Platonism

PLATONISM. - For ancient Greek Platonism, see the entry ACCADEMIA (I. Greek Platonism). Here we shall treat: I. Platonism in the Fathers; II. Platonism in the Middle Ages; III. Platonism in the Renaissance.

I. PLATONISM IN THE FATHERS

Among not a few writers of the patristic era, especially the Greeks, Platonism enjoyed exceptional favor. While Aristotle is the "physicist" or even "the atheist," Plato is "the philosopher": in the very sense that the Fathers give to "philosophy," not as pure theoretical speculation, nor as inquiry into the structure of the universe, but as the science that discovers the norms of life, shows man the way to happiness, frees him from slavery to sensible goods, and raises him to the contemplation of higher realities. According to Socrates' reply to Glaucon in the Republic (V, 475 e), "the true philosophers... are the lovers of truth, who strive to contemplate it." Plato, for the very reason that he is a philosopher (in this sense), is "the most theological among the Greeks" and in a certain sense a precursor of Christianity.

1. Meaning of Platonism in the Fathers

The imprecision and the mythical form with which Plato had clothed not a few of his doctrines lent themselves to different interpretations; and already among the first disciples, starting with Xenocrates, opposing doctrines appealed to Plato. The doubt advanced by the New Academy concerning the existence of immaterial beings is referred without hesitation to the founder of the school (Cicero, De oratore, III, 18, 67). Such skepticism, because of the consequences it entailed in the moral field, provoked lively opposition (v. the indictment of Numenius against Arcesilaus and his successors, in Eusebius, Praep. Evang., I, XIV, ch. 6 ff.: PG 21, 1200 B ff.). At the beginning of the 2nd century A.D., on the contrary, through influences that remain obscure, the syncretism that bears the name of Middle Platonism considers the founder of the Academy above all as the theorist of the existence of God and of the immortality of the soul, the master who teaches how to live well and to make oneself like God, through contemplation and union with him. This point of view could certainly avail itself of Plato, especially of the Plato of the last period, in the Sophist, Philebus, Timaeus, Laws. But it is only in Middle Platonism that an affirmation such as that of St. Augustine can find justification: "Non dubitat (Plato) hoc esse philosophari amare Deum" (De civit. Dei, VIII, ch. 8: PL 41, 233). The Platonism of which there is a trace in the Fathers is that of Plato, but first of all Middle Platonism, and, later, the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Porphyry and Proclus.

It must further be noted that such Platonism did not exclude the influence of other philosophical systems. Like Middle Platonism, so Neoplatonism drew elements from diverse sources: Socrates, Heraclitus, the Ionians, the Pythagoreans, Aristotle (v.); for moral doctrines, in large part from Stoicism (v.), which sometimes passed into the Fathers through Philo or Plotinus.

2. Principal representatives

The Fathers and ecclesiastical writers of the first centuries who most underwent the influence of Platonism are: a) the apologists of the 2nd century: St. Justin, Athenagoras cite the Dialogues, but know them, it seems, only through florilegia (J. M. Pfättisch, Der Einfluss Platos auf die Theologie Justins des Märtlers, Paderborn 1910). The influence of the "Platonists" is far more perceptible on the Alexandrians: Clement (S. Meifort, Der Platonismus bei Clemens Alexandrinus, Tübingen 1928) and Origen (cf. the Index of the Koetschau edition); and, in the 4th century, on Eusebius, Methodius of Olympus, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius; it is not entirely absent in St. Athanasius and St. Basil. b) Among the Latins Plato was almost unknown. Nevertheless, St. Jerome's statement should not be taken literally: "Quanti Platonis vel libros novere vel nomen? Viz in angulos ottosi eos senes recolunt" (Comment. in Epist. ad Galatae, I. III, ch. 5: PL 26, 401 B). St. Augustine is certainly among the Fathers who made the most use of Neoplatonism (cf. L. Grandgeorge, St Augustin et le néoplatonisme, Paris 1896; Ch. Boyer, Christianisme et néoplatonisme dans la formation de st Augustin, ibid. 1920). c) In the 5th century mention should be made of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Nemesius, Claudianus Mamertus, Synesius (cf. H. Eibl, Augustin und die Patriotik, VIII: Christliche Neuplatoniker des V. Jahrhunderts, Munich 1923); and above all the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite.

