Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM 33
theologians’, which included Hermes Trismegistus, an Egyptian priest and nearcontemporary
of Moses. The Hermetic corpus—like the other documents
comprising the ancient theology, a Greek forgery from the early Christian era—
was translated by Ficino, who thought that it contained a gentile revelation
analogous to that granted to the Jews. This quasi-Mosaic wisdom, which had
been transmitted to Plato via Orpheus, Pythagoras and other venerable figures,
helped to account for the similarity between Platonic doctrines and those of the
Old Testament. 99 But Plato had not only followed the Mosaic law, he had
foretold the Christian one. 100 All this made Platonism an ideal gateway to
Christianity, especially for those intellectuals who so admired pagan antiquity
that they could not be convinced by arguments based on faith alone. 101
Aristotelianism, pace Thomas Aquinas and George of Trebizond, had been
unequal to this formidable task, for on those two crucial issues —the immortality
of the soul and the creation of the world—it had failed to provide solid
philosophical support for Christian dogma. One had therefore to turn instead to
Platonism.
Early humanists like Bruni had looked primarily to the Phaedo for Plato’s
demonstration of immortality. So too did Ficino, but he found further proof in
the Phaedrus (245C–246A), where Plato puts forward the thesis that the soul, as
the self-moving principle of motion, moves and hence lives perpetually. 102 The
centrality of this issue for Ficino’s synthesis of Platonism and Christianity can be
seen in his major philosophical treatise, Theologia platonica de animorum
immortalitate, ‘The Platonic Theology of the Immortality of Souls’. Maintaining
that in order to accomplish the goal of our existence as human beings, which is
the eternal contemplation of God, our souls must be immortal, he produced
fifteen different philosophical arguments which established conclusively, on the
basis of reason rather than Christian dogma, that the soul survives the body. 103
Ficino’s primary philosophical authorities were Plato and the Neoplatonists, but
he believed that Aristotle too had supported the doctrine of immortality, although
in a vague and confused manner. Ficino had been persuaded by Themistius and
other ancient Greek commentators on Aristotle, as well as by Bessarion, that the
two philosophers were in essential agreement in most areas. 104 Aristotle’s
ambiguous presentation of this doctrine, however, had given rise to two
erroneous interpretations, both ‘wholly destructive of religion’: Alexander of
Aphrodisias’s belief that the soul was mortal and Averroes’s contention that
there was only one rational soul for all mankind. 105 The best way to combat these
pernicious opinions was to go back to the pristine Platonic source from which
Aristotle’s muddled teachings derived.
No such reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle was possible on the issue of
creation, since Aristotle had declared the world to be eternal, while Plato had
produced in his Timaeus a Greek counterpart to the Book of Genesis. Yet
although Plato’s description of creation was in agreement with the Mosaic
account, Ficino questioned its congruence with Christian theology. 106
Recognizing that Plato, as a pagan living long before Christ, was necessarily