Plato’s writings do not expound a coherent philosophical system; his thought changed and developed, with the result that later Platonists attempting to systematise it had to select from contradictory ideas, and often added ideas of their own which Plato would never have accepted. The one central belief common to Plato and his followers (though the terminology may differ) is that of the two worlds. The first, which is intelligible or apprehended by the intellect, is the world of Ideas or Forms, the archetypal patterns of everything existing in the inferior material world. It is the world of Being, stable, eternal, immutable, perfect (1). The second, which is sensible or apprehended by the senses, is not real in itself; its value is in the fact that it is a copy of the real world of Forms. It is the world of Becoming, always subject to change. The human soul comes from the first world and is trapped in the body in the second, from which it seeks to escape (2, 7). The return or ascent of the soul to the world of Forms is the subject of much of Plato’s writing, but the way in which the ascent is described varies. In the Symposium the two worlds are united by Eros (Love). Love of the beauty of one human being leads to love of physical beauty in general, then to moral beauty, then to intellectual beauty, until finally the Idea of Beauty is reached (1). In the Republic the goal is the Idea of Good, and the ascent undertaken by the intellect is far more arduous. Socrates (Plato’s teacher and the chief speaker in his dialogues) outlines a long and rigorous scheme for educating the Guardians of the hypothetical republic. The difficulty of the ascent to the world of Ideas and the problem of explaining the relation between the two worlds to untrained minds is illustrated by the allegory of the cave (Republic VII). Life in the second, material world is represented by prisoners in a cave, chained so that they cannot move their heads, who spend their time watching shadows cast on a wall by a fire behind them. One of them (representing the philosopher) is forcibly released and made to see his ‘reality’ for what it is. He is then dragged out of the cave into the sunlight (the first world), where painfully he is able first to discern objects and finally to look straight at the sun itself (the Idea of Good). Having learnt the truth, he returns to the cave to attempt to enlighten his fellow prisoners, who refuse to believe him and want to kill him (Plato is here alluding to the execution of Socrates by the Athenians). This allegory not only illustrates the steps the philosopher must ascend, it also emphasises his social responsibility. The philosopher must descend the ladder from the first to the second world and apply his knowledge for social and political purposes. For life in the second world can only be ordered harmoniously and usefully if its relation to the first is understood (6).
There are contradictory tendencies in Plato’s accounts of the relationship between the two worlds. One tendency is towards asceticism, intellectual self-discipline and other-worldliness. The soul wants to have nothing to do with the body; death is a longed-for release. The inferiority and insubstantiality of the material world are stressed. This is the version in the Phaedo (7), Plato’s account of the last hours before Socrates’ execution. Allied with this asceticism is the belief that the ascent to knowledge of the real world is painful and difficult, as is explained in the Republic. The other tendency is towards aesthetic enjoyment of the second world, which is beautiful and good because it is a faithful copy of the real world. This is the version in the Timaeus, in which the mythical creator is seen using the world of Ideas as a model (Ch. 6.2). It is the beauty of the material world that leads the soul to apprehend the Idea of Beauty, and the process is one of rapture or ecstasy (as in the Symposium) rather than an arduous climb. Both these tendencies in Platonism are exploited in different ways by later Platonists.
The Platonism revived in the first three centuries AD was religious as much as philosophical; it incorporated magic and elements of late pagan mystery religions, and attempted to shape Plato’s thought into a coherent doctrine. Plotinus, the third-century Neoplatonist whose work was as much revered as Plato’s in the Renaissance, devised an elaborate hierarchy of being which differs significantly from Plato’s accounts of the two worlds. First there is the ultimate principle, the One, which transcends being. Then comes the Divine Mind, whose thoughts are the world of Ideas. Then comes soul, which links the intelligible and the material world; individual souls are part of this greater soul. The individual soul is tripartite (as Plato also believed); one part is concerned with the intelligible and one with the material, while the third is free to turn in either direction. Though the material world is at the foot of the hierarchy it is orderly, beautiful and good. The goal of life is the ascent of the soul to mystical union with the One (2), and Plotinus describes the achievement of this state on the basis of his own experience.