3. Aspects of the influence of Platonism

They can be specified as follows: a) there is first of all a certain vocabulary, a choice of expressions and images: philosophy considered as the search for the "invisible," a science that is also "love," and of which "union with God" is the supreme term. Together, the body compared to a "prison," to a "burden"; souls "weighed down" in their flight by matter; the necessity of escaping from "down here" and tending "up there"; and again a certain way of understanding the "kinship" of souls with God, "contemplation" and "purification." b) Consequently, the persuasion that the "true world" is not that of sensible things, but that of immaterial beings. It is in this persuasion that Augustine saw the principal and almost sole cause of his errors overcome (Conf., V, ch. 12, 9). His meditations on the condition of the angels (cf. De Gen. ad litteram) take up motifs of Neoplatonic speculation on the intelligible world. c) The belief in Him who gives consistency to all things, since, not involved in becoming, he is the absolutely simple, the One, the Monad that is at the same time the Good in itself; everywhere present, because all things participate in him, and yet different, because he does not pass into anything that proceeds from him, but remains, identical to himself, in need of no others. A transcendent principle, therefore, source of being and of the intelligible that is beyond every being and every intelligible, beyond science, and yet light of the intellects, end and supreme good of every thing. Concerning God, Neoplatonism has felicitous expressions that the Fathers made their own: in a certain way formally definitive if detached from a context that, for lack of a doctrine of divine personality and freedom, preserves a tendency to monism (v.). d) Since every participated effect is inferior to its principle, there are in the structure of the world different degrees of imperfection, to the extent that individual beings distance themselves from their source. Since, moreover, effects resemble their cause and follow it "without the distance being too great," the "descent" is accomplished harmoniously through intermediaries, the lower reaching the higher; and, since the first principle is also the ultimate end, every thing returns to God from whom it derives. This cyclical view of the world, provided it is integrated with the affirmation of the freedom of the creative act, was reconcilable with the Christian conception of the origin and end of creatures. Through St. Augustine and the Pseudo-Dionysius, it became an important part of scholastic philosophy (cf. Durantel, St Thomas et le Pseudo-Denis, Paris 1919). e) The human soul, in what it has of highest and at the same time most intimate, is a "divine plant," similar to God, capable of reaching him. This is man's destiny: he exists for a dependence on infinite being, and therefore finds himself in finding God, loses himself in losing him. It is in contemplation that this union with God is accomplished. But it is necessary that, just as the One is above every intelligible, in contemplation the intellect not only detach itself from the sensible world, but also from itself, in order to reach the mystical union, which is not science, but "epignosis," spiritual intoxication. These Platonic themes were not used in the exposition of Christian doctrine except after being rethought and, as it were, vivified by a new spirit. Where the due corrections were lacking, imprecisions, incoherences and errors were not avoided.

4. Difficulties of Platonism

a) Platonism is not merely belief in an immaterial world more real than the sensible world. It tends to admit that the object of thought is in reality such as it is in thought, and to hold that the elements which reflection discovers as co-constituting finite being are really separable. Hence, Tertullian thinks, the aeons of the Gnostics: « Inde neones et formae nescio quae et trinitas hominis apud Valentinum: platonicus fuerat » (De praescriptionibus, VII: PL 2, 22 A). That tendency furthermore contained a danger for the unity of composite beings and in particular of man and of the soul. For a « Platonist », man is the soul, and in the soul what matters is the higher part, the nous. From this there followed, in spirituality, an asceticism of separation. Contempt for matter and the illusory attempt to free oneself from it gave rise to not a few false mystical tendencies and exercised a harmful influence on others. b) The theological error known under the name of Apollinarianism likewise derived from the Platonic trichotomy. « There are some — says Nemesius — and Plotinus is among them, who, holding the intelligence distinct from the soul, maintain that man is composed of three elements: the body, the soul and the intelligence. Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, followed in their footsteps, and on this foundation he built the rest of his doctrine » (De natura hominis, 1: PG 40, 504 A). In Jesus Christ the divine Word took the place of the intelligence. By this path the step toward Monophysitism (v.) was easy. c) Similarly as regards the Trinitarian dogma. Petavius does not hesitate to see in Arius « an authentic Platonist » (Dogmata theologica, II, de Trinitate, I, I, chap. 8 § 2). The question is debatable. But since the Arian heresy regarded the generation of the Word as a creation and laid it down as a principle that the One cannot immediately produce anything but one single and unique being, and, therefore, through it, the rest of the universe (cf. St. Athanasius, Contra Arianos, orat., 2, n. 24: PG 26, 200 A), it was in line with « Platonic » speculation and had to conceive the Trinity as a descending hierarchy of hypostases, in the manner of Numenius and Plotinus. From the very beginning of speculation on the Word, among the first apologists and the Alexandrians, Platonism was a temptation to subordinationism ([v.] cf. Sum. Theol., 1ª, q. 32 a. 1 ad 1: « Nos non ponimus Patrem et Filium secundum substantiam differentes: sed fuit error Origenis... et Arii, sequentium in hoc Platonicos »). d) Platonism, by positing separation from matter as the first condition for attaining divine truth, stood opposed to the Christian dogma in what is most essential to it: the Incarnation of the Word and the Revelation, through it, to men of the mystery of God. What is most Christian is at the same time what is least Platonic. e) One therefore understands the condemnation of Platonism by certain ecclesiastical writers, otherwise known for their habitual severity. « I sincerely regret — declares Tertullian — that Plato has been the seasoning of all heretics » (De anima, 23: PL 2, 680 f.). The condemnation, however, does not concern Plato alone, since, in general, « the philosophers are the patriarchs of the heresies » (ibid., III: 651 A-B). St. Jerome will write to Heliodorus, evoking the day of Judgment, when « this foolish Plato will appear with his disciples » (Epist., XIV, 11: PL 22, 554).

