BOOK: Marsilio Ficino, "Platonic Theology"

Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology. Vol. 1: Books I–IV. English translation by Michael J. B. Allen with John Warden. Latin text edited by James Hankins with William Bowen. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 2. Harvard University Press, 2001. 0674003454. xvii + 342 pp.

Now that I have sort-of caught up with the I Tatti Renaissance Library (except for the volumes published this year, which I haven't bought yet), I figured it's a good time to go back to the only ITRL volumes that I skipped so far, namely Ficino's Platonic Theology. It came out in 6 volumes early in the series (2001–6, one volume each year) and I bought them as they appeared, but didn't read them at the time. Actually I tried reading a little of volume 1, following the arguments earnestly, like you would in a mathematical textbook, and keeping notes about everything I thought wrong about them — the wishful thinking, the unwarranted assumptions, the wooly-minded and ill-definded concepts, etc. etc. etc. — but soon I gave this pursuit up as futile. One could, in principle, get through the whole six-volume set in that manner, but what would be the point? I clearly was neither enjoying it nor learning anything in the process.

So I laid the Platonic Theology aside and went on with the other volumes in the ITRL series, and it was not until reaching Ficino's commentaries on Plato (ITRL vols. 34, 51–2) that I found a way to make reading Neoplatonic mumbo-jumbo palatable to me, by approaching it more as a very odd sort of fantasy fiction than as something that is supposed to be true and logically sound (see one of my posts from back then). And it is armed with this approach, plus with what little I've managed to learn about Neoplatonism from Ficino's other works in the ITRL series (and from the little I've read of Plotinus, Dionysius and for that matter Plato himself) that I now went back to his Platonic Theology.

[P.S. I wondered whether I should make one blog post per volume, or just a single long post for all six volumes. Since the six volumes constitute a single work and I read them one after another without interruption, I figure it's more convenient to make it into a single post, even if it's a bit longer than usual.]

Book I

Ficino introduces a five-level hierarchy of what he calls “essences”: body, quality, soul, angel, God. This is clearly very similar to the hierarchy that we saw in his commentary on the Parmenides (matter, form, soul, intellect, the One), but now with more explicitly christian rather than pagan terminology.

In fact I'm not sure if there are any really meaningful differences between the two hierarchies at all. For example, at the lowest level one has body and the other has matter. But Ficino says here that “body is made up of matter and of quantity”, matter is only “extended in space” and “quantity is nothing but the extension of matter” (1.2.1), so it's hard for me to see much of a difference between body and matter. It's hard to resist the feeling that his concept of matter is very different than what we have in physics nowadays, and that I'd probably be less prone to misunderstand him if he used some other word for it, even if he had to make up an entirely new one.

Next above body he has quality, which he defines as “all form which appears, divided up, in body” (1.3.1). I'm not sure what to make of the word “form” here. Until now I thought it, when used in the context of Plato's philosophy and the like, “form” was simply the same thing as “idea”, but borrowed from Latin rather than Greek; and that both are more or less the same as the native English word “shape”; and I thought of these Platonic ideas as some kind of mental abstractions, e.g. you have the ‘idea of a dog’ that exists in the Platonic ‘higher’ or ‘intelligible’ world and is a kind of template of the dogs that we know and love in our ordinary ‘lower’ or ‘sensible’ world (i.e. the world that is accessible to our senses and not only to our intellect).

But how to square this with Ficino's description of quality as a kind of form? Well, perhaps it is not his use of “form” but his use of “quality” that I misunderstand here. I thought of quality as ‘surface features’ like ‘being white’ or ‘being hot’ and the like; but maybe it's more than that. Ficino often describes matter as a “formless substrate” and the like (1.3.8, 1.3.15), which suggests it's something undifferentiated that is all alike everywhere, and it is only when quality gives it a certain shape (i.e. form) that some matter here may constitute a dog and some matter somewhere else may constitute a horse and so on.

In constructing the higher levels of his hierarchy, Ficino proceeds largely by wishful thinking and vigorous gesticulation. Quality, he says, cannot come from something equal to itself (i.e. another quality) or from something lower (e.g. matter), but from something higher (1.3.9), and since quality is extended (divided) in matter, this higher form must be indivisible and incorporeal (1.3.10). Such an incorporeal, indivisible form is what conveys unity to the otherwise divisible object, so that it can be one object at all (1.3.21). Another wishful argument: surely, he says, just like the human mind can climb from lower to higher and more abstract concepts, a similar ascent must also exist in the universe itself, from lower to higher forms (1.3.11). Anyway, by such ‘arguments’ he arrives at the (rational) soul, an indivisible form which gives bodies their qualities (1.3.25).

He writes a good deal about motion, but from the way he uses this word I got the impression that he took “motion” to include every kind of change. We would say that a body of e.g. a living person changes all the time, but to him the body is just formless matter so he says that qualities change all the time (1.4.1), and since it is the soul that conveys qualities to the body, the soul itself is at least partly ‘in motion’. But partly it is ‘motionless’ — its essence doesn't change (1.4.3), by which I guess he means things like: even if the body of a living person is constantly changing, nevertheless it remains in some sense the same body of the same person, and this comes from the unchanging part of the soul.

Again proceeding by wishful thinking, since soul is partly in motion and partly motionless, he figures that there must be something completely motionless above it. There seems to be an unwritten Neoplatonic axiom at play here: if A is more perfect than B, and B exists, then A must also exist :] Motion means change over time, and something is more perfect if it's timeless (eternal) and unchanging (1.5.2). Thus he arrives at a higher form which is motionless itself but can set the souls below it into motion; and unlike soul it is entirely free of matter (1.5.10). He mentions the term “mind” for such forms, used by ancient philosophers (not only Platonists — he also gives an example from Aristotle; 1.5.10), but “the Hebrews and later philosophers [. . .] called these minds angels and messengers” (1.5.11), and so he adopts the term angel — rather confusing at first sight, in my opinion. Since they are not constrained by matter, there can be a lot more different kinds of angels than of souls, and Ficino makes some reference to the angelic hierarchy such as we know it from Dionysius and similar authors (1.5.14).

Another unwritten Neoplatonic axiom seems to be that if A differs from B in two aspects, then there must exist an intermediate thing between them that differs from each of them in only one aspect :) We already saw that the soul is (partly) mobile and there is also a certain plurality about it (as it moves (i.e. changes) from one thing to another); and angel is motionless, but it cannot be motionless unity because it would then differ from the soul in two ways instead of just one; so it must be motionless plurality, and there must be some sort of motionless unity above it — and this, of course, is God (1.6.2). I suppose that all arguments for the existence of god are more or less ridiculous, but I still couldn't help that this particular one was more ridiculous than usual.

For Ficino, God is largely synonymous with truth and goodness, and he has a few interesting paragraphs explaining the relations between soul, angel and God (1.6.5–7). He gives an analogy (1.6.5): the eye perceives light; if your eye grew so that your whole body would be one big eye, it would perceive more light, but would still be distinct from light itself. Similarly, your mind is a part of the soul that perceives truth (= God); but an angel is all mind, and thus perceives more truth; but it is still distinct from truth itself (“the mind needs truth, but truth does not need mind”; God is “clearest truth [. . .] the light seeing itself”, 1.6.6).

The function of the soul is “to provide vital motion” to living beings; the function of the mind is “to order by means of forms” (1.6.7), and thus its power extends farther than that of the soul (because every living being has a form but some non-living things have a form too). And similarly, since God is goodness, its power extends farther than that of the mind, because even matter (which is formless) “desires” the good. (You might wonder how formless, mindlesss matter can ‘desire’ anything. I can only suppose that when he says ‘desires’, that's simply sloppy phrasing for something like ‘has the potential for’.)

Book II

This longish book is about the various properties of God, the fifth essence discovered in the previous book. Much of this stuff is so abstract that I had little real idea what to do with it.

The early parts of this book mostly try to demonstrate that there is exactly one god, as you would expect given that Ficino is a monotheist. He starts by reiterating that truth, goodness and unity are the same thing (and are also the same thing as God), but I was very unimpressed by the handwaving by which he purports to demonstrate this (2.1.1). His arguments that there is nothing higher than these three things (or rather this one thing) were a bit more reasonable; for instance, if there existed some higher principle than unity, then unity itself would consist of a part that participates in that higher principle and a part that doesn't, so it wouldn't be unity at all (2.1.2).

He similarly argues that there cannot be several distinct but somehow equivalent highest principles (i.e. gods), because then they would have to have something in common (since they are equivalent), and then that common aspect would be an even higher principle (2.2.2). He also rejects dualism, the idea that there might be two gods, a purely good one and a purely evil one: the purely evil one cannot exist since existence is something good and if he existed, he wouldn't be purely evil (2.2.10). This sounds technically correct, but I can't help feeling somehow cheated when I encounter arguments like that :]

There's also a chapter about how there cannot exist an infinite succession of gods one above the other (2.3), but I had the feeling that his arguments here ultimately come down to little more than a vague discomfort about infinite sequences with no clear beginning. He keeps insisting that there must be a first cause of things, otherwise there would be flux and chaos everywhere (2.3.3–4).

Ficino says that weakness comes from dispersion, but strength from unity; thus, since god is perfect unity, his power is infinite (2.4.1) — in modern terms we might say that god is a singularity :P He has another argument: we see that god keeps moving the universe regularly over such long periods without any changes, so clearly his power is inexhaustible, and hence infinite (2.4.4).

He ‘proves’ that god is everlasting by a hilarious technicality. God, we saw, was truth; and if truth had a beginning then, before that beginning, it would still be true that there will be a beginning; so truth would exist before its beginning, which is absurd; and you can likewise show that truth has no end, so it is everlasting (2.5.1). He uses an interesting term that was new to me: sempiternal, which apparently means everlasting in the sense of having an infinite duration, whereas eternal can be used by philosophers to mean things which exist outside time altogether (wiktionary).

God is omnipresent, partly for simple reasons such as because he's the ultimate cause of everything (and thus in a sense present in all things; 2.6.1), or because being everywhere is a good thing and thus god as the ultimate good cannot lack that (2.6.2). But he also has a more interesting argument: god is everywhere because “He Himself is ‘the everywhere’ which contains itself and everything else” (2.6.5).

God is the ultimate source of all being; he exists through himself, other things exist through him (2.7.3). An interesting argument for this is that a composite thing exists through the harmony of its parts, so the only thing that can exist through itself is a purely unitary thing (i.e. god, who is unity itself); 2.7.3. Since the existence of all things depends on god, he can be said to “preserve” everything (2.7.6).

