Influence of Plotinus On Marsilio Ficino S Doctrine of The Hierarchy of Being

THE INFLUENCE OF PLOTINUS ON MARSILIO FICINOS DOCTRINE OF THE
HIERARCHY OF BEING
by
Nora I. Ayala
A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of

The Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
Florida Atlantic University

Boca Raton, Florida
May 2011
THE INFLUE CE OF PLOTINUS ON MARSILIO FICINO'S DOCTRINE OF THE

HIERARCHY OF BEING
by
ora 1. Ayala
This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate's thesis advisor, Dr. Marina
Paola Banchetti, Department of Philosophy, and has been approved by the members of
her supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the Dorothy F. Schmidt
College of Arts and Letters and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Master of Arts.
SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:
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Clevis R. Headley, Ph.D.
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Clevis R. Headley, Ph.D.

Director, Liberal Studies
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ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to express my sincere thanks to those who were, have been, and are a part
of my life. I am who I am because of their unique gifts.
iii
ABSTRACT
Author:
Nora I. Ayala
Title:
The Influence of Plotinus on Marsilio Ficinos Doctrine of the

Hierarchy of Being
Institution:
Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor:
Marina Paola Banchetti, Ph.D.
Degree:
Master of Arts
Year:
2011
Marsilio Ficino provides the ground to consider Renaissance Platonism as a
distinctive movement within the vast context of Renaissance philosophy. Ficinos

Platonism includes traces of earlier humanistic thought and ideas from Neoplatonic
philosophers such as Plotinus, Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite. Ficino was able to
rebuild a traditional philosophy that, from the ancient Greeks to Plotinus, had established
the harmony between paganism and Christianity. Neoplatonism, characterized by
complex metaphysical, ethical, and psychological canons, provided the grounds for
Ficinos cosmological challenge to merge the cyclical aspect of the universe with the
religious notion of the soul, in order to secure its cosmic position. Ficino adopted Plotinus
hierarchy of being as a dominant component of his own thought. His formulations on the
iv
three hypostases and the movements of the soul allow him to develop his own hierarchy
of the universe, in which soul anchors the metaphysics of the structure and reaffirms its
ontological nature as immortal.
THE INFLUENCE OF PLOTINUS OF MARSILIO FICINOS DOCTRINE OF THE

HIERARCHY OF BEING
INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................1
CHAPTER I ....................................................................................................................6
Neoplatonism as a Philosophical Movement ................................................................6
Plotinus as a Neoplatonist: The Enneads .................................................................... 11
The Three Primary Hypostases (Enneads V. 1) .......................................................... 17
Soul ....................................................................................................................... 21
Intellect .................................................................................................................. 24
The One ................................................................................................................. 26
The One and the Theory of Emanation ....................................................................... 28
CHAPTER II ................................................................................................................. 35
Neoplatonic Heritage and Pseudo-Dionysius.............................................................. 35
CHAPTER III................................................................................................................ 51
Renaissance Platonism ............................................................................................... 51
Marsilio Ficino as a Renaissance Platonist ................................................................. 53
The Hierarchy of Being ............................................................................................. 54
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 78
BIBLIOGRAPHY ......................................................................................................... 82
vi
INTRODUCTION
If each of us, essentially, is that which is greatest within us, which always remains
the same and by which we understand ourselves, then certainly the soul is the man
himself and the body but his shadow. Whatever wretch is so deluded as to think
that the shadow of man is man, like Narcissus is dissolved in tears. You will only
cease to weep, Gismondo, when you cease looking for your Alberia degli Albizzi
in her dark shadow and begin to follow her by her own clear light.1
Marsilio Ficino, a Florentine priest who has been described as a combination of
scholar, philosopher, and magus, not only revived Plato for Renaissance thought but also
introduced into his own philosophy several Neoplatonic philosophers such as Plotinus,
Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite. His profound understanding of their metaphysics
provided him with a better understanding of pagan ideas, thereby facilitating his
reconciliation of Platonism with Christianity. His own vision of unity, however,
surpassed that of his philosophical ancestors in that it is a totalizing unity, in which the
universe is seen as a manifestation of the One, God, or the Good. His Platonic
evangelization has influenced European thought to the present time, most fundamentally
through his teaching that:
Marsilio Ficino, Meditations on the Soul: Selected Letters of Marsilio Ficino, trans. from the Latin by
members of the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, (Vermont: Inner Traditions
International, 1997), 15.
The human soul was immortal and unlimited, [which] links directly with the
unshakeable confidence and creative genius that so many of the giants of the
Renaissance expressed in so many fields. His view that the whole creation was
moved by love and inspired to return to God through His beauty was reflected in
the intense beauty of physical form that the masters of the Renaissance manifested
with such skill. His emphasis on the importance of human nature and the virtues
that lie within it gave support to a new direction in education. Ultimately it is the
practice of these virtues that leads to the discovery of the divine in man.2
Of all his commentaries, letters, writings, translations, and interpretations of
Plato, Plotinus, and other Neoplatonists, his own Platonic Theology is the most
influential work because it played a central role in the Lateran councils promulgation of
the immortality of the soul as a dogma in 1512.3 The Platonic Theology was written at
the beginning of the 1470s, a time during which Ficino finished the first epic translation
of Platos works, entered the priesthood, and tried to draft a unitary theological tradition,
and particularly a theological metaphysics. 4 It can be described not only as a summa
theologica, but also as a summa philosophica, and a summa platonica, an audacious,
sometimes problematic, endeavor to re-emerge ancient and late ancient philosophy for an
intellectual and governing elite, who were the Florentine equivalents of Socrates most
intelligent audience, with a style which imitates in Latin what Plotinus did in Greek,
Marsilio Ficino, Meditations on the Soul, xix.
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, trans. by Michael J. B. Allen with John Warden, Latin text edited by
James Hankins with William Bowen, Volume I, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), viii.
4
Ibid., ix.
approaching sublimity in a manner that is both, simple and rhetorically challenging. 5

Ficino considered his Platonic Theology his major and longest philosophical toil, his
masterpiece in which he developed his search for the existence of an afterlife and which
included notions of the mind, spirit, and body, reserving for the human soul a privileged
place in the hierarchy of Gods creation, appealing to medieval and scholastic theories
but mainly reviving ancient theosophical themes 6 which will foresee the predominantly
cosmological theories characteristic of the late Renaissance philosophers and
astronomers. Ficino formulates a hierarchy which is unity within plurality, an ordered
song which is both inside and outside the soul both as unitary self and as all things a
part becomes the whole, a whole of parts and in parts, in the world and yet in God as
God.7
Since Ficino is considered a Renaissance Platonist, the Platonic Theology
includes references to Plato and Plotinus but, as the names similarity to Procluss
Theologia Platonica insinuates, it is also a tribute to this last Neoplatonist, who carried
Plato into the Middle Ages. The subtitle On the Immortality of the Soul is exactly the
same subtitle as that of Plotinuss Enneads 4.7 which marks the clear indebtedness to
both Plotinus and Marius Victorinus, who translated Porphyrys compilation of the
Enneads into Latin. In his letter to Besarion, the Greek cardinal of Sabina, Ficino
describes Platos discussion on beauty in Phaedrus as referring to the beauty of the soul,
required from God, that is called wisdom and is compared with gold. When this gold
5
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, ix.
Ibid., x.
Ibid.
was given to Plato by God, it shone in him most brilliantly, because he was so pure in
heart.8 And he adds later that when that gold was first put into Plotinuss work, then
that of Porphyry, Iamblichus, and eventually of Proclus, the earth was removed by the
searching test of fire, and the gold so shone that it filled the whole world again with
marvelous splendor.9
It is clear that Plotinuss mystical formulations on the soul greatly influenced
Ficinos development of his own hierarchy of being and the role of soul from both
ontological and metaphysical perspectives. From the ontological perspective, soul is
considered immortal by creation and able to transcend death and, from the metaphysical
perspective, it is considered to have a twofold opposition of structures or natures. Based
on Plotinuss two assumptions, Ficino places the soul in the middle of his pentadic
structure, where it is located at the dividing line between the intelligible and the sensible
realms and is able to ascend toward the eternal realm through contemplation and also,
through energies and activities, to descend to the temporal realm. This privileged position
in the middle of the hierarchy enables soul to link the eternal to the temporal, to become
the microcosm that contains within man all the reflections of what is in the eternal realm,
and to sustain the metaphysics of the hierarchical structure.
The emphasis of this thesis will be the study of three different philosophies, which
are intimately connected, following a chronological order. Chapter I will discuss
Neoplatonism as the last great movement in ancient philosophy. The focus will be on
Plotinus and on the influential role of his treatises compiled as the Enneads, on the three
Marsilio Ficino, Meditations on the Soul, 82.
Ibid., 83.
hypostases of Being, on his theory of emanation, and on the nature of the soul. Chapter II
will focus on the medieval transition from the notion of the One to the notion of God. At
this time, Greek intellectual Christianity displayed a strong Platonic and Neoplatonic
influence, as seen in the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, commonly known as
Pseudo-Dionysius. The discussion will emphasize Pseudo-Dionysius works The Divine
Names, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, and The Mystical
Theology, in which the Neoplatonic aspect of his thought included mysticism. 10
Chapter III will discuss the philosophical thought of Marsilio Ficino who, while
translating Plato into Latin, read the Enneads and incorporated Plotinuss ideas into his
own and christianized Platonism by combining Christian and Plotinian ideas, all the
while developing his doctrine of the hierarchy of being. The influence of Plotinuss
hierarchy of being will be compared and contrasted to Ficinos, analyzing both
similarities and differences in detail, while acknowledging other influences on Ficinos
thought, such as Humanism and Christianity. This last chapter will concentrate on Book
III of his Platonic Theology, which is titled On the Immortality of the Soul.
10
Pauliina Remes, Neoplatonism, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 199.
CHAPTER I
Neoplatonism as a Philosophical Movement

The philosophical tradition of Neoplatonism thrived from the third century to the
sixth century CE in such intellectual cities as Alexandria, Rome, and Athens.
Neoplatonism originated in the thought of the philosopher Plotinus, who moved from
Alexandria to the capital of the Roman Empire and began teaching his own interpretation
of Platos philosophy. His numerous disciples included Porphyry, who exhibited such
originality that he ultimately bestowed on the movement an identity of its own. By the
time the Christian emperor Justinian closed the Athenian Academy in 529 CE,
Neoplatonic philosophy had expanded to Syria, Asia Minor, and Alexandria, as well as to
the birthplace of Platonism itself, Athens. Neoplatonism and Christianity co-existed at a
time when Christianity was the official religion of the empire, and were able to engage in
intensive but peaceful debate. The Neoplatonic school came to an institutional end when
the School of Athens was officially closed, but its philosophy survived in both pagan and
Christian contexts and influenced the thought of Christian intellectuals who had an
interest in philosophy and theology. Through these thinkers, Neoplatonism was able to
leave its long-lasting mark on Western philosophy.
Although the term Neoplatonism entails that this movement was primarily
influenced by Plato, it distinguished itself in several ways during the five hundred years
that separated Plato from Plotinus. As a matter of fact, two theories have been argued on
the applicability of the term. One branches from nineteenth-century German scholarship,
and bears no relation to the self-understanding of Plotinus and his followers, who, no
doubt, understood themselves as simply the spiritual and philosophical pupils of Plato.11
For them it was more important to prove Platos philosophy correct than to claim their
own originality. The second theory is that the name builds a false gap between the
Neoplatonists and the Middle-Platonists, ignoring the fact that there exists a continuity of
thought between Plotinus and the later Platonists. Because Plotinuss works survived the
test of time, unlike the others, there may be support for this last theory. Neoplatonism is
closely related to Middle-Platonism, which begins around 130 BCE and lasts until the
late-second century CE. This crucial and challenging period marks a return to a stricter
reading of Plato, combined with the doctrines of Aristotle, the Stoics, Pythagoras, and
synthesizing Platos formulation of the intelligible realm with Aristotles perfect intellect
or Nous, separated from the individual human intellects [thereby] rendering Platonic
forms as contents of the supreme intellect.12 But the most important aspects of
Neoplatonism, which make it unique in its approach to Platonism, are the following five
characteristics:
11
Pauliina Remes, 2.
12
Ibid., 5.
1. The formulation of the One, which is superior to the Nous or Aristotelian intellect,
as a first principle from which everything emanates and which is indefinable,
while the emanations are accessible by reason.
2. The multiple metaphysical levels proposed by Plotinus, which are more complex
than the Platonic idea of two different realms; one material, changeable, and
temporal and the other eternal, immaterial, and permanent. For Plato, the
empirical realm is just an imitation of the eternal realm, which is true reality.
3. The Platonic idea that the higher realm is prior, more perfect, simpler, and more
unified than the metaphysically lower realm is applied to a hierarchical
metaphysical system13which extends from perfect unity to the multiple
manifestations of the observable realm, in which the goodness of the higher level
diminishes further at each lower level.
4. The central levels of reality are both metaphysically real and intimately connected
to the human soul. Neoplatonists as metaphysical realists 14 believe that reality
exists independently from the human mind but also that reality inhabits in the
mind. Therefore, the complexity of thinking must coincide with the complexity
of being. Reality is thereby essentially minded or intelligible, that is both
intelligibly organized and penetrable to reason, as well as in some sense
essentially thought.15
13
Pauliina Remes, 7.
14
Ibid., 8.
15
Ibid.
5. The desire for wholeness, completion, and perfection belongs to the nonintellectual life. The motivation to continue life and existence that is observable in
nature responds to the vertical effort to achieve the perfection of its origin and to
rise, at last, towards the absolute unity of the source of the hierarchy. The
contemplative character of creation, where the created constantly looks upward
toward the creator or origin causes a tendency to return to the first principle. This
upward or vertical movement is one of the most distinctive features of
Neoplatonism.
Neoplatonism exemplifies the role that philosophy played in antiquity. Philosophy was
seen as a way of life of which the main task was to heal the soul. For Neoplatonists, the
healing of the soul was achieved through a journey to the inner self by internal
contemplation, an activity that was not contrary to reason but was a kind of intellectual
intensification.16 Plotinus considered the role of reason as important in the therapy of the
soul, but he located the spiritual and ecstatic experiences outside the rational faculty. The
later Neoplatonists, on the other hand, favored theurgy, the process by which man tries to
be god-like by trying to subdue the desires and passions of the body to the use of reason,
which was considered the most divine aspect of human nature.17
In Neoplatonism, philosophical studies were combined with religious practices in
which prayer and mystical rituals were also incorporated. Theurgy became a captivating
object of study of religion, religious practices, mysticism, and meditation. At the
Neoplatonic school, philosophical studies did not begin until the purification of the soul
16
Pauliina Remes, 9.
17
Ibid., 10.
had been achieved. Students became acquainted with the Pythagorean Golden Verses
followed by Aristotles Metaphysics as an introduction to philosophical matters
concerning nature and the sensible realm. While most Middle-Platonist believed that
Plato and Aristotle displayed some degree of harmony and philosophers previous to
Plotinus showed animosity towards Aristotle, Plotinus tried to portray Aristotles position
as conflicting and, therefore, tried to complement or substitute it with Platonic ideas. 18
After Porphyry, the notion that the two theories were compatible was accepted. Once the
student of Neoplatonism had reached clarity of thought and learned the art of
argumentation, Platos dialogues were then introduced, not in chronological order but in a
peculiar order that served the purpose of the schools curriculum. Special emphasis was
placed on the dialogues Timaeus and Parmenides, because both deal with metaphysics
and cosmological order. While the first of those offers explanation for the physical
aspect of Neoplatonism, the second of those establishes the foundation for the idea of the
One as a separate entity from being.
Several ancient philosophical schools had some influence on the development of
Neoplatonism. These were skepticism and stoicism which provided Plotinus with some
materialistic ideas that he adjusted to his non-materialistic philosophy. The Stoic
conception of the physical universe permeated by internal sympathy had an influence
on the way the Neoplatonists regarded nature and the hypostasis Soul as responsible for
the temporal and living unity of the cosmos.19 But it is also important to examine how
Neoplatonism related to the two most prominent religious movements prevalent in the
18
Pauliina Remes, 11.
19
Ibid., 14.
10
Roman Empire at the time; Christianity and Gnosticism. All of them had in common the
belief in one god or first principle, in the immortality of the soul and its return to the first
principle, in evil, prayer, and mystical experiences. The differences between them,
however, were based on the discrepancy between the simple Neoplatonic One, which
created out of necessity, and the anthropomorphic Christian God, and between the
Christian return to God through personal salvation and the Neoplatonic idea of an ascent
of the soul to achieve perfect goodness. Of the three movements, Neoplatonism was the
only one loyal to philosophical argumentation, in addition to its spiritual and mystical
characteristics.
Plotinus as a Neoplatonist: The Enneads