5. Conclusion

In the analogies of expression and of thought between Platonism and nascent theology, more than one historian has believed he could discover a ground for dependence. Harnack affirms: « they approach one another so closely as often to be confounded » (Dogmengeschichte, I, append. 3; Der Neuplatonismus, 4th ed., Tübingen 1909, p. 824). M. Heinze admits a penetration of Neoplatonism into the dogmas (art. Neuplatonismus, in Protestant. Realencyclopädie, 3rd ed., III, p. 783). E. Bréhier affirms:

« It is one and the same evolution which, in the first five centuries, advances pagan thought from the practical problem of interior conversion in a Seneca or an Epictetus to the refined theology of Plotinus and of Proclus, and Christian thought from the spiritual and interior Christianity of St. Paul to the dogmatic theology of Origen and of the Cappadocians: it is difficult not to discern the same factors in this transformation » (Histoire de la philosophie, I, p. 491). This is an error. Even when they make extensive use of Plato, the Fathers do not derive from him the rule of their faith. In Plato they found a type of speculation, an impulse of thought, affinities, at times indeed exaggerated, in the way of understanding man's destiny and his relationship with God. But the substance of their doctrine and the conceptual determinations of the dogma are sought elsewhere. Their explicit declarations are a clear confirmation of this. St. Augustine affirms: « Apud Platonicos me interim quod sacris nostris non repugnant reperturum esse confido » (De civit. Dei, VIII, chap. 4, 9 and 10: PL 41, 231-35). Even when he speaks as a Platonist, he is first of all a Christian: « This is quite clear: I shall never depart from the authority of Christ » (Cont. Acad., III, chap. 20, 43: PL 32, 957). Similarly already St. Justin: what he preaches are « the teachings received from Christ and from the prophets who preceded him. They contain the whole truth, whereas in the philosophers it is only partial and participated » (Apol., I, 23: PG 6, 364 A). Origen himself in the De principiis, a work largely speculative, affirms that « illa sola credenda est veritas quae in nullo ab ecclesiastica et apostolica discordat traditione » (I, 1: PG 11, 116 B). He always intended to have no masters but Jesus Christ and the Apostles (Cont. Cels., I, 42; III, 47: PG 11, 776 A, 981 A, 1017 A). In the school of Origen, as St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, his disciple at Caesarea, relates, the teaching consisted above all in the interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures (Oratio panegyrica, 15: PG 10, 1093 f.). If, in ethics and metaphysics, Origen advised recourse to the philosophy of the Greeks, it was in order to draw from it « what can serve as a propaedeutic to Christianity » (Epist. ad Gregorium, I: PG 11, 88 A). Pascal will say: « Plato to dispose one to Christianity » (Pensées, ed. Brunschvicg, Paris 1897, n. 219). This « preparation of the soul », which Platonism can furnish (« suffragatur religionem vera », says St. Augustine), derives above all from the fact that it believes in metaphysics. For the great current of thought that appeals to Plato, sensible things, however beautiful, are but the lowest degrees of a ladder whose summit is lost in the luminous mystery of God. And the soul truly tends to unite itself with God, whose height always transcends it. In reality the ultimate conclusion of the Platonic itinerary should be the recognition of the inadequacy of human thought before the Mystery and the hope for a revelation of the supreme truth.

