from the sense given them by the distortions of poets, which do not precisely conform with philosophy, to a sense which does […] conform to the greatest possible degree [with philosophy]…[23]

This is a clear rejection of the mythological theology of these ancients. From this point of view, the prayer quoted above is even more revealing. It is not addressed to the Muses, as any classicizing writer would have emulated, but to the philosophical gods. Ancient Greek mythology is restored to rational philosophy. And this restoration is remarkable by some blatant absences: not only the Muses, but also Apollo, Athena, Aphrodite, and many other gods that inhabited the Olympus seem to have moved out.

Nevertheless, some Hellenic gods – namely Zeus, Poseidon, and Hera – are reinstated, and Plethon justifies his claim with the list of authorities just mentioned. Not surprisingly, antiquity is the measure of truth. Unfortunately, some of these ancient authorities are legendary at best. Therefore, Scholarios had an easy time mockingly suspecting that Plethon certainly never read all of them. Also, this lack of authenticity necessarily jeopardized their teachings. Every scholar as learned as Scholarios could detect this. Plethon, however, put enormous effort in affirming the harmony of the ancient teachers and their status. The capstone of his construction of ancient wisdom was certainly Zoroaster, the most ancient of all sages, who – in Plethon's narrative – revealed the truth about the gods to the Persians and other Asian peoples.[24]

In order to boost Zoroaster's authority, Plethon even edited the Chaldaean Oracles from Michael Psellos and published them as Zoroaster's oracles. And again, every scholar of his time could easily verify this maneuver.

Therefore, the past was for Plethon a means to an end. He appears to have been dependent on construing a strong claim of antiquity for a philosophical theology, which exactly did not originate among the Ancients. This brings us to the second question, which I will treat only briefly.

As we already observed in the initial prayer, Plethon's gods are ambiguous: they are connected with logos, and as such they are both reasonable and oracular, and they guide knowledge based on science and opinion. This becomes even more evident in a summary of his doctrines. It starts by exhorting: "These are the main chapters that anyone who wants to be prudent or right-minded (phronimos) has to know: First this about the gods that they exist…"[25] The startling word, here, is phronimos. The most common usage of this word refers to practical knowledge, right-mindedness in this world, nothing close to wisdom and sanctity.[26] In Plato's book Nomoi there is only one passage that suggests some sapiential meaning of this word,[27] but even there this property is dependent on logos, and on the whole, the context belongs to ethics more than to theology. It should also be noted that in Plethon's system of virtues, phronesis exercises reason in humans, in as much as they are gifted with reason (logikon ti zoon).[28] This virtue, then, is divided into piety, natural knowledge, and soundness of judgment (theosebeia, physike, euboulia).[29] This piety can do well without revelation. The absence of the muses and the poetical deities indicates that there is no room for mystical inspiration from the Gods, and certainly no grace familiar to Christians. Plethon's mythology is Greek or Hellenic only in appearance. Most probably he endeavors to meet the expectations of an audience filled with humanist classicism, but in point of fact he brings this phase of emulation to an end. Plethon's Zoroaster, then, has less likeness with the legendary founder of a still existing religion of venerable age than with Nietzsche's Zarathustra.

II.

Now we are prepared to address the other two riddles of Ficino's praise: is it legitimate to lump Pico and Plethon together into one Aristotelianism, to which the latter does not belong in the first place? Argumentative "misery acquaints a man with strange bed-fellows".[30] Pico quotes Plethon, indeed, one time, but in a context that makes their association by Ficino's pen even more surprising, because it is in Pico's "Commentary on a Song of Love", which is known to be a harsh criticism of Ficino's appropriation of ancient mythology. Specifically Pico refers to the technique of the ancients to hide truth behind metaphors, so dear to his Florentine colleague. Here Pico betrays that he is familiar with Gemistos' work and offers his own hermeneutics of mythology: Oceanus, "father of gods and of men", he claims, is an image to signify the Angelic Mind, "the cause and source of every other creature which comes after it."[31] His authority is Georgios Gemistos, "a much approved Platonist" – approved by whom? So Pico hastens to add: "These are the waters, this is the living fountain, from which he who drinks never thirsts anymore: these are the waters or the seas upon which, as David says, God founded the whole world." Pico's artifice, here, is to channel ancient and Gemistian mythology back into clear waters of Christianity. This does not mean that Plethon is Christian, but that Pico at best has learned from him how to translate pagan wisdom philosophically, while he does not advocate this very paganism, but turns it into biblical correctness. If there is any canopy that covers Plethon and Pico, they stick their heads out at opposite ends.[32]

We may conclude from this that the Aristotelianism allegedly represented by Plethon and Pico is actually anti-Aristotelianism, and the defense of religion is of dubitable Christianity. With this collapses the first claim proffered in the quoted statement. The association of Pico and Plethon is even more questionable because Plethon had endeavored to prove that Aristotle is at variance with Plato, and with Christianity, whereas Pico just recently had wielded an attack on the distinction between Platonic and Peripatetic conceptions of the One and of Being. Already in 1484, Pico announced to Ermolao Barbaro that he was about to divert from Platonic studies in order to show that Plato and Aristotle contradict only in words while in the matters they were most concordant.[33] The De ente et uno was to become a sample of this project. This is justified, according to Pico, by the same Themistius, who in Ficino's praise is a founding father of true Aristotelianism.

