Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM 29
sent to Gaza for comments. Gaza, although identified by George as one of the
Platonic conspirators, thought of himself as an Aristotelian and had earlier
written two tracts against Plethon, one refuting his concept of substance and the
other answering his uncompromising determinism. In the second work Gaza
attempted, following a long-established Byzantine tradition, to reconcile the
views of Plato and Aristotle, demonstrating that the Stoic-inspired determinism
postulated by Plethon had been rejected by both philosophers. 78
In the comments which he sent to Bessarion, Gaza set out his Aristotelian
critique of the hyper-Aristotelianism of George’s Comparatio. Such a corrective
was necessary, he said, because George lacked ‘all understanding of Aristotle’s
language and subject matter’. Similar charges had been levelled against Gaza
himself by George in his blast against Gaza’s ‘perversion’ of Aristotle; it was
now time to settle old scores. 79 Gaza focused on the two issues which were at the
centre of the debate about the relationship between classical philosophy and
Christianity: the doctrines of creation and immortality. On the first, he showed
that Aristotle had not, as George claimed, believed in creation ex nihilo but had
maintained that the world was eternal, as indeed had Plato, although with far less
clarity than Aristotle. The problem of immortality was more complex. Gaza
admitted that the Averroist doctrine of the unity of the intellect was difficult to
refute on philosophical grounds but pointed out that Aristotle had never
explicitly endorsed it; on the other hand, he had never given any indication that
he supported the notion of personal immortality. Given, however, that the
expectation of just rewards and punishments in the afterlife is essential for the
maintenance of public and private morality, Gaza argued that we should adopt
Plato’s belief in immortality, even though it is not capable of rational
demonstration. 80
A decade later Bessarion published his own refutation of the Comparatio,
which appeared in a Latin translation so as to reach the same large readership as
George’s work. The aim of Bessarion’s treatise, In calumniatorem Platonis, was
to defend Plato against the calumnies which threatened to destroy his reputation
among Christians and also to damage the reputation of his calumniator by
revealing the shoddy scholarship on which his work was based. Following up
Gaza’s claim that George censured Platonic doctrines which he could no more
understand c than some rustic fresh from tilling the fields’, Bessarion gave a
practical demonstration of George’s ignorance and incompetence by pointing out
over two hundred errors, philosophical as well as linguistic, in his translation of
the Laws. 81 But while Bessarion wanted to lower George’s standing, he had no
desire to harm that of Aristotle, whom he respected as a philosopher and whose
Metaphysics he had translated. Like Gaza, he accepted the Byzantine position
that there were no fundamental differences between the two philosophers,
although Bessarion tended to follow the ancient Greek commentators in ranking
Plato, the supreme metaphysician, higher than Aristotle, the supreme natural
philosopher and logician. 82