Renato Arnou

II. PLATONISM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Platonism in the Middle Ages had various expressions in Byzantine culture, in Arab culture, and in the Latin West.

1. The Byzantine East

The fact that there was no need to translate the writings of Plato and the Platonists in order to read them explains why the tradition of Platonic thought remained alive in the Byzantine East throughout the whole Middle Ages, down to the fall of Constantinople. Nevertheless, when the speculative fervor of an Origen (v.), of the great Basil (v.) and of the two Gregories, Nazianzen (v.) and of Nyssa (v.), was succeeded by the theological systematization of John Damascene (v.), the ardor for Platonism gradually waned, while Aristotelianism gained ground, so that one must come to Arethas, a disciple of Photius, to see the revival of the cult of that Plato whom George Hamartolos, their contemporary, regarded, as Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius had before him, as a precursor of Christ. But it is above all through the work of Michael Psellus (v.) that Plato once again became the greatest philosopher and the one closest to Christianity. Along with the writings of Plato, those of Porphyry (v.), of Proclus (v.) and of other Neoplatonists came into honor, and Byzantium became the center from which Platonism radiated toward the East, into Armenia and Georgia and into the Byzantine provinces of Italy. Psellus's school had a large following: John Italus and Michael of Ephesus, Eustratius of Nicaea and Michael Italicus, called the "second Plato," continued its spirit, links in a chain that extends down to Gemistus Pletho (v.) and to Card. Bessarion (v.).

2. The Muslim World

The Arabs came under the influence of Greek culture not directly from the Byzantines, but from the Syrians, after the conquest of their country and of Persia (642-640). Destitute of science, they threw themselves avidly upon the rich Greek encyclopedia of which the schools of Nisibis, of Gundishapur and of Edessa were the depositaries. Under the caliphate of al-Ma'mūn or shortly thereafter they came into possession of a twofold translation of the Timaeus and were able to read in Arabic the Republic, the Laws and the Sophist with the commentary of Olympiodorus, the Apology, the Crito and the Phaedo. In addition, there was translated into Arabic the Synopsis that Galen had made of certain Platonic dialogues such as the Cratylus, the Sophist, the Statesman, the Parmenides, the Euthydemus, the Republic, the Timaeus, the Laws, and various Neoplatonic writings of which the Muslim philosophers made extensive use. Among the latter, of particular importance, because of the influence they exercised on Islamic thought, are the Book of the Five Substances of Pseudo-Empedocles, the so-called Theology of Aristotle, an extract from books IV-VI of Plotinus's Enneads, which P. Henry considers the work of Plotinus himself, and the Book of Pure Goodness, an extract from Proclus's Elements of Theology and later translated into Latin under the title Liber de causis. A decidedly Neoplatonizing tendency is found in all Muslim philosophers from Persia to Spain before Averroes (v.). And particularly in al-Fārābī (v.), who composed a paraphrase of Plato's Laws and also a writing, recently discovered (Klibansky, op. cit. in bibl., p. 39), on the tendency of Plato's philosophy and that of Aristotle. Averroes himself, who in his great commentary had set out to free Aristotle's thought from every foreign element, not only left a paraphrase of Plato's Republic, but also, in his interpretation of Aristotle, was himself seduced, just like Themistius (v.), by genuinely Platonic motives in formulating both the thesis of the unity of the possible intellect (De anima, III, comm. 5; Destr. destruct., I, dub. 8) and that of the copulatio with the agent intellect (De anima, III, comm. 36).

Closely akin to Arab Neoplatonism is the Jewish Neoplatonism that derives from it. Avicebron (that is, Šēlōmōh ibn Gēbirōl, 11th cent.) in his Fons vitae, which exercised so much influence on the thought of Christian Scholasticism, alludes to Plato (even if it is not rather an error for Plotinus) where he speaks of a spiritual matter as the subject of all created forms. But this doctrine had already been disseminated by the Book of the Five Substances of Pseudo-Empedocles and by Ibn Masarrah, who lived more than a century earlier in Spain. From al-Fārābī there also derives the Neoplatonizing interpretation of Aristotelian thought in the Mōrēh nēbhākhīm of Moses Maimonides (v.). Neoplatonic elements are equally evident in cabalistic speculation, into which G. Pico della Mirandola (v.) wished to be initiated.

