Ficino and the Platonism of the English Renaissance

Abstract

For Renaissance authorities' there is no such thing as Platonismthere are only Platonists; and the term is applied equally to such diverse thinkers as Plato and Proclus, Macrobius and Apuleius. For the Renaissance, Platonism included every authority in the long history of the Platonic tradition from Zoroaster to Pico. Modern critics,2 on the other hand, have not always been careful to distinguish the Platonism of a More from the Platonism of a Spenser, and the result is that we commonly think of the Platonism of the English Renaissance as being really a flurry of interest in Neoplatonic metaphysics caused primarily by the Florentine Platonist, Marsilio Ficino.3 According to this traditional explanation, English writers had to acquire their knowledge of Platonism from the continent because there was no formal school of Platonism in England; and, since the most influential Platonist on the continent was Ficino, he must have been widely read in England. The Neoplatonic coloring, according to this view, is a natural consequence of the fact that Ficino himself interpreted Plato as a Neoplatonist. This explanation of Ficino's responsibility for the Plato-