A few remarks on chronology: The Plotinus edition was printed on 7^th May 1492, one month after Lorenzo's death (8^th April), but it had already been solemnly presented to him on 12^th November 1490, to whom it is dedicated.[34] Whenever Ficino wrote his preface, he did not withdraw his references to Pico in it, even though De ente et uno was written in 1491 by this complatonicus.[35] Furthermore, there is Ficino's harsh rebuttal of De ente et uno in the commentary on Plato's Parmenides with the famous passage "Utinam ille mirandus iuvenis":

"Had this admirable youngster just diligently pondered over the disputations and queries, presented above, before being so cocksure as to assail his teacher and so headstrong as to publish views that run counter to those of all Platonists …!"[36]

The controversy is well known among Ficinisti; what I want to emphasize at this point is that Ficino's outburst – if it was factually justified – presupposes that Pico possibly could have read (and not perhaps anticipated) the Parmenides-Commentary, which, consequently, must have been in the making while Pico published his De ente et uno and Ficino introduced Plotinus.[37]

At this point, while reading the preface to Plotinus, the reader has already been enchanted by the praise of Pico who is inferred to have been providentially instrumental in stimulating Ficino to continue his work, inspired by Cosimo de'Medici, as Ficino describes it. Looking back in the text, we may state that Ficino actually needs Pico in order to justify his own work; and that means that in the passage quoted, two rhetorical strains merge: the Pico strain with the Plethon strain.

Ficino employed the figure of young Pico as having urged him to translate Plotinus – and we may leave the miraculous circumstances aside – in order to explain why he went beyond the command of Cosimo's who had commissioned only the Corpus Hermeticum and Plato. Now as is well known according to Ficino’s narrative, this idea that had been associated with the founding of the so called Platonic Academy, i.e. making these key texts available in Latin, came to Cosimo from Gemistos Plethon. Giovanni Pico, then, serves as a stepping stone between the remote event of the Council of Florence, when in 1439 Cosimo encountered Plethon, and the new translation of Plotinus, to be dedicated to Cosimo's grandson Lorenzo. The divine inspiration – instilled by Plethon and forwarded from Cosimo via Pico to Ficino – allegedly Christianizes the project, but this would have sounded dubitable if related only to Plethon. Consequently we may sum up the narrative as follows:

Plethon convinced Cosimo that Hermetism and Platonism contain "mysteria", hitherto unknown. Plotinus, in Ficino's view, must be the completion of the Medici project, which is now presented as an attempt to save religion. Ficino, well aware of the pagan implications of Plethon's doctrine, made Pico his accomplice, exactly because Pico had criticized the non-Christian implications and inconsistencies of Neo-Platonism and because he had advocated the compatibility of Aristotle and Plato from a "higher point of view" (as he maintained in his letter to Ermolao Barbaro). Thus, Pico was to help saving Ficino's reputation as a religious philosopher. For this purpose, Ficino had to parallel Plethon with the unsuspected Pico, to the effect that Plethon became so to say christened. This achieved, Ficino may now present Plotinus' works to Lorenzo as the source that discloses the "philosophiae mysteria" which had inspired Cosimo.

Finally, in order to tie up the whole narrative, Ficino makes reference to Angelo Poliziano, the professor of Aristotelian philosophy, close friend of Pico's, and certainly a competitor in the attention from Lorenzo. Ficino mentions that Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, that opens the whole work, was particularly dear to Poliziano, "alumnus tuus".

So, to return to the initial question: whom is Ficino actually praising when he praises people we wouldn't expect him to hold in praise? We should not forget that a dedicatory letter addressed to the backer of the book should first of all praise him. So Ficino eulogizes Lorenzo and his Grandfather and their friends. As it happens, he has to applaud them for intentions he does not share, or at least not in the same way. And, even worse, the addressee of the preface died before the book came out. Appropriately, in his new brief dedication to Pietro de'Medici, Ficino muses about being unfortunate. Ficino perceives the passing of times against which he pursues his Platonic project, and he craves recognition by those he praises.