3. The Latin West

At the time of the Carolingian renaissance, among the Latins only the fragment of the Timaeus translated by Calcidius was known (Cicero's translation was by then almost unknown), accompanied by his commentary. Nevertheless, the indirect action of Platonic, or rather Neoplatonic, thought never ceased, transmitted with the patristic heritage of Augustine and Ambrose, and with the translations of certain writings of the Greek Church Fathers. To these must be added the translations of the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius (v.) by the work of Hilduin and of Scotus Eriugena (v.), who also translated the De hominis opificio of Gregory of Nyssa and the Ambigua of Maximus the Confessor (v.). Eriugena's great work, De divisione naturae, is a bold and powerful synthesis of Christian thought with Neoplatonic speculation. Alongside these channels of transmission of Platonic thought, one must not forget Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae (especially meter 9 of book III), nor Macrobius's commentary on the Somnium Scipionis, nor the De deo Socratis and the De dogmate Platonis of Apuleius and the Noctes atticae of Aulus Gellius and the sixth book of Virgil's Aeneid with the gloss of Servius, works all of which continued to be read in the Christian schools of the West. And in particular in the school that takes its name from the abbey of Chartres during the 12th century. Here the Timaeus was several times glossed by William of Conches (v.), who had proposed to comment on Macrobius as well. From the reading of these works, and from the benefit that certain writers of this period drew from them for their commentaries on the first chapters of Genesis, derive certain typical theories such as that of the world soul identified with the "spirit of God" that "brooded over the waters" (Gen., 1, 2, according to the Hebrew text and ancient versions prior to the Vulgate). This doctrine is inserted by Theodoric of Chartres (v.), the younger brother of Bernard whom John of Salisbury (Metal., IV, 35) declares "the most perfect of the Platonists," into a bold theory that tends to establish between the Christian triad and the Neoplatonic triad (Together, Nous and Psyche or Entelechy) a perfect correspondence, indeed, one may say, identity.

Shortly after the middle of the 12th century, and precisely in 1156, two of the most important Platonic dialogues, the Meno and the Phaedo, were translated from the Greek by Henry Aristippus, archdeacon of Catania. But the translation did not at first obtain the diffusion that it began to have toward the end of the 13th century. Far wider diffusion, on the other hand, was obtained by the two translations of Nemesius's De natura hominis, made by Alfonso, bishop of Salerno, and by Burgundio of Pisa, both of them shortly after that of the Phaedo. Nemesius's writing exercised a strong Platonic influence on the Scholastics of the first half of the 13th century, which was very soon checked by the predominant Aristotelianism (v.). Certain citations that were believed to derive directly from Plato originate instead from Nemesius.

Another indirect source of the schoolmen's knowledge of Plato are the Aristotelian writings, in which the polemic against Platonism is unceasing. If St. Augustine had saved Plato's and Plotinus's "ideal world" by placing it in God, Platonism was definitively defeated on the question of the relations between soul and body. Although patristic thought had rejected Gnostic and Manichaean dualism, it nonetheless did not conceal a certain propensity for Platonic dualism, which opposed the substance of the soul to the substance of the body. In general the Fathers seemed to shrink from the Aristotelian concept that makes the soul the act or entelechy of the body, fearing that, as some declared with Plotinus, such a doctrine compromised the immortality of the soul. But the profound meaning contained in the dogma of the resurrection of the flesh prevailed, and the concept of the indissoluble unity of the human individual ended by prevailing over the Platonic concept that makes the soul the guest or the prisoner of the body. To define dogmatically Christian thought concerning the relations between body and soul, the Aristotelian formula was adopted that makes the soul the immediate and substantial form of the human body, against every residue of dualism (v.).