Some tenets of Platonism were obviously incompatible with Christianity: for example, that the soul passes through several bodies, and that knowledge is the recollection by the soul of its own previous existence. Further incompatibilities were introduced by the Neoplatonists, some of whom regarded demons and the pagan gods as intermediaries between the intelligible and material worlds. However, of all the ancient philosophies Platonism, because of its doctrine of the two worlds, was most easily assimilated to Christianity. Plotinus’ thought is much closer to Christianity than Plato’s in one important respect. There is no transcendent principle of unity in Plato, whereas Plotinus’ One can easily be identified with the Christian God. Augustine, who passed through a Neoplatonic period (recorded in Confessions VII) before his conversion to Christianity, was much influenced by Plotinus, and it is largely through Augustine (and through the late Roman author Boethius and the anonymous Greek Christian Platonist known as Dionysius the Areopagite) that the Platonic tradition reached the Middle Ages. The centre of this diluted Neoplatonism was twelfth-century Chartres. As knowledge of Greek was lost in the West, so the original writings of Plato, Plotinus and other Neoplatonists became inaccessible. There were very few Latin translations of Plato: Timaeus, Phaedo and Meno were the only texts available in the medieval period. In order for a revival of Platonism in the Renaissance to be possible, therefore, the texts had first to be translated into Latin.
The late fifteenth-century Florentine Neoplatonists, in particular Ficino, were responsible for the dissemination of Platonic and Neoplatonic texts. Ficino translated the complete works of Plato and Plotinus into Latin, wrote commentaries on them, and developed his own system of ‘Platonic theology’, Theologica Platonica. The object of this Platonic theology was to reconcile Platonism and Christianity, but some of Ficino’s sources were distinctly unplatonic. The Florentine Neoplatonists attached great importance to a group of writings of late antiquity which they quite wrongly assumed to antedate Plato. (Milton’s Il Penseroso [ll. 85–96] portrays a Neoplatonist of this kind.) These works of mysticism and magic were attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Zoroaster, who were venerated as sages equal in importance to Moses. Plato was supposed to have derived his philosophy from them; thus Greek, Jewish and Christian ideas could be interpreted in terms of one another. It was not until the early seventeenth century that the proper dates of these writings were established. Although Plato frequently resorted to myth to illustrate his more difficult theories, this Renaissance emphasis on magic, mysteries and the occult is quite foreign to true Platonism. Florentine Neoplatonism was essentially syncretic; it drew on contradictory philosophies and beliefs and tried to show their underlying unity. Thus Ficino’s follower Pico della Mirandola wanted to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, the Jewish Cabala and Christianity.
In theological terms Florentine Neoplatonism is important for its emphasis on the freedom of the will. In Ficino’s system, which is similar to that of Plotinus, each order in the universal hierarchy (God, angelic mind, soul, body) naturally aspires to that above. Man constantly strives to reach God. However, because of the intermediate position of the soul, man can look upwards or downwards; he is free to reach towards the truth or ignore it. This emphasis on human choice and aspiration differs significantly from the emphasis on divine grace and election in Protestant thought (see Chapter 8).
The most influential aspect of Ficino’s thought was his theory of Platonic love. His De Amore (on love), a commentary on Plato’s Symposium, together with Pico’s commentary on Benivieni’s Canzone on Divine Love (3), provoked a series of imitative love treatises in sixteenth-century Italy. The argument of one of these, Bembo’s Asolani, was largely incorporated by Castiglione in Book IV of The Book of the Courtier (4), a work which helped to spread the social ideals and manners of Renaissance Italy in northern Europe. This theory of love, while following Plato closely in some aspects (the lover begins by loving an individual and finally reaches God), also draws on a quite different tradition, that of medieval courtly love. Courtly love, in which the intangibility of the woman is her chief attraction, can become simply a game in which sexuality is artificially ignored. The association of Ficino’s Platonic love with courtly love had the effect of trivialising it; thus the terminology of what was intended as a serious theological system could be used frivolously in love poetry. Platonic love might mean an emotional flirtation denied a proper sexual fulfilment.
