In a
sacred grove of olive trees outside the city wall of ancient Athens,
the
philosopher Plato founded and administered his own school, called the
Academy. Over the door to the Academy was inscribed but a single
requirement: "No one shall enter who is not versed in geometry".
Plato taught there for thirty-eight years, as men and women from
all parts of the Mediterranean world came to pursue various studies,
notably mathematics, logic and astronomy. Founded in 387
B.C., the Academy continued in operation until it was closed as an
affront to Christianity by the Byzantine emperor Justinian in 529 A.D.,
a date which is often cited as the end of antiquity.
It was nearly one
thousand years later,
under the inspiration and patronage of the ruling Medici family, that a
new Platonic Academy arose in Renaissance Florence. The
rediscovery of Plato and the literature and art of ancient Greece and
Rome
had led to advent of Humanism, an intellectual and cultural movement
centered in Florence
that emphasized knowledge and reason in human affairs. In
1462, the Medici gave the villa of Careggi to the scholar Marsilio
Ficino, and here Florentine humanists gathered in the Tuscan
countryside and formed a philosophical academy in imitation of Plato's
school.
Ficino was fascinated by Plato and tried to imitate him in all
respects. Like Plato, he opened his home to his friends, to
listen to music, to discuss classical texts and philosophical
mysteries. They dreamt of seeing Plato’s portrait, and
rejoiced when an “authentic” bust was opportunely discovered in the
ruins of Athens.
Lorenzo de Medici bought it and enshrined a copy for them, which
they crowned with laurel. They greeted each other with the
words "Salus in
Platone" ("good health in Plato), and on the walls of the lecture hall
various Platonic maxims appeared: "Everything comes from the
good and returns to the good", and "Avoid excess, flee from troubles,
rejoice in the present moment". In the hall before the bust
of Plato, a lamp was lit on November 7th, supposedly the day of
philosopher’s birth and death.
Ficino
and his fellow humanists did more than play at Classicalism,
however. Plato left a large body of work that had been forgotten
in Europe since the end of
antiquity. In these writings, his dialogues, Plato used his
mentor Socrates as a character to advance ideas ranging from politics
and ethics to religion. Plato's dialogues evinced certain
recurring themes. Forms and ideas, which are transcendent
universals, alone constitute reality as against the shadowy existence
of particular material objects; chief among these forms or ideas is the
idea of the Good, supreme both as the goal of knowledge and as a guide
to morality. Similarly, the ideal republic is a state in
which each class – workers, soldiers and ruling philosophers – performs
its function harmoniously. Plato's Socratic dialogue, the
Symposium (a Greek drinking party) focused on Eros (love) and its place
on the philosophic path. Love is depicted in the Symposium
as a process of ascent from sensual cognition of earthly beauty to the
understanding of the immortal idea of beauty itself.
Ficino translated
much of this work for
the first time, and in interpreting it became a Platonic philosopher in
his own right. Ficino's love doctrine, expounded in his
"Commentary of Plato's "Symposium" about Love", gave metaphysical
expression to spiritual love in Plato's sense, for which the Italian
coined the term Platonic love. Ficino's threefold
classification of love was widely repeated; (1) divine love, the
expression of a contemplative life, whose goal is divine knowledge, (2)
human love and the active life, which delight in seeing and conversing
with the loved person and (3) bestial love and the voluptuous life
which deserts the spiritual senses for the "concupiscence of touch."
Under the influence of Ficino and the humanistic thinkers in this "new
Athens",
Florentine artists such as Sandro Botticelli eagerly turned toward the
themes of love and beauty in exploring a mythological
past. Botticelli's allegorical paintings represented a
victory for humanism in art, temporarily ending centuries of domination
by the church and the religious themes it favored.
The goddess of
love, born in a storm in
the Aegean Sea, is blown ashore by
the winds and greeted by a nymph, ready to wrap her in a
cloak. By painting Venus instead of the Christian virgin,
Botticelli was expressing the Platonic representation of the birth of
Humanism, generated by Nature's elements and the union of spirit with
matter.
Neither icon, portrait, nor holy celebration, La Primavera was pure
fantasy, inspired by verses from the love poet Poliziano, "The reign
where every Grace finds enjoyment, where beauty decorates her hair with
flowers, where lustful Zephyr flies behind Flora and covers the meadows
with flowers." Originating in Ficino's ideas, Venus in her
garden, rather than representing the carnal side of pagan love, is the
humanist ideal of spiritual love.
"Venus and
Mars", is considered a
visualization of Ficino's doctrine of the correlative "temperament" of
the planets. In his comment on the Symposium, Ficino
furnishes an astrological interpretation of the myth: "Mars stands out
among the planets for his strength, because he makes men stronger, but
Venus dominates him. When Venus is in conjunction with Mars,
in opposition to him, his malevolence is often halted. She
seems to dominate and placate Mars, however, Mars never dominates
Venus." Venus, source of love and harmony thus opposes Mars,
symbol of hate and discord, defeating him by virtue of the harmony of
opposites.
The Florentine Academy, which had an enormous influence on the
direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance as well as the
development of European philosophy, ended in 1522, when a large number
of its members were politically involved in a plot against Gulio de
Medici, later Pope Clement VII.
Now on November 11, 2006, The Greenbelt Academy will open for feasting,
drinking, and philosophizing!