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Ficino on the Exalted and Suffering Body: Comparing the Platonic Theology and On the Christian Religion
Get PDFTo what extent does Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic theology correspond to his Christian theology? This question, although too wide to grasp all at once, furnishes the inspiration for the following essay. Here I discuss the human body in the Platonic Theology — the human body as an intellectual helpmate, companion to the soul, and site of spiritual danger. I then consider the significance of the body in On the Christian Religion, Ficino’s major Christian theological statement. I show how the meaning of physical suffering in this latter treatise corresponds to the Platonic Theology and transcends it. I conclude the paper by arguing that physical suffering, for Ficino, embeds the Christian within the history of the Church
A perfect knowledge means a finite world
No full textInternational audienceThe world’s finitude is at the core of Johannes Kepler’s natural philosophy. In this article, I discuss the factors that go into his argument for finitude. My focus is on his conception of divine ideas and of human participation in these ideas. Here, Kepler owes much to Scholastic philosophy. I end the article with a brief analysis of his profound differences with Nicholas of Cusa regarding infinity and knowability
A hot mess : Girolamo Cardano, the inquisition and the soul
Get PDFGirolamo Cardano makes a number of surprising, even shocking claims about the soul in his De subtilitate, one of the most widely read works of natural philosophy in the sixteenth century. When he was finally investigated by the Roman Inquisition and the Index, these claims did not go unnoticed. This study will narrow in on three passages marked as heretical by the first Holy Office censor of De subtilitate. It will consider the Inquisition’s priorities and ask about materialism, determinism, and conceptual inconsistency in Cardano’s views on the soul. The study will give special attention to the claim made by Cardano that souls can be reduced to celestial heat. In addition to De subtilitate, several of Cardano’s other works will be considered for added perspective, especially Contradicentium medicorum libri duodecim
Logic, mathematics and natural light : Liddel on the foundations of knowledge
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'Qualis alio modo reperiri non potest' : a few words on Copernican necessity
Get PDFI will examine what counts as necessary in the Copernican world, primarily as presented in Book I of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543). In doing so, I will consider how Copernicus offers his system as an idea mundi, such that the intellectual vision of the astronomer converges with the divine vision of necessity. My reading here owes a particular debt to Georg Joachim Rheticus (1514–1574) and Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) and to the astronomical frontispieces of Oronce Fine (1494–1555). I also ask what necessities Copernican astronomy imposes on material bodies. I argue that Copernicus presents matter as perfect—perfectly incarnating geometry—at the cosmographical-astronomical scale. Material contingency, for him, arises only at smaller scales. My analysis of these issues extends to numerous points within Copernicus’s context and within the sixteenth-century reception of his work
An unfolding geometry : appropriating proclus in the harmonice mundi (1619)
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