Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Today's topic is humanism and Neo-Platonism. We begin with Marsilio Ficino (1433--99), who received the support first of Cosimo and then of Lorenzo de Medici; his Neo-Platonic philosophical interests characterized the latter half of the fifteenth century. Ficino founded in Florence a Platonic Academy, modeled on the ancient Athenian Platonic Academy, both of them places for aristocratic types to gather and converse. This was a model of education different from the formalized curriculum that was found in the universities, and it played an important role in translating and promoting Greek literature.
In 1453, the city of Constantinople fell to the Turks, and as a result, Italy was full of Greek refugees. These included many scholars, who were much in demand as teachers of Greek. Believe it or not, Greek studies became wildly popular among the aristocracy, kind of like a fad. The reconciliation of ancient and Christian thought that had been so difficult for Petrarch was achieved here.
Neo-Platonism represents a return to speculative philosophy, but of a different sort from that found in the universities, which had been based on Aristotle. I should tell you something about Plato, an Athenian philosopher who lived from 428--348 B.C. He was a student of Socrates and Aristotle's teacher, best known for his theory of forms. The underlying insight here is that what is intelligible (intuited through the mind) is more real than what is intuited through the senses. We perceive through the senses, but what we see is only a copy of what is ultimately real. The job of the philosopher is to ascend from the visible, physical world into the realm of the intelligible. The idea, or form, is the essence of a thing, which makes it what it is.
Platonism is compatible with Christianity at many levels, particularly in its other-worldly focus. St. Augustine in the late 4th century would find the Platonic philosophers to be the most helpful in his own religious odyssey. While I don't want to dwell overly much on labels, I consider the Neo-Platonists to be humanistic in terms of their interest in ancient literature, and in their concern about the impact of these ideas on the lives of human beings (as opposed to speculation for its own sake).
There is a marked contrast between Ficino and Pico on the one hand and the political focus of the earlier part of the fifteenth century on the other. By the middle of the century, power in Florence was more or less monopolized by one family, the Medici. Until 1434 they had been in exile, but when in that year they were recalled, the patriarch Cosimo became the de facto ruler of Florence from behind the scenes. The forms of republican government were still in place, but no one held office or made policies without Cosimo's blessing. He maintained this power until his death in 1464. From 1464 to 1469, Cosimo's son Piero took over, but was a much weaker ruler. Then the dashing Lorenzo the Magnificent became the leader, ruling until 1492. Things went downhill after that: from 1492 to 1494 Lorenzo's son, another Piero (the name must be unlucky!) was run out of town following a devastating invasion by King Charles VIII of France. It was Lorenzo who presided over the Golden Age of Florence, a splendid period during which Lorenzo overextended the Medici bank in his patronage of artists and philosophers.
Pico della Mirandola (1463--94), a generation younger than Ficino, taught in the Platonic Academy. He died just as the French were invading Florence. He was a dashing figure; in his youth he abducted an unhappily-married noblewoman with whom he was in love. He carried forward Ficino's attempts to show the underlying truth binding the world's greatest philosophical and religious insights together. He was a great syncretist (think of the term "synchronize"), incorporating Persian, Hebrew, and Arabic sources with Christian and Jewish ones. His 900 Theses were a compilation of wisdom from all these varied places. This obviously got him into trouble! He wanted a public disputation, which is the way scholars in the medieval universities handled the introduction of a new thinker's conclusions. The Oration you're reading for today is a prologue to this.
One prominent, legendary figure who is introduced in this reading, and whom you should know about, is Hermes Trismegistus, an Egyptian, believed (falsely) to have been in communication with Moses. Scholars called him a magus, and became interested in sympathetic magic, based on a sense that the universe is linked symbolically, from the material to the spiritual world. White magic is a means of manipulating these relationships to promote beneficial outcomes. Medieval and Renaissance thinkers believed that the universe is alive, with angels constantly bringing messages from God to man and vice versa. Trismegistus was believed to have written a textbook on magic (the magi are men who gain knowledge from God). Plato himself wrote of demons as intermediaries between God and man. Renaissance Platonists believed in them as evil forces as well, as we might note from Pico's reference to black magic. Good magic involved the manipulation of symbols: herbs, talisman, scents, gems. The planet of Saturn, for example, was believed to have ruled scholars ("saturnine" means prone to depression, probably the reason why we scholars are such a somber lot). The planet stands for all that is cold, slow-moving, sympathetic to heavy metals, and melancholy. Ficino was frightened of this planet, and who could blame him?! Sapphire is its gem.
Music could be used as part of magic to attract benevolent impulses. The idea behind sympathetic magic is that these symbols attract forces that are already inherent in natural objects. Black magic, on the other hand, attempts to manipulate demonic powers. Ficino was a doctor who practiced astral medicine, linking parts of the body to signs of the zodiac. For the Neo-Platonists the connection between mind and body extended to the universe as a whole. Magic thus could be considered a kind of pious meditation.
One major idea that occurs in Pico's Oration is that of the Great Chain of Being: God has placed everything in an ordered hierarchy, from the lowest heavy metal to the highest angelic intelligence. Man is at the center, but according to Pico he is in no fixed place. This concept of the chain of being was eventually ruptured with the Scientific Revolution, and we and our thought world lie on the other side of that great divide.
Marsilio Ficino begins his commentary on Plato's Symposium with a comparison of the two Venuses, the heavenly and the earthly, which leads me to show you Titian's famous protrayal of Sacred and Profane Love. The sacred Venus is the nude, not needing the earthly trappings of the elaborate clothing the profane Venus wears. She is draped only with the white of purity and the red of heavenly passion, and holds aloft a lamp. Yet the earthly Venus is not to be despised; she is the partner to the heavenly love. The two are seated on a tomb, into which the Cupid between them is reaching. Love thus takes us out of our earthly life and into the world to come.
There is one other character mentioned who is important, Alcibiadis, who is a youth of aristocratic background and a follower of Socrates. This young man is a rather rambunctious type, who stumbles into the party in a state of inebriation after it is well along, and tells a story about his attempt at seducing Socrates. His desire to possess the older man in an erotic encounter was thwarted by Socrates' godlike self-control, in spite of the fact that Alcibiadis is an extremely desirable man with a beautiful, well-proportioned body.
The frankly homoerotic substance of Platonic love in general and the Symposium in particular can be disturbing not only to cultural conservatives, but also to those who are concerned about a culture that seems to exclude women altogether. Ancient Athens was a place where citizen-women were kept tightly confined to their homes except for certain specified occasions. Athenian men socialized with one another but did not include their wives. Instead, they had female "companions," high-class prostitutes who were the only women allowed to interact freely with men. Wives were expected to be chaste and obedient. When the Florentines found themselves inspired by the example of Athens, they also tended to imitate the Athenians in their relegation of women to the background.
Homework and Panel Questions:
Laurel Carrington carringt@stolaf.edu
Most recent update: January 23, 2008