Research Catalog

Title

Marsilio Ficino as reader of Plotinus : the Enneads commentary / by Stephen Gersh.

Author

Gersh, Stephen

Publication

• Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2024]
• ©2024

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Series Statement

History of metaphysics : ancient, medieval, modern, 2666-9307 ; volume 5

Uniform Title

History of metaphysics: ancient, medieval, modern ; v. 5.

Subject

• Ficino, Marsilio, 1433-1499. Commentary on Plotinus
• Plotinus. Enneads
• Neoplatonism

Note

• "Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plotinus' Enneads was published in Florence in that culturally and politically important year for European history of 1492. When Ficino came to write this work, he was obviously faced with a choice of two possible methodologies to be contrasted or combined: first, the composition of a dialectical analysis or summary of the given text as a more or less isolated unit; second, the writing of a similar project but also permitting or promoting intertextual engagement with either Platonic or Christian materials. That he clearly chose the intertextual option is indicated by his programmatic statements in the praefatio and exhortatio and also by his execution of the project as a whole. If Ficino had chosen the narrowly dialectical approach, he would have produced a document that risked being seen as a set of footnotes to the main work of Plotinus himself; by actually choosing the intertextual option he opened up a passage towards a creative conceptual expansion in many directions of what is stated in a more preliminary or merely suggestive manner in the Enneads. It is because of this choice especially that it is now worth presenting a thorough study of Ficino's commentary: this for the first time and after more than five hundred years."--Preface, page xiii.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 525-546) and indexes.

Contents

Acknowledgements -- Citations of the Plotinus Commentary --- Preface -- General Introduction: The Commentary on Plotinus' Enneads -- Excursus 0: The Problem of Ficino's exhortatio -- Part 1 Analogy and Trinity. Plotinus and Christianity ; Ficino's Logic of Analogy ; Excursus 2: Substance and Quality ; The Trinitarian Analogue -- Part 2 From Ontology to Agathology. The Structure of Soul ; The Unembodied Soul ; The Embodied Soul ; Transmigration and Embodiment ; Sensation ; Intellect and Ideas ; Soul's Choice between Good and Evil ; The Threefold Reversion ; Ascent to Beauty ; Ascent to the One and the Good ; Excursus 11: Daemons and Soul -- Part 3 Matter, Reason, Spirit. Matter ; Excursus 14: Potency and Act ; Ratio ; Excursus 15: Non-formal Ratio ; Spirit -- Epilogue.

Call Number

JFE 24-2902

ISBN

• 9789004701113
• 9004701117
• 9789004701892 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2024015071

OCLC

1430653382

Author

Gersh, Stephen, author.

Title

Marsilio Ficino as reader of Plotinus : the Enneads commentary / by Stephen Gersh.

Publisher

Leiden ; Boston : Brill, [2024]

Copyright Date

©2024

Description

xvi, 558 pages ; 24 cm.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

History of metaphysics : ancient, medieval, modern, 2666-9307 ; volume 5

History of metaphysics: ancient, medieval, modern ; v. 5.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 525-546) and indexes.

Summary

"This book represents the first ever systematic philosophical study of Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plotinus' 'Enneads' (first published in Florence, 1492), this work of Ficino being arguably as definitive for the Florentine thinker's later work as the Platonic Theology was for his earlier. Publication of the present study uniquely illuminates the extent to which Plotinus had always been the crucial influence over Ficino's revolutionary projects of introducing Platonic thought based on original Greek sources to western Europe, correcting certain features of late medieval and Renaissance Aristotelianism, and laying the foundations of a new Christian Platonism. The study can be read both as an independent introduction to Ficino's later philosophy and as the complement to the first modern edition and translation of the Commentary on the Enneads itself also by Stephen Gersh (I Tatti Renaissance Library, 2017)"-- Provided by publisher.

Other Form:

Online version: Gersh, Stephen. Marsilio Ficino as reader of Plotinus Leiden : Brill, [2024] 9789004701892 (DLC) 2024015072

Research Call Number

JFE 24-2902