The philosophy of Plotinus provided an answer to the anxiety experienced during
the third century CE in the Roman Empire, in which twenty-nine emperors reigned
during a period of seventy years. Social and political unrest were provoked internally by
antagonists and externally by the hostility of barbarians, who threatened the stability of
the empire. The Stoics exhortation to accept reality as it was, in order to become
untouchable by the swings of fate, was no longer convincing. Therefore, a philosophy
which established that the freedom of the soul would not be achieved in the empirical
world but by ascending into an ideal realm gave credence to the idea that the political and
social unrest of society should not interfere with the souls ultimate aspiration.
Accordingly, we find an inspirational disregard in Plotinus for ordinary matters, and this
disregard and silence about them is the only tribute which Plotinus ever pays to the
turbulences which after all must have been an insistent enough fact in peoples livesbut
11
a formidable tribute it is, as it signifies the philosophers sense of powerlessness in regard

to the ordinary world.20 It seems that Plotinuss purpose as a philosopher was to chart
the insensible realm, the world that transcends sensory reality, and to live in it abundantly
despite the souls ties to the human body. His philosophy has its roots in the Hellenic
tradition, as he stated in one of his debates against the Gnostics. But although it does not
abruptly depart from his predecessors ideas, it is new in many respects to the point that
19th century scholars linked Plotinus to the beginning of Neoplatonism.
What we know about Plotinuss life and his school is known through his
biography, The Life of Plotinus written by his pupil Porphyry. In this text, Porphyry
prepares the reader for understanding Plotinuss treatises and his peculiar silence about
his parents, race, and native land, something interpreted by Porphyry as indicating
Plotinuss disregard for the human body and the sensible realm. It is estimated that
Plotinus was born in Lycopolis, Egypt, in 204 or 205 CE, moved to Alexandria in his
twenties and discovered there his intellectual affinity. Guided by his teacher Ammonius
Sacca and motivated by the idea of becoming acquainted with Eastern philosophies,
Plotinus enlisted in the military expedition of Gordian III to Persia. The expedition failed
before he reached his goal, and he was forced to return to Rome where he spent the rest
of his life teaching and writing. Among his listeners were highly ranked officials, such as
Emperor Gallienus and Governor Rogatianus, who found that the cure for psychosomatic
problems merely required changing their way of life. It was in Rome that Plotinus began
writing philosophy and those writings were the reflection of his oral lectures, which
20
Plotinus, The Philosophy of Plotinus: Representative Books from the Enneads, ed. Sterling P.
Lamprecht. (Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1950), viii.
12
followed a seminar style in which students questions and oppositions provided him with
grounds for his own further philosophical development. His works are preserved in full
due to the flawless recompilation by Porphyry, who organized them in six groups of nine
treatises each, called the Enneads, which means nine in Greek. He ordered them, not in
chronological order, but following the Aristotelian division of philosophy, probably not
approved by Plotinus himself, into ethics, physics, and metaphysics. The Enneads begin
with easier ethical treatments, proceeding in Enneads II and III to discussions pertaining
mostly to natural philosophy and cosmology. The psychological benefits of philosophical
contemplation are discussed in IV. Epistemological issues and intellection are mostly
discussed in V. The last group of treatises deal with the higher levels of the hierarchy of
being, namely numbers, being in general, as well as the One beyond Being. 21 Because
Porphyry also provides the chronological order in which the treatises were developed by
Plotinus, it can be noted that for Plotinus the telos of a wise life was its identification with
Intellect or nous rather than with the One. 22 His writings were not easy to follow and,
unfortunately, he did not mention the different philosophers who could have influenced
his thought. He called these philosophers they and expressed their thoughts in a very
condensed manner. The exceptions to this are references to Plato, in whom Plotinus
found a source for most of his principles. Nevertheless, those who applied the name
Neoplatonism to distinguish the philosophy of such thinkers as Plotinus from that of
Plato [and the Middle-Platonist philosophers], were perhaps even more right than they
21
Pauliina Remes, 20.
22
Ibid.
13
imagined23, because there are two fundamental differences between them. One is a
difference in method and the other in focus. According to the former, while Plotinus
dedicated his life to teaching a doctrine, Plato wrote dialogues with the purpose of
confronting different philosophies with one another. Plotinuss dialectic becomes
metaphysics. That is, what is dynamic takes on the garb of fixity, though the breath of
mystical aspiration which dominates the Enneads confers its own powerful impulse upon
the whole.24 While Plato focused his concern on the reorganization of Athenian society,
Plotinus tried to disengage himself from earthly matters. But overall, Plotinus exerts a
major role in later interpretation of Plato, to the point that Ficino declares that Plato
speaks through the words of Plotinus. There are three critical points in Platos doctrine
that are essential for Plotinus:
1. The clear distinction between the eternal realm and the temporal, between Ideas
and sensible things, and between the here and the beyond. These dichotomies are
characteristic of a relaxed dualism, contrasted with radical dualism, whether
Gnostic or Manichean. The same relaxed dualism reappears in the doctrine of
creation to achieve a fusion with the relaxed monism, different from pantheism,
of Semitic and Biblical thought. 25 Plotinus does not emphasize the distinction
and opposition between the intelligible and the sensible world, which are bound
together by what he calls participation. The intelligible realm is the realm of the
three hypostases; the One, Intellect or Nous, and Soul.
23
Plotinus, The Philosophy of Plotinus, x.
24
Paul Henry, introduction to Enneads, Plotinus, trans. Stephen MacKenna, ( London: Oxford University
Press, 1954), xi.
25
Ibid.
14
2. The Socratic idea of a soul that is immaterial and immortal. This idea, which was
not common to all the Greeks, isolates Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus from the rest
of the Greek tradition. Plotinus, in his first treatise On Beauty, one of the most
striking and widely read, follows Plato in placing the essence of beauty not in
symmetry but in a non-material principle, that is, in participation with the idea of
beauty in the intelligible realm. Thus, this kind of idealism becomes a feature of
his relaxed dualism. In On the Immortality of the Soul, he attacks the Stoics,
Pythagorass view of the soul as harmony, and Aristotles view of the soul as a
bodys form or entelechy, and emphasizes the distinction between the spiritual
and the physical realms. Plotinus shares with Plato the notions that the soul
survives death and that it is individual.
3. The idea of a transcendent God who is superior to the Ideas and to Being. Plotinus
finds the foundation for his idea of negative theology in the notion of the Good
in Platos Republic and in the description of the absolute One in the Parmenides,
in which the Good is described as being above everything and in which the One
does not allow for any kind of multiplicity.
Plotinuss teachings and writings are so rich that they provided the foundation for the
Neoplatonic movement. While for his pupils he was a wise teacher, his interpretations of
Plato provoked a departure for the later representatives of the school, who embraced a
different position on the status and the ascendant movement of the universal soul. 26
According to Plotinus, the ascent of the soul was attained through the use of reason,
allowing man to lift himself from sensible objects. This idea of intellectual training as
26
Pauliina Remes, 21.
15
means of purification classifies Plotinuss thought as non-humanistic, because the type of

immortality he attributes to the human soul is independent from its deeds in the empirical
world. This position conflicted with Christianity, which did not see much value in the
wisdom of the Greeks for the attaining of salvation, since it contradicted the Christian
idea of salvation after death.
To fully understand Plotinuss idea on the ascent of the soul, one must consider
his ethical aim, which is neither Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, nor Epicurean. Plotinus
does not emphasize changing the empirical world because, in terms of his metaphysics,
he has already affirmed the existence of an intelligible world. 27 Humanity can transcend
its worldly circumstances through thought. But, the kind of intellectual activity
advocated by Plotinus is not everyday intellectual activity. According to Plotinus,
thought could be carried to the point of embracing the totality of existence [and] the true
objects of thought are not the things of sense but their ideal exemplars, the forms or
intelligibles of whose unchanging beauty we sometimes get a glimpse in some beautiful
object.28 For him, however, intelligence is not the ultimate reality, since knowledge
implies a desire for what we do not have, and what we lack is a state of unity with the
One. In order to achieve this inner experience, it is vital that the soul break away from the
body and return upon itself. In the equation between contemplation and action lies the
very center of Plotinuss metaphysics.29 This inward movement, so characteristic of
Neoplatonism but also of Gnosticism and Christianity, shows Plotinus as closer to Plato
27
Plotinus, The Philosophy of Plotinus, xxii.
28
Ibid., xxiii.
29
Paul Henry, xlii.
16
than to Aristotle. This is because Plotinuss metaphysics is closer to meta-psychology,

and his theodicy departs from Aristotles views of the movement of the spheres towards
the unmoved mover to the satisfaction of the souls desire for unity, that only the One can
gratify. In Plotinus, the starting point of movement is Soul, not nature. The soul travels,
through the power of dialectic, back to the Intellect and, through a process of purification,
to the One. Since Plotinus does not take into consideration the ideas of sin or salvation,
he does not consider the soul as being in opposition to sin, and he criticizes the idea of
man as the centre of the universe and the subject of redemption. 30
Although Plotinuss theory is not systematic, it brilliantly synthesizes the
religious and philosophical problems of the soul, of the world, and of its rational
justification. His theology fuses the cosmos and the soul and, without departing from
rationality, he is able to incorporate mysticism in his philosophical approach to these
problems.
The Three Primary Hypostases (Enneads V. 1)

Porphyry placed The Three Primary Hypostases, one of the most important and
revealing of the treatises, at the beginning of what is considered the theological
Ennead31. It not only reflects the unbreakable unity of personal spiritual life and
metaphysical reflection that is typical of Plotinian theology, but it is also the most cited
after Eusebius of Caesarea, by Basil and Augustine, Ciryl and Theodoret.32 As is
30
Paul Henry, xliii.
31
Ibid., xliv.
32
Ibid.
17
suggested by its title, it gives an extensive explanation of the three hypostases of the
intelligible realm, their characteristics, their differences, and how each derives from the
other. They are presented in ascendant order: Soul, Intellect, and the One. 33 This Ennead
explains the ascent of the soul as an upward journey of the mind to the One, where man is
called to understand his true nature and dignity. It describes how the soul, in its
estrangement in the sensible realm, is reminded of its true nature in a language of a
power unsurpassed in the Enneads; then we are shown how, having returned to an
understanding of our true nature as soul, we find transcending it Intellect and the One or
Good, and are brought to see how the Good must transcend and generate Intellect. 34 We
are reminded, at the end, that we as soul are able to find Intellect and the One within us.
There is a final plea not to be concerned with worldly problems but to turn inwards and
listen to the voices from on high. 35 According to Paul Henry, Plotinus intelligently
asserts that his doctrine is a continuation of Platos doctrine, and he elaborates his
hierarchy of the intelligible world linking the differences between the One, Intellect, and
Soul with the three ones of Parmenides first three hypotheses, with other passages in
the Timaeus, and with passage VI. 508c, d, e and 509 of the Republic in which Socrates
explains to Glaucon:
What the good itself is in the intelligible realm, in relation to understanding and
intelligible things, the sun is in the visible realm, in relation to sight and visible
things.
33
Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,

1987), 7.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid., 8.
18
How? Explain a little more.

