Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM 31
analyses of themes—metaphysical and epistemological as well as moral—which
ran through the entire corpus.
Humanists quickly began to take account of Ficino’s work, which inspired new
interpretations of classical literature. Cristoforo Landino (1425–98) used Ficino’s
philosophical ideas in his exegesis of Vergil’s Aeneid, which he saw as a
Platonic allegory of the soul’s journey from sensuality and hedonism,
symbolized by Troy, to a life of divine contemplation, represented by Italy. 88
Ficino was himself influenced by humanists, sharing many of their prejudices
about contemporary scholastics, whom he referred to as ‘lovers of ostentation’
(philopompi) rather than ‘lovers of wisdom’ (philosophi). Like Bruni and
Poliziano, Ficino accused so-called Aristotelians of not understanding the texts
they professed to expound, reading them as they did in barbarous medieval
translations. He also displayed a humanistic distaste for the logical nitpicking to
which scholastics were addicted, leaving them little time, he felt, for more
serious philosophical endeavour. 89
Not that Ficino was a stranger to scholastic Aristotelianism. His early
university training in logic, natural philosophy and medicine gave him a
thorough grounding in Aristotle, Averroes and Avicenna, not to mention more
recent writers such as Paul of Venice. Although he soon turned against most of
the ideas and doctrines associated with this tradition, it left a lasting impact on
his terminology and method of argument: there is a definite scholastic feel about
the presentation of most of his treatises. 90 De vita libri tres (1489), Ficino’s most
popular work, contains many scholastic elements. Book II, on methods of
prolonging life, borrows liberally from the thirteenth-century English Franciscan
Roger Bacon; Book III deals with medical astrology, as transmitted to the
medieval West by Arabic thinkers, and also develops a theory of magic based on
the doctrine of substantial form elaborated by Thomas Aquinas and other
scholastics. 91 Even in his Platonic commentaries scholastic ideas often make an
appearance: his defence of the superiority of the intellect to the will in the
Philebus is taken verbatim from Thomas. 92
Although significant, this scholastic strain in Ficino’s work was overshadowed
by ancient Neoplatonism. The philosopher whom he most revered after Plato
was Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, whose Enneads he translated and
commented upon. He also translated works by Proclus, Iamblichus, Porphyry and
Synesius, all of whom helped to shape his understanding of the Platonic
corpus. 93 By promoting Neoplatonic interpretations, already ventilated to a
certain extent by Bessarion, Ficino altered the Western perception of Plato,
transforming him from a wise moral philosopher into a profound metaphysician.
It was Plotinus who first systematized Platonic ontology, dividing reality into
a series of hierarchical levels of being or hypostases, extending from the highest,
the transcendent One, which was above being, to the lowest, matter, which was
below it. This metaphysical scheme was taken over, with various modifications,
by the later Neoplatonists, who used it, as Plotinus had done, to explain the
deepest layers of meaning in the dialogues. Proclus, for instance, saw the