---

[1] Marsilio Ficino, Opera (Basel: Henricpetri, 1576; Reprint Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1983) II,p. 1537: "cuius mentem hodie pauci, praeter sublimem Picum complatonicum nostrum ea pietate, qua Theophrastus olim et Themistius, Porphyrius, Symplicius, Avicenna, et nuper Plethon interpretantur". About this preface see Sebastiano Gentile in Marsilio Ficino, Lettere, I (Florence: Olschki, 1990), pp. XIII-XLII; Sebastiano Gentile: "Giorgio Gemisto Pletone e la sua influenza sull'umanesimo fiorentino", in Paolo Viti (ed.): Firenze e il Concilio del 1439 (Florence: Olschki, 1994), I, pp. 813-832. Michael Stausberg: Faszination Zarathushtra. Zoroaster und die Europäische Religionsgeschichte der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1998) I, p. 82, called this preface a "geschickt inszenierte Legende" (a cunningly contrived legend). Cf. Cesare Vasoli, Quasi sit deus. Studi su Marsilio Ficino (Lecce: Conte, 1999), pp. 23-50. James Hankins: "Cosimo de' Medici and the 'Platonic Academy'", in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990), 144-162. Paul Richard Blum: Philosophieren in der Renaissance (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2004), pp. 167-175; Idem: "Die Graue Eminenz des Renaissance-Platonismus: Georgios Gemistos Plethon", Tumult. Schriften zur Verkehrswissenschaft 29 (2005), 119-129 (this issue is dedicated to "Georgios Gemistos Plethon (1355-1452), Reformpolitiker, Philosoph, Verehrer der alten Götter").

[2] The name refers to (Nagy-)Várad, Hungary, today Oradea in Romenia. Klára Pajorin: "Ioannes Pannonius e la sua lettera a Ficino, Verbum – Analecta Neolatina 1 (1999) 59-68.

[3] Ficino: Opera, pp. 871 sq. and 1537; translation from Michael J. B. Allen: "Golden Wits, Zoroaster and the Rivival of Plato", in idem.: Synoptic Art. Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation (Florence: Olschki, 1998), p. 15.

[4] C. M. Woodhouse: Gemistos Plethon. The Last of the Hellenes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), p. 193, § 5.

[5] Woodhouse, S. 203, § 32.

[6] Woodhouse, S. 213, § 55.

[7] Bernadette Lagarde: "Le 'De differentiis' de Pléthon d'apres l'autographe de la Marcienne", Byzantion 43 (1973) 312-343; p. 321: Oi men hmwn palaioteroi kai Ellhnwn kai Romaiwn Platwna Aristotelou" pollw twi meswi proetimwn. I altered Woodhouse's translation, which – in accordance with the Latin – translates: "Our ancestors, both Hellenes and Romans, …" (cf. "Tam Graeci quam Romani veteres, qui nostrum saeculum antecesserunt …": Georgii Gemisti Plethonis De Platonicae atque Aristotelica philosophiae differentia libellus, ed. Georgius Chariander, Basel 1574, fol. B 2 v; cf. Migne PG 160, col. 890).

[8] John Monfasani: "Marsilio Ficino and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy", in Michael J. B. Allen and Valery Rees (eds.): Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 179-202; p. 199 edition of Ficino's marginal note on De fato from Cod. Riccardianus 76; pp. 196-199 Ficino's references toPlethon. On that codex see S. Gentile, S. Piccoli and P. Viti (eds.): Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone. Mostra di manoscritti, stampe e documenti, Firenze 1984, n. 43,pp. 55-57.

[9] Pléthon: Traité des lois, ed. C. Alexandre (Paris, 1858; reprint Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1966), I 2, pp. 30-32. In the following Nomoi will refer to this work.

[10] Ibid. I 5, p. 44.

[11] Some hints at possible Neoplatonic backgrounds of Plethon's Nomoi in Dominic J. O'Meara: Platonopolis. Platonic Political Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003), pp. 203 sq., who also suggests parallels with a-Farabi's The Best State.

[12] Pléthon: Traité des lois, I 2.

[13] Woodhouse, p. 328 sq.; Traité, I 4, p. 45.

[14] Gennádiosz Szkholáriosz: Petrus Hispanus Mester Logikájából (Greek-Hungarian), ed. György Geréby (Budapest: Jószöveg, 1999), p. 214. Cf. George Karamanolis: "Plethon and Scholarios on Aristotle", in Katerina Ierodiakonou (ed.): Byzantine Philosophy and its Ancient Sources (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), pp. 253-282.

[15] Arnold Toynbee: The Greeks and their Heritages (Oxford: University Press, 1981), p. 308.

[16] Toynbee, p. 308; Traité, Appendix XV, p. 404; Woodhouse, p. 13.