But despite this defeat of Platonism, other Platonic motifs, inherited from the Augustinian tradition and from the Neoplatonizing Peripateticism of al-Fārābī and Avicenna (v.), continued to exercise their seduction on the spirit of certain schoolmen, as on the author of the Summa philosophiae, published by L. Baur (Beitr. zur Gesch. d. Philos. d. Mittelal. 9 [1912], pp. 275-643), on St. Bonaventure, whose doctrine of knowledge consciously welcomes Platonic elements, and on St. Thomas himself, who commented on the De divinis nominibus of Pseudo-Dionysius and the Liber de causis, whose source he discovered in Proclus's Elementatio theologica. But above all on St. Albert the Great, who said (Metaph., I, tr. 5, cap. 15): « Et scias quod non perficitur homo in philosophia nisi ex scientia duarum philosophiarum Aristotelis et Platonis ». Besides the many direct citations of the Timaeus and of Calcidius's commentary, he also cites the Phaedo, the Meno, the Phaedrus, the Gorgias, the Laches, the Republic and the Laws; but these are indirect citations from Macrobius, from Nemesius, from Eustratius or from Aristotle. Nevertheless in the De causis et processu universitatis, in the unpublished commentary on the De divinis nominibus and in his commentaries on Aristotle he shows that he had assimilated the whole thought of Arabic "Peripateticism," that is, the doctrines of the Neoplatonizing commentators of Aristotle, which he opposes to the interpretation of the "Latins." A contemporary of Albert was his Flemish confrere William of Moerbeke (v.), who translated a part of Proclus's commentary on the Parmenides and the Timaeus, the Elementatio theologica of Proclus himself (of which the Liber de causis is held to be an extract or free abbreviation); furthermore the three opuscules, also by Proclus, De providentia et fato et eo quod est in nobis, De decem dubitationibus circa providentiam and De malorum subsistentia; and also Themistius's paraphrase of the De anima, Simplicius's commentary on the De caelo, and an important fragment of Philoponus on the third book of the De anima.

All this new, genuinely Neoplatonic literature was used by the group of those German Dominicans who might be called the continuators of Albert the Great's work, namely Ulrich Engelberti of Strasbourg (v.), Dietrich of Freiberg (v.), Berthold of Mosburg (v.) and Master Eckhart (v.). Dietrich in particular makes extensive use of Proclus's Elementatio, of which Berthold left a diffuse commentary, preserved in a Vatican manuscript and in a codex of Balliol College, Oxford. In Eckhart Platonism reaches the vertiginous heights of Parmenidean thought. The influence of these men acted profoundly on later German thought: John Tauler and Henry Suso or Seuse clearly bear the mark of Eckhart's teaching; Dionysius Rickel, also called Dionysius the Carthusian, from the Thomism he professed as a young man, increasingly oriented himself toward the Platonism of the Albertist current, and Nicholas of Cusa had likewise read Berthold of Mosburg's commentary on Proclus's Elementatio.

Another thinker who used the new Neoplatonic literature in William of Moerbeke's versions was the latter's compatriot and friend, Henry Bate of Malines, author of the Speculum divinorum et quorumdam naturalium, divided into 23 parts of which only two have so far been published. Bate's purpose is to demonstrate the agreement between Aristotle and Plato; and this he does in the 4th, the 8th and the 12th part of his great work, which in many respects anticipates by a century and a half Ficino's Theologia platonica. Around the middle of the 15th century, Bate's Speculum, transcribed for Pope Nicholas V, became part of the Vatican Library, where it still is, and from it Pico della Mirandola borrowed it, having the copy made that figured in his library.

III. PLATONISM IN THE RENAISSANCE

What distinguishes the Platonism of the classical Renaissance from that of Henry Bate is a direct knowledge of all the dialogues of Plato, of the Enneads of Plotinus and of numerous other Neoplatonic writings. Dante recalls the Timaeus, but it is very doubtful that he had read it; and to explain the influence that certain great Platonic concepts certainly had on his thought, the writings of Albert the Great, well known to him, would suffice. Petrarch (v.), on the other hand, not only knew the Latin Timaeus and the commentary of Calcidius, but also possessed a copy of the Phaedo and perhaps also of the Meno translated by Henry Aristippus (the copy of the Phaedo owned by him and taken from the exemplar bequeathed to the Sorbonne by Gerard of Abbeville [v.] forms part today of cod. lat. 6567 A of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, and has brief marginal annotations in his own hand; it had previously belonged to Jacopo Finucci da Castel Fiorentino). But Petrarch attests that he had also procured a fair number of Greek codices of Plato. The number of "sedecini vel eo amplius Platonis libros" (De ignor., cod. Vat. lat. 3359, f. 28ᵃ) almost certainly also includes the dialogues "in latinum versos aliquot nunquam alibi visos"; but even setting these last aside, the figure for the Greek ones is still considerable for that time. Except that Petrarch, who had set about studying Greek in order to be able to understand Plato, did not get very far in his knowledge of that language. Moreover, to penetrate into Plato's world he lacked an adequate philosophical preparation. He therefore had to limit himself to a rather generic knowledge of that world, derived in large part from Cicero, Apuleius and Augustine (v.), yet sufficient for him who never had to confront true speculative problems, and was rather tormented by moral restlessness. Hence even the shift of worship from Aristotle to Plato, in the Trionfo della fama, does not have that philosophical significance that is often attributed to it, but is rather an expression of a dilettante's sympathy.