You know that, when we turn our eyes to things whose colors are not longer in
the light of the day but in the gloom of night, the eyes are dimmed and seem
nearly blind, as if clear vision were no longer in them.
Of course.
Yet whenever one turns them on things illuminated by the sun, they see clearly,
and vision appears in those very same eyes?
Indeed.
Well, understand the soul in the same way: When it focuses on something
illuminated by truth and what is, it understands, knows, and apparently possesses
understanding, but when it focuses on what is mixed with obscurity, on what
comes to be and passes away, it opines and is dimmed, changes its opinions this
way and that, and seems bereft of understanding.
It does seem that way.
So what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower is
the form of the good. And though it is the cause of knowledge and truth, it is also
an object of knowledge. Both knowledge and truth are beautiful things, but the
good is other and more beautiful than they. In the visible realm, light and sight are
rightly considered sunlike, but it is wrong to think that they are the sun, so here it
is right to think of knowledge and truth as godlike but wrong to think that either
of them is the goodfor the good is more prized.
19
Therefore you should also say that not only do the objects of knowledge owe
their being known to the good, but their being is also due to it, although the good
is not being, but superior to it in rank and power.36
Plotinus is not only indebted to Plato in the development of his theory of the three
hypostases and of the transcendent One, but also to Aristotle and to the Stoics. Although
he criticizes Aristotles view of the first principle as an entity which thinks itself, Plotinus
owes to him the fundamental principle that the thought par excellence is self-thought, in
which intelligence and intelligible coincide. 37 Since this is the most distinctive attribute
of Aristotles Unmoved Mover, which is separated and distant from the world of man as
is Plotinuss One.38 The immanent God of the Stoics can be found in the nature of
Plotinuss notion of the world soul, which can be both transcendent to the sensible world
and the seat of Providence.39 Thus, Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism are
represented by each one of the three hypostases: the One, on this assumption, would be
the God of Plato, the Good in the Republic identified with the absolute One of the
Parmenides. The thought which thinks itself and in which Being and Intellect coincide
would be the first principle of Aristotle. Lastly, the soul of the world would conjure up
certain features of the Absolute of the Stoics, the vital principle of the immanent in the
world.40
36
Plato, The Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, revised by C. D. C. Reeve, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing
Company, Inc., 1992), 182.
37
Paul Henry, xlvi.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid., xlvi.
20
Soul
What is it, then, which has made the souls forget their father, God, and be
ignorant of themselves and him, even though they are parts which come from his
higher world and altogether belong to it? The beginning of evil for them was
audacity and coming to birth and the first otherness and the wishing to belong to
themselves. 41
The soul, in its desire to become different, chooses a direction that leads it away
from its origin, forgetting that its life derives from it, and is unable to seize the power and
nature of divinity. This kind of ignorance is the product of the souls excessive
attachment to the sensible world and to its disregard for itself, since the desire to seek and
admire something implies the acknowledgement of ones inferiority to the thing sought.
The soul, which now belongs to the sensible world, can return to the intelligible realm by
instructing and reminding itself of its true nature and worth and accepting the low value
of the things it prizes at the present. 42 The soul needs to gain knowledge of itself before it
examines the object of its desire and needs to know whether it is capable of such
investigation since, if it cannot recognize the thing it seeks, this is not worth the task. But
if the soul shares its nature, the task will be possible. The soul needs to know that it is
that which infuses the spirit of life to all the animals on earth, the air and water, and all
the stars and the heavens. But because it is different from them, it is superior to them, and
it does not perish with them. Since it never departs from itself, it is eternal. According to
Plotinus, although soul is only one, it has two halves. The one that is higher, called
41
Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.1.1-7, 11.
42
Ibid., V.1.1.17-30, 13.
21
World Soul, is nourished by the Intellect and serves as a guide. The other that is lower
is called Individual Soul. But both halves have the same rank. Even though soul
animates all things and is present in every single point of mass, the World Soul remains
whole and present in its totality, resembling the Intellect from which it obtained its
indivisibility and omnipresence. Its power makes possible a world of plurality contained
within the ties of unity and its presence makes the world divine. We are divine because
our soul is of the same kind as the World Soul, which gives life to the deities. As Plotinus
states:
Let look at the great soul, being itself another soul which is no small one, which
has become worthy to look by being freed from deceit and the things that have
bewitched the other souls, and is established in quietude. Into this heaven at
rest let it imagine soul as if flowing in from outside, pouring in and entering it
everywhere and illuminating it: as the rays of the sun light up a dark cloud, and
make it shine and give it immortality and wakes what lies inert. For soul
has given itself to the whole magnitude of heaven, as far as it extends, and every
stretch of space, both great and small, is ensouled; one body lies in one place and
one in another, and one is here and another there; some are separated by being in
opposite parts of the universe, and others in other ways. But soul is not like this
and it is not by being cut up that gives life, by a part of itself for each individual
thing, but all things live by the whole, and all soul is present everywhere, made
like to the father who begat it in its unity and universality. 43
43
Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.2.4-23; 31-40, 17.
22
Without soul we are only earth, just as the fire is nothing without the principle that ignites
its flames. Therefore, if it is the soul that calls our attention then, rather than seeking it in
others, we should seek it in ourselves, although by admiring the soul in another, you
admire yourself.44
Because Soul has a divine character, it can help us to reach divinity or pure unity,
ascending with the help of its power. According to Plotinus, we as human beings
will not look far; and the stages between are not many.45 That which will guide us
during the ascension towards union with the One is the upper part of the soul, its more
divine part, which is an image of the Intellect from which it proceeds. Just as the spoken
word is the image of the word of the soul, the soul is the image of the word or reason of
Intellect and of that segment of its activity by which life is produced in another level or
reality. 46 Plotinus compares this phase of the Intellects activity to fire, which holds heat
as part of its essence but also radiates it outwardly, although the activity on the level of
Intellect does not flow out of it, but the external activity comes into existence as
something distinct.47 Because Soul proceeds from Intellect, it has intellectual existence,
manifested by its discursive reasoning, and some degree of perfection that is never equal
to its predecessor. When Soul establishes itself in the sensible world, it never departs
from Intellect since it only finds its actualization in the continuous contemplation of the
Intellect. Therefore, Intellect makes Soul divine by being its progenitor and by being part
44
Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.2.5, 19.
45
Ibid., V.1.3.5, 19.
46
Ibid., V.1.3.10-15, 21.
47
Ibid.,V.1.3.13, 21.
23
of it. These internal and intellectual activities of the soul are active and superior
compared to the inferior activities, of foreign origin, which are passive. The only thing
that separates Soul and Intellect is their nature. As matter is to form, Soul is to Intellect,
the recipient of a simple intellectual form not composed by parts. Although Soul
possesses great excellence, Intellect is superior to it. Plotinus explains that it is normal for
soul to try to transcend the sensible realm and to observe the pure Intellect presiding
over [it], and immense wisdom, and the true life of Kronos, a god who is fullness and
intellect. For he encompasses in himself all things immortal, every intellect, every god,
every soul, all for ever unmoving. 48
Intellect
Plotinus describes the Intellect as a superior reality that embraces all immortal
beings, all intelligence, divinity, and soul. Since it does not have a future or a past and it
does not change due to its perfection, it is eternal and immutable and all the things in it
are perfect and remain identical with themselves, satisfied with their present condition.
Therefore, it lacks nothing and its state of harmony is not contingent on anything else. In
contrast with Soul, whose action is always divided by the different objects it tries to
animate, Intellect remains unchanged because all the things it contains are perfect,
having nothing which is not so, having nothing in itself which does not think; but it
thinks not by seeking but by having.49 This reflects Plotinuss idea that knowledge
48
49
Ibid., V.1.4.15, 23.
24
implies a want or a lack. For him, knowledge is not a possession but a desire to obtain
something we do not have.
Each thing contained by Intellect is both Intellect and Being, since the cause of
thinking is also the cause of Being. Intellect gives existence to Being in thinking it and
Being, as the object of thought, provides Intellect with its thinking and its existence.
But the cause of thinking is something else, which is also the cause of being; they
both therefore have a cause other than themselves. For they are simultaneous and
exist together and one does not abandon the other, but this one is two things,
Intellect and Being and thinking and thought, Intellect as thinking and Being as
thought. For there could not be thinking without otherness, and also sameness.
These then are primary, Intellect, Being, Otherness, Sameness; but one must
include Motion and Rest.50
The activity of thought implies difference as well as identity. Thus, it is important to
consider other terms beside Intellect and Being, terms such as Identity or Sameness that
describe the unity of Intellect, Difference or Otherness that explain the difference
between the thought and its object, Motion or Movement that are part of the thinking
process, and Rest that results from sameness. The multiplicity of objects or forms creates
number and quantity, while the individual characteristics of each create quality, and
from these as principles everything else comes. 51 The reality of the Intellect is multiple,
and the soul lives in it until it decides to separate and descend to the sensible realm as a
giver of life. But when it comes closer to Intellect and becomes one with it, it has the
50
51
Ibid., V.1.4.44, 25.
25
desire to seek knowledge of that which has begotten Intellect, the perfect unity that is also
the cause of Number. Because Number is not primary and dyad is secondary, the cause of
this must be a Being whose simplicity and unity precedes multiplicity and is the cause of
their existence as a manifold. The dyad is indefinite in itself but, when it becomes
determinate, it becomes Number, which is substance. Therefore, soul is also number,
because only things without mass or extension belong to the higher levels of the
hierarchy. The things that the senses experience as real are ranked as inferior. Plotinus
exemplifies this concept by comparing it with a seed, the value of which does not reside
in its observable properties but in the importance of the unseen, which are Number and
the seminal reasons. 52 According to Plotinus:
what is called number in the intelligible world and the dyad are rational principles
and Intellect; but the dyad is indefinite when one forms an idea of it by what may
be called the substrate, but each and every number which comes from it and the
One is a form, as if intellect was shaped by the numbers which came to exist in it;
but it is shaped in one way by the One and in another by itself, like sight in its
actuality; for intellection is seeing sight, and both are one. 53
The One
Before discussing the One, Plotinus invokes us to reach out with our souls and
pray to the One in quiet solitude, so that we can observe God resting alone as in an inner
sanctuary in which he remains undisturbed and removed from all things. To accomplish
52
Plotinus, The Philosophy of Plotinus, 14.
53
26
this, we must first observe all those objects that resemble the images surrounding the
sanctuary or simply the image that first emerged and the principle by which it appears.
Everything which is moved must have some end to which it moves. 54 The One,
according to Plotinus, differentiates itself from everything else by not having an end or
telos. Therefore, it does not need to move towards such an end and that which it generates
is generated without motion on its part. The One creates the secondary hypostases below
it without volition or movement, because the One is akin to an energy that overflows
without exhausting itself, like the light of the sun which, so to speak, runs around it,
springing from it continually while it remains unchanged. 55 All things, during their
existence, necessarily generate from their own substance some further existence, which
depends on their power. This new reality resembles the image of its genitor. Therefore,
everything that possesses this kind of perfection is productive and, because the One is
complete perfection, its production is eternal. However, that which it produces is not as
perfect as itself and perfection diminishes further with each lower level that is produced.
According to Plotinus, the Intellect, emanated from the One, contemplates and needs the
One for its existence, though the One does not need Intellect. The Soul, which is an
emanation of Intellect, depends on it as a derivation of Intellects activity and directs
itself to Intellect, just as Intellect contemplates the One. Therefore, as there is nothing
between Intellect and the One, there is nothing between Soul and Intellect. The only
separation between the begetter and the begotten is the difference between them. When
Plotinus calls Intellect the image of the One, he implies that Intellect retains some of the
54
55
Ibid., V.1.6.31, 31.
27
attributes of the One, but it is not the One. Thus, he raises the question of how the One
gives origin to Intellect. According to Plotinus, it is by its return that it sees; and this
seeing is Intellect.56 Plotinus did not believe that the One returns upon itself and sees
itself as the unity-in-multiplicity which is Intellect57 because, in his account, there is no
division or multiplicity in the One since it is perfect unity. Intellect, certainly, by its own
means even defines its being for itself by the power which comes from the One, and
because its substance is a kind of single part of what belongs to the One and comes from
the One, it is strengthened by the One and made perfect in substantial existence by and
from it.58 Therefore, Intellect is characterized by multiplicity, has in itself the power to
generate and to characterize Being out of itself, is of pure origin, and includes in itself the
whole of being, all the beauties of ideas, and all the intelligible deities, without letting
them descend into matter. It is this Intellect that, out of its perfection, generates Soul, the
last hypostasis of the divine sphere.
The One and the Theory of Emanation

Plotinuss philosophy embraces two ideas that imply and represent two
movements. One movement is downward from perfect unity to multiplicity, and the other
movement is an upward journey away from multiplicity and towards the perfect unity of
the One. The first movement is justified by the hierarchical organization of living reality
or hierarchy of Being, which proceeds eternally from its transcendent First Principle, the
One, and descends in an uninterrupted chain of levels from the Divine Intellect and the
56
57
Ibid., footnote, 34.
58
Ibid., V.1.7.12-16, 37.
28
Forms to the Soul and to the last reality, Matter. The ascendant movement can be
achieved as a result of the Souls desire to abandon the sensible realm and by a process of
gradual purification, to achieve union with the object of desire, that is, the One. The
theory of emanation explains the origin of this hierarchy. Plotinus, taking into account the
principle of prior simplicity, believes that all things must be originated by one single
source. This principle postulates that every composite thing depends and derives in
some way from what is not composite, what is simple. 59 Plotinus applies this principle
with a rigor that distances him from Aristotle and brings him closer to Plato and such
Platonists as Alcinous, who states that divine intellect cannot be simple because, although
it has a high degree of unity, it is still a composite. Therefore, for Plotinus, there must be
something prior to divine intellect, something that represents perfect unity. But it must
be single, if it is to be seen in others. Unless one were to say that it has its existence by
being with others. But then it will not be simple, nor will what is made up of many parts
exist. For what is not capable of being simple will not exist, and if there is no simple,
what is made up of many parts will not exist.60 Plotinus, in this passage, emphasizes a
duality that will be characteristic of the natures of Intellect and Soul. Both have dual
natures, one as part of the whole and the other in itself, outside of the whole. As well, that
which is prior to multiplicity must be superior in power and in being, since it produces
the complex and displays unity, independence, and self-integrity. 61
60
Plotinus, Enneads, V.6.3.10-15, quoted in Dominic J. OMeara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the

