3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Volume Five: A Refutation of Averroes the Arab's Psychology (on the soul), October 31, 2008
This review is from: Platonic Theology, Volume 5: Books XV-XVI (I Tatti Renaissance Library) (Hardcover)
Marsilio Ficino's magisterial and ethereal tome on the Platonic Theology (On the Soul's Immortality), continues on in books XV-XVI (vol. 5), with a refutation of Averroes the Arab's theology of the soul and culminates with a positive exposition for the Platonic doctrines concerning the divinity and immortality of the soul. The debate is between the Italic Aristotelian scholia (the Averroists) and Ficino's resurrected Platonism, as he formulated it under the tutelage of the gens Medici at the Florentine Academy. Now it goes without saying, that the schools were, for the most part, polar opposites: the Averroists emphasized logic and unaided human reason in philosophy and thus were, generally speaking, secular and materialistic in their world-view. Marsilio Ficino's platonism insisted upon the role of divine revelation and religion, the arts and human reason in philosophy, in a tradition that was viewed as reaching back to, and becoming incarnate in, figures like Hermes Trismegestus and Moses, or Plato and Dionysius Areopagite, to name a few. The humanistic ideal--as one would find in Pico's Oration--of man's dignity in the world and his kinship the divine is also invariably stressed. Thus in Florentine Platonism, philosophy and religion overlap and are twin currents flowing from one truth. With the Latin Averroists philosophy and religion are two distinct systems.
Perhaps this quotation from Ficino's epistles (bk. 8, ep. 19) will help paint a picture of the divine mission that Ficino and his circle of Platonists felt they played in the succession and trasmission of the universal or perennial philosophy. So Ficino says, "We have been chosen for this work by divine Providence...so that when this Theology emerges into the light the poets [presumably, Lucretius and the Neo-Epicureans] will stop the irreligious inclusion of the rites and mysteries of religion in their stories, and the Aristotelians...will be reminded that it is wrong to consider religion...as a collection of old wives tales. For the whole world has been siezed by the Aristotelians and divided for the most part into two schools of thought, the Alexandrian [those who adhered to the ancient commentators, such as Alexander Aphrodisias] and the Averroist. The Alexandrians consider our intellect to be subject to death, while the Averroists maintain that there is only one intellect. They both equally undermine the whole of religion." Thus, the debate that Ficino is involved with here in this volume against the Averroists, is just a part of an entire religio-philosophic program, divinely ordained, that endeavored to bring the light of true philsophy and religion into world.
The view-point that Ficino challenges is Averroes' psychology [Medieval/Renaissance =study of soul/body composite and its relation to the cosmos and the Divine] which proposed that human souls are bound in unity by a single active Intellect, of which each man, the passive subject, merely participates in Intellect collectively in the mode of cognition. This implied that individual men do not posses, nor attain by merit, their own individual knowledge (apart from sensory data) but rather only as it is "loaned" to humanity through the operation of the active Intellect, in which the universal species of things inheres and can be known as the true objects of thought. Essentially, man is viewed as an instrument of the active Intellect, in the same way that planetary spheres, as passive subjects, are moved by and participate in, the active Intellect. Furthermore, Averroes attests that the body is the substantial form of the soul, as opposed to the soul being the form of the body. Ficino, for obvious reasons, could not tolerate Averroes psychology. For one, the denial of the individuality of intellective souls--which Ficino insinuates should be equivalent to the number of human beings--is an explicit denial of the individual immortality of the soul. For upon the death of the individual, according to Averroes, everything that constituted the individual's life experience (knowledge, memory, vocation etc.), died with the man along with their bodies, while that which was impressed upon their souls by the active Intellect, remained immortal.
But what kind of immortality, Ficino argues, is that which is not actually enjoyed by the individual? Human souls should necessarily be stamped with a personal identity and hold a particular role in the world-cosmos and certainly more so in the divine order of being, as would be characteristic of a loving God. To Ficino, Averroes' psychology is the destruction of the human identity and soul, since all the man could know for himself, throughout his life's duration, were the particular corporeal objects formed in the opinionative faculty (which nonetheless died with him), while the "real" universal objects were only known by the active Intellect and thus were not understood in themselves by the human soul. This only left an impersonal immorality to the "unicity" of human intellects--those grafted into the active Intellect--leaving only that portion of man's "borrowed" intelligence to be assimilated to the Author of its knowledge. In short, Averroes psychological system reduced the nobility of the human soul to a subservient role in the cosmic scheme, with an existence that is swallowed up in the oblivion of death--a pernicious doctrine to the Christian and Platonic traditions.
In response, Ficino champions the cause for the individual immortality of souls--that intelligence is bestowed upon souls as a gift from the Divine Mind and immortality is merited by the free exercise of will. Since God creates with intelligence and wills for souls to return to Him, it is the office of humanity to mirror those characteristics of God--to imitate God by being creative, to utilize intelligence to contemplate His Being and the Ideal Forms and to willfully embrace and mount the ascent and return to God. So, God creates the human soul as the substantial form of the body, with the intellect and will (the soul's wings) being integral components to the human soul. Moreover, the soul is not limited to the body during the term of its embodiment, for the best part of it (the intellective) as it contemplates God's being, is detached from the body and initiates itself in a divine union. So that when the intellective soul is engaged in the highest mode of contemplation, the soul is in a sense, here in the world and there in the hyper-cosmic sphere, at the threshold of God's being. Thus intellective soul is the "vehicle" which elevates itself, in union with Divine Mind, to the cosmic and hyper-cosmic spheres through contemplation; and on account of that contemplation, the soul becomes replete with true understanding (becoming one with the Ideal Forms) and realizes its innate linkage with the Divine and is assimilated to God. In a corporeal context, the intellective soul governs the body and the world, being supreme among all things on earth, through the application of the divine gnosis and the implementation of the practical virtues, making man a "god" on earth, in the same manner that the angels are "gods" of the celestial spheres. And further, the lower sensitive/appetitive soul operates for the life of the body--for generation and consumption--and is good, in itself, as long as moderated by the intellective soul. Therefore, the human soul is poised upon the median of divinity and mortality and may rise by virtue or fall by vice; thus it is the soul's duty to subvert the passions and the body to temperance so that the soul will ever-communicate with the Divine. It is hoped that this summary will help shed some light on this remarkable and complex work.
In addition, Ficino's exposition in this volume represents some of the central teachings of the Neoplatonists on the soul and its transcendant relationship with the One, also with elucidations on the nature and operation of the hyper-cosmic and encosmic gods, eudaimones and heroes. A wealth of citations are referenced, as well, which lead readers to central concepts in the Platonic dialogues that will spawn further inquery. [For further information, see Platonicus' reviews which are posted for volumes one, two and three on Ficino's Platonic Theology]
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Important Scholarship for the tri-transection of Pagan, Infidel & Christian Thought!, November 16, 2008
This review is from: Platonic Theology, Volume 5: Books XV-XVI (I Tatti Renaissance Library) (Hardcover)
The reviewer 'John the Platonist' has given lucid insight to the learned treatise on Platonic Theology (actually, all five volumes).
Simple mastery of Classical & Medieval Greek is required to do justice to the Platonic tradition.
This Renaissance version of 'divine' Truth is rooted in the Chaldaean Oracular & Magical Egyptian tradition.
'John the Platonist' has invited me to this web-site blog of his.
Resepctfully,
John E.D.P. Malin,
Cecilia, Louisiana 70521-0460
Information Contact: InformaticaMalin@gmail.com
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