[17] Janus Pannonius: Poemata (Utrecht: Wild, 1784; reprint Budapest: Balassi, 2002), I, p. 561 (Epigrammatum lib. 1, nr. 236): "Nuper in Elysiis animam dum quaero Platonis, / Marsilio hanc Samius dixit inesse senex."

[18] Traité, p. 28.

[19] A fabulous Thracian singer and priest of Ceres, who brought the Eleusinian mysteries and the culture of the vine to Attica (Lewis and Short).

[20] Traité, pp. 30-32.

[21] Traité, p. 32.

[22] Traité, p. 34.

[23] Traité, p. 2, translation from Woodhouse, p. 322, with alterations.

[24] Traité, p. 30.

[25] Traité, p. 262; cf. Woodhouse, p. 319, who suggests "prudent" and "right-minded" for phronimos.

[26] See Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott: A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. – Scholarios contraposed sophos and hieros to phronimos in his polemics agains Juvenalios, a pupil of Plethon's, by stating: "Allà sophòs men ouk ên, oudè hierós, phrónimos dé." Oeuvres complètes de Gennade Scholarios, ed. Louis Petit, X. A. Sideridès and Martin Jugie, tome 4, Paris 1935, p. 482, 6-7 (letter to Manuel Raoul Oises).

[27] Plato: Nomoi, 12, 963 e: "aneu de au logou psuchê phronimos te kai noun echousa out' egeneto pôpote".

[28] Plethon: Peri aretôn (De quatuor virtutum justa explicatio), PG 160, 865-882; 865.

[29] PG 160, 880. The virtues are explained as: Theosebeia regards the divine, physike the natural, euboulia the human things.

[30] Shakespeare: The Tempest, Act II, sc. II.

[31] Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Commentary on a Canzone of Benivieni, transl. Sears Jayne (New York: Lang, 1984), II 19, p. 115.

[32] It should be noted at this point that Gianfrancesco Pico, who tended his uncle's legacy, seems to have known only the De differentiis, which he adduced, together with Bessarion and Nicholas of Cusa, in his Examen vanitatis doctrinae Gentilium, book 4, when criticizing Aristotle: Joannes Franciscus Picus Mirandulanus: Opera omnia, (Basel: Henricpetri, 1573; reprint: Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1972), vol. 2, pp. 1025, 1239 sq.

[33] Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Opera omnia (Basel: Henricpetri, 1572; reprint Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1971), I p. 368 f.: „Diverti nuper ab Aristotele in Academiam, sed non transfuga, ut inquit ille [Themistius], verum explorator. Videor tamen (dicam tibi, Hermolae, quod sentio) duo in Platone agnoscere, et Homericam illam eloquendi facultatem supra prosam orationem sese attollentem, et sensuum, si quis eos altius introspiciat, cum Aristotele omnino communionem, ita ut si verba spectes, nihil pugnantius, si res nihil concordius." Cf. Eugenio Garin: "Introduzione", in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus, De ente et uno e scritti vari, ed. Eugenio Garin (Florence: Vallecchi, 1942), p. 9.

[34] Paul Oskar Kristeller: Supplementum Ficinianum (Florence: Olschki, 1937; reprint 1999), I, pp. CXXVIII and CLVIII. Raymond Marcel: Marsile Ficin (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1958), pp. 504, 507 f. On Lorenzo's personal copy see: Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone. Mostra, n. 115, pp. 147-149.

[35] Eugenio Garin: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Vita e dottrina (Florence: Le Monnier, 1937), p. 42, says the dedication of De ente et uno to Angelo Poliziano dates 1492, but there Pico speaks in present tense about "Ethica hoc anno publice enarras", and Poliziano started teaching Aristotle's Ethics in 1490-91: Paul F. Grendler: The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), p. 238. Cf. PaoloViti (ed.): Pico, Poliziano e l’Umanesimo de fine Quattrocento, Catalogo (Florence: Olschki, 1994), p. 119.

[36] Ficino, In Parmenidem, cap. 47 (Opera II, 1164): "Utinam ille mirandus iuvenis disputationes, discussionesque superiores diligenter consideravisset, antequam tam confidenter tangeret praeceptorem, ac tam secure contra Platonicorum omnium sententiam divulgasset, et divinum Parmenidem simpliciter esse logicum, et Platonem una cum Aristotele ipsum cum ente unum, et bonum adaequavisse." I partly used the translation in Jill Kraye: "Ficino in the Firing Line: A Renaissance Platonist and His Critics", in: Allen/Rees, pp. 377-397, p. 379.

[37] According to Kristeller, Supplementum, I p. CXX, the Parmenides commentary was begun after November 1492; but Ficino complains that Pico should have read his "disputationes, discussionesque", which in fact appear like independent quaestiones inserted into the commentary; these might have been written beforehand.