Enneads, (New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1993), 46.
60
Dominic J. OMeara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads, (New York: Oxford University Press,
Inc., 1993), 44.
61
Ibid., 49.
29
Plotinus describes the One as ineffable and unknowable, because it cannot be

considered as an object of knowledge and discourse.62 It is formless and infinite,
neither intellect nor Being. Therefore, it is not nothingness but an incredible source of
power and perfection, originator of everything else that emanates from it, such as form,
number, measure, order, and limit.63 In Plotinuss universe, immanence does not rule out
transcendence since, for him, the One is both immanent and transcendent. The One is
transcendent as the source of all Being. But, the One is also always in the world, in us as
much as we are in It. Plotinus describes the lower realm as being in the higher realm,
body as being in soul, soul as being in the Intellect, and Intellect as being in the One. The
hierarchical order does not imply a physical separation between hypostases, since these
are distinctive while also together. The One derives the Intellect out of necessity without
experiencing any change and outside ordinary time. Its derivation is eternal, since it does
not have a beginning or an end. Intellect is, for Plotinus, a living conglomeration of
beings, which have the characteristics of Forms and Intelligences, in which every part
thinks and therefore in a real sense is the whole; so that the relationship of whole and
parts in this spiritual world is quite different from that in the material world, and involves
no sort of separation or exclusion.64 This idea of unity-in-diversity constitutes the most
perfect representation of the unity of the One, which the Intellect cannot fully grasp in his
normal contemplation. While Intellect is infinite due to its power and to its
immeasurability, it is also finite by virtue of its constitution as a whole that is made of
62
Dominic J. OMeara, 55.
63
Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, xvii.
64
Ibid., xxi.
30
numerous Forms. For humanity, Intellect represents our higher level of perceptive
thought, which grasps its object without the need for reason. At this highest stage, we
become Soul, which is formed as an image of the Intellect.
The Soul in Plotinus is very similar to that in Plato. It serves as a liaison between
the intelligible and the sensible realms, representing the former in the latter. Soul is
derived from Intellect and returns to it through contemplation, as the Intellect returns to
the One. However, its relationship to Intellect is much closer than that of Intellect to the
One because, at its maximum state, Soul belongs to Intellect. The Soul is constituted by
two parts or levels, the higher level where it performs as a transcendent principle of
form, order, and intelligent direction and the lower where it operates as an immanent
principle of life and growth65 in what Plotinus called Nature. The lower soul is
connected to the higher soul, as the higher soul is connected to Intellect, through
contemplation. But, since Nature belongs to the sensible realm, the contemplation of the
lower realm is so weak that what it produces is the immanent forms in body, which are
non-contemplative and so sterile, and below which lays only the darkness of matter.66
The soul, differently from Intellect, moves freely from one thing to another, causing
physical movement in space and time. It does not possess being as a whole but as
individual parts. The Plotinian soul has two characteristics that define its nature in terms
of its relationship to the material world. It organizes bodies and it is present in bodies. It
is rational, and it is both one and many. Our individual souls are simply parts of the
Universal Soul. Therefore, spiritually having the whole within them, they can turn to
65
66
Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, xxii.

Ibid., xxiii.
31
universality through contemplation, abandoning the bodies that they rule. The soul
divides itself when it enters the body without ceasing to be whole, because its unity is not
the same as the unity of body, which is the sum of its parts. The soul, being divisible and
indivisible at the same time, is not one in the sense of being continuous and the possessor
of different parts. It is divisible, because it is present in every part of the body that it
inhabits. But it is indivisible, because it is present as a whole in each part that constitutes
the body. This indicates the magnitude of the souls power, which establishes it as a
divine entity that is situated at the privileged location between the superior, or
intelligible, realm and the sensible realm.
Nature, as Plotinus defines it in the Enneads, is part of the range of powers or
activities that are manifested by Soul. Thus, Nature is not a reality separated from Soul,
as Soul is separated from Intellect. It is an image produced by Soul, which does not work
on matter but creates without moving or changing because, in all production, there is
something which does not move or change, the form guiding the process, and since it is
in matter that change occurs and that visible shapes are generated in accord with this
form.67 For Plotinus, then, Nature as the formative principle of things is described as
contemplation, as an object of contemplation, and as a rational principle. For it is the
product of a contemplation that remains and does anything else, but makes in being
contemplation.68 It is a contemplation guided by superior principles in which things are
created in harmony with the nature of the maker. Nature contemplates Soul as Soul
contemplates Intellect. Natures type of contemplation belongs to the lowest level in the
67
Dominic J. OMeara, 75.
68
Plotinus, Enneads, quoted in Dominic J. OMeara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the Enneads, 75.
32
series of contemplations, in which contemplation manifests itself as derivation. Intellect

exists as a contemplation of the One, Soul exists as a contemplation of Intellect, and
Nature exists as contemplation of Soul. Therefore, everything derives from contemplation
and is contemplation. For Plotinus, the individual soul descends into a body in order to
fulfill the law of the universe and the plan of Universal Soul in its desire for expansion.
However, the spiritual state of the individual soul determines the degree of attachment to
the material world. The soul that is completely attached to the body and isolated from the
whole is trapped inside the body and is deviated from its higher destiny to rise from the
trivialities of the material world and ascend to the universality of transcendent Soul and
to the world of Intellect,69 towards perfect union with the One. Plotinuss work and
philosophy are captured in the following words: try to bring back the god in you to the
divine in the All.70
According to Plotinus, the material world, as an organic living form, is the best
imaginable representation of the realm of Forms within Intellect. These are fused together
by a universal sympathy and harmony, 71 in which evil and misery belong as part of a
greater design. Everything that is alive and has a form is good. But matter, which is the
last and lowest level of the Ones derivation or emanation, constitutes the principle of
evil. For Plotinus, however, evil does not represent a positive form or spiritual entity in
the universe. It is, rather, a privation or lack of goodness that is inevitable as part of the
69
Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, xxiv.
70
Ibid., xxv.
71
Ibid., xxiv.
33
material world, since the lowest emanation is also the one that is furthest removed from
the Ones absolute perfection and unity.
34
CHAPTER II
Neoplatonic Heritage and Pseudo-Dionysius

Platonic and Neoplatonic influences are very difficult to separate when studying
their roles in Western philosophy, because the Platonism present in medieval and
Renaissance thought is saturated by the Neoplatonic interpretations of Platos work.
Therefore, it is important to study this Neoplatonic legacy as divided into two categories.
The first category is that of direct influence, in which the thinker includes in his writings
what he imported directly from the Neoplatonic source. The other category is that of
indirect influence, in which the thinker imports Neoplatonic ideas through intermediary
sources. Direct influence is the most prevalent but also more difficult to prove. In the
case of Neoplatonism, however, it is the most common form of influence. The
Neoplatonic heritage can be then divided into Plotinian, Athenian, and Alexandrian
strands of thought.72 The Plotinian branch is faithful to the Enneads, the Athenian
branch is characterized by its marked mysticism and embraces metaphysical and
theological ideas and concepts, and the Alexandrian branch is Neoplatonic but also
embraces Aristotelianism and, particularly, Aristotelian logic. The most influential
thinkers of this period were Marius Victorinus, the fourth century Christian rhetorician
and theorist who translated Greek Neoplatonism into Latin, Augustine of Hyppo (354430 CE), whose interpretation of Plato is close to Plotinuss and Porphyrys and who is
72
Pauliina Remes, 198.
35
responsible for synthesizing the Christian faith with Platonic philosophy, and Boethius
(480-525 CE), who forms a strong link between antiquity and medieval philosophy in the
Latin West. Of the medieval philosophers, the most important Neoplatonists were
Johanes Scotus Eriugina (800-877), whose translations of Plato were employed by
Arabic philosophers, William of Moerbeke, who translated Procluss Elements of
Theology and his commentaries of Parmenides and the Timaeus into Latin, and Meister
Eckhart (1260-1327), who retained the mystical side of Neoplatonism and adopted its
idea of negative theology.73
It is, however, in the Greek Christian world in which one finds the strongest
Neoplatonic influence, as exemplified in the ideas of Basil of Cesarea (330-379 CE),
Gregory of Nazianzen (329-390 CE), Gregory of Nyssa (d. 394CE) and, most
fundamentally, Dionysius the Areopagite, commonly known as Pseudo-Dionysius. While
Gregory of Nyssa followed the Plotinian branch of Neoplatonism, Pseudo-Dionysius
embraced Procluss tradition. Proclus, who has been considered the great systematizer
of Neoplatonism,74 departed from some of Plotinuss beliefs and embraced Iamblicuss
idea of a more prolific supra-sensible realm.75 Confronted with the dilemma of how the
One can be both absolute and transcendent unity and imminent multiplicity in being, later
Neoplatonists took different approaches from that of Plotinus. While Iamblichus claims a
new entity above the One, which he calls the Ineffable, Proclus retains the One with its
transcendent and perfect attributes. But he also adds the Henads, a group of entities
73
74
Ibid., 29.
75
Ibid., 28.
36
located above the Forms that have the properties of being, in some way, transcendent and
unknowable, while being definable by and accessible to the human soul. Therefore, the
domain of the One is expanded by the Henads, which each act as the beginning of a chain
of entities, so that every entity below is subordinated to the One and to each of the
Henads. Basically, the Henads narrow the gap between the One and Being, but they do
not solve the problem presented by multiplicity. They function as the catalyst in the
process of unity becoming multiplicity and vice versa. They do not interparticipate as do
the Forms, and they are beyond thought and Being.76 The introduction of these new
hierarchies helped the later Neoplatonists to include a new system of divinities, which
were absent in Plotinuss hierarchy, and to create a system that was not only more
amenable to the mysticism and literature of the time but that also synthesized
metaphysics with traditional religion, thereby heightening the value of paganism in an
environment that was increasingly dominated by Christianity.
Neoplatonism left a strong legacy for the development of the philosophy of
religion, with regard to issues concerning God and the immortality of the soul. With
respect to the issue of God, three important factors should be considered:
1. The idea of the One as the unity of being, truth, and happiness is transformed into
the notion of a God who maintains these threefold characteristics but also
differentiates Himself through direct creation. Truth is endowed to the world as
part of the creation, rather than as a thought within the divine Intellect. As in
Neoplatonism, happiness is understood as a form of bliss, a product of the union
with the Creator, who represents order, goodness, and beauty.
76
Pauliina Remes, 74.
37
2.
The doctrine of emanation from the creator appears first in Augustines On the
Trinity. The triadic nature of the power of the Neoplatonic God, which has
internal activity or rest, external activity or movement, and the ability to return
back to the creator proved very influential on Christian thinkers such as Gregory
of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus the Confessor, and Thomas Aquinas in
their interpretation of cosmic theology and creation. It became interpreted as the
distinction between ousia (substance), dunamis (power or potentiality) and
energia (activity).77 According to Christianity, God creates through an act of
will. God makes Himself known through His creation, and the idea of the divinity
regressing to Himself through His creation is manifested in one of the pillars of
Christian faith, that is, the idea of a transcendent God who creates the universe
and the return of man to God through salvation.
3. The theory of negative or apophatic theology, elaborated first by Plotinus in his

