Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

26 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
(1398–1481), who had translated Aristotle (Rhetorica ad Alexandrum) as well as
Plato (the Euthyphro and some of the Letters), did not turn to the dialogues when
writing his treatise on Platonic ideas but relied on the more accessible treatments
of the subject in Cicero, Augustine and certain Middle Platonic sources. 63
As in the case of Aristotle, it was the Byzantine émigrés who brought a new
depth to the study of Plato. Since Platonism was part of their educational
background, they were more capable of dealing with the entire range of Plato’s
philosophy, speculative doctrines as well as practical ethics and politics.
Argyropulos allowed a small Platonic element to seep into his university courses
on Aristotle and gave at least one private lecture on the Meno. 64 Even Aristotle’s
staunchest defender, George of Trebizond, had gone through a Platonic phase in
his youth and was later commissioned by Nicholas of Cusa to make a complete
Latin version of the Parmenides, only a portion of which was available in the
medieval translation. George, who needed the money, agreed with reluctance,
and in 1459 produced a reasonably accurate rendering of the text. 65
Eight years earlier George had made a far less successful translation of the
Laws and Epinomis, this time at the behest of Nicholas V—another offer he
could not afford to refuse, although his slipshod and distorted version may have
been an attempt to subvert the dialogue’s potential influence. After falling out
with the pope, 66 George transferred the dedication to the Venetian Republic,
suggesting in the new preface that the city’s founders must have read the Laws—
Greek, he pointed out, was spoken in Italy during the early Middle Ages—
because their government perfectly exemplified the mixed constitution described
by Plato in Book III (692–3): the Grand Council representing democracy, the
Council of Ten aristocracy and the doge monarchy. George’s real opinion of the
dialogue and its author is not to be found in the flattering words he addressed to
the Venetians but rather in some marginal notes which he wrote in his own copy
of the translation: ‘What shallowness!’ ‘Look at his arrogance!’ ‘The man should
be stoned!’ 67
These harsh remarks were inspired by George’s increasing fear that Platonism
would not only replace Aristotelianism as the dominant philosophy of the West
but would also be the springboard for a world-wide return to paganism. He
blamed Cardinal Bessarion and his accomplice Gaza for promoting Platonism,
but the éminence grise of this ruinous movement was, he believed, Bessarion’s
teacher, Georgios Gemistos Plethon (c. 1360–1454). 68 During the Council of
Florence (1439), a last-ditch attempt to reunify the Eastern and Western churches
in the face of the approaching Turkish menace, Plethon, a member of the Greek
delegation, had written a brief treatise, De differentiis Aristotelis et Platonis,
which compared the doctrines of the two philosophers to Aristotle’s great
disadvantage. The work was addressed to Westerners, both the minority who
were already convinced of Plato’s supremacy and the majority who, taken in by
the extravagant claims of Averroes, gave their preference to Aristotle. 69 Plethon,
who for many years had taught Platonic philosophy at Mistra in the Peloponnese,
discussed a wide range of topics—metaphysics, epistemology, cosmology,