Studies in the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico

by Michael J.B. Allen

Overview

Fifteen of these essays by one of the leading authorities on Renaissance Platonism explore the complex philosophical, hermeneutical, and mythological issues addressed by the Florentine, Marsilio Ficino (1433-99). Ficino was the pre-eminent Platonist of his time and a distinguished philosopher, scholar and magus who had an enormous influence on the intellectual and cultural life of two and a half centuries, and who is one of the most important witnesses to the preoccupations of his age, above all to its fascination with ancient poetry and philosophy and their uneasy accommodation as an ancient "theology" with Christianity. Two further essays treat of cognate themes taken up by Ficino‘s younger friend and rival, the dazzling prince of Concordia, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94), who was fascinated by Platonism in his youth but also by other philosophical legacies from the past, including Cabala and the Scholastic Aristotelianism of the Middle Ages. This volume‘s initial essay serves as an introduction to the comprehensive phenomenon of Renaissance Platonism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781351547567
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/05/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	348
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Michael J.B. Allen

Table of Contents

1: The Renaissance: Platonism; 2: Cultura Hominis: Giovanni Pico, Marsilio Ficino and the Idea of Man; 3: Renaissance Neoplatonism [and Literary Criticism]; 4: Marsilio Ficino: Daemonic Mathematics and the Hypotenuse of the Spirit; 5: In principio: Marsilio Ficino on the Life of Text; 6: The Ficinian Timaeus and Renaissance Science; 7: Paul Oskar Kristeller and Marsilio Ficino: Etenebris Revocaverunt; 8: Marsilio Ficino, Levitation, and the Ascent to Capricorn; 9: Marsilio Ficino and the Language of the Past; 10: The Birth Day of Venus; 11: «Quisque in Sphaera Sua»: Plato’s Statesman, Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, and the Resurrection of the Body; 12: At Variance: Marsilio Ficino, Platonism and Heresy; 13: Sending Archedemus: Ficino, Plato’s Second Letter, and its Four Epistolary Mysteries; 14: To Gaze Upon the Face of God Again: Philosophic Statuary, Pygmalion and Marsilio Ficino; 15: Marsilio Ficino on Saturn, the Plotinian Mind, and the Monster of Averroes; 16: Eurydice in Hades: Florentine Platonism and an Orphic Mystery; 17: Prometheus Among the Florentines: Marsilio Ficino on the Myth of Triadic Power; 18: Ratio Omnium Divinissima: Plato’s Epinomis, Prophecy, and Marsilio Ficino; Corrigenda&Addenda