God acts not by deliberation or choice, but by his very being, easily and effortlessly, much like e.g. the Sun gives off light naturally by its being and not by some sort of deliberate effort (2.8.1).

Understanding is a good thing and god is the ultimate good, so obviously he has understanding (2.9.2); he understands himself perfectly and thus, since he is the cause of all other things, he also understands all other things (2.9.5). “In God, being and understanding are completely identical” and both are infinite (2.10.3).

Occasionally Ficino uses arguments that remind me a little of modern-day creationists: “the amazing order of the world could not come about through chance devoid of order”, so its “form must necessarily exist in the understanding of its maker” (2.11.7); thus, in a sense, the forms of all things are in god. He creates those other things not by understanding alone, but by exerting his will (2.12.1); but then in him, willing and understanding are identical anyway (2.12.5). He is “the fount of reason” and thus does not act by chance, and so it could be said that his will is constrained by a kind of necessity (2.12.2); but his will is also free, because he makes only some of the things which it is in his power to make (2.12.9), so he is clearly exercising choice in this. He doesn't work haphazardly but follows a plan, and Ficino inveighs heavily against Lucretius for suggesting otherwise (2.13.6–7); the wonderful complexity of nature makes it clear “that all things are made and ruled by the providence of the one all-knowing craftsman” (2.13.7 — I guess this is an example of the (in)famous ‘watchmaker analogy’).

If god created the world, why is it so full of imperfections? Ficino handwaves this a little, saying that “the absolutely highest perfection should not be sought for in the whole work” (2.13.9), and especially not in any individual part — it's enough that each part is in harmony with the rest: “we will find that the world cannot be better arranged than it is”. I don't see any sort of convincing argument here, and I suspect he's really going in the opposite direction: he is already convinced that god is perfect, so he can't accept the idea that god created an imperfect universe, so he can't help concluding that if you look at the universe carefully, you will find that it cannot be better arranged than it is.

If god created the world and moves everything in it, how can people have any sort of free will? Ficino handwaves this as well, assuring us that we totally do have free will, but it just so happens that god knows in advance what exactly it is that we'll freely choose to do (2.13.10) :S

Book III

This book starts with a sort of summary overview of the five levels or essences that we encountered in Book I. Ficino compares them in various ways, but a bit more systematically than before: God is motionless unity; angel is motionless plurality, it moves others (i.e. acts on them; 3.1.12); soul is plurality subject to movement, but also partly immobile (3.1.9); quality is completely mobile, subject to change even in its essence, but at least it can also change/move other things (namely bodies); but body is only subject to movement but does not move other things (3.1.10).

He emphasizes the importance of the soul as the intermediate level in this scheme, “nature's center, the mean of everything in the universe” (3.2.6). The gap between the immutable god and angels on the one hand, and the completely inactive body on the other hand, is too big and requires an intermediate level that can be in contact with both of these (3.1.13), i.e. the soul. God and angel are eternal and incorporeal (undivided in time and dimension), body and quality are purely temporal and corporeal (dispersed in time and dimension); angel is immobile, quality is constantly changing, all of which again requires an intermediate level between them (3.2.1, 3.2.5).

The soul connects these extremes; it is in contact with the body everywhere, but not divided the way quality is — the whole soul is present in the body everywhere (3.2.3–4), so in a certain sense it is both divided and undivided (3.2.5). It is in contact with the higher levels through understanding them (3.2.9).

The lower two levels, body and quality, are moved by others, but the soul is moved by itself (3.1.12). The soul is where the first movement is located (as the upper two levels are immobile); in fact this motion coming from an internal power is what we describe as life: the soul gives life to the body (3.2.7).

Book IV

If there's one thing you can rely upon the Neoplatonists to do, it's to obsessively divide everything into levels and sublevels. ‘When in doubt, just insert another level’ could well be their most important motto.

In this book we see a little of what you might call cosmology or astronomy, though Ficino does not enter into a really systematic exposition of it. From what I gather here, the world consists of four “spheres” associated with the elements (from heavier to lighter, and thus from lower to higher: earth, water, air, fire), and above it there are eight heavenly “spheres” associated with the various astronomical bodies (probably Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the fixed stars).

But what really interests Ficino here is to demonstrate that each of these twelve spheres has a soul. As we already saw earlier, for him the soul is something that gives life and motion to a body. Earth and water generate and “nourish” various living beings, cause plants to grow from seeds and so on (4.1.2; and sometimes living things are even “born by putrefaction”, without any seeds at all — 4.1.6), therefore clearly* the spheres of earth and water have a soul from which this life-giving power comes. And if these lower spheres have souls, then surely the higher and “much purer” spheres of air and fire must have souls too (4.1.12).

[*Or maybe not so clearly: Ficino takes care to argue why this power comes from soul and not e.g. from God (4.1.9) or angel (4.1.10). For example, these higher principles are too indivisible and incorporeal to be compatible with the task of giving form to matter, but the soul is just right for that (4.1.10).]

For the heavenly spheres, the argument that they are alive (and thus have a soul) seems to be mostly based on their regular motion (4.1.17, 21). This motion cannot come from quality, which is too limited and would get exhausted (4.1.17), nor directly from God, who cannot be divided between the spheres (but each sphere moves differently on its own, 4.1.18–19), nor from angel (which, as we know, is completely immobile; 4.1.20–1). Thus the motion of the spheres can only come from the soul. That individual animals have individual souls also follows from the fact that they can move independently of the sphere of earth or water that they otherwise inhabit (4.1.22).

Ficino even provides the “names of the divine souls”, two for each sphere, from one of the ancient Greek hymns attributed to Orpheus (4.1.28).

Besides the souls of the spheres, there are of course also the individual souls of the various individual creatures living in those spheres; we are familiar with animals living in earth and water, but apparently there also exist “airy and fiery creatures” (4.1.13), which are unfortunately invisible to us. Individual stars, those “celestial animals” (4.1.13), have souls too.

In the lower spheres (earth and water), some of these individual souls are rational, some irrational (in the higher ones, all are rational); e.g. in the sphere of water, the souls of fish are irrational, those of “water daemons” or “Nereids” are rational (4.1.14) :)) “Their bodies are sometimes seen by sharper eyes, especially in Persia and Africa”, and Porphyry reports that some daemons can even be touched (ibid.).

Ficino also mentions a delightfully wacky Pythagorean belief that in each sphere, between the soul of the sphere and the souls of individual creatures there is a layer of “twelve principal souls” (4.1.15), which then rule over the numberless individual souls below them (4.1.16). In the sphere of stars the twelve principal souls are tied to the twelve signs of the zodiac; in the sphere of earth, the twelve principal souls correspond to twelve types of human personality (which arise from different proportions of reason, irascibility, and desire).

Above the souls of the twelve spheres there is one “soul of the world” (4.1.23). This soul connects the spheres, gives them a cetain unity, and enables them to be in “sympathy” with each other (ibid.). This seems to be another one of those unstated Neoplatonic axioms, and I remember also seeing it at work in Plotinus and in Ficino's commentaries upon him: that for two things to be connected, or to have any sort of influence upon each other, it is necessary that there exist some sort of soul which is simultaneously present, in its entirety, in both of them, and it is through this soul that a connection between those two things is possible.

Towards the end of this book, Ficino writes a bit more about the motion of the souls of spheres. He says this is circular motion because it is the most perfect kind of motion, as it is the most similar to being at rest (4.1.10; I guess the idea is that if a circle rotates around its own centre, it will actually look like the same circle all the time). But why do the spheres rotate at all? Well, apparently “the matter of the world cannot possess all the figures in heaven at the same time” and it therefore rotates “so that it can attain by succession [. . .] what it cannot attain at rest” (4.1.8). And it seems there is also a mechanism whereby the movement of each sphere causes the next inner sphere to move as well, because each particle of the inner sphere “yearns to come into contact with all the particles” of the outer sphere (4.1.10). But I don't see why both spheres would have to rotate for this; if the outer sphere rotates, the inner sphere could stand at rest and it would still eventually come into contact with all points of the outer sphere...

*

Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology. Vol. 2: Books V–VIII. English translation by Michael J. B. Allen with John Warden. Latin text edited by James Hankins with William Bowen. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 4. Harvard University Press, 2002. 0674007646. v + 397 pp.

Book V

In this book, Ficino presents something like fifteen arguments that the (rational) soul is immortal. This stuff was mostly very abstract and hard for me to understand, and the various arguments don't seem to have all that much in common with each other, but I couldn't help being impressed that he managed to approach the subject from so many different directions. The other books in the present volume are organized along similar lines, by the way. In mathematics, it is enough to have one proof of a theorem :], but perhaps in philosophy one feels safer to have a dozen or more.

• For example: we saw earlier that soul is the level at which movement begins (the higher levels, angel and God, are motionless), and so this movement must be perpetual, otherwise “nothing else in nature would be moved”; and since this “internal movement is life”, it follows that soul is immortal (5.1.2).

• But we also saw that the soul is partly motionless — its substance doesn't change; and therefore it also can't stop existing, so it is immortal (5.2.2).

• Soul endows matter with form, and since matter can't stop existing, it follows that the soul can't either, so it is immortal (5.4.10). Why can't matter be destroyed? It cannot be dissolved into parts because it doesn't really have parts (those come with quantity), and it cannot be destroyed by contact with an opposite quality since no quality is opposite to it — matter can receive any quality (5.4.7). Once again I find his notion of matter easier to understand if I think of it as space...

• A similar but more direct argument: soul itself cannot be broken into parts since it is not divided in the body; nor can it be destroyed by receiving an opposite quality, “for the first subject exposed to passion is matter” (5.5.6). Soul inclines towards matter, but does not depend on it (5.5.4–5).

• There's a nice explanation of the difference between essence and existence (5.7.1): the former is more like a definition, the “rational principle of a thing”; for example, a comet is such-and-such a thing, and this is true even if no comets happen to exist at the moment. But existence is “the act of its essence”, the presence of the thing at a specific place and time.

Ficino then asserts that soul (or any other form), when it is separated from matter, exists in itself, i.e. it receives its existence from its essence, and essence is immortal, so that soul is also immortal (5.7.4). This strikes me as cheating — a kind of argument by definition. In this view, soul exists in the same sense that e.g. Pythagorean triples exist; but that's hardly what people have in mind when they dream about immortality.

