Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on Plotinus’ Enneads was published in Florence in that culturally and politically important year for European history of 1492. When Ficino came to write this work, he was obviously faced with a choice of two possible methodologies to be contrasted or combined: first, the composition of a dialectical analysis or summary of the given text as a more or less isolated unit; second, the writing of a similar project but also permitting or promoting intertextual engagement with either Platonic or Christian materials. That he clearly chose the intertextual option is indicated by his programmatic statements in the praefatio and exhortatio and also by his execution of the project as a whole. If Ficino had chosen the narrowly dialectical approach, he would have produced a document that risked being seen as a set of footnotes to the main work of Plotinus himself; by actually choosing the intertextual option he opened up a passage towards a creative conceptual expansion in many directions of what is stated in a more preliminary or merely suggestive manner in the Enneads. It is because of this choice especially that it is now worth presenting a thorough study of Ficino’s commentary: this for the first time and after more than five hundred years.

Now, any reader approaching Marsilio Ficino’s commentary needs to be forewarned that there are at least two main differences between Ficino’s interpretation of the Enneads and Porphyry’s presentation of his master’s thought. First, the Florentine commentator thoroughly integrates the teaching of the Enneads into a Christian context in the manner suggested above, and in so doing seeks to align it more specifically with the Christian Platonism of Dionysius the Areopagite whose treatises form the basis of another commentary published shortly after the Plotinus commentary. Second, Ficino takes certain analogical tendencies of Plotinus’ original thought and elevates them to the level of a systematic methodology, a development reflected in two short essays published around the same time: “On the Sun” (De Sole) and “On Light” (De Lumine).

There are also many historically significant differences between the Porphyrian and the Ficinian Enneads in addition to the well-known divergence resulting from what might be termed the “psycho-centric” aspects of the Florentine thinker’s work. Modern scholars including those as distinguished as Ernst Cassirer and Paul Oskar Kristeller have tended to stress the doctrine of the microcosmic rational (human) soul as the focal point of Ficino’s philosophical project as a whole. That there is much truth in this assessment is confirmed in the case of the Plotinus commentary, especially by Ficino’s exegesis of Enneads I. 3 and VI. 7. Nevertheless, the commentary often passes over this issue with mere allusions to the author’s earlier Theologia, instead concentrating – at least in the modified version that eventually reached the printers – on the macrocosmic natural (trans-human) soul and associated questions. In fact, the longest of Ficino’s Enneads commentaries deal with astrological signification, providence and fate, and universal matter, while a separate treatise on natural magic once belonged to the Plotinus commentary.

The structure of the present study itself is primarily designed to foreground the integration of the Enneads’ teaching into the Christian context and at the same time the elevation of analogy to the level of a systematic methodology, as mentioned above. The original enneadic arrangement of materials in Porphyry’s edition and as preserved by Ficino has not been strictly followed, although it is to a certain extent recoverable by a careful reading of the present study. Our aims here can therefore be seen as an attempt, on the one hand, to avoid the reduction of Ficino’s commentary to a merely subordinate role in relation to Plotinus and, on the other, to emphasize important cross-currents of Ficino’s thinking that are often obscured by the lemmatic structure of his commentary. That the same important topics sometimes come up for discussion in different chapters of our study with different emphases is perhaps a price that must be paid for a strict maintenance of this twofold strategy.

The reader’s attention will immediately be drawn to the division of the present study into three main parts. Part I is concerned with exploring Ficino’s resort to a kind of logic of analogy and his exploitation of what he perceives as a Christian subtext, the combination of these two approaches being brought to light through our study of various Trinitarian analogies (and semi-analogies) [chapters 1–3]. In the course of this discussion, other important analogies are also reviewed, the most important of these being that established between Platonic dialectic and Aristotelian logic. In this part also, the underlying concept of a special kind of Platonic analogical genus will need to be examined.

Part II is organized in such a way as to illustrate Ficino’s extensive use of a further “Christian” feature. This involves his clearly noticeable placing of greater emphasis on the first principle as Good than on the first principle as One, and similarly greater emphasis on the revertive rather than the processive aspects of the emanative system. The reason for this is that the notions of the Good and reversion are much more capable of assimilation to certain fundamental tenets of the Christian revelation. Here, it may be recalled that classical Platonism, being based on the transmigration scheme, places the One and the Good and procession and reversion in an equilibrium of dynamic processes, whereas Christian Platonism, being anchored in creationist assumptions, treats the One and procession as a status quo and concentrates on the Good and reversion.