The extent of the influence of Italian Neoplatonism on English Renaissance poetry is a disputed matter. Spenser is often claimed as a Platonist, but his emphasis on marriage, fruition and procreation seems fundamentally unplatonic. It is not known how far Spenser was familiar with Platonic literature. Sir Thomas Hoby’s translation of The Book of the Courtier (1561) was widely read and could have provided enough information, but Spenser may have used Ficino’s translation of Plotinus when he wrote Four Hymns (5). The chief Platonist among the poets is the young Milton. The Pythagorean-Platonic concept of the musical harmony of the world of Ideas which is faintly reflected in the material world (see Chapter 6) is a unifying theme in Milton’s early poetry. Milton, who read Plato in the original Greek, wanted to free Christian Neoplatonism from what he saw as its debasement by love poets, but as he moved in the direction of radical Puritanism in his middle years Platonism lost its importance for him, though there are Platonic elements in his later poems. This Christian Platonism is used rather differently by Marvell in his religious poems, which draw wittily on the tradition of Platonic asceticism and ignore Platonic love theory (10).
It is in love poetry that the largest number of allusions to Neoplatonism is to be found, but these are often negative and ironic. Critical reference to the Neoplatonic separation of ideal and physical love as untrue to the facts of human experience can be the starting-point for the poet’s own definition. This technique is used to great effect by Sidney in Astrophel and Stella (11) and Donne in Songs and Sonnets (12). Among cavalier poets the assertion of the rival merits of ‘Platonic’ and ‘antiplatonic’ love became an intellectual game and evidently reflected courtly pastime (13). It was against this kind of fashionable Platonising that Milton wrote; Comus is from one point of view a defence of true against false Neoplatonism (9).
Ficino’s ‘Platonic theology’ had few followers in England. However, there was one group of mid-seventeenth-century English Platonic theologians who came too late to have much influence on Renaissance poetry but who are important in the history of thought. The Cambridge Platonists, Whichcote, Smith (8), Cudworth and More, reacted against the Calvinist portrayal of divine wrath and human depravity. In their belief in reason, free will, the beauty of religion, and the soul’s delight in God, they looked back to the long tradition of Neoplatonism and forward to the rational Latitudinarian theology of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The bulk of their work is in the form of sermons and treatises, but Henry More’s long poem Psychozoia (the life of the soul) is an attempt to expound Plotinus and Ficino through the medium of Spenserian allegory.
1 Socrates recounts what Diotima taught him:
This beauty is first of all eternal; it neither comes into being nor passes away, neither waxes nor wanes; next, it is not beautiful in part and ugly in part, nor beautiful at one time and ugly at another, nor beautiful in this relation and ugly in that, nor beautiful here and ugly there, as varying according to its beholders; nor again will this beauty appear to him like the beauty of a face or hands or anything else corporeal, or like the beauty of a thought or a science, or like beauty which has its seat in something other than itself, be it a living thing or the earth or the sky or anything else whatever; he will see it as absolute, existing alone with itself, unique, eternal, and all other beautiful things as partaking of it, yet in such a manner that, while they come into being and pass away, it neither undergoes any increase or diminution nor suffers any change.
Plato Symposium 211A—B
2 But how shall we find the way? What method can we devise? How can one see the ‘inconceivable beauty’ [Symposium 218E] which stays within in the holy sanctuary and does not come out where the profane may see it? Let him who can, follow and come within, and leave outside the sight of his eyes and not turn back to the bodily splendours which he saw before. When he sees the beauty in bodies he must not run after them; we must know that they are images, traces, shadows, and hurry away to that which they image… This would be truer advice. ‘Let us fly to our dear country’ [Iliad II 140]. What then is our way of escape, and how are we to find it? We shall put out to sea, as Odysseus did, from the witch Circe or Calypso… Our country from which we came is there, our Father is there. How shall we travel to it, where is our way of escape? We cannot get there on foot; for our feet only carry us every where in this world, from one country to another… Shut your eyes, and change to and wake another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use.
Plotinus Enneads I vi 8
3 Because man may be understood by the rational soul, either considered apart or in its union to the body; in the first sense, human love is the image of the celestial; in the second, desire of sensible beauty, this being by the soul abstracted from matter, and (as much as its nature will allow) made intellectual. The greater part of men reach no higher than this; others more perfect, remembering that more perfect beauty which the soul (before immersed in the body) beheld, are inflamed with an incredible desire of reviewing it, in pursuit whereof, they separate themselves as much as possible from the body, of which the soul (returning to its first dignity) becomes absolute mistress. This is the image of celestial love, by which man ariseth from one perfection to another, till his soul (wholly united to the intellect) is made an angel. Purged from material dross, and transformed into spiritual flame by his divine power, he mounts up to the intelligible heaven, and happily rests in his Father’s bosom.