Elsewhere he similarly asserts that soul “exists entirely in itself separate from body” (5.9.4), and since “nothing departs from itself” it will always inhere in itself and therefore alwasy exist. Another similar argument is that soul, “being related to unchangeable God through its own unchangeable essence, it remains unchanging” (5.10.5) and thus is immortal.

Still elsewhere he says that if the soul is destroyed, “it loses its existence, yet its essence survives” (5.11.3), so the soul is immortal in that sense.

• A thing ceases to exist when it is separated from its form (5.8.1); for instance, the same matter is still there, but no longer arranged in the form of a dog, so it's no longer a dog. The matter could exist without being arranged in that particular form, so the object (composed of matter and form) can cease to exist (5.12.2). But soul is a simple form, not a composite of e.g. matter and some other form (5.12.4); soul is a “simple form, subsisting in itself” (5.12.1), or in other words, soul cannot be separated from its form, its “essence is the form of itself” (5.8.5). Thus soul cannot cease to exist.

• As we already saw earlier, soul is what gives life to living beings; “life is the property of soul” and God “never takes from anything what is its own property” (5.12.7), so soul is immortal. Argument by strong faith :P

Or in other words, “soul from its very essence is life” (5.14.2), and a form cannot receive its opposite (5.14.2), so soul cannot receive death (as the opposite of life) and is hence immortal. Ficino later clarifies that this all applies to the rational soul, whereas the irrational soul “is not a true soul”, it just animates the body and doesn't exist in itself (5.14.7). He then lists the opinions of various philosophers as to whether the irrational soul is immortal or not.

• God is the ultimate source of all existence: “That you exist, you have from God alone. That you are human, you owe to a human being too; that you are warm, to a fire.” (5.13.3.) To really create something, from nothing, requires infinite power, and God alone can do that (5.13.9); thus the essence of soul is “made directly by God” and he preserves things by the same power with which he created them, so soul is immortal (5.13.12).

• The soul governs the body, not vice versa; it can change or move the body, but the body can't change the soul, e.g. when the body dies (5.15.3). The soul can remember the past or imagine the future, so it is in a way above time; when the body moves (or changes), the soul doesn't really change because both the old and the new state were in a way already in it (5.15.3).

Book VI

Ficino starts with an account of a discussion that he apparently had with a number of prominent Florentine intellectuals, in which some of them suggested that his arguments so far had indeed shown that the third essence (or level of being) was immortal, but not yet that the rational soul was in fact on that third level. Various ideas are then put forth as to how the soul might actually be corporeal: perhaps it's a “very fine miniature body spread throughout our grosser body” (6.1.3), or a kind of quality either spread through the body (6.1.4) or a point attached to some part of the body like the heart or brain (6.1.5), or present throughout the body but somehow arising out of it (6.1.6). For each of these views he lists various ancient philosophers that supported it. This was impressive to see, but also confirmed my impressions that philosophers don't actually know anything about anything, they just argue endlessly (and pointlessly).

Ficino intends to refute these views, since to him it was of course very important that the soul be incorporeal. He says that the ideas about soul being corporeal largely arise from a simple mistake: people are used to perceiving the world around them with their senses, which detect only corporeal things, so they think that the soul must be corporeal too; to get a truer understanding of the soul, you should use your mind instead (6.2.3–4), which will allow you to appreciate what the pure soul is like (i.e. apart from being trapped in the body; 6.2.10). Our senses often deceive us, after all, or give us an incomplete picture 6.2.7–8).

He mentions two famous thought experiments connected with this. Avicenna imagined a man born without any senses; such a man would not be used to perceiving any body-like characteristics such as “color, length, or breadth”, so he would certainly not imagine his soul as having them either — he would imagine it as incorporeal (6.2.11–12). This confirms that those who imagine the soul to be corporeal are simply misled by their senses. — The other thought experiment is Plato's story about prisoners in a cave, who could see only shadows of things on a wall, rather than the things themselves. To Ficino our visible, sensible world is also such a shadow, and we should strive to use our minds to study the truer, higher, divine invisible world (6.2.14–15).

He has a couple of arguments as to why non-material things exist. If you start with a body and gradually abstract away its three dimensions and even its location, you end up with a sort of point-like unity completely separated from space; the more abstract something is, the more perfect it is;* so, since body existed, that final incorporeal unity must also exist, since it is more pefect than the body (6.2.16).

[*This seems to be another of those Neoplatonic axioms, this time even stated explicitly: “rational thought, when it is ascending, is not deceived” (6.2.16).]

Besides, things like light are incorporeal, and everybody agrees that light exists (6.2.18). He then asserts that the visible light of the stars and planets “depends on” the invisible spiritual light in the souls of those objects (6.2.19–20).

• One of the functions of the soul is nourishment (vegetative soul), which causes bodies to grow; if the soul were corporeal, all bodies would have that power; but some don't (e.g. stones), so soul must be incorporeal (6.4.1).

• Each body is either soulless or ensouled. If soul were a soulless body, that is clearly absurd; if it were an ensouled body, there would have to exist some other soul by which it is ensouled, and then you'd have the same problem about this other soul. The only option then is that soul is not a body at all, i.e. it's incorporeal (6.5.1). (I wonder why the soul couldn't be ensouled by itself?)

• If soul were corporeal, it would be based on one of the elements, maybe fire; but then all things on fire would be alive, which they clearly aren't (6.6.1). Also, if something is corporeal, our senses could perceive it; but they can't perceive the soul, so it must be incorporeal (6.6.3).

• Body, Ficino says, is composed of matter and form (interesting; in book 1 he said matter and quantity). If soul were also a body, it would likewise be composed of these two things, and it would then need some other principle that would compose them into a whole; and then that other principle would really be what we should call soul (6.7.1).

• Body is dispersed in space and “subject to opposing qualities” (e.g. heat and cold; 6.8.1); something incorporeal is needed to make it into a whole, and that's the soul: it is “not body, but the body's inner bond or binding substance” (6.8.3).

• The soul, as something that gives the body its unity, is simultaneously present in its entirety everywhere in the body, and this is something that is clearly impossible for a corporeal thing; thus soul is incorporeal (6.9–10).

• Soul is the source of motion, but a body isn't self-moving; thus the soul must be incorporeal. The claim that the body can't move itself seems to rely mostly on the fact that it's divisible, so you could have some parts of the body moving either themselves or other parts, but in no case can you say that the body as a whole moves itself as a whole (6.12.2). The soul, being indivisible, does not have this problem.

Ficino goes on to list all the specific kinds of motion and then argues, for each of them, why the body is incapable of it (but the soul is). For me this was mostly interesting because it finally illustrates what he means by motion: “All the motions are these: alteration, generation, corruption, growth, diminution, condensation, rarefaction, and progression” (6.12.9). So it's true, as we said earlier, that to him ‘motion’ is more like what we would call ‘change’.

• If the soul were corporeal, then e.g. larger bodies would have a larger soul with greater powers: “In a huge body the rational soul will be more noble and more divine.” (6.13.2) This could be the premiss of a nice science-fiction story, with blue whales being the noblest beings, lording it over elephants, with humans somewhere far below :)

Book VII

This book provides yet more arguments that the soul must be incorporeal, this time with a focus on its capacity for sense-perception. Basically, Ficino argues in various ways that senses couldn't work if the soul were corporeal. Nowadays we know a bit more about how our senses work, with the cells in our eyes, our brains and so on, so we do not think it odd that it all arises from these purely material phenomena. To us today, our perceptions, our thoughts, our very life are just abstractions arising out of the complex interplay of biological processes in our cells, electrical impulses firing in our brains and so on. But Ficino couldn't imagine that things could work that way, and wouldn't accept such a material explanation of them.

Instead, he has some very odd and literal ideas about how bodily senses would have to work, and naturally he concludes them to be absurd. “Whenever body receives something, it receives in a corporeal manner” (7.1.2) — meaning that e.g. if it was our body that saw something, this means that the image of that thing would have to be somehow imprinted on our body like a seal is imprinted on wax. This means we couldn't see something larger than ourselves, nor could we imagine two things at once (just like you can't imprint two different seals on the same piece of wax simultaneously).

• Furthermore, we have five senses, but clearly we also have some sort of power that integrates their perceptions together; to accomplish this, that power must be indivisible (7.2.3); so it cannot be corporeal (but is part of our incorporeal soul). Here we again see one of those unstated Neoplatonic axioms at work: for two separate things to somehow be connected or work together, there must exist some mysterious linking thing (like the soul here) that is present in its entirety in both of them at once and thereby connects them. Neoplatonists just can't stand the idea of anything functioning at a distance.

• If senses were present in the body, they would be “distended by corporeal bulk” (7.4.1), so each sense-perception would be infinitely divided, just like body is; so we wouldn't be able e.g. to see any object as a whole — clearly absurd.

• Ficino also has some interesting arguments based on our internal senses of what is happening inside our body. For instance, if something injures your foot, your whole attention is turned that way — it isn't just the foot that feels this and reacts to it. This can only work because our soul unites all parts of the body and the perceptions coming from them (7.5.1). Otherwise each part of the body would feel its own pain only and would be unaware of what is happening elsewhere (7.5.4).

• He introduces an interesting new concept: “the soul, since it is most pure, is linked to this gross and earthy body, which is so different from it, only by means of a superlatively fine, transparent, diminutive body which we call the spirit. It is generated by the heart's heat our of the finest part of the blood and thence spread through the whole body.” (7.6.1) Our hypothetical foot injury damages the foot and the corresponding part of the spirit, but not the soul, otherwise the soul wouldn't feel anything (since the relevant part would already be damaged or missing; 7.6.1–2).

(Later he describes the spirit as “that warm living vapor [. . .] the knot of the soul and body”; 9.5.2.)

• Ficino also argues that the soul is not merely the “complexion” of the body, this being “a technical medical term meaning a commixture or tempering, especially of humors in the animate body” (note 13 on p. 383). This complexion, he says, is merely an “accidental form” which arises from the body with its various contrary qualities (7.9.1); but the soul is a “substantial form”, a substance: it defines the species to which the body will belong (e.g. man or dog), and only after that will the complexion be able to appear at all; and “when the soul leaves, the body fades away” and so does complexion (7.9.2).

