Platonic Theology: Volume 2, Books V–VIII by Marsilio Ficino (review)

182 letters in canada 2002 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 These are detailed case studies, of two types. Most of them compare a particular translation to its source, explaining changes in light of the author=s aims or situation. The textual comparisons focus on a range of features: from lexis or grammar to concepts or content. Similarly varied are the strategies for explaining alterations: the subtle, or not so subtle, intrusion of the author=s moral concerns; insight into the meaning of the original; the wilful erasure of cultural difference. Of particularly interest is the pair of essays on Montaigne=s translation of Sebond=s Theologia naturalis. The elegant article by Philip Hendrick uncovers how Montaigne=s stylistic changes register an intellectual program quite different from Sebond=s B more concerned with human agency, while more sceptical of systematizing dogma. Where Hendrick=s piece overstates its case, claiming that Sebond and Montaigne are representative of medieval and Renaissance worldviews , the essay by Edward Tilson provides a useful corrective, refining our sense of what makes Sebond=s work, and Montaigne=s translation of it, unique. The other approach focuses not on specific translations but on how the very notion of translation took shape in a particular place and time. The essays of this sort recall current work on medieval vernacularity and on Renaissance ideologies of rhetoric. Here the collection moves beyond the appraisal of particular translations in order to consider how a target culture, as a cultural system, both enables and regulates the work of translators. Especially compelling is Andrew Taylor=s sophisticated discussion of the fifteenth-century English writer Reginald Pecock. Taylor shows that the charged issue of biblical translation, as patrolled by church authorities, lies behind Pecock=s writerly career, even though Pecock never translated the Bible or took a stand on the issue. The title of this volume deserves a caveat: >politics= is construed in the widest possible sense, where for >political= one could substitute >cultural,= >ethical,= or even >hermeneutical.= Only a concept so large could contain the various concerns of these essays. And it is hard to picture it being news to any reader that, >no translation is an innocent, transparent rendering of the original.= But every collection demands some rhetorical posture, and this one succeeds in enabling a set of thoughtful studies on a topic of current import in several fields. (WILL ROBINS) Marsilio Ficino. Platonic Theology: Volume 2, Books VBVIII. English translation by Michael J.B. Allen with John Warden. Latin text edited by James Hankins with William Bowen Harvard University Press. 416. US $29.95 Marsilio Ficino (1433B99) was the most prominent and respected of the humanist intellectuals at the court of Lorenzo de=Medici during the height of the Florentine Renaissance. In 1462, Cosimo de=Medici had given Ficino humanities 183 university of toronto quarterly, volume 73, number 1, winter 2003/4 the villa at Careggi, where Ficino established the Platonic Academy. Ficino and his disciples devoted themselves to the revival of Platonism, an endeavour that they believed would revitalize Christianity, primarily by inspiring a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of the soul. In 1463 Ficino undertook the first translation into Latin of Plato=s complete works (a project that lasted more than six years), as well a number of other texts written in the Platonic tradition, including those of Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius, the Aeropagite. By the early 1470s Ficino, already an eminent philosopher, astrologer, physician, and musician, was preparing to enter the priesthood. It was during this period that he wrote the Platonic Theology (subtitled On the Immortality of the Soul), a work that he himself considered his magnum opus. The longest of Ficino=s philosophical treatises, comprising eighteen books, the Platonic Theology is his most extensive articulation of >the essence= and permanence of the soul. The work is strongly indebted to the Neoplatonic tradition originating in Plotinus and Proclus, and to Christian theology, particularly the works of Augustine, Aquinas, and the Areopagite. The Platonic Theology is Ficino=s fullest attempt to reconcile Platonism and Christianity, a reconciliation that he hoped would bring about a philosophical revival akin to a golden age of theological...