Marsilio Ficino’s Arguments on Beauty and Love: A Case Study

• In Event: Ficino II: Ficino’s Methods of Composition

Abstract

This paper will provide a contextualised analysis of a set of hitherto unexplored Plotinian texts that Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) collected in one of his extant working notebooks −MS Riccardianus 92−and probably used as a textual basis for his commentary on Plato’s Symposium (1469). The passages preserved in this manuscript contain drafts of complex arguments on the themes of beauty and love that Ficino developed more extensively in his commentary. These arguments, which play a key role in Ficino’s philosophical thought, include his own interpretation of the major Neoplatonic theme of the deity as sun symbol set at the centre of a hierarchical structure of the universe, giving light and thus intelligibility to
things. The analysis of Ficino’s notebook will therefore provide further insight into the study of the genesis of his philosophical work.

Author

• Rocco Di Dio, Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Neo-Latin Studies