• He similarly denies that the soul could be merely “a kind of harmony born from the complexion” (7.10), because then it would again be just accidental; besides, every body has some kind of harmony, but not every body is alive, which it would be if it had a soul (7.11); and there is a kind of harmony within each part of the body too, but it would be absurd to say that each part has its own soul (7.12). Besides, compare an upright man and a thief: the former is “more in tune” and thus has more harmony; so if soul were harmony, he'd have a stronger soul and would thus be more lively than the thief (since soul gives life), but we know that this isn't necessarily the case (7.14).

Book VIII

What the previous book did for sense-perception, this one does for understanding, i.e. it argues that the soul couldn't perform this function if it weren't incorporeal (and hence immortal).

Ficino starts by introducing an interesting hierarchy of increasingly abstract abilities: sensation, imagination, phantasy [sic], and understanding (8.1.2). With sensation you e.g. see a specific person when he is in front of you; with imagination you can also recall that image to memory when the person isn't there; with phantasy you can make judgments about the image, e.g. recognise who that person is and what he is like (8.1.3); with the understanding (or intellect) you can perform abstractions, e.g. by comparing different people or identifying common features of humans as a whole (8.1.4).

• Some of the arguments for the incorporeal nature of the soul in this book are a bit odd. The soul, he says, feeds on truth, just like the body feeds on food; your body stops being hungry when you've had enough food, but your soul never stops being hungry for more truth, so the soul is incorporeal (8.2.7). Truth itself is, of course, also incorporeal, otherwise “it would not be present in incorporeal entities” like God and angels (8.2.9).

• Some arguments are similar as in the previous book: if the soul were corporeal, then a larger person with a larger body would also have a larger soul and thus stronger mental powers, he'd be wiser and more just, etc., which is obviously not true in general (8.3.4).

• For (abstract) thinking to work, the soul has to receive immaterial things which are variously called “universal forms” or “concepts” or “rational principles” (8.4.1), and such indivisible immaterial things cannot be received by the body or by quality (form divided in body), which are divisible (“indivisibles are only grasped by indivisibles”, 8.5.3); so the soul has to be incorporeal. Also, a material body couldn't receive universal forms because it is tied to a particular place and time (8.8.1).

• The intellect has to be indivisible because, when you understand something, you do it with your whole intellect, you can't just understand it with a part of your intellect (8.6.1).

• A body loses its form when it receives a new one (e.g. if a cold object becomes hot), but the intellect can receive any form (think about any concept) without losing its form (it still remains intellect), so clearly it can't be some kind of body (8.7.1). He returns to this argument several times, rephrasing it in terms of motion (8.11; remember that for him, “motion” really means “change”), and emphasizing that the mind does not change when it receives forms (just like a mirror doesn't change when it reflects an image; 8.13.1). And since it does not change, “it receives nothing from outside which would change or destroy it”, so it is immortal (8.13.4).

• Two bodies cannot be one inside the other and vice versa at the same time; but two minds can understand one another like that, so clearly minds are incorporeal (8.9.1).

• Bodies don't act outside their species (“a dog for instance never gives birth to a sheep”, 8.10.1), but a mind can easily receive the forms of many kinds of bodies and even incorporeal concepts; so it must be incorporeal itself (8.10.3).

• A mind can entertain two contrary concepts at the same time, but a body can't e.g. be hot and cold at the same time (8.12); so the mind must be incorporeal.

• The mind must be non-material because it can rise above material things, e.g. by imagining something that isn't there, abstracting specific objects into their species, etc. (8.14.1).

• Mind “is moved of its own free will, it gazes at itself [. . .] and it acts for its own benefit” (8.15.1). That is, the mind's activity begins and ends in itself, and runs entirely inside itself; so the mind lives and exists through itself, and is therefore immortal (8.15.6). (By contrast, the activity of the body is directed at some external end.)

• The mind has a certain grasp of infinity, by things which we might describe as induction, abstraction and so on; it can discover “infinite act, which is God”, and “infinite potency”, i.e. “matter [. . .] capable of receiving from Him numberless forms” (8.16.5). Something corporeal couldn't have such infinite powers, so the mind must be incorporeal.

*

Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology. Vol. 3: Books IX–XI. English translation by Michael J. B. Allen with John Warden. Latin text edited by James Hankins with William Bowen. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 7. Harvard University Press, 2003. 0674010655. v + 362 pp.

Book IX

This book is dedicated to (yet more) arguments that the soul is independent of the body, which, together with the already often demonstrated fact that it is indivisible, should be enough to prove its immortality (9.1.1).

• Ficino points out that the mind can reflect upon itself; e.g., when you understand something, you understand that you are understanding (9.1.3). But a bodily thing could not reflect upon itself, because a body is divided into parts and you could have parts reflecting upon parts or upon the whole, but not really the whole upon the whole (9.1.2). But this struck me as little more but another way of saying that the soul must be indivisible.

• He also gives examples of people making prophecies in their sleep or shortly before dying (9.2.2), and says that this demonstrates that the soul works the better the more it is separated from the body — a sign of the soul's independence of the body.

• The soul often actively resists the body, e.g. when in contemplation it ascends towards non-corporeal concepts (9.3.2) or when it resists, at least temporarily, some bodily urges (9.3.6). This shows that the soul does not originate in the body, otherwise it wouldn't be able to resist it.

• The behaviour of other animals is compelled by their nature or instinct, but humans can choose to behave differently (9.4.3, 5), which shows that our rational soul can act free of the body, unlike the irrational souls of other animals. Different people can behave differently and have different opinions, unlike animals, where all members of a species behave the same (9.4.14). Our soul is so free that even the astrological influence of stars upon us is only limited (9.4.14).

• The soul gives form to the body and controls it, rather than vice versa (9.5.2). When our mind performs abstract thinking, “any corporeal instrument interposed between us” and the abstract concepts “would be a hindrance” (9.5.13), so that part of our soul at least does not depend on the body, but acts without it. And since the soul does not exist through the body, it won't die with it either (9.5.30).

• Man has a dual nature: such things as nutrition and sensation, the corporeal nature of our body, are like those found in the other animals, and are likewise mortal; but our “power of contemplating will be immortal, being concerned with immortal things and shared in common with the immortals” (9.6.4; i.e. with God, angels, souls of the heavenly spheres etc.).

• Animals have a mortal (irrational) soul in a mortal body; the heavenly spheres have an immortal soul in an incorruptible body; but we have an intermediate position, an immortal soul in a perishable body (9.7.3–4).

Book X

In another example of the Neoplatonic obsession with hierarchies, Ficino introduces the order of bodies (10.1.2), from highest (“heaven on high”, by which I guess he means the eight heavenly spheres, or perhaps just the highest of them?) to lowest (prime matter). Above this order there is also the order of intellects (or minds; 10.1.3), from highest (God) to lowest (the human mind; 10.1.6). In each order, the higher things are more active and govern the ones below, which are more passive (they receive forms). (But perhaps this division into two orders is just another way of describing the familiar distinction between the sensible universe and the intelligible universe?) Anyway, Ficino argues that even the lowest body (matter) is incorruptible and can only be created by God, so therefore the lowest intellect (human mind) — which is in a higher order than the lowest body — can also only come from God and be incorruptible (and thus immortal; 10.1.4).

Next comes another fascinating hierarchy, which he calls the chain of being (10.2.2–3), consisting of several orders where the lowest part of one order is quite close to the highest part of the next lower order. First there is the aether, by which he seems to mean the eight celestial spheres; next there are the elements, i.e. the four elemental spheres (and he tells us that the lowest of the heavenly spheres, i.e. the moon, and the highest of the elements, i.e. fire, are close to each other). Below the elements are the composites: dense vapours and smokes (still close to elements), porous rocks, solid rocks, metals like iron and lead, and finally silver and gold (close to plants). Next is the order of plants, from tubers (close to metals) to trees (close to animals); next is the order of animals, from oysters (close to trees) to “beasts that resemble men” (mammals); and finally the order of men, from “dullwitted, lazy men” (close to animals) to “heroic men” (close to “the divine spirits”). Next is the order of spirits, from lower ones (daemons or heroes) to higher ones (angels; he gives a rudimentary version of the angelic hierarchy). Wow! This reminded me a lot of the stark raving lunacy of Plato's Timaeus, but Ficino goes a few steps farther :)

His reason for introducing this hierarchy is to explain how something of divine origin, like our soul, can be stuck in matter the way it is. Just like in the chain of being the lowest end of one order touches the highest end of the next lower order, so our soul lies at the point where the “lowest intellect is linked with the highest of the sensitive souls” (10.2.4). Our soul has an intermediate position between immortal spirits outside the body (angels) above us, and mortal spirits inside the body (irrational souls of animals) below us; our soul is therefore inside the body, but immortal (10.2.6). It governs the body below it and contemplates the divine things above it (10.3.7). It is the highest form in the order of bodies and is only partly attached to the body (the intellect is not attached; 10.3.8).

He even cites some really kooky ancient Neoplatonic ideas which suggest that this applies not only to men but also to some daemons, who may be “happier and far longer-lived than men” but nevertheless mortal (10.2.7); and he mentions Plutarch's famous story about the death of Pan as an example of such a daemon's mortality (10.2.8).

The descent of the soul into the body is a gradual process: first it gets a “celestial body of air”, then “a spirit generated from the heart”, and only then does it really enter into the body (10.2.13).

God, when creating our body, first forms prime matter into elements, these into humours, these into limbs, and then adds the forms of nutrition, feeling and understanding (10.3.2). I found this interesting as it illustrates just how broad a sense the word “form” as for him — it seems to be far more than just a simple mental abstraction that you hear about in Plato (the form of a dog etc.).

Ficino later goes into more details about the technicalities of creation. God first “conditions” the prime matter with “prime qualities”, which come in four pairs: rarity/density, lightness/heaviness, heat/cold, wetness/and dryness (10.5.1). Based on different mixtures of these, matter can then receive the species or forms of elements; e.g. fire is based on rarity, lightness, heat and dryness. Blending the four elements results in the forms of composite materials like stones and metals (10.5.2). Next come the forms of plants, which include such capabilities as life, procreation, and some movement (10.5.3); then the souls (forms) of animals, which add the abilities of sense and knowledge (10.5.4); and finally the human soul, which also has the power of understanding, and in this it resembles “the minds of heaven” (10.5.5). Our soul must be non-material since matter impedes such abilities as sight, knowing and understanding (10.5.6).

