Music, Temperance, and Participation in Marsilio Ficino

doi:10.1017/9781009440028.014

12 - Music, Temperance, and Participation in Marsilio Ficino

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2024

Michael J. B. Allen†

Edited by

Douglas Hedley and

Daniel J. Tolan

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Douglas Hedley: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Daniel J. Tolan: Affiliation:
University of Cambridge

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Summary

This chapter will examine some aspects of Marsilio Ficino’s complex engagement with the many-sided but interrelated notions of temperance and music, and with the technical notion of participation (methexis) in the Platonic Ideas, a key, it would appear, both to Platonic metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics (see Cornford 1962 [1935]; see too Spruit 1994–1995),1 and to Christian theology, given that redeemed souls will participate in the glory of the risen Christ on the Day of Judgment having already participated in the gift of divine grace.

In his maturity, Ficino was the undisputed voice of Renaissance Platonism on at least three counts. First, as a devout Christian, an ordained priest, and eventually a canon of Florence’s cathedral, he was wedded to the dream, in part a Patristic dream, of reconciling Christianity with Platonic and pre-Platonic philosophy, and of inaugurating a new Platonic age of gold.

Type: Chapter
Information: Participation in the Divine
A Philosophical History, From Antiquity to the Modern Era
, pp. 272 - 291

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009440028.014 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2024

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