Nevertheless Petrarch's example gave an impulse to the study of Plato, when the Greek codices of the latter began to flow into Italy and the humanists had learned Greek. A pupil of Chrysoloras (v.), Guarino followed his master to Constantinople, where he remained five years. Among the codices that he brought back, no fewer than five were of Plato. Codices of Plato were also brought back from Constantinople by Giovanni Aurispa (v.) and Rinuccio da Castiglione in the third decade of the 1400s; Antonio Cassarino around 1438 brought a large volume that seems to have contained all the Platonic dialogues. Other codices continued to arrive from the East even later, brought by Greek scholars fleeing before the advance of the Turks, and together with the writings of Plato there flowed in the Neoplatonizing commentaries on Aristotle (Themistius, Philoponus, Simplicius, Priscian of Lydia, etc.) and the works of the major Neoplatonists (Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus [v.]). The arrival of the codices was followed by translations. Leonardo Bruni (v.) alludes to a rough anonymous translation of the Republic; to this was added another in 1402 by Chrysoloras himself, too literal and in inelegant Latin. Umberto Decembrio, his disciple at Pavia, attempted to redo it, but only his son, Pier Candido, carried it to completion after 1437. A few years later that of Cassarino appeared. Meanwhile Bruni was translating the Phaedo (1405), the Gorgias

(1409), the Phaedrus, the Apology (1424), the Crito, the Epistles (1423-27) and part of the Symposium (1435). Later Cenoio de' Rustici translated the Axiochus, Filelfo the Euthyphro, Pier Candido Decembrio the Lysis, Rinuccio Aretino the Crito, Lorenzo Lippi the Ion, Poliziano part of the Lysis, and George of Trebizond the Laws, dedicating the translation to Martin V, and the Epinomis. But the glory of having turned the whole of Plato and a great number of Neoplatonic writings into elegant Latin belongs to Marsilio Ficino (v.).

The translations were followed by heated discussions concerning the interpretation of Platonic thought and its relations with the dominant Aristotelianism and with Christianity. Certain Byzantine Platonists who came to Italy contributed greatly to these discussions. First among them all was George Gemistus Pletho (v.). Before coming to Florence, to the Council that was to deal with the ending of the Greek schism, he had attempted in the Peloponnese, whence he came, a great social, philosophical and religious reform that was to have renewed the ancient Hellenic culture reconciled with Christianity by means of Platonism. Interpreting the ancient myths in a philosophical sense, as Plato and even more the Neoplatonists had done, he believed that the gods of Homer and Hesiod would still find a place in a renewed Christianity as the religion of all humanity. In Florence he did not find much agreement in this; but the ardor that he kindled for the philosophy of the "divine Plato" in the soul of Cosimo the Elder and of not a few cultivated Florentines would spread from Florence to the whole of learned Europe. In the spiteful polemic that George of Trebizond engaged in against Gemistus, Cardinal Bessarion (v.), formerly a pupil of the latter, intervened with a more pacific spirit, and in his work In calumniatorem Platonis marked out the main line of a moderate interpretation of Plato, generally followed by him who was the greatest representative of Florentine Platonism, namely Ficino.