• There's an interesting section about the creation of forms in matter (the point, again, will be to explain how our soul can be stuck in matter). In our body, the soul causes food to be digested (usign heat as its instrument) and turned into various forms: lower (bones), intermediate (flesh and sinews), and highest (the spirit); 10.4.2. Similarly, an artist or craftman uses his instruments (tools) to create various forms in matter, from lower (e.g. furniture) to intermediate (paintings, buildings) to highest (discourses, songs, music); 10.4.3.

Ficino argues that God will similarly create various forms in matter, from lowest to highest; and the highest, the one most like him, will surely have to be immortal, otherwise it would not be “a perfect and complete image”. This highest form is our soul, which is therefore immortal (10.4.4).

Our soul may be the highest of the bodily forms (10.5.8), but our mind is the lowest of the intellects: the ensouled (animated) mind (10.6.2). While it is ensouled, even its contemplation of the divine relies on being stimulated by images arising out of our senses and phantasy, and these two faculties “operate through the corporeal spirits” (10.6.2). But later it leaves images behind as it ascends towards more abstract concepts (10.6.6).

• More on how the immaterial soul can be produced in matter: Ficino tries to explain this by analogies, like how the sun produces “light in the air but not from the air”, or how the reflection is “in the mirror but not from the mirror” (10.7.1). Similarly God creates the rational soul in matter, and since he is eternal, it is eternal as well (10.7.6).

• Ficino asserts that “Everything comes to rest in its proper end. Its proper end is its proper cause.” (10.8.2) He tries to demonstrate that for our souls, this end (and hence cause) is nothing other than God himself. Our mind is inclined to inquire about the causes of things, going farther and farther back up the chain of causes until it reaches God (= truth). Similarly, our will keeps desiring the good and is not content with anything less than the infinite good, i.e. with God (10.8.4). “No effect extends beyond its cause” (10.8.8), so given that our soul doesn't stop until it has ascended all the way to God in its yearning for truth and goodness, it clearly can't have been created by anything lesser than God.

• He also asserts that the object of some activity always conforms to that activity and to the power which gives rise to that activity. For example, sight (activity) uses its “inner ray” (power) to detect the things we see (object; 10.9.1). (This refers to the old theory of how sight works, namely that our eyes emit some kind of ray, which touches another ray coming from the object of our sight, and it is this contact between the rays that allows us to see the object. But Ficino has examples for other senses as well, which are less misguided.)

Regardless of what we think of his example involving sight, what he really wants to use this principle for is the mind, of course. Its objects (what it tries to contemplate, namely rational principles) are non-material and eternal, so clearly mind itself must also be non-material and eternal (10.9.2).

Book XI

Ficino argues that our mind or intellect is immortal because, in its business of understanding things, it is bound up very closely with such eternal and immaterial things as “rational principles” and “species” (11.5.10). From my point of view all this was quite strange and mostly showed what a very unusual view he had of how minds and understanding work. He insists that, when the intellect understands something, it is joined and merged with the thing understood (the intelligible); 11.1.2.

And such intelligible things as definitions of things and properties of species are eternal: a man is always a rational animal, even if no man happens to be alive at the moment (11.1.3). And such an eternal universal species therefore cannot arise out of the actual mortal men that may or may not be alive at any given moment; instead, such abstractions arise out of the intellect (11.2.2) — the intellect, in understanding a thing, really understands something that arose out of itself (11.2.4). It's masturbation navel-gazing all the way down!

Later he tries to go into a little more detail about how this is supposed to work. He insists that “species” or “universals” are produced by the mind out of itself (11.3.8), not out of images delivered by our imagination or phantasms delivered by our phantasy. For example, your mind couldn't get its concept of human nature from your observations of actual concrete people, because in them human nature is mixed with accidental properties (e.g. the details of each individual's appearance; 11.3.4) and, besides, you can't possibly have seen all people (11.3.5). So I guess what he's trying to say that the key part of developing a universal concept must occur in the mind (by abstracting from what you have seen and unifying the various images into one concept), and so in that sense this concept came from the mind and not from outside images (these images can only trigger the process, 11.3.8).

Similarly, he points out that you won't find perfect unity, goodness, beauty, etc. in bodies, so our ideas of these things can't come from images and sensations (11.4.18); our mind must have got these Ideas from above and they are then innate in it (11.4.22).

There are also a couple of what you might call arguments from incredulity. For example: our soul actually descends from God with all the Ideas already embedded in it — because surely he would not have made it less perfect than that (11.3.9) :)) Or: we see that the lowest part of the soul, which is in charge of nourishing the body, contains from the start the principles of such things as body parts, so that it is able to form those body parts; so then surely the highest part of the soul, namely the mind, will also be filled with rational principles from the start (11.3.10).

Animals can't form abstractions but people can; abstractions must therefore come from what people have that animals lack, i.e. from the intellect (11.3.13).

Certain concepts and principles of reasoning are self-evident to us, which shows that they must be innate in our minds (11.3.15, 18). For example, all people have an innate ability to judge what is beautiful, what is true, etc. (11.5.1, 11.6.15). Even teaching, in Ficino's view, isn't so much about transferring information from the teacher to the student, but rather about the teacher helping the student discover things which are in some sense already innate in his mind (11.5.7). This innateness also explains why people are sometimes able to discover things by themselves (11.5.8).

In fact the “species” he spoke about earlier in this book seem to be more or less the same thing as Plato's “Ideas” (11.4.2). These Ideas (or “rational principles” or “universal forms of things”) “move and form and perfect the intellect” (11.4.4), so they are higher than it. They are present as one single form in God/unity (the first hypostasis of Plotinus & co.) and as multiple forms in “the intelligible” (second hypostasis; 11.4.6).

Rational principles of things must be present in their causes (11.4.12), so it makes sense that the Ideas of everything must be in God as the ultimate cause. Other lower causes are just the “instruments of the first cause” (11.4.14).

P.S. Some people talk about the birds and the bees. . . some about the sun: “In human generation for instance, because the sun generates man through the medium of a man, the begetting man has more in common with the begotten man than the sun has.” (11.3.5) :))

*

Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology. Vol. 4: Books XII–XIV. English translation by Michael J. B. Allen. Latin text edited by James Hankins with William Bowen. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 13. Harvard University Press, 2004. 0674014820. vii + 371 pp.

Book XII

The purpose of this book is to argue that the soul is immortal because our mind is constantly being formed by God and filled by him with understanding. Ficino starts by describing Plato's theory about how our mind ascends from “the perception of bodily forms” (e.g. seeing a circle-shaped object) to abstract Ideas (e.g. the idea of a circle), which are divine and external to us. The intermediate step here involves “formulae of the ideas”, which are innate in our mind (12.1.1); e.g. “the mind through the formula of man adapts itself to the idea of man” (12.2.2). (I just now realized that “formula” probably originated as a Latin diminutive of the word “form”, and the latter is sometimes used as a synonym of “idea”.)

The way understanding works is that our mind is “being formed by the divine understanding” (12.1.2), i.e. we receive forms from God, in whom truth resides (or rather he himself is the truth). Our mind thereby becomes “joined to God” (12.2.3) — a very mystical view of things, which reminded me a little of the proverbial new-ager at the hot-dog stand: ‘make me one with everything’ :) Understanding consists of the mind “matching itself to the idea” (12.3.1).

Ideas or “rational principles” of things are unchanging and precede the creation of those things, so they can't be anywhere else than in God (12.1.7). Ficino points out that many ancient philosophers “combined the study of philosophy with religious piety” (12.1.14).

Then Ficino makes something of a detour explaining the Neoplatonic view that unity, and not being, is the highest principle (12.3.6; and thus equivalent to God), and why it is furthermore the same as goodness (12.3.7; because “all things seek the good absolutely but not being absolutely, just well-being”. But didn't we already see things along these lines in Book I?

He has a very charming metaphor: “God creates souls, then places Himself in front of them, as though they were mirrors: in this way reflections of God are formed in individuals. These reflections are souls' minds” (12.4.2). Our mind is the link between our soul and God (12.4.5). It continually receives divine forms much like prime matter receives natural forms, and is thus immortal similarly to how prime matter is incorruptible (12.4.8, 10).

The remainder of the book gives various examples that illustrate how our mind constantly receives its understanding from God:

• In judging the visual images brought to it by the senses (e.g. in art or architecture), our mind relies on notions of unity, beauty, symmetry, etc., which are innate and unchanging and cannot come from any other than God (12.5.7).

• When two people, during the course of an argument, agree that something is true, it is not a matter of one of them seeing this truth in the other, but rather both of them “see it in that unchangeable truth which is above our minds” (12.5.15).

• When we listen to music or a song, our ability to judge the harmony and rhythm does not come from the sounds we hear, but is inside our mind (e.g. because it “does not cease to exist when there is silence”, 12.6.2). Our mind contains “judging numbers” (internal principles of harmony), against which we compare the “sensual numbers” (i.e. the harmonies we hear in the outside world; n. 76 on p. 347). And these internal principles, since they are unchanging and do not come from outside, must have been received from God (12.6.11).

• Everyone's mind is aware of certain universal principles of reasoning, e.g. that the statement “if Plato runs, he moves” is true, regardless of whether Plato happens to be moving right now or if he even exists or not; 12.7.5. Such principles must come from God, since he is truth itself (12.7.6).

The book ends with another of those dodgy arguments for the immortality of the soul (12.7.13). The soul is either the cause of its own existence, in which case it cannot perish; or it comes from God, which is the same as the truth. The opposite of truth is falsehood, which cannot kill the soul because falsehood “can do nothing further but deceive; but unless someone is alive, he is not deceived”. And if not even the opposite of truth can destroy the soul, then nothing can, so the soul must be immortal.

Book XIII

This book tries to bolster the argument for the soul's immortality by showing how the soul controls the body (rather than e.g. vice versa). Ficino gives examples of how the emotions in our phantasy (desire, pleasure, fear, pain) influence the body, e.g. fear makes us pale (13.1.1); a feeling of disgust provokes nausea (13.1.2). Some of his examples are rather silly, e.g. he suggests that a fetus is affected by “the greed of a pregnant woman” or by “the vehemence of their [i.e. the parents'] phantasizing about the various things that happen to affect them when they are mating!” (13.1.1) Another example of the soul controlling the body is the ability of suitably stoical philosophers or martyrs to bear pain with indifference (13.1.6).

Some philosophers (13.2.2) and priests (13.2.6) managed to withdraw from their body for various periods of time during deep contemplation. Poets derive their abilities not from training but from being seized by a divine frenzy (13.2.5). And the ability of prophets to see the future comes from their soul detaching itself from the body, whereby it temporarily reverts to its natural state of being present in every space and time (13.2.8).