definition of the ineffable One and which defines God by what He is not,
influenced the Cappadocian Fathers, Maximus the Confessor, and PseudoDionysius who adopted the via apophatica, thus differentiating themselves from
thinkers in Latin West who adopted the via cataphatica, defining God in positive
terms.
Although the Neoplatonic idea of the immortality of the soul is rooted in Plato and the
idea of the soul as a divine intellectual entity is shared with other ancient philosophers,
the most particular aspects of the Neoplatonic conception of the soul are its two
movements: The ability to descend and separate from its creator and its desire to return to
77
38
its origin through purification. The later Neoplatonists decided to remove divinity from
the soul, so that human beings would have their own nature and their own place in the
creation. This idea fits with the Christian assumption that the soul is not able to reach the
level of the transcendent God. However, they maintained the ability of the soul to ascend,
through the practice of virtues and the purification from sin. The union of the soul with
its creator is no longer achieved through its own desire, as Plotinus had stipulated, but by
the grace of God.
The historical importance of Pseudo-Dionysius rests both on the fact that his
doctrine is the first Christian version of a type of Neoplatonic philosophy taught mainly
at two centers of learning, Athens and Alexandria, from approximately the fourth to the
sixth century A.D.78 and on the fact that he is responsible for transmitting the tenets of
ancient philosophy to many influential thinkers of the Byzantine world. PseudoDionysius is an enigmatic author whose treatises are difficult to decipher and whose
thought includes themes such as the hierarchical vision of the world, the approach to
God and the different ways of naming him, the correlative presentation of the divinizing
intelligences, and the treatment of symbols. 79 Although several theories were developed
regarding his real identity, none of these has been conclusive. What we know about
Pseudo-Dionysius we know through his works, which appeared bearing his name around
500 A.D., in Syria, and were immediately embraced by other thinkers. His works,
referred to as the Corpus Aeropagiticum, consist of four treatises and ten letters. The first
78
Stephen Gersh, From Iamblichus to Eriugena: an investigation of the prehistory and evolution of the
pseudo-Dionysian tradition, (Leiden: Brill, 1978) , 1.
79
Pseudo-Dionysius, the Aeropagite, Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. by Colm Luibheid,
Mahwah, (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1987), 5.
39
treatise, On Divine Names, is devoted to the intelligible names of God. The second
treatise, On Celestial Hierarchy, is devoted to the angels. The third treatise, On the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, is devoted to the Christian Church and its sacraments and
orders. Lastly, the fourth treatise, Mystical Theology, explains the union with God. The
Letters expose the techniques used by the author in his adoption of Neoplatonic ideas and
also explain how the author adapts those ideas to the Christian faith. The symbolic
theology in which the Letters culminate is inseparable from the affirmative and negative
theologies expounded in the four treatises, and the Letters were composed on a hierarchic
plan, which elaborates in many details on the obscure discursive treatment of hierarchy in
the treatises, a subject on which, this Neoplatonist is the discoverer and master.80
Although some scholars have claimed that Pseudo-Dionysius rejected paganism, his
Letters confirm his reliance on Proclus and Neoplatonism.
The Dionysian spirituality takes two routes in its journey to posterity as being a
significant influence in the history of Western spirituality. One route leads from the
paganism of the East to the Christian Orthodox East. The second route leads from the
Christian Orthodox East to the Catholic West.81 Through the first route, Dionysian
spirituality had been cleansed of any traces of paganism by the work of Maximus the
Confessor and, due to Maximuss legitimacy as a saint of the church, the medieval West
pushed his ideas towards the second route. By this time, Pseudo-Dionysiuss works have
been translated by different authors, including John Scotus. Phillipe Chevalliers
80
Ronald Hathaway, Hierarchy and the Definition of Order in the Letters of Pseudo-Dionysius: A Study in
the Form and meaning of the Pseudo-Dionysian Writings, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969), xiv.
81
Pseudo-Dionysius, 13.
40
enormous anthology of The Corpus Aeropagiticum made possible its evaluation by later
Latin translators, including Marsilio Ficino reinforcing the notion that PseudoDionysiuss spirituality has been better received and more influential in the West than in
the East, where Augustine had been more influential. According to Jaroslav Pelikan, the
most fascinating aspect of the westward odyssey of Dionysian spirituality is the
interaction between the Neoplatonism of Dionysius and the Neoplatonism of Augustine.
Each had a distinctive metaphysics; but more importantly, each was the fountainhead for
a distinctive piety and devotion.82
Pseudo-Dionysiuss metaphysics of creation claims of God that he is all, that he
is no thing83and is the cause of everything. It is the cause of all beings, but itself
nothing, as transcending all things in a manner beyond beingBut sinceit is the cause
of all beings, the beneficent providence of the Thearchy is hymned from all the effects. 84
When Pseudo-Dionysius refers to God as cause, he does not mean this as first cause or
Supreme Being. Rather, he means this in the sense that everything that exists is Gods
effect. In this sense, Pseudo-Dionysius remains loyal to the Neoplatonic idea of causation
as vertical, in which a lower ontological level is the effect of a higher level. 85 As already
mentioned, Pseudo-Dionysiuss influence derives from Proclus who, on the subject of
causation, differs from both Plato and Plotinus. This is because his doctrine of causation
departs from the dual relation between the participated term that involves the
82
83
Pseudo-Dionysius, On Divine Names, I.2, 596C.
84
Ibid., On Divine Names, I.5, 593C-D.
85
Eric Pearl, Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Aeropagite, (Albany: State of New
York Press, 2007), 17.
41
individuated properties and the unparticipated term that represents perfect unity and
does not belong to anything. Procluss doctrine embraces a three-term relation that
includes the participated, the participant, and the unparticipated. The purpose of this
division is not to keep the participants alienated from the unparticipated but to assert
Gods presence in all of them. Thus, the cause is separated in the sense that it is not
conditioned by its effects, not in the sense that it is not present to or immanent in them.
The unparticipated term, then, is simply a universal determination considered as one and
the same and hence transcendent to its instances; while the participated terms are the
same determination considered as differently present in each instance. 86 Thus, in the
doctrine of creation as manifestation, the effect is contained in the cause and, regardless
of the number of levels or triadic subdivisions, the creation represents the differentiation
of the One.
According to Pseudo-Dionysius, God is the source of all holy enlightenment, a
Source which has told us about itself in the holy words of scripture, the cause of
everything that is origin, being, and life. It is the Life of the living, the being of
beings, it is the Source and the cause of all life and of all being, for out of its goodness it
commands all things to be and it keeps them going.87 The manifestation of God in all
things created is what Pseudo-Dionysius refers to as powers, participations, processions,
providences, manifestations, or distributions of God.88 His God is both transcendent and
immanent. It is transcendent because it is not a being at all and is not part of reality.
86
Eric Perl, 24.
87
Pseudo-Dionysius, On Divine Names, I.3 589B-C.
88
Eric Perl, 29.
42
However, it is immanent because it is present in each one of the things created. In this
account, using Plotinuss metaphor of the One as source of light that is not itself
illuminated, Pseudo-Dionysiuss God is the being in which all beings participate, but It is
not one of these beings. Thus God, as light or illumination, both transcends and
permeates from the higher and most revered level to the lowest. When he calls God the
Different in On Divine Names, Pseudo-Dionysius tries to explain Gods divine
difference as Gods unitary multiplication and the uniform processions of his multiplegeneration to all things.89 For Plotinus, Proclus, and Pseudo-Dionysius, God is simple
and unified, in which all the differentiated beings become one undifferentiated entity that
contains everything but also has the power to unfurl and multiply in different beings.
Therefore, the whole of reality is the appearance or occurrence of God. It is theophany. It
is the presence of God in the content of any being in a distinctive finite way, endowing
such a being with the gift of intellect and transforming it into a representation of God.
For to be present means to be given or available to thought, i.e. to be intelligible. And as
intelligible, as given to thought, God is apparent, or manifest, in and as the being. 90 This
idea of being as theophany, in Pseudo-Dionysius, is a response to the Neoplatonic idea
that being belongs to the intelligible realm.
At this point it is important to clarify what it means for God to appear in reality, in
order to truly grasp the doctrine of being as theophany. This is because referring to God
as a mere appearance could lead to a reduction of God to a mere thing or object of
thought. This would remove all divine attributes from God and would consider God as
89
Eric Perl, 31.
90
Ibid., 32.
43
just another member of reality. But since God is not just another thing but is the sum of
all things, God is beyond being.
It is the supra-being beyond every being. It sets the boundaries of all sources and
orders and yet it is rooted above every source and order. It is the measure of all
things. It is eternity and is above and prior to eternity. It is abundance where there
is want and superabundance where there is plenty. It is inexpressible and
ineffable, and it transcends mind, life, and being. It is the supernatural. It is the
transcendent possessor of transcendence. 91
Pseudo-Dionysius, in On Divine Names, elaborates his own notion of reality, as
hierarchic and triadic, based on the Platonic and Neoplatonic models of three classes,
three stages, and three functions. Therefore, his angelic universe, which corresponds to
the Plotinian intelligible realm, is constituted by three triads, each divided into three
orders, each of which is branched into three levels of intelligences, each one belonging to
the threefold arrangement. In every single triadic cluster, perfection belongs to the first
element, illumination to the second, and purification to the last.92 The angelic and the
human realms are parts of a dualistic universe, which constitutes a sacred order, an
understanding, and an activity, all regulated by the law of hierarchical mediations, both in
the sense of the descent of divine illumination and in that of the ascent of divinization.93
The stability and synchronization of each of the parts and of the whole depend on
occupying their proper place and function. In part, this is possible because Pseudo91
Pseudo-Dionysius, On Divine Names, II.10, 648C-D.
92
93
Ibid., 6.
44
Dionysius only includes the divine in his hierarchy. Thus, the steadiness, the dynamism,
and the effectiveness of his hierarchy is totally dependent on the creator, which is both
the origin and the final desire of all divinization. It is through this approach that PseudoDionysius reaches the idea of God, whose divine name maybe either of biblical or of
philosophical origin, since all these names imply the paradoxical idea that God reveals
itself in the creation but nobody has ever seen it. Therefore, God could be the recipient of
numerous names or could continue without a name, because God is above everything that
can be named. From the perspective of the process of creation, it is possible to name God
based on its work by adopting affirmative or cataphatic theology. But, from the
perspective of the divine ascent or return, God will not bare a name, as affirmed in the
negative or apophatic theology. The divine names that Pseudo-Dionysius introduces in
On Divine Names, are Good, Being, Life, and Wisdom. Arranged in a hierarchical mode,
each one of these names represents the manner in which God is present in the different
classes of beings: matter, plants, irrational living beings, rational living beings, and
intelligible beings. The last three of these, considered cognitive beings, are participants
in God as Wisdom.94
The divine name Good tells of all the processions of the universal Cause; it
extends to beings and nonbeings and that Cause is superior to being and
nonbeings. The name Being extends to all beings which are, and it is beyond
them. The name of Life extends to all living things, and yet is beyond them.
94
Eric Perl, 65.
45
The name Wisdom reaches out to everything which has to do with

understanding, reason, and sense perception, and surpasses them all. 95
I do not think of the Good as one thing, Being as another, Life and Wisdom as yet
other, and I do not claim that there are numerous causes and different Godheads,
all differently ranked, superior and inferior, and all producing different effects.
No. But I hold that there is one God for all these good processions and that he is
possessor of the divine names of which I speak and that the first name tells of the
universal Providence of the one God, while the other names reveal general or
specific ways in which he acts providentially. 96
Therefore, the divine processions, as Pseudo-Dionysius called them, are organized by
taking into account the extent of universality by which each is present in different beings.
The divine order is established by placing the Goodness of God at the apex, followed by
Being, Life and, at last, Wisdom. Following Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius situates Being as
prior to Life, because Being, Life, and Intellect participate, in that order, in the
intelligible realm. All of these are below the Good, which is itself beyond Being. While
Procluss thought implies the existence of several gods of different types and ranks,
Pseudo-Dionysius discards this position, arguing that his ranks are not substances or
hypostases located between God and his creation but are the different ways in which God
makes itself present in its creation. This rejection of polytheism illustrates the process of
Christianization that Pseudo-Dionysius is experiencing. The disparity between Proclus
and Pseudo-Dionysius, however, is more rooted in what concerns religious practices than
95
Pseudo-Dionysius, On Divine Names, V.1, 816B.
96
Ibid., On Divine Names, V.1, 816C-D.
46
in metaphysics, because both sustain the idea that the universe is filled and constituted
by a multiplicity of divine powers at work differently in different things, all of which are
presences or manifestations of the One, or God.97
According to Pseudo-Dionysius, both beings and nonbeings participate in God as
the Good, identifying nonbeings with matter, which does not have form but constitutes
the substratum of every other being capable of receiving or possessing forms. Therefore,
matter takes its origin from the Good. Inanimate objects are produced by the Good and
Being. Plants are produced by the Good, Being, and Life. Animals are produced by the
Good, Being, Life and Wisdom. Within this arrangement, the more universal encloses the
less universal, so that Being is above Life because Life is a specification of Being and
Life is above Wisdom because Wisdom is a specification of Life. As intellection is the
highest form of consciousness, intelligible beings possess the higher modes of Life and
Being. These celestial beings or angels, mentioned in On Divine Names and the
Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, are considered to represent the most perfect level in the
hierarchy because they are closer to God.
Divine intelligences do exist in a manner superior to other beings and they live in
a fashion surpassing other living things. They have understanding and they have
knowledge far beyond perception and reason. They desire and participate in the
beautiful and the Good in a way far above the things which exist. They are very
much closer to the Good and participate much more in the Good, from which they
have received more and certainly greater gifts. The more a thing participates in
97
Eric Perl, 68.
47
the one infinitely generous God, the closer one is to him and the more divine one
is with respect to others.98
The Good then is present in all things according to their rank, as it shines through them.
These illuminations are the participated determinations of creatures, and they are
analogous to each in that each being participates in God in the manner appropriate to and
constitutive of that being. 99
In the Celestial Hierarchy, Pseudo-Dionysius makes clear that although the
activity of each level in the hierarchy represents the presence of God according to that
level, the activity of the lower level is similar to that of the higher but in a lesser manner.
Therefore, when Pseudo-Dionysius states that the higher beings are closer to God, he
does not mean that they are between God and the lower beings. Rather, he means that
God is not present in all things equally but in a just proportion. Pseudo-Dionysius departs
from the Neoplatonic idea that each level causes the one below it and postulates that only
cognitive illumination and not being is transmitted through the created hierarchy. 100
Each being in the hierarchy participates in God according to its desire to fulfill the role of
its proper position in relation to other beings above or below, exercising its activities, not
individually but in constant relation to the other beings. Therefore, when the hierarchic
order lays it on some to be purified and on others to do the purifying, on some to receive
illumination and on others to cause illumination, on some to be perfected and on others to
bring about perfection, each will actually imitate God in the way suitable to whatever role
98
Pseudo-Dionysius, On Divine Names, V.3, 817B.
99
Eric Perl, 71.
100
Ibid., 73.
48
it has.101 The purpose of the hierarchy, then, is for beings to become like God and to be
united to God. Its core principle is what Pseudo-Dionysius calls immediate mediation, the
hierarchical mediation of beings by which God constitutes them through his presence.
Pseudo-Dionysiuss influence on Scholastic theology became noticeable during
the twelfth century and continued through the thirteenth century, when monks of the
Franciscan and Dominican orders translated and commented on his works. Thomas
Aquinas discussed some of his treatises and Saint Bonaventure considered him the
prince of mystics.102 In the sixteenth century, no other writings of the early Christian
era received similar attention in terms of translations, excerpts, commentaries, and even
cumulative corpora, with the exception of the Bible and the works of Boethius. 103
As mentioned above, Pseudo-Dionysiuss ideas influenced not only medieval
mystical thought but also Scholastic theology. His apostolic authority was supported by
Hilduins conflation of three Dionysii: the Areopagite, the first bishop of Paris, and the
author of the corpus104 within Roman traditionalism. However, after being discredited
by the humanist Lorenzo Valla, Pseudo-Dionysius and his writings lost credibility with
Protestant thinkers. The different inclinations towards and interest in the study of the
Dionysian corpus during the fifteenth century within some humanist circles continued in
the next century among Protestant and Catholic scholars. The relationship of humanism
to Dionysian thought was significant. The humanists philological interest in reading
101
Pseudo-Dionysius, On Celestial Hierarchy, III.2, 165B-C.
102
Ibid., 29.
103
Ibid., 33.
104
Ibid., 32.
49
ancient texts and translating them into Latin improved the condition of Greek texts and
made it possible to have greater access to the Dionysian corpus. Humanistic pedagogy
rejected Scholastic logicism and intellectualism and embraced Pseudo-Dionysiuss idea
that Christian learning and contemplation imply one another, promoting the concept that
the study of the liberal arts, accompanied by deep contemplation, were the remedies for
the ills of the time.105 For the members of the Florentine Academy, Pseudo-Dionysius
offered the perfect combination of Platonic philosophy and Christian faith. The head of
the Academy, Marsilio Ficino, not only translated and commented on The Divine Names
and The Mystical Theology but also included Dionysian thought in his own Theologia
Platonica, including Pseudo-Dionysius with Plato and Paul, as the pillars of his religious
synthesis.106
105
106
Ibid.
50
CHAPTER III
Renaissance Platonism
Renaissance philosophy, although a direct product of Medieval thought, placed
tremendous emphasis on the ideas of humanistic intellectuals, who were captivated by the
revival of ancient Greek texts. The translation and reinterpretation of those texts,
especially those of Plato and of the Neoplatonists, dethroned Aristotelian scholasticism in
favor of humanistic pedagogy that emphasized rhetoric and ethics over logic and the
production of commentaries. Apart from humanism, as primarily a pedagogical reform
movement, two schools of thought dominate Renaissance philosophy. These are
Platonism and Aristotelianism. In the context of Renaissance philosophy, these two
schools of thought share the fundamental concepts of the dignity of man, the unity of
truth, and the immortality of the soul, which distinguish them from both earlier and later
forms of Platonism and Aristotelianism. The theme of dignity and excellence of man,
derived though it was from a patristic and mediaeval Christian tradition, was the principal
medium through which the status and powers of man in relation to divinity, cosmos, and
polity were treated in a focused way. 107 The relevance of the concept of the hierarchy of
being is, on the other hand, specific only to Renaissance Platonism as a result of Marsilio
107
Charles Trinkaus, Marsilio Ficino and the Ideal of Human Autonomy, in Ficino and Renaissance
Neoplatonism, ed. by Konrad Eisenbichler and Olga Zorzi Pugliese, (Toronto: Dovehouse Editions Canada,
1986), 141.
51
Ficinos development of this notion, which he inherited from Neoplatonism and PseudoDionysian philosophy.
Renaissance philosophy was enriched by access to previously unavailable texts
from ancient Greece and Rome. Therefore, the predominant role of Aristotle during the
later Middle Ages is, in part, replaced by Plato and other non-Aristotelian philosophers.
Platos manuscripts were read under a new light in part because of the great
accomplishments of Ficino, who retranslated and reinterpreted the works of Plato and the
Neoplatonists.108 Some Platonic dialogues, such as Timaeus, acquired particular
importance during this period. The success of Ficinos work facilitated the development
of Renaissance Platonism, which also incorporated humanism but was also characterized
by a definitive departure from medieval philosophy. Since Aristotle did not take a
definite position on the existence of God, the eternity of the world, and on the
immortality of the soul, Plotinian thought offered a better alternative for the Church
Fathers in their attempts to reconcile paganism and Christianity. Plato had a great
influence on Eastern theologians such as Clement, Origen, and Pseudo-Dionysius, but
Latin authors read in the medieval West also saw the advantage of buttressing their faith
with Platonic wisdom, 109 which fit well with the Christian teachings on creation, the
immortality of the soul, and eternal life. However, because Christianity and
Neoplatonism were closer in time and doctrine, it was easier for Ficino to resolve
theological problems from the point of view of the Plotinian unitarian conception of God
108
Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmidt, Renaissance Philosophy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992), 15.
109
Ibid., 128.
52
than from Platos less schematic theology.110 The Neoplatonic philosophers had great
interest in Platos metaphysics and were eager to incorporate the idea of hypostatical
hierarchies, therefore focusing their attention on dialogues such as Phaedrus, Symposium,
Timaeus, and Parmenides. The Neoplatonic interpretation of Plato led to the development
of theologies in which Gods transcendent being was so far removed from the material
realm that new spiritual levels or hierarchies had to be created in order to close the
ontological gap. Neoplatonists championed the idea of unity, of the superiority of cause
over effect, and of the creation of different levels of reality, and they distinguished
themselves from Plato by creating a more doctrinaire and schematic philosophy. 111
Marsilio Ficino as a Renaissance Platonist

