Plato's Academy in Florence and its thought leader

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:55

It was not an official legal institution and was not tied to the state or church. The Platonic Academy in Florence is a free community of free people, formed from different strata, having different professions, who came from different places, who are in love with Plato, neoplatonism, Filosofia Perennis.

Ecclesiastical representatives (bishops, canons), and secular persons, and poets, and painters, and architects, and republican rulers, and the so-called businessmen of that era gathered here.

The Platonic Academy in Florence (photo below) acted as a kind of brotherhood of versatile talented individuals who later became famous. These include: Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano, Michelangelo Buanarotti, Pico de la Mirandola, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Francesco Catania, Botticelli, etc.

So, in this article we will talk directly about the brotherhood of geniuses, whichwas named "Plato's Academy in Florence" (leader - Ficino).

Prerequisites for its creation

The impulse for revival has been brewing for a long time. Despite the fact that the 12th - the middle of the 17th centuries is considered to be the time limits of that era, nevertheless its culmination, the apotheosis falls on the 15th - 16th centuries. The center was Italy, more precisely, Florence.

At this time, she was in the very depths of European secular and cultural life. It was there that people arrived from Germany in order to study art and science. In Paris, innovations from Florence riveted the attention of professors at the Sorbonne, who regarded them almost as a "new gospel".

The important role that this city played in the era under consideration was described by R. Marcel. He believed that it was worth recognizing the absence of conditions for this kind of revival elsewhere. It was Florence - as the center of humanism, the center of light - that was able to attract all the we alth of the human spirit without exception. It was the place where the most precious manuscripts were collected, where one could meet eminent scholars. In addition, Florence was identified by him with a giant art workshop, where everyone contributed their talent.

Thus, there are no questions left about why it was the Platonic Academy in Florence, led by Ficino, that showed the world unique geniuses who made an incomparable contribution to various areas of our life with their works.

Athens of the West

So called Florence becauseafter the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, the cultural and spiritual riches of the ancient world flocked there. From a single "mystical stem" a unique phenomenon appeared both in the history of the culture of Italy and Europe as a whole, called the "Plato Academy in Florence". Ficino, the Platonic philosopher, led it. Another name for the academy is the "Platonov family", although it had a short, but rather brilliant history of its existence. The well-known rulers of Florence, Cosimo de Medici and his grandson Lorenzo, significantly helped this.

A Brief History of the Platonic Family

The Platonic Academy in Florence was founded in 1470 by the aforementioned Cosimo. The peak of prosperity falls on the reign of his grandson Lorenzo Medici, who is a member of it. Despite the short-lived flourishing of the academy (10 years), it had a significant impact on the culture and thought of Europe. Plato's Academy in Florence inspired the most famous thinkers, artists, philosophers, scientists, politicians, poets of his era. It was not just a meeting place for highly spiritual, talented and intelligent people. It can be said with certainty that the Platonic Academy in Florence is a brotherhood of like-minded people, the criterion for uniting which was the dream of a new, better world, a man, a future, so to speak, a golden age, worthy of attempts at revival. Many call it philosophizing, and sometimes even a way of life. A specific state of consciousness, soul…

Plato's Academy in Florence, whose ideological leader- Ficino, creates a new spiritual climate, thanks to which models (ideas) were developed and deployed, which are still recognized as the main ideas of the era. The legacy left by the "Platonov family" is colossal. The Platonic Academy in Florence is the bearer of what is called the myth of the Renaissance. It can be said that her story is the story of a Great Dream.

Plato's Academy in Florence: M. Ficino

He was both a philosopher, and a scientist, and a theologian, and an outstanding thinker of the Renaissance, who had a significant impact on the evolution of philosophy in the 17th - 18th centuries.

Marsilio was born near Florence (1433-19-10). He studied Latin and Greek, medicine, philosophy. Early enough, he showed interest in Plato (his school). The patronage of Cosimo Medici and his successors played a significant role in the fact that Ficino devoted himself to scientific knowledge.

In 1462 he was recognized as the ideological leader of the Platonic Academy in Florence, and in 1473 he became a priest, holding a number of church posts of high rank. His life was interrupted in Careggi, near Florence (1499-01-10).