Next Ficino describes a delightfully mystical theory of “three universal orders”. First there is a hierarchy of minds, from god at the top, to angels and finally to minds of rational souls. Rational principles emanate from god and descend down this hierarchy; this “universal disposition [. . .] is called providence” (13.2.10).

Secondly, there is a hierarchy of rational souls, from the World-Soul down to the souls of the twelve spheres and finally to the souls of individuals. In each soul there is a power that provides life to its corresponding body; this power is called the “idolum” or “simulacrum” (13.2.11). These idola are in a mutual accord, and seeds of corporeal things descend down their hierarchy; “this concord, this transmission of seeds” is fate (13.2.15).

Thirdly, there is a hierarchy of bodies, from the body of the world to the bodies of the twelve spheres and finally to the bodies of individuals. The instincts of the higher natures are transmitted down this hierarchy; this is called the natural order (13.2.16; here “natures” = “complexions or affective dispositions”).

We are linked to all three orders: to providence through our mind (which is the highest part of our soul), to fate through the idolum (which is the lowest power of the soul), to nature through our body and its nature; but our reason, which is the middle part of our soul, is not tied into any of these orders and can thus move the most freely (13.2.19). Examples of how these links work: the minds above us send us an unexpected sudden insight from time to time; our body may suddenly be affected by anxieties or mood swings and the like; but our reason might or might not take notice of such influences, which shows that it's independent of these links (13.2.20–2). The reason can notice these influences better during periods of “emptying or release”: sleep, swoon, solitude, etc. (13.2.24).

Another example of how our rational soul controls the body is the human ability to learn various arts and skills, unlike e.g. animals, who have only a narrow range of instinctive behaviours (13.3.1). Abilities such as acuity of mind, good memory, prophecy, and a wide vocabulary (Ficino gives examples of each, mostly from ancient history), also demonstrate the role of the soul as “God's emulator in the arts and governance” (13.3.12), which shows its divine origin.

As another example of the soul's influence over bodies, not necessarily just its own body, there's a hilarious explanation of how evil magic works: suppose a sorcerer wants to give a child a fever; “[h]is imagining the fever arouses [. . .] his choleric spirits”, which “in turn arouses [. . .] fetid and fever-causing vapours [. . .] in the sorcerer's body [. . .] like arrows they speed with the spirit to the spot the evil phantasy had intended as its mark”, especially through the eyes (13.4.8). And more generally, we know that one soul can influence another (e.g. by spreading vices), so it makes sense that it can also influence another's body, since bodies are lower and weaker than souls (13.4.9).

Miracles can also be explained by a similar mechanism; the soul of someone who focuses on the divine part of himself, on his mind, and disregards the senses, “emerges from this body into the great [world] body, and, filled now with God, moves the humours of this greater animal, the four elements, that is, of the greater world, as if they were his own” (13.3.13). A man in this condition becomes pure mind, like an angel (13.3.12), and is united with God (13.5.3). Sure it's nonsense, but it's beautiful, poetical nonsense.

Book XIV

Ficino discusses twelve properties of God and argues that our soul closely imitates him in all those ways, and in fact strives to become God. But how will this striving demonstrate the soul's immortality? Here he resorts to the good old argument from incredulity: surely God wouldn't induce us to seek him in vain (14.1.5), so we will surely become one with him one day and be immortal... (He makes arguments along similar lines later too, e.g. in 14.2.10, 14.5.6.)

One thing I liked is that his twelve properties are not meant to be a specifically christian thing: he says that “[i]n every nation all theology attributes these twelve properties to God” (14.1.2).

• God is prime truth and prime good; and our soul desires truth and goodness (14.2.2). And unlike most of our desires (e.g. for food and sex), this one is insatiable (14.2.5).

• God is all things; and Ficino argues that our soul also tries to become all things, as demonstrated by its various activities: sustaining the body, dealing with senses, reasoning, investigating nature, contemplation of mathematics, inquiry into divine mysteries (14.3.2). An even sillier argument comes later: “the intellect seeks to understand all things” and understanding a thing, as we already saw earlier (12.1–2), means taking the form of that thing, so our intellect seeks to become all things (14.3.4).

• God is the author of all things and is above all. People take up various arts and always strive to rule over others, so we are clearly imitating these properties of God (14.4.2).

• God is everywhere and always, and man strives to be that too, e.g. by exploring the universe and by striving for fame whereby posterity would remember him (14.5.1–2). Besides, our soul has a natural desire for immortality (14.5.4).

• God is provident, just, steadfast, and temperate, four virtues which man also strives towards (14.6.1). “Even thieves divide up their booty justly among themselves”, and even evildoers often convince themselves that they are actually behaving justly (14.6.3).

• “God's life is the most bountiful and the most delightful” (14.7.1), and similarly our soul seeks riches and pleasure. As with many of these strivings to imitate god, this can be done prudently or imprudently. A prudent man wishes to be rich in understanding and virtue, an imprudent man in material goods, etc. (14.7.2).

I liked this argument: “[e]ach thing comes to rest [. . .] in its own natural and habitual condition” (14.7.3), but man never quite knows rest while he is alive, so clearly our natural condition is in the afterlife :)

• God “loves and worships Himself” (14.8.1), and so do people; and, again, this ‘worshipping ourselves’ can be done prudently (and result in e.g. a kind of modesty from not wishing to pollute one's mind) or imprudently (stubbornness, arrogance etc.).

Furthermore, unlike lower animals, humans are naturally inclined towards religion and the worship of God (14.8.3, 14.9.1); and this is universal across cultures (14.10.2, 10). In fact Ficino says that religion comes so naturally to man that impiety is a kind of aberration, a result of an imbalance in the humours (14.10.7); and “generally the natural is true” (14.10.6). He uses this as an argument that religion must be true, because it is natural; but surely this makes no more sense than that old quip: ‘a billion flies can't be wrong — eat shit!’

There are a couple of hilarious arguments by wishful thinking. You see, man would be very foolish if he put in all this effort into being religious and didn't get immortality in return; but being so close to God, who is super wise, makes it impossible that man would be so foolish; therefore he will get immortality in return (14.7.8). :))))

And: “The probity of a truly pious man [. . .] strengthened by unvarying habit is an indestructible good”, and thus deserves an indestructible reward, i.e. immortality (14.10.14). And conversely, the impious soul “sins infinitely whenever it forgets the infinite God”, so it needs to be immortal in order to receive an appropriately infinite punishment (ibid.). Anything less than that would be unjust.

*

Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology. Vol. 5: Books XV–XVI. English translation by Michael J. B. Allen. Latin text edited by James Hankins with William Bowen. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 17. Harvard University Press, 2005. 0674017196. vii + 353 pp.

Book XV

In this book, Ficino aims to refute Averroes' view that immortality of the soul does not hold at the level of individuals but only for the human species as a whole. That is, mankind as a whole has one intellect or mind in common, which is eternal; but each individual man does not have an intellective soul of his own, but only a sensitive one, which is born and dies together with his body (15.1.12). An individual man has a cogitative soul which is capable of some quick and instinctive judgments, but real understanding happens in the (common) mind (15.1.13), which is constantly being supplied by images from the souls of individuals (15.1.15).

I liked the part where Ficino suggests that Averroes' mistakes are due to his studying bad translations of Aristotle into Arabic :)) (15.1.2)

Many of Ficino's counterarguments revolve around the claim that the mind is the “form of body”, and is therefore so closely connected with the body that Averroes' view (that there is just one mind largely separate from the individuals and their bodies) is untenable.

• We've already seen many times the Neoplatonic obsession with hierarchies, and he presents several of them here, trying to argue that no matter how you look at this “order of nature”, it requires the mind as the form of body (an intellectual form) somewhere in the middle of his hierarchy. For example, there are forms which are divine and cannot be united with matter; and there are forms which are natural and cannot be separated from matter; so in between there need to be forms that partly divine, partly natural, and can be united with matter but also separate from it (15.2.1).

Another such hierarchy: there must exist a pure good; an intellectual good and pure intellect; an ensouled intellect and pure soul; and a corporeal soul. These four levels correspond to God, angel, rational soul, and irrational soul (15.2.9). God is not formed, does not form, and does not adhere to matter; angel is formed (by God), does not form and does not adhere to matter; rational soul is formed, does form (the body), and does not adhere to matter; and finally, the irrational soul is formed, does form and does adhere to matter (15.2.11).

Another look at the same hierarchy: God is infinite with regard to being, essence and power; angel is finite in being, but infinite in essence and power; the rational soul is finite in being, but partly finite and partly infinite in essence and power; and finally the corporeal form (irrational soul?) is finite in being, essence and power (15.2.14).

In short, for the hierarchy to work, you need the kind of rational soul that Ficino has been describing throughout the Platonic Theology, and not the kind of arrangement that had been described by Averroes.

The rational soul has to be incorruptible and joined to matter so that it can exist as an intermediate level between angels (incorruptible and not joined to matter) and the souls of beasts (corruptible and joined to matter); 15.4.4–5. He has a nice analogy about how soul is present in the body: it fills it much like how sunlight fills the air, “one and undivided [. . .] and the whole of it is in any part of the air” (15.5.4). In fact it's rather the body that is in the soul than vice versa: “body is not present to all of soul, but only to its lowest” part, i.e. the vital power, but not the power of judgment, the higher part of soul, which is above the body (15.5.6).

• We say that man is a rational animal, but that wouldn't be true if all mankind had just one mind in common, because then reason would be “extrinsic” to man (15.6.1), being present only in that common mind. Similarly we say that man understands things; but if Averroes' view were right, it would be only that common mind that would understand anything (15.7.5). We say that a man can move himself freely and make his choices, but under Averroes' view he would be moved by the external mind, rather than freely moving himself (15.8.1).

• It is hard for us to focus on a bodily and a mental activity at the same time: “guests are scarcely able to listen to the lyre and enjoy the meal at the same time” (15.9.1). This sort of problem wouldn't occur if the mental activity were coming from a universal human mind extrinsic to each individual.

• If Averroes' supposed common human mind really existed, it would be more like heavenly minds, and wouldn't need to be connected to individual humans at all and wouldn't need to receive images from them (15.10.1, 8). There would be no point in the connection between such a common mind and an individual man; far from establishing a new single composite thing, such a bond would be a “useless fabrication” and a “monstrosity” (15.10.9).

