Philosophical Readings - Online Journal of Philosophy – ISSN 2036-4989

The Pagan Gods in Marsilio Ficinoʼs Christian Platonism

Martin Žemla — 2023-08-29

The basic aim of Marsilio Ficino is to unify Christianity with Platonic philosophy, while referring to the “ancient wisdom” present in both. However, for him, Platonic philosophy comes hand in hand with ancient gods. To make use of them, Ficino claims to write not as a theologian but as “poet”. Most typically, the ancient gods are allegories of astral influences on human affairs. But according to Platonists, stars are ensouled beings, gods expressing their effective powers – not just natural forces. Here, Apollo/Phoebus, the solar god and allegory of the Sun, is of special importance: for Ficino, solar and light metaphysics is generally crucial. In his De vita, he demonstrates how the stars, i.e. the ancient gods in their mythological context, help cure human bodies, including the subtle-material body, i.e. the animating “spirits”. This “magical” cure is made possible through hidden and ubiquitous sympathies between all the stars, metals, stones, animals, flowers, and sensual qualities in general, which are all interlinked with certain gods. Although Fi- cino emphasises that this system of natural magic is lim- ited to “nature”, it seems that, in fact, his “imitating of the stars”, and thus of the ancient gods embodying them, can ultimately have a higher, theological relevance.

The Location of God: A Medieval Question on Pantheism and Its Responses in Early Modernity

Paul Richard Blum — 2023-08-29

Peter Lombard discussed in his Sentences (lib. 1, d. 37) the meaning of the statement: Deus est in omni- bus. It was an aside, as he noted, for it diverted the per- spective from theology proper to the relation of things to the Creator. He differentiated divine presence as potency and essence and also as grace. Thomas Aquinas com- mented on the problem, both in his commentary on the Sentences and in his Summa theologiae, noticing the dan- ger of pantheism (ante litteram, of course) when focusing on created things. During the Renaissance and early mod- ern scholasticism the question: Where is God? and its le- gitimacy became a litmus test of Christian philosophy. Francisco Suárez and Théophile Raynaud reconstructed the history of the notion of divine omnipresence and its biblical hermeneutics and pointed to heretics past and present. Rodrigo de Arriaga responded by relating omni- presence to action at a distance in physics. Honoré Tour- nely, then, responding to Spinoza’s pantheism, empha- sized the otherness of God against rationalizing and natu- ralizing the divine. The formula, ‘God is in everything,’ discloses the conundrum that God’ s omnipresence is equally real, substantial, effective, particular, and universal.

Elements of Life: Campanella’s Living World Between Discord and Harmony

Elisabeth Blum — 2023-08-29

In Campanella’s magic universe, starting from the space that the first material substrate occupies, every- thing is alive with sense perception and a will of its own. The pre-condition of universal life is every creature’s structural similitude to its trinitarian creator, whose Pow- er, Wisdom, and Love are reflected in each individual as its power, knowledge, and will of existence. Since the ac- tive principle of life and sensation is fire – one of the two opposed physical elements Campanella assumes – the sensitive soul is material (animal spirits). In order to avoid both pantheism and dualism Campanella employs the inner dynamic of the trinitarian God for his cosmogony and cosmology.

Review to Lorenzo Bernini, Le teorie queer: un’introduzione (Mi- lano - Udine: Mimesis, 2018, ISBN 9788857541259).

Andrea Chiurato — 2023-08-29

Lorenzo Bernini, Le teorie queer: un’introduzione (Milano - Udine: Mimesis, 2018, ISBN 9788857541259).

Review to Byung-Chul Han, Le non cose. Come abbiamo smesso di vivere il reale (Torino: Einaudi, 2021, trad. di Simone Aglan-Buttazzi, ISBN978-88-06-25109-3)

Riccardo Bianco — 2023-08-29

Review to Byung-Chul Han, Le non cose. Come abbiamo smesso di vivere il reale (Torino: Einaudi, 2021, trad. di Simone Aglan-Buttazzi, ISBN978-88-06-25109-3)