Marsilio Ficino Quotes on Mind
Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) — the Florentine Renaissance philosopher whose Latin translation of the entire Platonic corpus (1484) and the Corpus Hermeticum (1471) reintroduced Plato to the Latin West — gave Renaissance Platonism its founding philosophical synthesis in the eighteen-book Platonic Theology on the Immortality of Souls (1482). The central treatment of mind develops the Neoplatonic hierarchy of being from the One through the Intellect, the Soul, Quality, and Body, with the human rational soul occupying the central middle position from which it is capable both of ascending toward the divine intellect through philosophical contemplation and of descending into bodily nature through the operations of imagination and sensation. The framework, integrating the Plotinian and broader Neoplatonic tradition with Christian theological commitments, shaped Renaissance humanist philosophy through Pico della Mirandola, the Cambridge Platonists, and the broader early modern reception of Platonism.
Quotes
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Attributed to Marsilio Ficino:
“The soul is partly in eternity and partly in time.”
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Attributed to Marsilio Ficino:
“We become what we love.”
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Attributed to Marsilio Ficino:
“Mortal things wear out with time, but the soul, since it is divine, lives forever.”
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“The intellect is prompted by nature to comprehend the whole breadth of being. ... Under the concept of truth it knows all, and under the concept of the good it desires all.”
p. 199 -
“The inquiry of the intellect never ceases until it finds that cause of which nothing is the cause but which is itself the cause of causes. This cause is none other than the boundless God. Similarly, the desire of the will is not satisfied by any good, as long as we believe that there is yet another beyond it. Therefore, the will is satisfied only by that one good beyond which there is no further good. What can this good be except the boundless God?”
p. 201 -
“The rational soul in a certain manner possesses the excellence of infinity and eternity. If this were not the case, it would never characteristically incline toward the infinite. Undoubtedly this is the reason that there are none among men who live contentedly on earth and are satisfied with merely temporal possessions.”
p. 202 -
“When the object of sense is very violent, it injures sense at once, so that sense, after its occurrence, cannot immediately discern its weaker objects. Thus extreme brightness offends the eye, and a very loud noise offends the ears. Mind, however, is otherwise; by its most excellent object it is neither injured nor ever confused. Nay, rather, after this object is known, it distinguishes inferior things at once more clearly and more truly.”
p. 205