• Ficino mentions an interesting distinction (which I think he hasn't mentioned until now) between the “agent intellect” and the “receptive intellect” (15.11.1); if I understand correctly, the difference is that species (= abstract concepts?) are produced by the former and received by the latter. Under Averroes' view, the common human mind is the agent intellect while individual humans have only a receptive intellect (15.11.10), but Ficino argues that both the active and the receptive power are present in each individual: the power of understanding must be present in an individual, otherwise the universal mind wouldn't be able to make him understand things (15.11.11). (I must admit that I still don't see why the receptive power shouldn't suffice for that, however.)

Sensing is the act of the body and soul together (as a composite), while understanding is the act of the soul alone (15.12.10). We already saw that the whole soul is present in each part of the body, but here we get an additional detail: if e.g. a hand is amputated from the body, the soul instantly disappears from the severed part (15.12.8).

• Having one mind per person, instead of one for the whole species, also “contributes to their more perfect happiness” as they can “rejoice together [. . .] in equal and mutual recognition and friendship”; “the universe is far more beautiful if there is a multitude everywhere” (15.13.5). I don't know that any of this constitutes an argument, but it's touching and beautiful :)

• Ficino points out various more or less absurd consequences that would follow from Averroes' theory that there is one mind common to all people. For example, every person thinks that “I am one and the same person who is understanding and perceiving” (15.14.2); but if Averroes's theory is right, the perceiving is done by the individual person, but the understanding by the common human mind; and this mind would presumable be aware of that fact, and would impart it to the individuals, so how could everyone be mistaken about this?

Minds are receptive to truth,* and since so few people have been receptive to Averroes' view of the one common human mind, this view is unlikely to be true (15.14.3).

[*This seems almost touchingly naive nowadays, when the internet is bursting at the seams with conspiracy theories and disinformation... It is now clear that minds are receptive to anything that looks vaguely truth-like and appeals to their biases, whether it's true or not.]

“[O]n any given day innumerable men consider the same thing and are often in error”, so if it's really Averroes' common human mind that's doing this understanding, it follows that “that mind at any moment is considering the same thing thousands of times over aand often being deceived” — an absurdity (15.15.5).

Another complication that would result from Averroes's common mind is what happens if two people understand the same thing. Is (assuming that all the understanding is being done by the common human mind) this one act of understanding or two, and does it result in one species (= abstract concept) or two? Ficino finds all possible answers to these questions unsatisfactory; and of course these problems do not occur if you reject Averroes and allow the two people to have two separate minds (15.17.1).

If understanding is done by the common mind, “[h]ow then, when one person ceases to understand, does another man not cease too?” (15.18.4) When a person understands something, he is also aware that he understands this; and so “it is beyond question amazing that the Averroistic mind which is single, eternal, indivisible, uniform, and equally present to all, with you is aware of what it understands, but with me is never aware of what it may understand in you” (15.18.8). And if all understanding comes from the common mind, how can different people (e.g. different philosophers) arrive at completely opposite opinions of the same question (15.19.3)?

• Ficino also says that the mind can preserve species (abstract ideas) and does not need to have them constantly refreshed by images (15.16.3, 14). So Averroes' view of a common human mind that is constantly being supplied with images from the souls of individual people is unnecessary. In our phantasy, images sometimes spring up that it had never received from the senses (15.16.11), which shows that it is rather the mind that supplies the phantasy with images, not vice versa.

Book XVI

This book mostly deals with the question of why souls are imprisoned in such poor earthly bodies, which if left unexplained could I guess be taken by some people as throwing doubts on the view that the soul is of divine origin and hence immortal.

• Ficino says that such incarnation is desirable because it enables souls to understand particular things instead of just abstract ideas. He describes how understanding works at different levels of minds: at the top there's God, who understands everything through one single Idea, “namely the one essence of God” (16.1.12) or “the one Idea of being or the good, which Idea is God's nature itself” (16.1.14). Then as you go lower through various levels of angelic minds, they understand things through an increasingly large number of increasingly narrow Ideas: the one Idea splits into two Ideas, of substance and of accident, and the highest angels understand things through these two; lower down the Idea of substance separates into Ideas of corporeal and incorporeal substance, the Idea of accident separates into Ideas of quality and quantity, etc. (16.1.15). At the lowest level of minds, the human minds, ideas are split into those of individual species, and this is what our minds understand (16.1.16).

Since our minds are the lowest sort of minds, they are completely passive; they can receive these Ideas of species from above, but can't apply them to the understanding of particular things belonging to such species (16.1.17). For this we need reason, which works with the help of images coming from the senses to gain an understanding of particular things, to “distribute the universal Ideas of the mind into particular notions” (16.1.23); and for this our soul needs to be in a body that is able to sense (16.1.19–20).

• Our souls are the lowest level that can deal with ideas; below that, they pass into the material world and turn into mere “shadowy likenesses” of themselves (16.3.1; an allusion to Plato's cave, I guess). But our soul can synthesize the perceptions of these material things and abstract them back into Ideas again in our mind (16.3.2). For Ficino, this ability is proof that our mind is much closer to the divine minds above it than to bodies below, and is hence immortal.

• A rather unoriginal argument for incarnation: having to deal with the trouble of being in a body will make our soul appreciate the “divine joys” (of a bodiless existence) more... :S (16.4.1)

• Being in a body allows the soul to exercise its lower powers (phantasy, sense, nutrition), which it otherwise would have no use for; but a limited time suffices for this (i.e. it's OK if the body is mortal) “since the acts and effects of these powers are wholly changeable and temporal”(16.5.1). Besides our usual body, our soul also has an “ethereal body”, which is immortal (16.5.4). Unlike some of the ancient Platonists, Ficino does not seem to have believed in reincarnation, but he thought that the souls of the dead can communicate with the living in visions and dreams (16.5.4–5). He later adds that the soul enters the body out of a love for it, not due to some sort of compulsion (16.7.14; I seem to vaguely remember reading the same thing in Plotinus).

• Incarnation is a good thing because it makes the material world more similar to God, by filling it with reason (because our souls have reason and are present in bodies); 16.6.1. In fact each of the heavenly spheres also contains lots of souls.

Another potentially skeptical question that Ficino tries to address here is: if souls are divine in origin, why are they afflicted by such tumultuous emotions? He says it's because our body is “composed of four warring elements”, it's constantly in some sort of flux and the soul is constantly busy trying to preserve it (16.7.1). While doing so, it disturbs now this, now that humour in our body, and images and emotions corresponding to that humour are awakened in us (16.7.11). Furthermore, our body contains an “airy spirit” that can be moved by the demons of the air, and this moves our humours too and excites emotions (16.7.18). [I'm waiting with bated breath for the chapter about the water-demons that come up the drainpipes, lurk in your toilet and... on second thought, never mind :)] The souls in the heavenly spheres have an easier task because they do not have to deal with any of this (16.7.4).

Lastly Ficino says a few words about the fear of death. This comes mostly from the lower parts of the soul because they lose the body that they used to care for (16.8.2). But “from the fear itself of death we can conclude that some sense will remain in us after death” (16.8.8), otherwise there'd be nothing to fear about being dead. Thus “if the dear of death originates from a horror of shadows, [our] immortality is evidenced in this very fear” (16.8.8).

*

Marsilio Ficino: Platonic Theology. Vol. 6: Books XVII–XVIII. English translation by Michael J. B. Allen. Latin text edited by James Hankins with William Bowen. The I Tatti Renaissance Library, Vol. 23. Harvard University Press, 2006. 0674019865. vii + 415 pp.

Book XVII

This book deals with the question of what is happening with the soul before and after its sojourn in the body. I was under the impression that the usual christian idea is that the soul is created at the time of conception or something like that; well, ancient Platonists, it seems, often believed by contrast that the soul existed before that and may have been subject to various kinds of transmigration. Ficino begins with a nice little historical overview of where all this (neo)platonic wharrgarble is coming from; he lists six principal ancient “theologians“: Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras and Plato; and six ancient “academies” or schools of Platonism, namely those of Xenocrates, Archesilas, Carneades, Ammonius, Plotinus, and Proclus (17.1.2).

As we've seen many times before, Ficino often relies heavily on the last two of these (perhaps because their work has been better preserved than that of the earlier Platonists?), though in the present book he'll have some cause to disagree with them. He tells us that the ancient Platonists believed that the soul has always existed, though if anything in his account is supposed to constitute an explanation of why they thought so, I certainly have to admit that I couldn't understand it (17.2.5). [Later he gives this rather feeble explanation: the soul has always existed, “the Platonists say, because, unless it had no beginning, at some time it would have an end”; 17.3.5. He himself condemns this idea in 17.4.4.] He emphasizes the status of the soul as a “universal mean” (17.2.9) between the indivisible minds above it and the entirely divisible qualities below it, etc., and says a little about the Pythagorean mysticism of numbers and harmonies with which they described the soul — very poetic, but utterly insane (17.2.11–13).

There are several levels of souls: the divine or celestial souls (of the planetary spheres and stars); angelic souls, demonic souls, heroic souls; and finally our human souls at the lowest level, unless you want to also include the souls of beasts, which are still further below us (17.2.15, 17.3.1). This brings us to one of the explanations for reincarnation: unlike some of the higher sorts of souls, our poor lowly souls can't simultaneously “use the human reason to gaze upon things divine and to govern earthly bodies”, and “what they cannot do simultaneously they do in alternation” (17.3.2), so they get incarnated for a time, then spend some time without a body between two incarnations, and then get incarnated again and so on (17.3.5). The soul reincarnates itself not by compulsion or deliberation, but by “a kind of natural instinct” (17.3.6), and chooses its new life based on its habits and emotions from the previous one (17.3.8) — which I guess is Plato's equivalent of karma :)

Over the course of these incarnations, the soul may travel up and down the levels, living the angelic, demonic, heroic and human life; a more controversial question was whether it could also get reincarnated in non-human animals. Plotinus thought that it could, Proclus that it couldn't (17.3.10).

Ficino says (perhaps because all this reincarnation stuff is a little too poorly compatible with christian religious beliefs?) that in these matters it would be better to follow the earlier four schools of Platonism rather than these last two (of Plotinus and Proclus), and that Plato's writings on this subject were often meant to be understood poetically rather than literally, or that they included things which he considered only probable rather than certain (17.4.1), or that they were included only “for the sake of discussion” (17.4.14). It's true, he says, that our soul cannot simultaneously govern our body and contemplate the divine; but it doesn't have to handle this by reincarnation, it is enough simply to do different things at different times in our life (17.4.2). Thus “a true transmigration from species to species never occurs” (17.4.2), and especially not from men to beasts (17.4.3–4). Ficino goes on to mention many specific passages in Plato's works and discuss how they should be interpreted in this way. So, no reincarnation for you!