Pico A Platonic Discourse (commentary on
Benivieni’s Canzone on Divine Love) II xx
4 Bembo speaks:
And therefore burning in this most happy flame, [the soul] ariseth to the noblest part of her which is the understanding, and there no more shadowed with the dark night of earthly matters, seeth the heavenly beauty: but yet doth she not for all that enjoy it altogether perfectly, because she beholdeth it only in her particular understanding, which cannot conceive the passing great universal beauty. Whereupon not throughly satisfied with this benefit, love giveth unto the soul a greater happiness. For like as through the particular beauty of one body he guideth her to the universal beauty of all bodies: even so in the least degree of perfection through particular understanding he guideth her to the universal understanding. Thus the soul kindled in the most holy fire of true heavenly love, fleeth to couple herself with the nature of angels, and not only clean forsaketh sense, but hath no more need of the discourse of reason, for being changed into an angel, she understandeth all things that may be understood; and without any veil or cloud, she seeth the main sea of the pure heavenly beauty and receiveth it into her, and enjoyeth the sovereign happiness, that cannot be comprehended of the senses.
Castiglione The Book of the Courtier IV
5 What time this world’s great workmaster did cast
To make all things, such as we now behold,
It seems that he before his eyes had placed
A goodly pattern, to whose perfect mould
He fashioned them as comely as he could;
That now so fair and seemly they appear,
As nought may be amended anywhere.
That wondrous pattern wheresoe’er it be,
Whether in earth laid up in secret store,
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see
With sinful eyes, for fear it to deflower,
Is perfect beauty which all men adore,
Whose face and feature doth so much excel
All mortal sense, that none the same may tell.
Thereof as every earthly thing partakes,
Or more or less by influence divine,
So it more fair accordingly it makes,
And the gross matter of this earthly mine,
Which clotheth it, thereafter doth refine,
Doing away the dross which dims the light
Of that fair beam, which therein is empight.
Spenser ‘An Hymn in Honour of Beauty’ ll. 29–49
6 The prison dwelling corresponds to the region revealed to us through the sense of sight, and the firelight within it to the power of the sun. The ascent to see the things in the upper world you may take as standing for the upward journey of the soul into the region of the intelligible… In the world of knowledge, the last thing to be perceived and only with great difficulty is the essential Form of Goodness. Once it is perceived, the conclusion must follow that, for all things, this is the cause of whatever is right and good; in the visible world it gives birth to light and to the lord of light, while it is itself sovereign in the intelligible world and the parent of intelligence and truth. Without having had a vision of this Form no one can act with wisdom, either in his own life or in matters of state.
Plalo Republic VII 517
7 Every seeker after wisdom knows that up to the time when philosophy takes it over his soul is a helpless prisoner, chained hand and foot in the body, compelled to view reality not directly but only through its prison bars, and wallowing in utter ignorance. And philosophy can see that the imprisonment is ingeniously effected by the prisoner’s own active desire, which makes him first accessory to his own confinement… Every pleasure or pain has a sort of rivet with which it fastens the soul to the body and pins it down and makes it corporeal, accepting as true whatever the body certifies. The result of agreeing with the body and finding pleasure in the same things is, I imagine, that it cannot help becoming like it in character and training, so that it can never get clean away to the unseen world, but is always saturated with the body when it sets out, and so soon falls back again into another body, where it takes root and grows. Consequently it is excluded from all fellowship with the pure and uniform and divine.
