The Minor Works of Marsilio Ficino

Nothing reflects the nature of the Good more than light. original: "naturā boni." In the Platonic tradition, "The Good" is the supreme principle or source of all existence, often equated with God. First, indeed, light in the realm of things perceived by the senses appears to be the purest and most eminent. Second: it is expanded most easily and widely of all things, and in an instant. Third: it meets all things harmlessly and penetrates them; it is most gentle and most alluring. Fourth: it carries a nourishing heat with it, fostering, generating, and moving all things. Fifth: while it is present and within all things, it is stained by none and mixes with none.

Similarly, the Good itself towers over the whole order of things. It is expanded most widely. It soothes and attracts all things. It compels nothing. It has Love as its companion everywhere, like heat, through which individual things everywhere catch fire and freely embrace the Good. Present everywhere in the innermost recesses of things, it has no mingling with those things. Finally, just as the Good itself is inestimable and ineffable Beyond the power of words to describe., so is light almost the same. For no philosopher has yet defined this, so that nothing is clearer than light anywhere, yet nothing, on the other hand, seems more obscure; just as the Good is both the best known of all things and likewise the most unknown.

Therefore, Iamblichus the Platonist Iamblichus (c. 245–325 AD) was a Syrian Neoplatonist philosopher who argued that the soul requires divine assistance—theurgy—to ascend. finally resorted to this: naming light a certain act and a visible image of the divine intelligence. Just as a ray flashing out from the sight is an image of the sight itself. But perhaps light is the very sight of the celestial soul, or the act of vision itself stretched toward exterior things—acting from a distance indeed, yet meanwhile not leaving the heavens, but remaining always continuous there, unmixed with exterior things, acting through seeing and touching at the same time.

We, at least, are accustomed to calling light a certain footprint of the world’s life, offering itself to the eyes by a certain proportion; or like a vital spirit Vital Spirit|In Renaissance philosophy, 'spiritus' was a subtle substance that acted as a bridge, allowing the immaterial soul to communicate with and move the physical body. between the world and its animated body. But of this we have said enough in our Theology original: "in theologia nra" (in theologia nostra). Ficino refers to his major work, Platonic Theology, where he reconciled Platonic philosophy with Christian doctrine.. Therefore...