Book XVIII

This book deals with miscellaneous questions and provides a sort of overview of the lifecycle of the soul and its association with the body.

The (material) world cannot make or sustain itself (this would require the kind of unity and infinite power which the body lacks due to its finite and divisible nature), hence it must have been created (by God); 18.1.2. So it had to have a beginning, and that was also the beginning of time: “[p]rior to the world's first moment there were no other prior moments of time” (18.1.9). Ficino mentions some hilariously specific ancient opinions about the precise moment of the world's beginning: “Aries was in mid-heaven, Cancer was rising, the Moon was in Cancer, the Sun in Leo” etc. etc. (18.1.12).

He presents an interesting hierarchy of spiritual beings with regard to duration (18.2.1): God has no beginning and no end; spirits of beasts have a beginning and an end; between them, occupying an intermediate position, angels and human souls have a beginning but no end (i.e. they are immortal). The difference between angels and human souls is that angels were born at the beginning of time, while human souls are born at various later points (and on the other hand, the difference between angels and God is that the latter exists outside of time altogether); 18.2.3.

Another good reason why our souls are created at the same time as our bodies: if our soul had existed for some time before our body, it would like that kind of existence so well that it would never choose to get incarnated :) (18.3.1). Hence, new souls are being created every day — partly, it seems, simply because creation is “God's principal activity” (18.3.13), so I guess he just can't get tired of it.

Ficino discusses the opinions of ancient “theologians” about where the soul comes from and how it enters the body, but distances himself from these opinions, probably because the church might disagree with them (18.5.4; “now and then, however, it is pleasant to converse with the ancients”, 18.4.1; “it is delightful to play poetically for a while with the ancients”, 18.5.1). There is, for example, the idea that to connect a simple and immortal spirit (our soul) with a composite and mortal body (our material body), there needs to be something intermediate: a simple and immortal body (18.4.1) — the “aethereal body received from the aether” (18.4.3), which our soul receives first before entering our material body. This aethereal body is the chariot from Plato's parable in the Phaedrus (18.4.3). Some philosophers went further and said we have two simple bodies (in addition to our usual, composite body, i.e. composed of the four elements), an immaterial (celestial or aethereal) one and a material (airy) one (18.4.7).

There's also a chapter about where exactly in heaven the souls descend from: “[p]rincipally from Cancer, according to the Platonists” (18.5.2), though Ficino agrees that it would be silly to take this literally, and provides a metaphorical interpretation. As the soul descends through the various heavenly (planetary) spheres, it receives some character traits from each of them (18.5.2) and possibly lives for some time on each sphere before descending further (18.5.3).

The soul is created and poured into the body 45 days after conception (18.6.1). It enters the body through “the heart's midpoint, which is the body's center” and thence diffuses through the body along with its natural heat (18.7.1). After death, our soul, together with its aethereal body, returns “back to the aether” (18.8.1); it is no longer influenced by living inside a body (symbolized by its bathing in the river Lethe to purge itself of its memories), it can now live “in harmony with the supercelestial gods”, i.e. the angels (18.8.6), and eventually merge itself into God completely (18.8.7). How can our mind in that state understand God if he is infinite? Well, partly the thing is that it doesn't understand all of him (18.8.22), partly the light coming from him is poured into the mind and conveys some of his power to it, thereby improving the mind's ability to understand him (18.8.21).

Since God himself is the cause of this union between a person's mind (in heaven) and himself, nothing can dissolve it and the mind will remain unchanging (18.8.33–4). In that state all people are content, as they find in God whatever it is that they originally wanted in life — understanding, power, pleasure, etc. (18.8.35).

The blessed souls can be divided into nine levels, depending on their attitudes towards divine goodness, power, and wisdom; and this division corresponds to the different heavenly spheres and quite possibly to the angelic hierarchy as well (18.8.11–12).

There's an interesting chapter about what happens to the body after death. We saw earlier that some of the ancient Platonists believed that the soul eventually migrates to other bodies, possibly even those of animals, and that Ficino largely disagreed with that. He points out that the universe must eventually reach a static final state, because “rest is more perfect than motion” (18.9.4). And in that perfect final state, our souls must have bodies, because they have a sort of natural inclination towards having a body and a state in which they have no body would be imperfect (18.9.6–8); also, there should be a body to share in the rewards or punishments of the soul (18.9.9). So they will get a new body, which will be just like our original body (i.e. no transmigration into a different body), in fact “rewoven” or “reassembled” from the elements into which our original body had been dissolved (18.9.10). The soul is the form of the body, which is why the new body will be the same as the old one (because it will be formed by the same soul; 18.9.10). However, this new body will be perfect and immortal (nothing else would make sense in that perfect end-state of the universe; 18.9.12).

Ficino also presents an interesting take on the fate of the soul in the afterlife. I usually imagined these things as involving god judging people and sending them to either heaven or hell, but here these things are presented as a much more impersonal process. The rewards and punishments in the afterlife are simply a continuation of the habits formed, and the virtues and vices practiced, in the earthly life: “reward is virtue fully grown [. . .] punishment is vice having reached maturity” (18.10.1). During life, a man's phantasy processes images coming from the senses, generates desires, etc.; but after death, having no body, these activities end. Someone who lived virtuously and kept his phantasy under the control of reason will find this to be a change for the better rather than for the worse (his reason can contemplate divine things all the more easily now; 18.10.8), but someone addicted to bodily pleasures will feel regret at their no longer being available (18.10.10). If he was led in life by phantasy rather than reason, the phantasy will now torment him after death by concocting “gloomy images”, for want of having any real sense-perceptions to process (18.10.14). Damned souls also suffer from their awareness of being cut off from God (18.10.15). Ficino also cites various allegorical interpretations of what the different parts of the ancient Greek underworld stand for; not all the damned souls are equally bad there, and if their vices weren't too habitual, they can eventually be purified of them (18.10.15).

Souls of those who died as “infants or idiots”, i.e. lacking reason, cannot quite know and love God the way a normal soul would, and thus cannot be completely blessed in the afterlife, but also do cannot do anything to deserve to be condemned, and instead end up in a sort of intermediate state (18.11.1, 5), though eventually even they may be turned towards full bliss (18.11.6–7). Thus there is a hierarchy of four levels with regard to blessedness, from better to worse: fully blessed souls; the intermediate state (partly blessed; infants and idiots); souls that are still in bodies (not blessed but have hope for the future); and damned souls (not blessed and have no hope); 18.11.2.

Ficino's Argument

As an appendix, vol. 6 also contains Ficino's ‘argument’ or introduction to the Platonic Theology, which he wrote shortly before finishing the PT itself. The argument follows the structure of the PT in its broadest outline but not necessarily in details. Ficino divides it into “three steps of Platonic contemplation”.

The first step is the ascent to God, across the five levels of essence (body, quality, soul, angel, God), which thus corresponds roughly to book 1 of the PT. The second step is the contemplation of God himself, i.e. a description of his various attributes, which thus corresponds to book 2 of the PT. The third step is the immortality of the soul, which thus corresponds to. . . books 3–18 of the PT? You can see there's a certain lack of balance here :)

The section on the immortality of the soul here in the argument mostly focuses on our capability for abstract thought, which (he says) demonstrates that our soul can do something independent of the body and its sensations, and if it can exist without the body then it must be immortal. But there are a great many things in books 3–18 that are hardly even hinted at in this argument. So as a sort of overall introduction to the work and to what it's trying to accomplish, this argument isn't bad, but as a summary of the whole thing it leaves much to be desired.

But fortunately, vol. 6 also contains an “outline” or summary by the translators (pp. 319–26), which is really excellent. It brings out the internal structure of the Platonic Theology and covers all of its parts; and it is, of course, infinitely better than my attempts to summarize it in my blog post here.

There's also an interesting concordance table between the book and chapter numbers of the present edition and the page numbers in the original publication of the Platonic Theology in the 1576 edition of Ficino's collected works (Opera). What impressed me is that the whole Platonic Theology seems to cover only about 350 pages in that edition, so each page there must correspond to about two pages in the ITRL edition. I guess it must be a huge folio volume, like many in those days.

*

What to say at the end? Reading this was pretty hard work, and I'm glad that I finally reached the end. Even though I was able to agree with almost nothing in Ficino's book, I was happy enough to be impressed and charmed by the enormous castles in the sky that he and the other Neoplatonists had built, and by his ingeniousness and subtlety in coming up with endless numbers of arguments for the immortality of the soul. At the same time I also couldn't help being a bit disappointed to see how easily Ficino sometimes switches from the most sublime speculation about the highest principles to the most credulous nonsense about astrology, demonic souls and the like. How can it be that he and other Neoplatonists never at any point during the undoubtedly long process of dreaming up their massive and complex system of thought took a moment to pause and wonder: “Wait, how do we know if any of this is actually true?”

I can sort of understand that someone might, on the basis of abstract philosophical arguments, convince himself about the existence of souls or of god and the like; but when you start making ridiculously specific claims about the souls of the planets, aerial and aethereal bodies, etc. — shouldn't you then pause and wonder whether mere speculation can really prove that these specific claims (and not some other fairly similar but still slightly different set of specific claims) are true? Ficino himself often compares the opinions of various ancient philosophers about something and points out their disagreements; if n people disagree, then at least n − 1 of them are wrong; and isn't it then very plausible — isn't it at least something you should seriously consider — that in fact all n of them are wrong, and that none of them have the slightest clue about the subject they're discussing?

Wouldn't it have been better simply to say ‘we have no idea’ instead of spending what was probably years of work to write hundreds of pages of very cleverly constructed arguments that are nonetheless utter nonsense from start to end? Well, on second thought, perhaps it wouldn't have been. Ficino presumably liked what he was doing, so it's hardly fair to say that he was wasting his time. And we nowadays can at the very least marvel at his work, and no doubt some few people — people quite unlike me — can also engage with it more productively. So I guess I shouldn't complain after all. I don't mind his having written this book, and I don't mind my having read it. If I had to summarize my impressions in a single line, it would be the one from The Picture of Dorian Gray: ‘I didn't say I liked it. I said it fascinated me.’