Ficino's Honored Works

Marsilio owns incomparable translations into Latin of Plato and Plotinus. Their complete collections in Western Europe (published in 1484/1492) were widely demanded until the 18th century.

He also translated other Neo-Platonists, such as Iamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus Diadochus, etc., treatises of the Hermetic Code. Popular were his outstanding comments onPlatonic and Plotinian writings, and one of them (to the Platonic dialogue called "Feast") became the source of a large number of discussions about love among thinkers, writers, poets of the Renaissance.

According to Marsilio, Plato regarded love as a spiritual relationship between so-called human beings, which is based on their original inner love for the Lord.

Plato's theology of the immortality of the soul

This is the most important philosophical work of Ficino (1469-74, 1st edition - 1482). It is a metaphysical treatise (sophisticated), where the teachings of Plato and his followers are presented in accordance with existing Christian theology. This work (a highly systematic work of precisely Italian Platonism for the entire Renaissance) reduces the entire Universe to 5 fundamental principles, namely:

• God;
• sky spirit;
• centered sentient soul;
• quality;
• body.

The main theme of the treatise is the immortality of the human soul. Ficino believed that the task of our soul is contemplation, which ends with a direct vision of God, however, due to the rare achievement of this goal within the Earth, its future life should be accepted as a postulate, where it reaches its destiny.

Ficino's famous works in religion, medicine and astrology

Widely popular was such a treatise as "The Book of the Christian Religion" (1474). CorrespondenceMarsilio is a rich source of historical, biographical information. Most of the letters are in fact philosophical treatises.

If we consider other works that are devoted to medicine, astrology, we can single out "Three Books on Life" (1489). Marsilio Ficino is one of the leading thinkers of the emerging Renaissance, significant representatives of Renaissance Platonism.

Ficino's Perception of God

According to Erwin Panofsky, his system is somewhere in the middle between scholasticism (God as the transcendence of the finite Universe) and the latest pantheistic theories (God is the identity of the infinite world). Like Plotinus, he understands the Lord as the inexpressible One. His perception of God boils down to the fact that the Lord is uniform, universal. He is a reality, but not a primitive movement.

According to Ficino, God created our world, “thinking of himself”, because within its framework to exist, to think, to desire is all the same. The Lord is not in the entire Universe, which has no boundaries, and therefore is infinite. But at the same time, God is in her because he fills her, while not being filled himself, since he is fullness itself. This is how Marsilio writes in one of his dialogues.

Ficino: the last years of his life

In 1480-90s. Marsilio continues to study "pious philosophy". He translates into Latin and comments on Plotinus' Enneads (1484-90, published in 1492), Porfirian works, as well as Iamblichus, Areopagite, Proclus (1490-92),Psella and others.

He has a strong interest in the field of astrology. In 1489, Ficino published a medical-astrological treatise en titled "On Life", after which a conflict was brewing with the higher clergy of the Catholic Church, more precisely, with Pope Innocent VIII. And only serious patronage saves Ficino from accusations of heresy.

Then in 1492, Marsilio writes a treatise called "On the Sun and Light", which is published in 1493, and the following year he completes the interpretation of Plato's dialogues. The life of the leader of the "Platonic family" ended for commenting on the work "The Epistle to the Romans" (Apostle Paul).

Plato's Academy in Florence: Landino

He was a professor of rhetoric. Even in his youth, Cristoforo showed himself in a poetic competition (1441). Landino was a friend and adviser to Ficino. Cristoforo is recognized as the first of the most famous commentators on Virgil, Dante, Horace. He directly publishes the great Dante, thanks to him the world learns about another dream (care) of the academy: to rehabilitate this poet, to do everything so that people recognize him as one of the incomparable poets, geniuses who deserves veneration in the same way as Virgil, other creators of the ancient world.

Cristoforo records a number of conversations at the Platonic Academy, which is why they have come down to our times.

Landino, with his outstanding treatises, makes an incomparable contribution to such a problem as "the ratio of active life to contemplative life" - the first of the main questions,which were actively discussed by the philosophers of the Renaissance.

Finally, it is worth recalling that the article considered an outstanding community of like-minded people of the Renaissance, known as the Platonic Academy in Florence (thought leader - Marsilio Ficino).