Marsilio Ficino
1433-1499 · Renaissance Humanism · Prominent
Ficino was a Renaissance philosopher and priest in Medici Florence who revived Platonism there. He made the first complete Latin translation of Plato and read him as an ally of the Church. One ancient wisdom runs from Hermes and Pythagoras down to Christianity, he held, so the pagan sages count as early witnesses to the same truth. The soul's hunger for God was his proof that it does not die.
Signature
The position Ficino is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Meaning
- leans Inherent
- Beginning of Things
- Emanation / Creation ex Nihilo
Positions on the 11 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- mildly leans Describable (33 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (17 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Inherent (75 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (81 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Mastery (25 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
9 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Ficino refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Eidetic Intuition
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Grounded in God / Intuition
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will / Divine Providence
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Emanation / Creation ex Nihilo
What is the origin of reality? - Death
- Union with the One / Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Path to the Divine
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?