Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence ed. by Stephen Clucas, Peter J. Forshaw, and Valery Rees (review)

The title of this volume in fact only accounts for its second part, which treats a number of aspects of Marsilio Ficino’s influence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There is, however, much more to be found in the fifteen contributions collected in this book. They can be divided in three groups.

In the first, specific issues of Ficino’s philosophy are discussed. In her contribution to a book whose title explicitly acclaims the Florentine philosopher, arguably the most influential thinker of the Italian Humanism, Valery Rees aptly illustrates the function of praise in his correspondence. For Ficino, praise should not be considered a mere form of benign communication, but rather one that, distinguished from flattery and associated with love, might work as an important philosophical tool, as it is “one more way of practising that . . . attuning of the soul that makes one’s life conform not just to the heavens but to the supercelestial world, in order to participate fully in the flow and return of divine love” (p. 65). Ficino’s correspondence also offers the material for Ruth Clydesdale’s contribution, which addresses the Tuscan philosopher’s conception of astrology, stressing how some of his “unpublished attacks on astrology [are] pleas for a reform, rather than rejection, of the discipline” (p.130). Practical and speculative motives form the basis of Sarah Klitenic Wear’s essay. Focusing on Ficino’s Libri de vita and comparing it with Proclus’s De sacrificio et magia, she describes in detail the meaning and use of hymns and hymn singing in Ficinian philosophy. Rather than being mere aid to contemplation, as Plotinus argued, hymns and hymn singing have a theurgic value for Ficino, allowing “the singer to participate in high realms of the universe, in so far as the hymns themselves are symbols containing divine power” (p. 148). But what are the characteristics of the object of praise and hymn singing, that is, of God? According to John Dillon, in the Platonic Theology Ficino “independently and creatively” (p. 24) constructs his own idea of God, disagreeing in places with aspects of the ancient Neoplatonic theology, especially with regard to the nature and powers of God. Ficino distances himself from some aspects the proclean mindset (an implicit polytheism, some tenets regarding the supraessential and supranoetic nature of the divinity, and so on), and borrows instead from Plotinus, especially on the topic of the “where-ness” and will of God. Religion is also the key concept of James Hankins’s contribution, which focuses on “religious melancholia” and offers some remarkable insights about Ficino’s novel role as “fountain-head of Renaissance discussions of the physiological causes of atheism” (p. 30). Stéphane Touissant traces down the sources of the doctrine of levitation that Ficino discusses in two loci, respectively, in the Platonic Theology and in the Libri de Vita, according to which “powerful light is capable of giving rise to elevation” (p. 106). In carrying out his analysis, Touissant suggests that Jean Gerson’s Opera might have served as Ficino’s source for this doctrine.

The second group of essays discusses Marsilio Ficino’s engagement with some of his contemporaries. Paul Richard Blum’s essay reconstructs the intellectual genealogy of some of Ficinian writings, underscoring the ambivalence of Plethon’s influence, which appears to be greater than what has been assumed before. As stated by the editors in the Introduction, “Blum alerts us once more to the importance of recognizing how far contemporary debate may obscure the expression of views, until we learn to weigh its influence, and discern the reasoning that lies partially concealed within it” (p. 6). Unn Irene Aasdalen’s contribution explores some aspects of the first Pico-Ficino controversy, centered on the Ficinian definition of the poet Guido Cavalcanti as “Socratic” and its implications for the interpretations given by the two philosophers...