yet philosophical style was nonetheless important to him.76 If Ficino did not participate in the above-mentioned epistolary controversies and disputations on Ciceronianism, his writings neglect neither to address the question of rhetorical personae nor to develop a particular philosophical style. As I pointed out in the Introduction to this book, Ficino employs a trope inspired by Plato’s Phaedrus in the preface to the 1495 printing of his letters, addressing the prefatory letter to his letters themselves, which he personifies as his children. On the first page of the volume, therefore, Ficino signals to his readers that his letters will be written in a Platonic style.
The fact that the Platonic philosopher and excellent Hellenist also received an education both in scholastic philosophy and in the Latin curriculum of the liberal arts in humanist schools in Florence should not be neglected in the present discussion.77 These latter two facets of his education are evident throughout his life. First, concerning his scholasticism, Ficino cites numerous scholastic authorities, and with the exception of so-called Averroists and Alexandrians, he usually does so positively. He regularly adopts scholastic terminology in his Latin prose, which demonstrates that he did not fear employing Latin as a lingua artificialis, but he also constantly returns to the Greek sources and demonstrates a certain willingness to critique scholastic neologisms and rethink their Latin prose in Platonic terms.78 For instance, in his epitome to the Euthydemus, Ficino critiques the terminological confusion of logic and dialectic present throughout the Middle Ages.79 More than just orthographic and terminological preferences lie behind Ficino’s critique of dialecticen, dialectica, and logica. In fact, there is a Platonic critique of syllogistic methods. Plotinus and later Neoplatonists argued that dialectic is the highest part of philosophy and not merely an external instrument to clarify its subject matter and formulate arguments, and in doing so differentiated themselves from most Stoics and Peripatetics.80 Ficino pairs dialectic with rhetoric and also distinguishes rhetoric from pure sophistry, which he often characterizes as magically enchanting or bewitching (fascinationis maleficae speciem) its audience’s mind by manipulating appearances instead of speaking truth. Ficino, however, stakes his claim on Platonic grounds. Dialecticen (the medieval arts of logic and syllogistics) concerns itself with terms, predicates, and propositions, and if not correctly used is also capable of approaching sophistry when it employs enthymeme. Dialectica or Platonic dialectic, conversely, concerns itself not with terms, predicates, and propositions as such but rather with the movement of the mind itself in analysis and synthesis, that is, the division and weaving together of the presence of intelligibles as logoi in the mind. Ficino’s argument closely resembles Plotinus’s in Enneads 1.3.4, where Plotinus explains that the discursive process of dialectic comes to rest in the quiet tranquility (ἡσυχία) of Plato’s noetic “Plain of truth” (Phaedrus 248b6), and leaves logic behind to busy itself by meddling in the affairs of propositions and syllogisms (πολυπραγμονοῦσα).81 Thus Ficino thought of dialectic as the philosophical or even metaphysical-theological capstone to the demonstrative and mathematical sciences.
Ficino’s commentary on Plato’s Parmenides once more places Latin neologisms under the light of Platonic metaphysics.82 When some Platonists speak about the triad of divine attributes being-life-intellect, Ficino explains, they not only demarcate concrete designations (being or ens, for example) from abstract ones (essentia), they also differentiate a third class, abstractions of abstractions (essentialitas), which push Latin as a lingua artificialis to its limits. There, Ficino notes, language seems out of place and even ludicrous.83 His point, however, is not to dismiss abstract neologisms altogether, nor to dismiss the triad of being-life-intellect. Quite the contrary: he frequently employs neologisms and the triad. To be more precise, in his commentary Ficino is observing Proclus’s remarks regarding the arguments of certain Platonists who claim that, since the first principle of all things—the One—is above the triad of being-life-intellect, which for the Neoplatonists was situated at the second hypostasis of Intellect, “it possesses within itself in some way the causes of all these things unutterably and unimaginably and in the most unified way, and in a way unknowable to us but knowable to itself.”84 These higher abstract neologisms demonstrate an attempt to designate what cannot be designated since they would speak from the perspective of the One. Ficino’s Latin neologisms speak more to language’s failure to assert and to its capabilities to negate. In short, the philosophical brevity of Neoplatonic dialectic begins to turn toward apophatic philosophy.
Turning to the second facet of his education and his relationship to humanistic rhetoric, Ficino employs his rhetorical training in various forms. For example, in addition to his philosophical occupations he taught the liberal arts, including oratorical composition and progymnasmata exercises, to some of the noble youth of Florence.85 It has been noted by past scholars that although his prose is polished, clear, and precise, Ficino does not often bother with the same kinds of ornate figures of speech as those used by his often more Ciceronian humanist contemporaries.86 Gianfrancesco Pico and Bembo noted that however much humanists tried to revive Cicero’s eloquence they would never hear him speak or see his features in person. They were acutely aware that although many wished to fashion Ciceronian personae, they could never fully achieve their aims, since an oratorical persona, as Cicero and other ancient rhetoricians explained, is not only formed by the style (elocutio) and narrative content (inventio and dispositio) of recorded speech but is made of the actual oratorical delivery. The absence of the persona of pronuntiatio and actio, that is, of the orator’s own voice and performance, thus led to important debates among humanists regarding their relationship to the past and concerning the fabrication of rhetorical personae.
Ficino’s approach to the recovery of Plato’s voice reveals similar preoccupations. Giovanni Corsi’s biography of Ficino exactly expresses this when Corsi explains that under Cicero’s influence Ficino desired to be able to speak to Plato and the Platonists face to face. It is of course a humanist commonplace to wish to speak with the ancients. To cite two famous examples, Petrarch was in the habit of writing that he would speak with Cicero and longed to converse with Homer and Plato, and Machiavelli described how at the end of the day he would dress in his best clothes to enter into conversation with the ancients.87 It is equally apparent, however, that Corsi is not simply drawing on current intellectual fashions but working explicitly with Ficino’s own writings to describe Ficino’s conversations and communions with Plato and the Platonists. Already in 1464, in the preface to his first Latin translation of ten of Plato’s dialogues, Ficino wrote to Cosimo de’ Medici: “As you saw already some time ago Plato’s spirit echoing with a living Attic voice in the text itself flew from Byzantium to Florence to Cosimo de’ Medici. So that he may discuss with him not only in Greek but also in Latin, it seemed to me worthwhile to translate some of the many things he says in Greek into Latin.”88 What at first sight comes across as a somewhat superficial humanist commonplace turns out in Ficino’s hands to be part of a sophisticated approach toward Plato’s texts.
In a passage from the preface to his commentaries on Plato’s dialogues, addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Ficino draws on the trope of Socratic serioludere to interpret Plato’s style of writing:
Meanwhile, while our Plato discusses often in a hidden manner the duty belonging to mankind it sometimes seems as though he is joking and playing. But Platonic games and jokes are much more serious than the serious things of the Stoics. For he does not disdain to wander occasionally through certain humble matters, if only gradually to guide his listeners, who grasp humble things more easily, to more elevated matters. With the most serious purpose he often mixes the useful with the sweet, by which with the modest grace of charming speech he may lure minds that are naturally prone to pleasure to sustenance with the bait of pleasure itself. And he often composes fables in a poetic manner, for in fact the style itself of Plato seems not so much philosophical as poetic. For he sometimes raves and wanders, as a vates, all the while paying no attention to a human order but to one prophetic and divine. And he acts not so much in the persona of a teacher as in the persona of a certain priest or vates, at times in furor but sometimes purifying others and seizing them similarly
