Commentaries on Plato, Volume 2 by Marsilio Ficino (review)

“The subject of the Parmenides is theological above all, yet its form is particularly logical. We have first [in the argumentum to the Parmenides] described what Proclus and his successors thought about the book’s arrangement and order; what I think about that, and to what extent I follow these philosophers, I shall gradually explain in the following commentary” (33–35). The Renaissance humanist and philosopher, Marsilio Ficino, wrote his commentary on Plato’s Parmenides aware of ancient debates about whether logic or dialectic is an external tool (organon) of philosophy or one of its parts—perhaps its highest part. In the mind of the Neoplatonic commentator Proclus, whose own commentary on the work is closely linked to the Parmenides’s fortunes, Plato’s dialectical musings were not mere logical exercises (mental games and gymnastics), but thought moving toward the apex of philosophy and theology: the One. Giving order and direction to the study of the Platonic corpus, the Parmenides stood at the culmination of the Neoplatonic curriculum formalized by Iamblichus. The Parmenides had a similar importance to Ficino, who first studied and translated it into Latin in 1464, with a brief argumentum. In the early 1490s he prepared for print its first full interpretation since antiquity.

Maude Vanhaelen has dedicated her talents to making Ficino’s difficult argumentum and commentary available in an admirable English translation and opposite-page Latin edition for the I Tatti Renaissance Library. Her work comprises Volume 2 of Ficino’s Commentaries on Plato, and follows Michael J. B. Allen’s superb translations of Ficino’s commentaries on the Phaedrus and the Ion (Volume 1 in the series). Due to the length of Ficino’s commentary, Vanhaelen’s edition (Volume 2) is printed in two parts.

Its introduction offers a brief account of the Parmenides and Proclus in the history of philosophy, and discusses their direct and indirect transmissions. Since Proclus’s commentary is extant only until the end of the first hypothesis, Ficino needed to forge his own path in later sections of the dialogue. Vanhaelen emphasizes the moments where Ficino differentiates himself from his predecessor. On the one hand, Ficino’s reading of the Parmenides is more mystical than Proclus’s, she argues, in part due to the Florentine’s approach to the tradition of Christian mysticism (particularly Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite). On the other hand, equally influenced by Plotinus, Ficino locates the Proclean henads not between the One and the Ideas separate from the soul (as Proclus has it), but as unities within the soul—a point that reinforces the mystical reading by making union with God possible. Thus, she reasons, Ficino’s differences with Proclus are motivated not solely by Christian apologetics but also by his knowledge of the affinities and varieties of Neoplatonism.

As for medieval philosophical traditions, Carlos Steel has tempered what he regarded as Raymond Klibansky’s rather exaggerated opinion of the influence of William of Moerbeke’s translation of Proclus’s commentary on the Parmenides. One can reasonably add, however, that with Ficino’s printed commentary, Neoplatonic readings of Plato’s difficult dialogue were unmistakably present in the Renaissance. Nevertheless, the medieval and Renaissance traditions of philosophy were not completely separate, insofar as Vanhaelen argues that Ficino worked with Proclus’s commentary in Greek as well as in Moerbeke’s translation. In addition, the introduction discusses Ficino’s treatment of poetry, dialectic, astrology, theurgy, as well as contextualizing the commentary through a debate between Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola on the nature of the Parmenides’s treatment of dialectic (i.e. whether it is merely a logical exercise) and metaphysics (i.e. whether the One is equal to Being or prior to and above it).

The edition includes an index, a bibliography, and notes to the text and translation. There are 45 pages of interpretive...