Marsilio Ficino, as the leader of the Florentine Academy, provides the grounds to
consider Renaissance Platonism as a distinct movement within the broader context of
Renaissance philosophy.112 Ficinos Platonism has a distinctive character that contains
both traces of earlier humanistic thought but is also imbued with ideas from other sources
that enrich its highly diversified thought.113
Between 1469 and 1474, Ficino wrote the eighteen books that comprise his
longest original work, the Platonic Theology, dedicated to his patron Lorenzo de Medici.
The central theme of this work is the ascent of the human soul, maintaining that
110
Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmidt, 135.
111
Ibid.
112
Paul O. Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance, (Stanford: Standford University Press,
1964), 37.
113
Ibid., 38.
53
although mans worship of God puts him closer to divinity than any other mortal thing,
to allow death to thwart the human yearning for immortality would make mankind the
most wretched of creatures, thus violating the order given the world by its creator.114 In
Platonic Theology, Ficino combines the influence of Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus with
that of Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, and Aquinas. This is due to the fact that the
preoccupation with the immortality of the soul was present in both Platonic and
Neoplatonic philosophy and in early and late medieval theology. Through the influence
of medieval theologians, Ficino incorporated ideas on the faculties of the soul, the
different attributes of God, and Natures order. Through Pseudo-Dionysian influence,
Ficino revised the Neoplatonic ontological levels in the hierarchy of being and tailored
these to Christian theology.
The Hierarchy of Being

Ficino remained faithful to his Neoplatonic and medieval sources and tried to
describe the universe in terms of a hierarchy descending from God. Each level below
God has its specific place and shares in a degree of perfection. Ficinos final
metaphysical position claims a hierarchy constituted by five substances. These are the
One or God, Angelic Being or Mind, the Soul, Quality, and Body or Matter.115 In his
revision of the Plotinian hierarchy, Ficino treats quality as a separate level of being but
also adds symmetry. He locates the soul in the middle of the hierarchy, between the
eternal and the temporal realms, providing the human soul with a privileged position that
114
Paul O. Kristeller, 38.
115
Ibid., 42.
54
defines the metaphysical background needed to develop his theory of the dignity of man.
The upper part of Ficinos hierarchy corresponds to Plotinuss three hypostases: The One,
Intellect (Nous), and Soul. Since Plotinus did not give a full account of the relation
between the hypostases and the sensible realm, his successors added these details.
Proclus, in his Elements of Theology and Theology of Plato developed the five levels that
influenced Ficinos chain, in which the souls metaphysical centrality secures its role as a
cosmic link between the divine and sensible realms. Representing the cosmos in
miniature, the little totality, [and] the all here in us which mirrors the All There which is
also us,116 the soul debilitates the position of angelic beings above it and quality below
it. Ficino understood the Neoplatonic principles that govern the description of being that
mediates between the One and Good, on the higher level and evil and non-being in the
lower level. The first two levels, as divine, transcend being and the lower two levels, as
absence of the good, do not possess being. The gap between these two extremes has to be
filled with different levels of being that display goodness and existence, but in different
degrees. Therefore, a hierarchy is constructed based on several principles such as the
superiority of one to many, of cause to effect, of rest to motion, and of whole to part. 117
The arguments presented by Ficino in his description of Gods supremacy in the
hierarchy show the influence of two schools of thought and of two ways of seeing the
universe. First, the establishment of Gods omnipotence through the direct relation
between power and absolute unity responds to Platonic and Neoplatonistic ideas in which
116
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, trans. by Michael J. B. Allen with John Warden, Latin text edited
by James Hankins with William Bowen, Volume I, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,
2001), xv.
117
Brian Copenhaver and Charles Schmidt, 150.
55
body or matter is divisible. Quality lacks steadiness, the soul has the inner capacity to
move itself and emulate pure minds or angelic beings, and angels have all knowledge but
depend for their being on a superior entity which is total unity. Secondly, the notion of
Gods omnipotence, which is based on the infinite character of being and the infinite
power needed for creation, are derived by Ficino from the Thomistic doctrine of being
and act, developed in the [later] discussion of primary and secondary causality. 118 Thus,
causality serves as the link between the Platonic/Neoplatonic and the Thomistic views of
the universe.
The factor that determines the five different hierarchical levels of Ficinos
universe is the level of unity and power that each manifests. For Ficino, the Platonic ideal
of self-knowledge is best achieved by knowing the world and God. This is a view of the
world that is unified by its connection to divine power.119 The lowest level of Ficinos
hierarchy corresponds to body or corporeality, which is characterized by extension. Since
it is extended, it is passive, composed of parts, and infinitely divisible. When left to itself,
matter is capable of constant change. It is not determined by species or kind and it
possesses, by nature, the potency to become any corporeal body. Thus, lack of stability
translates into lack of unity and, because unity is closely related to power of action,
matter or corporeality lacks the capacity to initiate action though it has the ability to
undertake it.
118
Ardis Collins, The Secular is Sacred: Platonism and Thomism in Marsilio Ficinos Platonic Theology,
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 22.
119
Ibid., 8.
56
If it is the characteristic of body to receive and to be acted upon, but characteristic

of incorporeal nature to give and to act, then in corporeal nature dwells what we
call potency (the potency the theologians call receptive or passive) and in
incorporeal nature act, that is, the capacity for action.120
Since corporeal things show stability and are capable of acting, characteristics which are
not innate in corporeality, there must be another factor responsible for this display of
unity and power. This is what Ficino calls quality. Quality is capable of influencing the
way in which corporeal things differentiate between each other, not in essence but in
action. It has the ability to differentiate one body from another by stamping its specific
action, because quality is a form and, as a form, it is a principle of being that causes a
thing to be what it is. Furthermore, the way a thing is determines the way it acts.121
According to Ficino, quality is a source of being, for the same reason that it is a source of
action.
So powerful is the gift of unity itself and of stability that only at the lowest level
of the universe does it seems to be overtaken by its opposites. Yet even there the
gift sometimes prevails in a way, since it continually keeps the matter which is
subject to infinite plurality and change, constant in the unity of substance and
order.122
120
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book III, Chapter I.5, 217.
121
Ardis Collins, 9.
122
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book III, Chapter I.2, 213-214.
57
Quality, defined as the many and the one,123 constrains bodies into species and, while it
is undivided within itself, it becomes divisible when it mixes with body. This implies that
quality, as a form, is both a principle of being and a principle of unity. Since unity is
related to the power to act, the unifying role is assigned to quality. Thus, quality is
responsible for stabilizing the body and defining its capacities. Since it provides the unity
of body, it must be more unified than corporeality. Quality, by nature, is not extended
and, even when a body is divided, its quality remains intact in each of the parts as it is in
the whole. Consequently, it is indivisible. But because it is received in matter and
divided up and thus made in a way corporeal, it is not pure act but rather act
contaminated with the passivity of body. So quality is composed of both act and
potency.124 Because it is indivisible in itself and is the cause of action, it is situated
above corporeality. However, because quality is said to subsist only in matter, there must
be a higher principle that can supply qualitys deficiencies.
The call for a higher principle responds to the lack of perfection in the form
present in quality. This higher principle must be able to hold unity of substance. A body
can only be whole if all of its parts belong to a single entity that will remain
unchangeable. According to Ficino, this unifying principle, the cause of harmony, is
called soul or life.
The universal principle must always have existed, and must always continue to
exist, through its own power. It must always have existed, because it could have
not been produced at some time out of itselffor that would involve its pre123
124
Ibid., Book III, Chapter I.1, 213.

Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book III, Chapter I.5, 217.
58
existing itselfnor could it have been produced from anotherfor nothing comes
before what is first (nothing else would ever have existed if the first had not
existed first). It will always continue to exist, because, if the principle is once
destroyed, the totality of things collapses, and neither the principle itself nor
anything else can any more restored to being. 125
This principle, considered incorporeal, has infinite power because it is immortal, does not
have any of the bodys characteristics but provides the body with qualities, and is the
bodys true form given that it exists through itself.126 Because this principle is not made
out of parts, it is immortal. First, it can never be disbanded. Second, it is not attached to
anything on which its existence depends. Third, it is not polluted by any other substance.
Lastly, it is not limited by space, motion or time. 127 Following the principle that a cause
always has some part in its effect, there must be something in quality which resembles
the soul. Since quality is totally mobile in itself and in its operations, the soul must have
some kind of mobility because that which bestow(s) mobility must possess it. 128 The
source of the souls motion is not external to it, as it is for quality. Soul is mobile due to
an internal source of motion, called life. When the soul is present in the body, which is in
itself powerless to act, the body lives and moves from within itself in order to act.
Without a soul, however, the body can only move as the result of external force.
125
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology , Book I, Chapter III.23, 51.
126
Ibid., Book I, Chapter III. 25, 53.
127
Ibid.
128
Ardis Collins, 12.
59
Ficino describes the rational soul as stable in its essence, mobile in its activity,
and both mobile and stable in its power.129 Thus, it is more simple and more stable than
quality, because it has the power of a true form. Although it supplies qualitys
deficiencies, it has it owns weaknesses when it comes to its mobility in its operations. 130
Both its external and internal functions are performed in time and divided into
consecutive moments. Thus, in operation, the soul is not stable or unified because it
hesitates between potency and act, between the capacity for something which is not
possessed and the actual possession of it.131 The soul moves, because it does not have
internal rest. This is due to its constant desire to reach something that will complete and
perfect its nature and that can be attained only by reaching for something more perfect
than itself. The soul yearns for understanding, because its capacity to understand depends
on something that is above it.
Therefore something exists above soul, in order than soulwhich by its nature is
open equally to understanding and to not understanding, switching as it does from
the one to the other in alternationmay be ordered and determined for
understanding through the influence, in this genus [of understanding], of that
which is always in act. Such a something is what is always understanding or
always actually understood which is the same. 132
Ficino does not explain in clear detail how the entity above soul endows soul with
understanding. But he explains that the rational soul, through an internal enlightenment,
129
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book I, Chapter IV, 55.
130
Ardis Collins, 13.
131
Ibid.
132
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book I, Chapter V.4.4, 63.
60
is constantly aware of the existence of the angels and of God. Thus, it is through this
knowledge that soul desires to be, in its functions, as angelic beings and God are in theirs.
The motion through which it pursues this end is innate to the soul, but the purpose of
such activity originates from an external source. Angelic beings need to be posited
between the soul and God as intermediaries because, as perfect minds, they act as a link
between the rational soul, which is imperfect mind, and God, who represents perfect truth
that is above mind. Faithful to Plotinuss description of the soul as two folded, Ficino
describes the rational soul, which is capable of two different types of activities, as if it
were made out of gold and silver, depending upon the realm in which its activity takes
place. Those activities that are executed in union with the body in the temporal realm
correspond to the silver part of the soul, while those activities that are rational and
performed independently of the body and are geared towards the eternal belong to the
gold part of the soul. Since soul is not unified in its activities and is always in motion, it
contains plurality and is not perfect. However, its existence implies the existence of a
perfect and pure mind, totally independent from the body, which is capable of infinite
understanding in an eternal act of knowing. 133 Angelic being precedes soul, which is
mobile and multiple. Thus, angelical being cannot be both motionless and unified. As
cause of soul, angelic being has to share one of the two characteristics of soul. It has to be
either mobile or multiple but cannot be both. Since it has multiplicity, it must therefore be
immobile. Thus, angelic being is characterized by its multiplicity and stability. It is
motionless plurality. It conforms to soul in that like soul it is a plurality; but it differs
133
Ardis Collins, 14.
61
from soul in that it is motionless while soul is moved.134 Multiplicity in angelic being is
manifested through intellect, the essence and being of which are the combination of its
capacity of understanding, of the act of understanding, and of the different things that are
understood. Since multiplicity derives from unity, which does not itself need to be
derived, multiplicity has an intrinsic need to become unified. Thus, angelic being, as
multiple, depends on something above it, that is, complete unity. Following Plotinus,
Ficino claims that this perfect unity is God, the most powerful of all in that He is the
simplest of all.135
God represents absolute unity, goodness, and truth in itself. These are one and the
same because, since unity is simplicity and truth is purity, what is good is the result of its
purity and simplicity. What is one and the same in things must be one and the same in
their cause, since an effect retains the vestiges of its cause and it is similar to it.136All
things are part of and seek unity, truth, and goodness. Thus, unity, truth, and goodness
must be the initial causes and the ultimate accomplishments of everything. Therefore
God, described by Plotinus as absolute unity, is for Ficino the pinnacle of the hierarchy of
the universe. As previously established, Ficino views the universe as a hierarchy of
causes in which what is superior must provide for the inadequacies of what is inferior.
God cannot have anything above it, since that which is absolute unity, goodness, and
truth, cannot be caused and cannot receive anything from outside itself. Multiplicity
134
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book I, Chapter II.3, 81.
135
Ibid.
136
Ardis Collins, 16.
62
implies weakness, while unity represents power and, since there is not anything more
powerful than unity itself, God must be omnipotent.
Just as extreme dispersion leads to infinite weakness, so in the highest unity
dwells infinite power. Act by its very nature contains no limit, for to be subject to
a limit is passion, which is the opposite of act. Therefore, act is only subject to a
limit to the extent that it depends on a substrate which possesses a degree of
passive potentiality. The divine act, however, subsists in itself. The active power,
insofar as it is power, is not itself confined to a fixed number of levels. For what
prevents the power as power from being thought about or from existing on one
level as on another? Therefore it accepts no limit as to its levels except from the
passive potentiality into which it is mixed, or from a limiting cause. But the divine
power is unmixed and is the highest power.137
Influenced by Neoplatonism, the dependence between the various levels in the hierarchy
is explained in terms of unity and power because, according to Ficino, unity is power.
Ficinos identification of unity with power becomes evident when the hierarchy of the
universe is explained by taking into account the concepts of potency and act. Here,
potency is the capacity to receive and to endure influences, while act is the capacity to do
things and impose influences. Potency belongs to corporeality, whereby nature has the
potency to become anything due to its passive and receptive characteristics. On the other
hand, the power to cause or act belongs to that which is incorporeal. Quality, which does
not share any of the characteristics of the corporeal but becomes embedded in the body, is
considered to be a mixture of potency and act. Soul maintains itself separated from the
137
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book II, Chapter IV, 1, 114.
63
body, so it is an act. But Soul is not considered as a pure act because, although it exerts
movement on something, it is also receptive of what it lacks in itself. Angelic being is not
pure act, because a pure act must be unique, while angelic being displays multiplicity.
Thus, angelic being is a combination of potency and act. [B]ecause it remains distinct
from truth and dependent upon it, its essence is in potency to its act of understanding and
receptive of those forms by which it understands.138 Angelic being is not unity but
multiplicity because, for understanding, it depends on God, who is absolute unity and
pure act.
In his description of God, Ficino introduces the principle of Being that, when
associated with effective power, is considered as a necessary condition of action. Thus, a
thing acts according to what it is: The mode of action follows the mode of being. 139
God, then, has unlimited power because he is absolute unity, pure act, and Being itself.
His act or capacity to impose influences and to be causal is infinite, because the only
thing which could limit the causal power of act is the passive potency of something
external of itself, such as the potency of what is caused but does not cause. Based on the
assumption that pure act is limitless, and that being is a necessary condition of action, it
follows that pure Being is, in nature, infinite perfection. Being can only be limited, not by
a flaw in itself, but by the nature of what has caused it. God has not been caused and, in
God, being itself is that which exists. 140 Therefore, God is infinite being and has
infinite power.
138
Ardis Collins, 18.
139
Ibid., 19.
140
Ardis Collins, 19.
64
Being itself, considered absolutely, is immeasurable, because it can be

