Icastes: Marsilio Ficino's Interpretation of Plato's "Sophist" (review)

284 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 3 I -"2 APRIL 1993 the cause of all the others in a genus is the highest in that genus--quite a different, and much sounder, proposition, and always the way Thomas proceeds elsewhere, as in De Poteraia, q. 3, art. 5-6. Similarly, in his explanation of the analogy between God and creatures, I think the author tries to stick too closely to Aquinas's own earlier schemas for explaining analogy , drawn from Aristotle, which most recent Thomists agree Thomas quietly laid aside as inadequate (see Klubertanz and Montagnes on analogy in Thomas). Elders does not clarify the situation by having recourse to the "analogy of participation" on which Thomas finally settled, which combines intrinsic proportionality and intrinsic attribution in a single integrated structure, because of the necessary similitude between cause and effect. Lastly, when the author deals with God's foreknowledge of free human acts, he explains well how God knows all creatures by causing their being and action, but does not dig into the difficult and thorny problem of how God can co-cause our actions and yet leave the actions free, not determined by him. The best solution so far (a key part of the solution) seems to me (and to some fine Dominican metaphysicians like Umberto degl'Innocenti [see his Aquinas, IV, 1961]) is that there is only one "premotion" of the creature's will by God, actuating it permanently towards the Infinite Good as the final end of its nature, in virtue of which it can subsequently actuate itself to all subordinate finite goods, and not a second premotion by God for every successive act of will, as held by the strict Bannezian Thomistic school. At least the problem should be mentioned, despite Thomas's own reticence on the matter. To sum up, though we will not find much creative advance over Thomas in this book, it still remains a very carefully done and valuable source book on St. Thomas's own philosophical thought about God. W. NORRIS CLARKE, S.J. Fordham University Michael J. B. Allen. Icastes: Marsilio Ficino's Interpretation of Plato's "Sophist." Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Pp. x + 3a7. Cloth, $4o.oo. Marsilio Ficino's most celebrated commentary is the DeAmore, his explanation of Plato's Symposium. But since the 197os Michael Allen has been mining Ficino's other commentaries , especially those on Plato's Phaedrus and Philebus, but also those on the Parmenides and Timaeus and Plotinus' Enneads. Following the leads provided by these sources, Allen has consistently struck gold, expanding our knowledge of Ficino's Platonism with new information and new insights into a complex thinker. Since Ficino's commentaries and translations profoundly conditioned how Europeans read Plato into the early nineteenth century, Allen's work has important ramifications not only for the Renaissance , but also for the Enlightenment. With the present volume, Allen makes accessible to the modern reader still another Ficinian commentary. Because of the late date of its composition (1494), the Sophist commentary comes close to being Ficino's last word on Plato. Unfortunately, of the six BOOK REVIEWS 285 Platonic commentaries published together by Ficino in 1496 three years before his death (on the Parmenides, the Tinmeus, the Philebns, part of Bk. 8 of the Republic, the Phaedrus, and the Sophist), the Sophistcommentary is the least substantial relative to the size of the Platonic text discussed, consisting of no more than 48 chapter summaries (3o pages in Allen's edition). So, to mine this source and to show its importance for our understanding of Ficino's thinking on metaphysics, epistemology, demonology, art theory, psychology, and other topics, Allen had to roam far afield among Ficino's other writings. Furthermore, we should take seriously the subtitle of his book: Five Studies and a CriticalEdition with Translation. For Allen has written not so much a close study of the commentary itself, as a series of studies in which the Soph/st commentary has a central place, but for which many other Ficinian texts come into play. The first of Allen's five essays explores Ficino's disagreement with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola concerning the latter's famous...