An excellent translator, but a mediocre critic, Ficino nevertheless understood Plato as an "Atticizing Moses," as he had appeared to Numenius (v.), and while through the pseudo-Hermes Trismegistus he made Platonic theology descend from the wisdom of the Mosaic books, through St. Augustine he made it an anticipation of Christian theology. Much more original and more audacious than Ficino's is the Platonism of G. Pico della Mirandola (v.), who attempts the reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle, and therefore of Platonism with Christianity, from a higher point of view, ascending to the One in which all the differences of being are implied and annulled. From Ficino's school one usually derives, along with others, the Augustinian Giles of Viterbo (v.), who dared to undertake a commentary on the Sentences "ad mentem Platonis," still largely unpublished, which the author began in the early years of the 1500s, until he interrupted it shortly after 1512. But if he takes his starting point from Ficino, he several times attempts the audacities of Pico, without however reaching him. Curious in this work is the use of pagan myths interpreted philosophically. The example, both in Giles and in Pico, came from Gemistus Pletho. In this regard it should be noted that, through an impulse coming especially from this Greek Platonist, mythology was rehabilitated in the thought of the scholars of the classical Renaissance, and the old demonological interpretation, as well as the Euhemerist one, came to be replaced by the theory that in the gods of the Greco-Roman religion one discerns personifications of naturalistic and philosophical concepts. Thus the ancient divinities could find a place, if not actually in the Christian churches, as Pletho would have wished, at least in the poetic and literary world, and remain there peacefully until the age of Romanticism and beyond. From the Platonic Symposium commented on by Ficino draw inspiration the numerous dissertations and lucubrations on love that could be called a revival of the poetic disquisitions of the poets of the "dolce stil novo"; so true is this that even Guido Cavalcanti's canzone Donna me prega came to be remembered, discussed and interpreted again. The most savory fruits ripened on this subject are without doubt Bembo's (v.) discourse at the end of Baldassar Castiglione's (v.) Cortegiano and the Dialoghi d'amore of Judah Abarbanel, known as Leone Ebreo. The doctrine developed by the latter is determined in a broad cosmic vision, whose unity is formed by the love that binds all things to one another and is the principle of their developing and rising up to union with God.

Once it had entered the culture of the Renaissance, not even the most resistant Aristotelians managed to escape the influence of Platonism, especially through the commentaries of Themistius, of Philoponus and of Simplicius. Pomponazzi (v.) himself, who among the Aristotelians is perhaps the furthest removed from the spirit of the new humanistic and Platonic culture, had read all of Plato in good or bad translations, and once, commenting in 1513 on Book I of the Physics (ch. 31), he even goes so far as to defend him against a criticism of Aristotle: « In hoc mentitur (Aristoteles) attribuendo haec Platoni; quoniam ego vidi Platonem; non est verbum quod dicat ea quae sibi imponit Aristoteles » (Arezzo, Fratern. de' Laici, cod. 389, f. 34°; cf. Bibl. naz. di Parigi, cod. lat. 6533, f. 39°). The most notable fact is not so much the diatribes over the superiority of Plato and Aristotle as the attempts to reconcile them. In this connection a page of Francesco Piccolomini (v.), a Paduan Averroist, is characteristic: he (Universa philosophia de moribus, III, Venice 1583, ch. 20, 23) admonishes his contemporaries not to falsify the true thought of the two philosophers with strained interpretations and contaminations, but rather to seek their harmony inasmuch as the one completes the other. Probably he had before his eyes the figures of the two philosophers in Raphael's School of Athens. The rapprochement between Aristotelianism and Platonism in the Renaissance was greatly aided by Simplicius' commentary on the De anima, inspired by Iamblichus. Used by G. Pico della Mirandola and then by Nifo (v.) and by others, it was taken up by Marcantonio Genua (v.), a Paduan Averroist, and by his disciples. With Genua the strictest form of Aristotelianism, such as Averroism (v.) was, begins to break up and to be reabsorbed into Platonic philosophy. Characteristic in this regard is the example of M. A. Mocenigo. A disciple of Genua, Mocenigo in 1559 presented himself at a public disputation for the doctorate at Padua, on a considerable number of Paradoxa theoremataque, among which those are notable in which the fundamental Averroistic theses are conceived in the spirit of Simplicius' commentary. Ten years later, in the De transitu hominis ad Deum (Venice 1569), his Averroism has by now completely dissolved into Platonism.

The last among the Platonists of the 16th century worthy of note is Francesco Patrizi (v.) of Cherso. Having succeeded at the Studio of Ferrara Antonio Montecatino, who had designed a great work on the concord of Aristotle and Plato and had expounded the latter's Republic, Patrizi, who knew the whole Neoplatonic literature, from the Chaldean Oracles to Proclus' Elements of Theology and the so-called Theologia Aristoteli, attempted in the Nova de universis philosophia (Ferrara 1591) to order Platonic thought in an organic and systematic form so as to set it against the Aristotelian system, which was by then heading toward dissolution. But acute as he was, he lacked the impetus of a G. Pico and of a Leone Ebreo.

After him the spirit of Platonism continues to permeate modern philosophy, whether that of Bruno or of Spinoza, of Descartes or of Berkeley (Lockean empiricism is a close-fought polemic against the Platonic innatism renewed by the Cambridge school), of Malebranche or of Schelling, of Rosmini or of Gioberti; but it is a spirit that has by now freed itself from the letter; while philologists had to labor somewhat to disentangle the genuine thought of Plato from later incrustations.