Marsilio Ficino

Born Oct. 19, 1433, in Figline, near Florence; died Oct. 1, 1499, in Careggi, near Florence. Italian humanist and Neoplatonic philosopher; founder of the Platonic Academy of Florence.

Ficino translated into Latin works of Plato (published 1484), Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry, and Psellus, as well as some of the Areopagite’s works and treatises from the hermetic literature. In his commentaries on these works and in other works, such as Platonic Theology—On the Immortality of the Souls (1469–74, published 1482; latest edition, vols. 1–2, 1965) and On the Christian Religion (1476), he developed a philosophical system that constituted an original interpretation of Neoplatonism (including the concept of emanation) and the mystical teachings of late antiquity in a spirit of concordance with the major doctrines of Christianity. The true worth of man, endowed with the capacity for cognition and with free will, is in his divine origin, the immortality of the soul, and the ability for uniting with god at the highest level of contemplation (“divine madness”). Characteristic of Ficino is the importance given to earthly beauty, the contemplation of which he regarded as a step toward the highest mystical contemplation. Ficino considered the historically existing religions and religious philosophical doctrines as stages in the development of a universal religion.

Ficino furthered the revival of Platonism and the struggle against scholastic Aristotelianism and had a significant influence on the development of the philosophy of the Renaissance and the 17th and 18th centuries.