communicated to an infinite number of things and be thought about in
innumerable ways. So if the being of anything is finite, it must be either limited
by its cause or by its substrate. Neither of these conditions applies to God. In
infinite being is infinite power just as in finite being is finite power. 141
The analysis of the relations between act and between potency and between unity and
power explains the dynamic unity that holds the hierarchy together. From the perspective
of mobility, it is necessary to concentrate on the causes for the existence of soul, which is
the first level capable of movement. At the pinnacle of the hierarchy, God is unmoving
absolute unity, followed by angelic being, which is plurality that is not subject to
movement, then followed by soul, which retains plurality and is subject to movement. If
soul lacked movement, soul would be angelic being. If, on the other hand, soul was
totally movable, it would be quality.
Soul, as also described by Plotinus, is the first entity capable both of being mobile
and of conferring movement to bodies. This proves that soul is the source of movement
and that the uncontrolled turbulence of the universe issues from it. 142 Ficino enumerates
four causes that account for the existence of soul.
1. Soul contains something from what caused it, because anything caused by another
thing can trace something in itself back to its cause.
141
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book II, Chapter IV.2, 115.
142
65
2. Soul has the capacity to be a mover that is not moved. If all existing things were
eternally moving, they could escape the hierarchy and wonder into infinity or
move in eternal circles in which the cause and the effect would be the same.
3. Soul is closer and its essence is identical to what it moves.
4. Soul has the capacity to move towards the things to be moved.
Without soul, bodies would not be able to move because angelic being and God, both
immutable, are incapable of turning towards bodies. As bodies are totally passive, they
would not be able to turn towards angelic being and God.
Therefore, there has to be some mutable nature which of its own accord turns
towards inactive bodies and arouses them. Always alert, it experiences changes in
itself before producing them in body, with the result that, just as corporeal
substance is made by spiritual substance, so corporeal movement is produced by
spiritual movement.143
In order to explain why soul can move itself, although it is dependent on God and angelic
being, Ficino appeals to Plotinuss idea that soul has an innate desire to become like its
progenitors in behavior and activity. In the act of becoming like angelic being and God,
the soul moves itself. This movement, described as activity within time, 144 flows from
its nature but is incited by the levels above it. As in Plotinuss theory of emanation, what
flows into the soul from God and angels is perpetual, invariable, and immediate. The
effect that it produces on the soul has the same characteristics as angelic being and God.
But the soul, being weaker than God and the angels, acts gradually over time and has the
143
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology , Book III, Chapter II.13, 227.
144
66
ability to descend from the divine to the corporeal and to ascend back to the divine by
virtue of its own desire.
Ficino begins Chapter II of Book III of the Platonic Theology by stating that the
soul is the middle level of being. It links and unites all the levels above it and below it
when it ascends to the higher and descends to the lower levels.145 Thus, the soul exists
halfway between the intelligible realm and the sensible realm. It is the third level from
the top down and vice versa. Without soul at this level, the whole hierarchy would
collapse. Soul is absolutely necessary in nature because angelic being, as unchangeable,
is always being and quality, which can be set in motion at any time and is always in the
process of becoming. Hence, a mean that shares the characteristics of both is required,
something that is eternal like angelic being and that is capable of being moved,
something which can always be in motion and alive, and which can by means of its
motion infuse life into bodies.146 Soul has the capacity to link the eternal and the
temporal due to its innate capacity of being both mobile and immobile. It is capable of
descending to the temporal realm without renouncing the eternal and is capable of
ascending to the higher realms without abandoning the lower. Borrowing from Plotinuss
analogy of the Sun, Ficino compares the souls activity with the activity of the Suns
light, which radiates from the Sun without detaching from it and mixes with the air
without contamination. In the same fashion soul, which is spiritually united with the
eternal through its knowledge, fills the temporal bodies with life, thus fusing the eternal
and the temporal.
145
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book III, Chapter II.1, 231.
146
Ibid., Book III, Chapter II.1, 233.
67
Since soul is not subject to extension or quantity, once it confers life to the body,
it does this as a whole, as though it were the center of a circumference. The center is not
attached to any point of the circumference and always holds the same position in regard
to the whole circle.147 Thus, as in Plotinus, soul is concomitantly divided and undivided.
It is undivided because, although it is present in each of the bodys parts, it is always
present as a whole. It is divided, because although it has a stable and unified essence, it
divides itself in many parts when it acts in space and time. It descends into plurality but,
when in contemplation of the eternal, it becomes totally unified.
This is what implants itself in things mortal without itself becoming mortal. For
just as it implants itself as a whole and is not split asunder, so it withdraws as a
whole and it is not dispersed. And because it controls bodies while it also clings to
things divine, it is the mistress of bodies, not their companion. This is the greatest
miracle in nature.148
Soul, as a universal medium, contains within itself the divine images of what is above it
and uses these as patterns for what it produces at the lower level. As the true link for all
being, it has the power to move into individual things while it conserves all things. As the
center of nature, the soul is the mean of everything in the universe, the succession or
chain of the world, the countenance of all things, and the knot and bond of the world. 149
According to Ficino, the rational soul gives life to the body within time. It is intelligent,
and its motion is perfect in its circularity. Its beginning and its end are the same. Thus,
147
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, Book III, Chapter II.4, 239.
148
Ibid., Book III, Chapter II.6, 243.
149
Ibid.
68
soul begins as moved from itself and returns to itself, thereby creating movement for its
own sake. It recognizes itself as spiritual and free from the constraints of matter by
essence.
The mystical nature of the soul is analyzed by Ficino from a perspective that is
different from that of the Neoplatonic tradition. In Plotinus, Platos notion of the
immortality of the soul had been overshadowed by the notion of Intellect as a derivation
from the One and of soul as an emanation from Intellect. Ficino, on the other hand, is less
concerned with the origin of the soul and more concerned with its return to being, life,
and intellectto the triad of which formally, originally, ultimately it is partand thence
its ascent within its own unity to mystical union with the transcendent One. 150 It is here
that Ficino departs from the Plotinian notion that the soul needs to pass through Intellect
in its journey towards the One. Ficino follows Augustines doctrine of common truth, in
which there is one truth contemplated by all souls but not one intellect for all souls.
Ficino holds that all intellects are plunged into the same font of truth, as if to
contemplate the work of the artificer in that one idea (ratio) through which he has
produced it.151 Closely related to the ascent of the soul is Ficinos theory of the
immortality of the soul, which constitutes the central theme of his Platonic Theology.
Ficino defends the notion that the soul is immortal by explaining the relationship
and difference between essence and being. While essence is what a thing is in itself,
being is the act of the essence and its presence in the nature of things. 152 It belongs to a
150
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, xv.
151
Ardis Collins, 8.1
152
Ibid., 47.
69
thing by virtue of its form. Every essence has the capacity to receive being, and being is a
form. Forms, which by definition are that which exists, are immortal. Essence, as a form,
is also immortal because it is not constrained by space or time. There are forms that
belong to a body and are limited by temporality. Nevertheless, the form remains immortal
due to its own nature and to being, which does not exist except through matter. Other
forms have existence of their own, so that what is received is received with relation to the
capacity of the recipient. Therefore, if the essence is immortal, it would receive being as
immortal. The rational soul, which does not have its being in matter, is different from
other forms because it is immortal due both to its essence and to its being. Since matter
does not have the capacity to think, the action of thinking that is executed by the mind
follows the subject of being, and the form of the action is the same as the form of being.
The human mind has existence because it belongs to an existing person. Its form of action
and its form of being is human. But the rational soul is capable of endless knowledge, an
action in which matter is not involved, since mind can know things independently from
matter and material conditions. As matter is characterized by multiplicity and mutability,
soul possesses unalterable knowledge. Through knowledge, it brings things to simplicity
and unites them under one universal idea. 153 Rational soul has the capacity to act
independently from matter, and its embodiment is not essential for its being, since the
souls being belong to the soul itself. The rational soul does not originate from matter,
because all the forms which attain their being from the power of matter decay as a result
of the same power. Therefore, the rational soul must have its origin in the power of
153
Ardis Collins, 51.
70
essence, which by definition is a capacity for being.154 As everything corporeal owes

