Chapter 2 Matter as a Mirror: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance ...

Matter as a Mirror 75
his integrity: he only gazes at his own image. 87 Irigaray describes the implications
of this Platonic account of parthenogenesis:
Being has nothing that predates it, nor anything ahead that it
should aim for. Everything is already (in) Him. […] Flooding
the universe with the seeds he scatters everywhere. […] Thus,
every “being” […] can only try to mimic God, copy him more
or less well, for there is no other perfection to rely on. […]
There is nothing outside or even behind, that is not subject to
his designs. Everything is enclosed in a super-celestial gaze. 88
In accordance with this, Ficino maintains that matter, after being
shaped by the divine glance, represents divine unity according to its own
diminished capacity, in a “shadowy way.” Thus, matter is God’s first creation,
but that is not all: as God could have created the universe at any given time,
matter has always existed potentially, as the withheld divine gaze, so to speak.
Ficino then goes on to say that matter has no definite characteristics whatsoever:
it is neutral and malleable and can assume any given form. As universal
potentiality, matter is neither inclined towards being (because then it would
not need a higher forming power), nor towards non-being (because then it
would not obey the divine craftsman). The precarious relationship we have
already detected between soul and matter is transferred onto the relationship
of God to his shadow: disobedient matter poses an alarming threat to divine
omnipotence. 89 The idea that matter could become such an obstacle to the
divine is a direct result of the Narcissism involved in the process of creation,
which always conveys a solipsist fantasy of absolute power that does not tolerate
any opposition.
The evidence of the Theologia platonica is corroborated by Ficino’s
Philebus commentary in which the act of creation is again described as a Narcissistic
process in which God is mirrored in a shadow, matter, or otherness. 90
87 Actually, Ficino is in dire need here of stressing that nothing is given away, as the
contrary is true in his theories of vision: see infra.
88 Irigaray (1985) 329.
89 See Plotinus, Enneads, II, 9, 3.
90 Ficino (1975) 389: “Ideo communis materies velut umbra quaedam fugientem sequitur
deum. Forma vero in materia velut in speculo ex quodam benefico divini vultus aspectu
resultat.” See also Ficino (1975) 417: “Therefore universal matter, like some shadow,