Plato Phaedo 82D—83D
8 The soul is too vigorous and puissant a thing, when it is once restored to the possession of its own being, than to be bounded within the narrow sphere of mortality, or to be straitened within the narrow prison of sensual and corporeal delights; but it will break forth with the greatest vehemency, and ascend upwards towards immortality. And, when it converses more intimately with religion, it can scarce look back upon its own converses, though in a lawful way, with earthly things, without being touched with a holy shamefacedness and modest blushing; and, as Porphyry speaks of Plotinus, ‘It seems to be shamed that it should be in the body’. It is true religion only that teaches and enables men to die to this world and to all earthly things, and to rise above that vaporous sphere of sensual and earthly pleasures, which darken the mind, and hinder it from enjoying the brightness of divine light. The proper motion of religion is still upwards to its first original… Wicked men bury their souls in their bodies; all their objects and designs are bounded within the compass of this earth which they tread upon. The fleshly mind regards nothing but flesh, and never rises above the outward matter, but always creeps up and down, like shadows, upon the surface of the earth; and if it begins, at any time, to make any faint essays upwards, it presently finds itself laden with a weight of sensuality which draws it down again. It was the opinion of the Academics [Phaedo 81C—D] that the souls of wicked men, after their death, could not, of a long season, depart from the graves and sepulchres where their mates were buried; but there wandered up and down in a desolate manner, as not being able to leave those bodies to which they were so much wedded in this life.
John Smith (Cambridge Platonist)
The Excellency and Nobleness of True Religion II
9 The Elder Brother speaks:
So dear to heaven is saintly chastity,
That when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream, and solemn vision
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul’s essence,
Till all be made immortal: but when lust
By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk,
But most by lewd and lavish act of sin,
Lets in defilement to the inward parts,
The soul grows clotted by contagion,
Embodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose
The divine property of her first being.
Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp
Oft seen in charnel-vaults, and sepulchres
Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave,
As loth to leave the body that it loved,
And linked itself by carnal sensuality
To a degenerate and degraded state.
Milton Comus ll. 452–74 (8 and 9 draw on the same passage from the Phaedo)
10 Soul: O, who shall from this dungeon raise
A soul, enslaved so many ways,
With bolts of bones, that fettered stands
In feet, and manacled in hands.
Here blinded with an eye; and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear,
A soul hung up, as ‘twere, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins,
Tortured, besides each other part,
In a vain head, and double heart?
Body: O, who shall me deliver whole,
From bonds of this tyrannic soul,
Which, stretched upright, impales me so,
That mine own precipice I go;
And warms and moves this needless frame
(A fever could but do the same),
And, wanting where its spite to try,
Has made me live to let me die,
A body that could never rest,
Since this ill spirit it possessed?
Marvell ‘A Dialogue between the Soul and Body’ ll. 1–20
11 It is most true that eyes are formed to serve
The inward light, and that the heavenly part
Ought to be king, from whose rules who do swerve,
Rebels to nature, strive for their own smart.
It is most true, what we call Cupid’s dart
An image is, which for ourselves we carve,
And, fools, adore in temple of our heart,
Till that good god make church and churchmen starve.
True, that true beauty virtue is indeed,
Whereof this beauty can be but a shade,
Which elements with mortal mixture breed.
True that on earth we are but pilgrims made,
And should in soul up to our country move:
True, and yet true that I must Stella love.
Sidney Astrophel and Stella v
12 But O alas, so long, so far
Our bodies why do we forbear?
They are ours, though they are not we, we are
The intelligences, they the sphere.
We owe them thanks, because they thus,
Did us, to us, at first convey,
Yielded their forces, sense, to us,
Nor are dross to us, but allay.
On man heaven’s influence works not so,
But that it first imprints the air,
So soul into the soul may flow,
Though it to body first repair.
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like souls as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtie knot, which makes us man:
So must pure lovers’ souls descend
To affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
Else a great prince in prison lies.
To our bodies turn we then, that so
Weak men on love revealed may look;
Love’s mysteries in souls do grow,
But yet the body is his book.
Donne ‘The Ecstasy’ ll. 49–72
13 For shame, thou everlasting wooer,
Still saying grace and ne’ er fall to her!
Love that’s in contemplation placed,
Is Venus drawn but to the waist.
Unless your flame confess its gender,
And your parley cause surrender,
You are salamanders of a cold desire,
That live untouched amid the hottest fire.
What though she be a dame of stone,
The widow of Pygmalion;
As hard and unrelenting she,
As the new-crusted Niobe;
Or what doth more of statue carry,
A nun of the Platonic quarry?
Love melts the rigour which the rocks have bred,
A flint will break upon a feather-bed.
Cleveland ‘The Antiplatonic’ ll. 1–16