Marsilio Ficino: The "Philebus" Commentary (review)

474 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY choice of words was not happy. Thus we find such phrases asfrui proximo in Deo and referre ad Deum. That Augustine believes that this eudaemonistic ethic is in substantial agreement with the New Testament is shown conclusively in his conception of friendship. In referring to Romans 5:3-5, he states that true friendship must begin and end in God. How like his uti-frui teaching this is. Further, it is certainly not true to say that there can be no ethical use of man. The entire structure of our economy, for example, supports the opposite conclusion, that one man can use another in an acceptable moral sense. Augustine sees all creation really as instruments for human salvation. There are different types of instruments that God uses for man's salvation and that man himself must use. But that there can be human instruments means not that man must be treated inhumanely but merely that in the final analysis he has only a relative worth. Two final points should be made. Many of the ancient philosophers who lived and wrote in the climate of the so-called eros world admitted an amor benevolentiae. If one admits the coherence of their systems, how then can the conception of eros exclude a benevolent love of fellow man? Furthermore, we might question whether there can be any such thing in a human sense as an absolutely selfless love. Throughout his work Brechtken seems to presuppose an answer in the affirmative, although he does admit that it probably is an unrealizable human ideal. To conclude, Brechtken's book represents a respectable, though not outstanding, attempt to prove that Augustine's ethics has suffered because of his adoption of an unsuitable framework from ancient philosophy. That this attempt does not succeed stems not from the author's lack of knowledge of Augustine, which at least on this point seems extensive, but rather from methodological deficiencies and philosophical preconceptions. Though the work is repetitious and the thesis at least debatable, the work could be used as quite a good introduction to the question of the relationship between Christian ethics and the moral philosophy of the GrecoRoman world. FREDERICKVAN FLETEREN,D.S.A. Villanova University Marsilio Ficino: The "Philebus" Commentary. Edited and translated by Michael J. B. Allen. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975. Pp. 560. $20.00) Despite his central importance in Renaissance philosophy, only two of Marsilio Ficino's major works, the Theologia Platonica and the De Amore, have thus far been available in modern editions. Now, in this splendid critical edition and translation of the Philebus commentary , Professor Allen has given us a third. The commentary grew out of the lectures on Plato's dialogue that Ficino delivered in the church of S. Maria degli Angeli before the patricians of Florence during the reign of Piero de' Medici, lectures that constituted the first public expression of the movement we know as Florentine Neoplatonism. Allen ascribes the commentary to the year 1469, placing it immedately between the De Amore and the Theologia Platonica. It thus belongs to Ficino's most creative period and must be considered one of his principal writings. Like the dialogue that he comments on with customary freedom, Ficino is concerned with the highest good for man. But though his concern is ethical, his ethic is firmly based on metaphysical considerations of what constitutes the highest good and how we share in it through contemplative ascent to God. In the course of his long and sometimes rambling exploraton of the issue, Ficino is especially concerned with the roles and relative importance of the intellect and the will in the soul's possession of the good. Borrowing silently and generously from the Summa Contra Gentes, he asserts with a confidence that would have startled St. Thomas the power of the well-directed intellect to contemplate eternal truth, evolving, BOOK REVIEWS 475 albeit for reasons ultimately pastoral, an approach to religion both intellectualist and naturalistic . In the course of the commentary Ficino touches on many of the constants of Renaissance Neoplatonism: the existence of the Ideas, the supremacy of the One and the Good, Beauty as the splendor of the...