1st Edition

Studies in the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico

By Michael J. B. Allen Copyright 2017
    362 Pages
    by Routledge

    362 Pages
    by Routledge

    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.

    Preface

    Acknowledgements

    I The Renaissance: Platonism 303-315

    The Columbia History of Western Philosophy, ed. Richard H. Popkin (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)

    II Cultura hominis: Giovanni Pico, Marsilio Ficino and the Idea of Man 173-196

    Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Convegno internazionale di studi nel cinquecentesimo anniversario della morte (1494-1994), Mirandola, 4-8

    ottobre 1994, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Olschki, 1997)

    III Renaissance Neoplatonism 435-441

    The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume III: The Renaissance,

    ed. Glyn P. Norton (Cambridge: CUP, 1999)

    IV Marsilio Ficino: Daemonic Mathematics and the Hypotenuse of the Spirit 121-137

    Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe, ed. Anthony Grafton & Nancy Siraisi (Boston: MIT Press, 1999)

     

    V In principio: Marsilio Ficino on the Life of Text 11-28

    Res et Verba in der Renaissance, ed. Eckhard Kessler & Ian Maclean, Wolfenbűtteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissance-forschung 21 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2002)

    VI The Ficinian Timaeus and Renaissance Science 238-250

    Plato's Timaeus as Cultural Icon, ed. Gretchen J. Reydams-Schils (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003)

    VII Paul Oskar Kristeller and Marsilio Ficino: e tenebris revocaverunt 1-18

    Kristeller Reconsidered: Essays on his Life and Scholarship, ed. John Monfasani (New York: Italica Press, 2006)

    VIII Marsilio Ficino, Levitation, and the Ascent to Capricorn 223-240

    Éducation, Transmission, Rénovation à la Renaissance, ed. Bruno Pinchard & Pierre Servet, Cahiers du Gagdes 4 (Geneva: Droz, 2006)

    IX Marsilio Ficino and the Language of the Past 35-50

    Forme del Neoplatonismo, ed. Luisa Simonutti (Florence: Olschki, 2007)

    X The Birth Day of Venus: Pico as Platonic Exegete in the Commento and the

    Heptaplus 81-113

    Pico della Mirandola: New Essays, ed. M. V. Dougherty (Cambridge: CUP, 2007)

    XI Quisque in sphaera sua: Plato’s Statesman, Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology

    and the Resurrection of the Body 25-48

    Rinascimento, 2nd ser., Vol. 47 (2007)

    XII At Variance: Marsilio Ficino, Platonism and Heresy 31-44

    Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy, edd. Douglas Headley & Sarah Hutton, International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol. 196, (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008)

    XIII Sending Archedemus: Ficino, Plato’s Second Letter, and its Four Epistolary

    Mysteries 413-428

    Sol et Homo: Mensch und Natur in der Renaissance: Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag für Eckhard Kessler, ed. Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Helga Pirner-Pareschi und Thomas Ricklin (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2008)

    XIV To gaze upon the face of God again: Philosophic Statuary, Pygmalion, and

    Marsilio Ficino 123-136

    Rinascimento, 2nd ser. 48 (2008)

    XV Marsilio Ficino on Saturn, the Plotinian Mind, and the Monster of Averroes 11-29

    Bruniana & Campanelliana 16 (2010/1)

    XVI Eurydice in Hades: Florentine Platonism and an Orphic Mystery 19-40

    Nuovi maestri e antichi testi: Umanesimo e Rinascimento alle origini del pensiero moderno: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi in onore di Cesare Vasoli

    (Mantova 1-3 dicembre 2010), ed. Stefano Caroti e Vittoria Perrone Compagni

    (Florence: Olschki, 2012)

    XVII Prometheus among the Florentines: Marsilio Ficino on the Myth of Triadic

    Power 27-44

    Rinascimento, 2nd ser. 51 (20110

    XVIII Ratio omnium divinissima: Plato’s Epinomis, Prophecy, and Marsilio Ficino 469-490

    Epinomide: Studi sull'opera e la sua ricezione, ed. Francesca Alesse & Franco Ferrari, with Maria.Cristina Dalfino, Elenchos 60-1 (Naples: Bibliopolis, 2012)

    Addenda and Corrigenda

    Index

    Biography

    Michael J. B. Allen is a Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA and the winner of the prestigious international Galileo Galilei prize for his work on Renaissance Philosophy. This collection is a companion one to his first Variorum volume, Plato’s Third Eye (1995).