In the light of these conclusions, Part II – together with the subtitle “From Ontology to Agathology” – has the following organization. Its first phase is concerned with the predominantly graduated and discontinuous structure of Ficino’s metaphysics based primarily on intellect and representing a theoretical approach. Here, we study the structure of soul (consisting of higher and lower soul or soul and animate being [chapter 4]), next turning to (1) the higher and unembodied soul especially as treated in Ennead I [chapter 5], then (2) the lower or embodied soul as treated mainly in Ennead IV [chapter 6], and then (3) the transition between the unembodied and embodied psychic states represented by transmigration [chapter 7]. An important structural affinity between literal vision as a power of embodied soul and analogical “vision” as a power of higher soul is singled out – both elaborated together with the metaphysics of light – for more detailed analysis [chapters 8 and 9]. The study of the higher and analogical vision in its turn leads into an extensive treatment of Ficino’s doctrine regarding the Platonic Ideas and intellect as stated in the commentaries on Enneads V–VI. The second phase of Part II is concerned with the predominantly graduated and continuous structure of Ficino’s metaphysics based on both intellect and will and constituting both a theoretical and a practical approach. Here, attention is focused on the soul’s dynamic tendency towards Good or Evil [chapter 10], the dynamic threefold schema of the soul’s reversions [chapter 11], and the dynamism of the soul’s ascents to Beauty [chapter 12] and to the Good [chapter 13].

Part III continues the development of ideas from Parts I and II. In relation to the former, the combination of the logic of analogy and the perceived Christian subtext, as illuminated through the study of Trinitarian analogies (and semi-analogies), is re-orientated to a Trinitarian analogy that is now a single analogy rather than a collection of analogies and also an implicit rather than an explicit analogization. With respect to Part II, we see Ficino dealing with a predominantly non-graduated and continuous structure in his metaphysics rather than a predominantly graduated and (dis-)continuous structure as before. This structure requires us to study its three almost consubstantial components: namely, matter, power, and infinity – analogous with the Father – [chapter 14], ratio or limit – analogous with the Son – [chapter 15], and spirit – analogous with the Holy Spirit – [chapter 16].

The present work examines several additional topics that are supportive of the main argument, these being added as excursuses to that primary structure – substance and quality [excursus x2], potency and act [excursus x14], and non-formal ratio [excursus x15]. These excursuses are highly abstract and technical and could perhaps be omitted from an initial continuous reading of the work as a whole. An excursus on daemonology [excursus xII] is of a somewhat different character and is designed as a kind of footnote to the psychological doctrine as a whole.

Marsilio Ficino as Reader of Plotinus: the Enneads Commentary in its monographic form had its origins in a projected edition and translation together with notes of Ficino’s commentary on the Enneads to be published by Harvard University Press in its I Tatti Renaissance Library (General Editor: James Hankins). The volumes dealing with Enneads III–IV were subsequently published (in 2017–2018). Unfortunately, the removal of certain subsidies from the ITRL series as a whole led to an interruption of its publication schedule and to the deferral to a future and indefinite date of subsequent volumes of the Plotinus edition and translation. Now, it is to be hoped that these volumes will appear under the aegis of Harvard University Press or another publishing house at some point in the future.¹ Meanwhile. consideration of the principle of ars longa sed vita brevis has convinced the present author to reorganize a segment of the project and to publish as a totally separate monograph especially the abundance of philosophical material from which the notes in the as yet unpublished volumes would have been drawn.

Sometimes unfortunate events can have fortunate results, and in this case the stimulus to the production of the monograph has led to illumination of the entire project from a totally different angle. There are perhaps two main differences of approach between the edition-translation and the monograph which readers of these works will detect. First, the “analytical studies” attached to the edition-translation contain extensive intertextual discussion of the post- Plotinian Neoplatonic writers (Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus) cited or used by Ficino in commenting on Plotinus. Since the importance of this material for Ficino seems to have been restricted to the commentaries on Enneads III–IV (and the detached portion of the commentary on Ennead IV published as De Vita III), it was decided not to develop these discussions further in the monograph. Second, the “analytical study” attached to the edition-translation of Ennead III contained a detailed account of Ficino’s application of harmonic analogies specifically to nature and more generally to reason-principles. Because the importance of this material for Ficino seems to have been restricted to the same pair of commentaries, it was also thought best not to continue these discussions in the monograph. Any reader who wishes to study these topics in more detail may therefore be referred most profitably to the earlier edition and translation.