Marsilio Ficino is well known for his efforts to expand the philosophical canon of his time. He exhibited great interest in Platonism and Neoplatonism, but also endeavoured to recover understudied philosophical traditions of the ancient world. In his Theologia platonica de immortalitate animorum, he commented on the Presocratics. Ficino thought of the Presocratics as authorities and possessors of undisputed wisdom. This article seeks to explore the way in which Ficino treated the philosophy of Heraclitus in the Theologia platonica (...) in order to formulate his own philosophical ideas. (shrink)

This paper examines the theories of the soul proposed by Girolamo Cardano in his De immortalitate animorum (1545) and his De subtilitate (1550-4), Julius Caesar Scaliger's comprehensive critique of these views in the Exercitationes exotericae de subtilitate of 1557, and Cardano's reply to this critique in his Actio in calumniatorem of 1559. Cardano argues that the passive intellect is individuated and mortal, and that the agent intellect is immortal but subject to constant reincarnation in different human beings. His (...) theory of cognition leads him to claim that at its highest level, the intellect is converted into the object of its perception. In his refutation of the various elements of Cardano's theories, Scaliger uses his knowledge of the Greek text of Aristotle to stress the reflexive faculty of the soul, its ability to conceive of objects greater than itself, and its status as the individuating principle of the hylemorphic human being. In spite of Cardano's pretention to novelty and Scaliger's humanist credentials, both thinkers are shown to conduct their discussions in an inherited scholastic matrix of thought. (shrink)

In De immortalitate animae Augustine is not satisfied with completing his proof of the immortality of the soul – which had been left open in the second book of the Soliloquies –; he also answers some possible objections, demonstrating that the rational soul cannot cease to exist, it cannot die, nor can it change into an irrational body or soul. Furthermore, remaining faithful to the programmatic declaration of never wanting to stray from the authority of Christ (Acad. 3, 20, (...) 43), he specifies the ontological status of the soul by affirming that it is, in itself, mutable and therefore not of a divine nature, as Varro had argued. Nor is it a substance foreign to the body, as the Platonists claimed, because the soul has an appetitus ad corpus and, if it questions itself, it easily discovers that it desires nothing else «except to do something, to know with intelligence or with the senses, or only to live, as far as this is in its power» (nisi agendi aliquid, aut sciendi, aut sentiendi, aut tantummodo vivendi in quantum sua illi potestas est). (shrink)

Marsilio Ficino is the best representative of Renaissance Platonism as well as the most prominent member of the Florentine Academy that he organized at the request of Cosimo de’ Medici. After he had given to the Western world the first complete Latin translation of the works of Plato and Plotinus, he wrote numerous commentaries, dialogues, and treatises, but his major work is the Theologia Platonica in eighteen books. In this treatise Ficino portrays the universe as a harmonious system of beings (...) where man occupies a central position and serves as a bond between spiritual and material substances. The main theme of the treatise is the immortality of the soul, as the subtitle De immortalitate animorum indicates. Ficino proves this doctrine by man’s inner tendency to union with God and other arguments of scholastic philosophy. Ficino’s primary concern in this treatise, however, is to reconcile Plato’s philosophy with Christian doctrine. (shrink)

... TRACTATUS DE IMMORTALITATE ANIM Ж. PR 0 OE^MIU M. * Continens intentionem, feu libri materiatn & can* fam intentionis. F rater Hieronymus Natalis, ...

El artículo versa sobre las fuentes inspiradoras del "De immortalitate animae", partiendo de las teorías clásicas que existen al respecto. Señala que, en la época que precedió al bautismo, la cultura de Agustín no se ajustaba al neoplatonismo tanto como se le ha presentado y que, a sus ojos, además de la novedad de la fé cristiana, todavía contaban mucho las sugerencias provenientes de la lectura de los clásicos latinos, no sólo Cicerón, sino también Varrón. Para demostrarlo se someten (...) a examen algunos pasajes del escrito, indicando las fuentes en las que se ha inspirado. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretative presentation of Duns Scotus’ notion of intellect, as it is delineated in his treatise entitled De Spiritualitate et Immortalitate Animae Humanae. Duns Scotus’ theory is gradually formed through his critical examination of the Aristotelian views which are presented in De Anima and Metaphysics.Duns Scotus accepts the Aristotelian definition of the soul, according to which the soul knows and thinks through its intellective power, and he claims that the intellective soul is the proper form of (...) man. However, he is opposed to Aristotle’s theory concerning the imperishability of the intellect, holding that since the intellect is the form of the perishable composite, it cannot exist apart from the composite. Furthermore, adopting the Aristotelian view that only human beings have two cognitive powers, the senses and the intellect, Duns Scotus shows the supremacy of the intellect compared to the senses. He distinguishes intellectual knowledge from sense knowledge by designating their functions and objects. Intellectual knowledge is an immaterial and non organic act in contradistinction to sense knowledge, which is a material and organic act; the intellect perceives abstract objects whereas the senses grasp particular objects. Although Duns Scotus proves that intellectual knowledge is superior to sense knowledge, he recognizes the contribution of the senses in acquiring knowledge inasmuch as he holds that the intellect understands only when it is rotated to the outside world: the intellect knows the universal by perceiving the intellectual images through the medium of imagination (phantasia), which modifies sense images to intellectual images (phantasms). Therefore, for Duns Scotus, knowledge would be impossible without cooperation between the intellect and the senses. (shrink)

L'utopie des posthumains est a notre porte. A nous, qui ne croyons plus aux lendemains qui chantent, elle promet que demain nous entrerons dans une nouvelle ere. Nous aurons dit adieu a notre miserable condition humaine: nous vivrons dans un monde a la mesure de notre demesure, habite par des surhommes technologiques, a la fois humains et machines, oscillant entre une realite reelle et virtuelle, immortels dans l'ignorance du temps, vivants dans l'ignorance de la vie. Depasser la condition humaine - (...) vaincre la mort et conquerir la vie eternelle - semble une quete ancestrale de l'humanite. Que vivrait ce nouvel homme dans ce rien eternel, dans ce non-temps, lui qui n'aurait rien a gagner, rien a aimer ni hair, rien a regretter, rien a pleurer, rien a esperer? Reprenant les grandes analyses sur l'immortalite, depuis le paradis perdu jusqu'a l'humanite augmentee, Bernard Edelman s'interroge sur ce qui donne sens a la vie. (shrink)