its existence to corporeal act, that which is spiritual, like essence, must exist through
spiritual act. In both cases, the pure ability to be created is nothing if stripped from the
actual act of creation. Thus, when the soul becomes being, it has to be by the power of
God who alone has the ability to create ex nihilo. According to his immutable nature,
God gives to things what is suitable to them. Therefore, God creates rational soul with the
innate capacity of being, a necessary and unconditional existence.
The soul is the principle of being for the body and its parts, capable of conferring
essence and power when it is intrinsically united with the body. If the union collapses so
does the essence, because the manner in which something relates to being is identical to
the manner in which something relates to unity. Thus, the soul can give being to the body
if and only if it is present in the body. This idea of intimate unifying presence leads
Ficino into a discussion of Gods role as the ultimate source of being and unity. Gods
divine presence is in each one of the levels of the metaphysical hierarchy and man,
burning with desire for unity with God, aspires to discover and to know him. The process
of examination is an introspective one in which man, through his soul in the act of
contemplation, reaches towards God who is perfect unity. In his letter to Giovanni
Cavalcanti, Ficino explains that when the soul is in union with the body, it is occupied in
multiple activities that provoke agitation and confusion. It is also more engaged with
temporal activities than with eternal ones, since that is Gods assignment for it in its
service to man. During this period, the soul cannot see clearly the incorporeal realm. But,
154
Ardis Collins, 53.
71
when those activities decline, the mind can see the divine because, freed from the body,
mind is capable of knowledge from within, unencumbered by sensory experiences.
Then indeed the soul will observe through itself, and it will see the light of
intellect more clearly than it now sees the light of the senses through the glass
windows of this bodily prison. Entirely at peace, it will perceive through its own
perfect transparency the highest impressions in the light of the divine sun. So
bright is that light, that the light of this sun becomes a shadow in comparison, and
because it is so clear it is hidden from impure eyes but fully manifest to those that
are pure. Nor will the mind then gaze as if at painted images, but rather at real
objects, of which all other things are images. 155
Ficino, following Plato, compares the role played by God in the act of knowing to the
role played by the sun in the act of seeing. As there are three components in the act of
seeing, that is, motion, sight, and the light that binds them, there are three components in
understanding. These are the act by which intellect moves the mind, the act of knowing,
and God who binds them. Here, the intellect represents truth, knowledge represents
science, and God represents goodness. Thus, what we know in things is their truth and
what we desire in them is their goodness. 156 God, who is both truth and goodness, has
the faculty to unite the knower with the known, and since the same discourse that applies
to knowledge can be applied to desire, God also unites the lover and the object of
desire. 157 Soul desires God, who represents absolute goodness and is above intellect or
155
156
Ardis Collins, 77.
157
Ibid.
72
being, because only God can attract and transform the soul. Being relates to God not as
his effect but as a demonstration, through its imperfection and incompleteness, of the
perfection of God. In agreement with Plotinus, Ficino explains that the perfection of a
thing depends on how close it is to the perfect being. From his knowledge of the divine
ideas or intellect, God knows himself as perfect and absolute being and as imitable in a
certain finite mode of being. 158 As first principle, God creates soul and everything below
him through the light of being and, by knowing all things in this light, the soul
recognizes a certain unity among them; all are understood in terms of being, which is to
say that all are understood in their relation to that one cause who is the cause of being. 159
When all the different essences are known as effects of being, God is known as unity that
contains plurality within itself.
In its desire to unite with God, the soul detaches itself from the body and turns
inwards in order to know things through the light proper to its own capacity. It then turns
to the common light or truth, which illuminates and acquires true knowledge of all things
created by God. In this highest state of bliss, the soul loses all multiplicity and becomes
stable, so it can ascend to God and become one with him, not due to its own power but to
the presence of God in it. In Ficinos letter to Michele Mercati, titled A theological
dialogue between God and soul, God explains to the soul that He is with it and within it.
Therefore, soul does not need to be drawn in many directions in order to take hold of
[Him],160 because He is unity in itself. The soul will be able to ascend by understanding
158
Ardis Collins, 79.
159
Ibid., 87.
160
73
and love beyond any kind of intellect, to life itself, pure existence, absolute being. 161
The soul which, by virtue of being incorporeal in its rise towards God, can abandon the
material world with its constantly changing forms reaches the intelligence of angelical
being, also incorporeal but unchangeable. Here, it finds that which creates itself, which
creates everything else without limits, and which is absolutely pure. The union of the soul
with God is possible through the transforming power of the love of God which takes
complete possession of the mind and makes it divine. 162
In Ficinos theory of love, intellect and will have the same goal. While intellect
deals with the subjective, the will is the force behind the love which moves soul and body
into action to obtain the object of their desire. 163 Thus, intellect is responsible for the
inward movement of the soul and will is responsible for outward movement. These
constitute the two Platonic wings, as described by Ficino that carry the soul in its flight
toward God.164 The role of the will in Ficino is Plotinian, but the difference between
intellect and will is not. According to Ficino, intellect and will are not the same, even in
God. Plotinus, on the other hand, claims identity of the will and being in the One and of
will and intellect in the Nous. Although both philosophers claim that desire motivates the
souls contemplative journey towards God, Plotinus claims that the journey is an
intellectual experience, while Ficino claims that it is an emotional one. Ficino, following
Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius, also emphasizes the role of the contemplative life. But
161
162
Ardis Collins, 88.
163
Laura Westra, Love and Beauty in Ficino and Plotinus, in Ficino and Renaissance Neoplatonism, ed.
by Konrad Eisenbichler and Olga Zorzi Pugliese, (Toronto: Dovehouse Editions Canada, 1986), 181.
164
74
since the humanists attributed to man an extraordinary importance, the belief in

immortality was considered to be mans ability to achieve another dimension. In Ficinos
case, immortality becomes essential to his understanding of human life and of its highest
goal. He claims that such a goal is not exclusive to a few people but is attainable by a
great number of people and attainable forever.165 According to Ficino, the love of God
and the knowledge of God constitute two different aspects of the same experience, which
holds the key to Ficinos metaphysics and ethics alike. 166 For Ficino, man accomplishes
more by his love for God than by his understanding.167 Based upon his interpretation of
Platos definition of love, combined with theories of friendship developed by Aristotle
and Cicero, the Christian view of love extolled by St. Paul, and the notion of courtly love
of the Tuscan poets, Ficino develops a theory of human love in which the love of God is
the result of the love of one human being for another. Ficino sees the mutual love
between people as a preparation for the love of God, which represents the ultimate goal
of mans desire. Any relationship between two people is a spiritual union based on their
individual love for God. Therefore, God is always the third component in any human
friendship and love, as the bond and guardian of such a relationship. Proper love and
friendship between human beings always originates in the love of each individual for
God, as manifested in the persons desire to ascend to God.168 The inner ascent of the
soul constitutes, for Ficino, the central goal of human existence as a representation of the
165
166

Ibid., 45.
167
Laura Westra, 182.
168
75
human good and of mans moral life. The entirety of Ficinos moral teachings, as
expressed in his letters, is a synthesis of the rules which would lead man into a
contemplative life. Only the person who can achieve this kind of life would be free from
the earthly worries and animated by his inner certainty and insight, he will know and do
the right thing under any given circumstances. 169 If man could not reach this goal, the
dignity conferred to him by his central position in the configuration of the universe would
have no purpose, and man would be more unhappy than the animals that can fulfill their
own natural needs.
I will conclude this final chapter with the beautiful words of Ficino, as he wrote
them to Giovanni Cavalcanti in his Meditations on the Soul.
That is why Plato advises us to retreat from here to therethat is, from
attachment to the body and involvement with worldly affairs, to the cultivation of
the soul. Otherwise we cannot avoid evil.
[] Such freedom we gain principally through the three virtues of prudence,
justice, and piety. Prudence recognizes what we owe to God and what to the
world. Justice gives its due to the world, and piety its due to God. Thus the man of
prudence yields his body, as a limb of the world, to the turmoil of the world
wherever it happens to move it. But his soul, the offspring of God, he removes
from all dealings with the body and freely commits to the guidance of divine
providence.
169
76
My dearest Giovanni [Cavalcanti], if we follow this golden rule of Plato, with the
wind of heaven behind us we shall circumnavigate successfully this vast
whirlpool of fortune, and quite untroubled, sail safely into harbor. Farewell. 170
170
Marsilio Ficino, Meditations on the Soul, 119
77
CONCLUSION
Marsilio Ficino considered that the Neoplatonism of Plotinus was the soul
philosophy, the living light that had shone across the darkness of corporeal death bringing
hope and comfort to the minds of the ancients.171 And, in accord with St. Augustine, he
believed that the soul is essentially immortal by origin and of angelic and divine
character, because it was created as an image of the eternal. Although some passages of
his writings show Ficinos rational strive to convince the skeptic human mind of his
assumptions about the soul, these also reflect the difficulties he encountered from
introducing and embracing Neoplatonic ideas. Based on his philosophico-religious
concerns,172 he rebuilt a traditional philosophy that, from the ancient Greeks to Plotinus,
had established the harmony between paganism and Christianity. He successfully argued
for the acceptance of Neoplatonic philosophy, because he was able to recognize the
impossibility of reconciling Christian beliefs with Aristotelianism in areas such as the
eternal character of the world, the souls immortality, the unifying nature of intellect, and
the astrological determinism that regarded the individual person, and indeed religion
itself, as transient phenomena bound by astrological cycles. 173
171
Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, xiv.
172
The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. by Charles B. Schmitt and Quentin Skinner,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 237.
173
Ibid.
78
Neoplatonism, characterized by an intricate and complex corpus of metaphysical, ethical,

and psychological canons, provided the grounds for Ficinos cosmological challenge to
merge the cyclical aspect of the universe with the religious notion of the soul, in order to
secure its cosmic position. The site of the rational soul at the center of the hierarchy of
being and as a link between the incorporeal and the corporeal is an acknowledgment of
its function as the giver of life to the sensible world. Accordingly, the rational soul, which
includes the human soul, marks the ontological difference between the two realms and
institutes a continuous interaction between them. According to the Neoplatonic tradition,
this specific location of the soul guarantees an understanding of the universe, its forces,
and the relation between the five-substance levels of Ficinos hierarchy of being in which
he can find an ever-changing and different reflection of Gods actions. 174
Ficino, familiar with Aristotles cosmology of celestial and elemental spheres
surrounding a static earth, tried to decrease the gap between the intelligible, or
supralunar, realm and the sensible, or sublunar, realm. The ability of man to return to its
source in an ascendant vertical movement, as also explained by Plotinus, establishes the
ontological nature and function of the rational soul as the link between the intelligible and
the sensible realms. The soul, as a celestial body, decreases the gap between the two
worlds because it has the ability to give life to the corporeal world through its divine
nature, in a descendent movement, and also to ascent towards the divine. These two
movements are the basis for the formulation of souls unique ontological status and for
the idea that the higher part of the soul is never attached to the body, an idea well
developed by Plotinus in his description of the soul as the third hypostasis.
174
The Cambridge History of Renaissance, 237.
79
In conclusion, although it is true that the immortality of the soul had been
defended from Plato to Augustine and other Christian thinkers, and that Marsilio Ficino
had read and adopted several arguments from each of these thinkers, it becomes clear that
Ficino adopted Plotinus hierarchy of being as a dominant component of his own thought.
His formulations on the three hypostases and the ascendant and descendent movements
characteristics of the soul allow him to develop his own hierarchy of the universe, in
which soul anchors the metaphysics of the structure and reaffirms its ontological nature
as immortal being.
Ficinos doctrine of the immortality of the soul and his arguments in support of it,
ensure his influence on the thought of many 16th century philosophers. Ficino may also
have indirectly influenced the adoption of the immortality of the soul by the Catholic
Church which declared this notion a dogma of Catholicism at the Lateran Council in
1512.175 Ficino considered the need to worship a higher being to be a natural need in
human beings, for the love and knowledge of God belong to man as part of his dignity
and excellence, and compensation for the many defects and weakness of his nature.176
Ficino attempted to establish the harmony between religion and philosophy, so that true
religion was considered to be Christianity and true philosophy was considered to be
Platonism. Ficino was convinced that Platonic reason was essential for understanding the
Christian dogmas, and he firmly believed that his mission was to restore the truth of
philosophy for the advantage of religion. He believed that those who cannot be guided
simply by faith can appeal to reason or intellect in their return to God.
175
176
Ibid.
80
Although Renaissance Platonism eventually lost its dominance in the Western

philosophical tradition, the eclectic philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, imbued as it was with
Neoplatonism, constitutes an important chapter in the historical development of
Platonism.
81
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allen, Michael. Marsilio Ficino on Significatio. In Renaissance and Early Modern
Philosophy. Edited by Peter A. French and Howard K. Wettstein. Midwest
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Platonic Theology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974
Copenhaver, Brian and Schmidt, Charles. Renaissance Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1992
Coppleston, Frederick. Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy. New York:
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Ficino, Marsilio. Meditations on the Soul: selected Letters of Marsilio Ficino. Translated
from the Latin by members of the Language Department of the School of
Economic Science, London. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International,
1997
Ficino, Marsilio. Platonic Theology. Translated by Michael J. B. Allen with John
Warden. Latin text edited by James Hankins with William Bowen. Volume I.
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82
Gersh, Stephen. From Iamblichus to Eriugena: an investigation of the prehistory and

evolution of the pseudo-Dionysian tradition. Leiden: Brill, 1978
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The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969
Henry, Paul. Introduction to Enneads. Plotinus. Translated by Stephen MacKenna.
London: Oxford University Press, 1954
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. Stanford: Standford
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85

Influence of Plotinus On Marsilio Ficino S Doctrine of The Hierarchy of Being

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THE INFLUENCE OF PLOTINUS ON MARSILIO FICINOS DOCTRINE OF THE

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of

Florida Atlantic University

THE INFLUE CE OF PLOTINUS ON MARSILIO FICINO'S DOCTRINE OF THE

Clevis R. Headley, Ph.D.

The Influence of Plotinus on Marsilio Ficinos Doctrine of the

Florida Atlantic University

Marina Paola Banchetti, Ph.D.

distinctive movement within the vast context of Renaissance philosophy. Ficinos

THE INFLUENCE OF PLOTINUS OF MARSILIO FICINOS DOCTRINE OF THE

Marsilio Ficino, Meditations on the Soul, xix.

approaching sublimity in a manner that is both, simple and rhetorically challenging. 5

Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, ix.

Marsilio Ficino, Meditations on the Soul, 82.

Pauliina Remes, Neoplatonism, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 199.

Neoplatonism as a Philosophical Movement

Pauliina Remes, 11.

Plotinus as a Neoplatonist: The Enneads

a formidable tribute it is, as it signifies the philosophers sense of powerlessness in regard

Pauliina Remes, 20.

Plotinus, The Philosophy of Plotinus, x.

Pauliina Remes, 21.

means of purification classifies Plotinuss thought as non-humanistic, because the type of

Plotinus, The Philosophy of Plotinus, xxii.

Paul Henry, xlii.

than to Aristotle. This is because Plotinuss metaphysics is closer to meta-psychology,

The Three Primary Hypostases (Enneads V. 1)

Paul Henry, xliii.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, (Cambridge Massachusetts: Harvard University Press,

How? Explain a little more.

Paul Henry, xlvi.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.1.1-7, 11.

Ibid., V.1.1.17-30, 13.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.2.4-23; 31-40, 17.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.2.5, 19.

Ibid., V.1.3.5, 19.

Ibid., V.1.3.10-15, 21.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.4.6-10, 23.

Ibid., V.1.4.15, 23.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.4.30-36, 25.

Ibid., V.1.4.44, 25.

Plotinus, The Philosophy of Plotinus, 14.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.5.15-19, 29.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.6.17, 29.

Ibid., V.1.6.31, 31.

The One and the Theory of Emanation

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, V.1.7.7, 35.

Ibid., footnote, 34.

Ibid., V.1.7.12-16, 37.

Plotinus, Enneads, V.6.3.10-15, quoted in Dominic J. OMeara, Plotinus: An Introduction to the

Plotinus describes the One as ineffable and unknowable, because it cannot be

Dominic J. OMeara, 55.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, xvii.

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, xxii.

Dominic J. OMeara, 75.

series of contemplations, in which contemplation manifests itself as derivation. Intellect

Plotinus, Enneads, trans. by A. H. Armstrong, xxiv.

Neoplatonic Heritage and Pseudo-Dionysius

Pauliina Remes, 198.

Pauliina Remes, 199.

Pauliina Remes, 74.

3. The theory of negative or apophatic theology, elaborated first by Plotinus in his

Pauliina Remes, 204.