Plato's Persona
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In 1484, humanist philosopher and theologian Marsilio Ficino published the first complete Latin translation of Plato's extant works. Students of Plato now had access to the entire range of the dialogues, which revealed to Renaissance audiences the rich ancient landscape of myths, allegories, philosophical arguments, etymologies, fragments of poetry, other works of philosophy, aspects of ancient pagan religious practices, concepts of mathematics and natural philosophy, and the dialogic nature of the Platonic corpus's interlocutors. By and large, Renaissance readers in the Latin West encountered Plato's text through Ficino's translations and interpretation. In Plato's Persona , Denis J.-J. Robichaud provides the first synthetic study of Ficino's interpretation of the Platonic corpus. Robichaud analyzes Plato's works in their original Greek and in Ficino's Latin translations, as well as Ficino's non-Platonic writings and correspondence, in the process uncovering new aspects of Ficino's intellectual work habits. In his letters and works, Ficino self-consciously imitated a Platonic style of prose, in effect devising a persona for himself as a Platonic philosopher. Plato's dialogues are populated with a wealth of literary characters with whom Plato interacts and against whom Plato refines his own philosophies. Reading through Ficino's translations, Robichaud finds that the Renaissance philosopher seeks an understanding of Plato's persona(e) among all the dialogues' interlocutors. In effect, Ficino assumed the role of Plato's Latin spokesperson in the Renaissance. Plato's Persona is grounded in an extensive study of scholarship in Renaissance humanism, classics, philosophy, and intellectual history, and contextualizes Ficino's intellectual achievements within the contemporary Christian orthodox view of Platonism. Ficino was an influential figure in the early Italian Renaissance: the key intermediary between Greek and Latin, and between manuscript and print, giving voice to Plato and access to the ancient frameworks needed to interpret his dialogues.
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Plato’s Persona
Marsilio Ficino,
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One should not dismiss the two letters, written in the genre of a paradoxical encomium, as a fictitious debate produced for the private amusement of two humanists essentially sharing the same opinion on the question. Indeed, I would stress two points: first, that since Pico was trained in both camps his exchange with Barbaro was not a simple literary game within the closed circle of humanism and, second, that the tone of the disputation is that of serioludere, or playfully communicating serious matters, often associated with Socrates’ manner of talking. Pico’s own appeal to Glaucon from the Republic underscores the Platonic nature of their exchange. Like Socrates who disavows opinions he has just expressed—one thinks, for example, of Socrates’ personification of Protagoras in the Theaetetus (164e–168c)—Pico declares after his barbarian philosopher has just finished his speech: “But I exercised myself with pleasure in this infamous matter, so to speak, like those who praise the quartan fever, not only to prove my ingenium, but also with this intention: that, just as Plato’s Glaucon praises injustice not according to his own judgment but so that he might spur Socrates to praise justice, so I, in order to hear you defend eloquence passionately, turned on it without restraint—even though my own nature and disposition briefly fought back.”54 Barbaro’s initial accusation forces Pico’s philosopher to give a public defense for his office on his own terms without an advocate, which is exactly what Socrates repeatedly claimed the philosopher would never be able to do, stressing the uselessness of philosophy for the public life.55 Through these layers and inversions of personifications Pico and Barbaro debate central questions regarding philosophical writing, asking in what style philosophy should be written, does philosophy’s formalized, even artificial language clarify or obscure its content, and, simply, what counts as philosophical language?
Pico’s philosopher defines these questions by contrasting philosophical and rhetorical language. What is a rhetorician’s duty, he asks, if not to lie, deceive, trick, turn things upside down? The orator changes white into black, black into white, and magically changes his face and appearance. “Does he not mislead just as larvae and simulacra projected onto the mind of the audience to mislead them? Will this person have something in common with the philosopher, whose zeal is completely turned towards the knowledge and demonstration of truth to others?”56 The rhetorician’s art is better suited to forensic questions than to the Academy. Pico’s barbarian continues, “Do you not know that not all things made in the same fabric are appropriate to all? I’ll admit that eloquence is filled with lures and delight is indeed elegant, but it is neither acceptable nor fit for the decorum of a philosopher. Who does not esteem a soft step, graceful hands, and playful eyes in an actor or a dancer? But in a citizen, a philosopher, who does not disapprove, complain, and loathe the same features?”57 What one says and how one says it must suit the situation, time, place, and audience. If the rhetorician is to retain and present a prediscursive persona in his speech (instead of being nothing but a deceitful magician), his discourse must conform to his natural character. Playing with the imagery of fabric as the textus of speech, Pico’s letter conveys the idea that one’s style of speech must suit one’s style of life, just as one ought to wear clothes appropriate to the occasion. In this case, it is a philosopher’s style of life that is at stake. In the end, Pico’s performance as a scholastic philosopher orating in beautiful Latin to make his case destabilizes any fully defined notion of decorum.
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