Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
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Metaphysics
567
books
deal with the question of the agreement of the two classical
philosophers with Christian doctrine. With a
sure
sense for the historical
context in which Plato and Aristotle wrote, Bessarion maintained
that
the
teaching
of
neither the one nor the other could have agreed with Christian
doctrine. Since both
lived
before Christianity, it would be anachronistic to
expect
them to be orthodox Christians. Both accepted ancient polytheism
and believed in demons and the pre-existence of souls. Aristotle had,
contrary to George of Trebizond's claim, no knowledge of the Christian
Trinity. Not only is it false
that
he taught
that
the world was created by God
freely
and ex nihilo and
that
God's providence extends to inferiora, but it is
also impossible, on Aristotelian principles, to prove
that
the human soul is
immortal. Throughout the work Bessarion
treats
Aristotle's thought with
great respect, but holds, nevertheless,
that
Plato came much
nearer
than
he
did to Christian doctrine. Plato did not deny divine providence. His
account
of
the production
of
the world approached the revealed doctrine of
creation. Pseudo-Dionysius borrowed much from the Parmenides, espe-
cially
in his De divinis nominibus. What Plato says about the One agrees with
the doctrine of the super sub stantialis Dei
divinitas
taught by the supposed
disciple
of
St
Paul. God is not a being among beings, but
rather
the principle
of
all
beings,
himself
beyond being. In the Republic, Plato seems even to have
had a presentiment of the Christian notion of the word of God. The
teaching of his disciple, Plotinus — whose work could, in the generally
accepted
view
of the period, have been influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius
—
resembled very nearly the doctrine of the trinity of persons in God.
46
Bessarion's
tract
offered, for the first time in the West, an ample and
balanced account
of
Platonic doctrine, based on a profound knowledge not
only
of all of Plato's works but also of his ancient commentators. At the
same time, the In calumniator em, in accordance with the Byzantine scholarly
tradition, insisted on the fundamental agreement between Plato and
Aristotle.
Without denying the great
gulf
between paganism and Christ-
ianity, Bessarion also emphasised the continuity between classical and
patristic thought. His famous library, which included about twice as many
Greek
as Latin titles, not only contained Plato and Aristotle, along with their
commentators, and Neoplatonic writers like Plotinus, Iamblichus and
Proclus,
but was also especially strong in the works of the Greek Church
Fathers. Similarly,
Johannes
Argyropulos,
another
Greek theologian who
had remained in Italy after having attended the Council
of
Florence, began
46.
Bessarion
1927.
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Metaphysics
his teaching in the Studio of Florence in 1457 by seeking, in a course on
Aristotle's
Ethics, to reconcile Plato and Aristotle. Both he and Bessarion
produced new Latin translations of Aristotle's Metaphysics, works which
enjoyed
a wide diffusion in early
printed
editions.
It is, therefore, all the more remarkable
that
the first translation of the
entire
corpus of Plato's writings was made in conscious opposition to the
Aristotelianism of the schools and without explicit reference to Greek
ecclesiastical
writers. Marsilio Ficino's translations and systematic treatises
are, ex professo, Platonic works. The project
of
translating Plato's dialogues
was
begun in the same year
that
Nicholas
of
Cusa
composed his De venatione
sapientiae. But whereas for Nicholas Platonism was but one
part
of
philosophical culture and for Bessarion the agreement between Plato,
Neoplatonism and revelation was of primary importance, Ficino seemed
almost to place Platonism before even the Christ of the gospels. He saw
Plato and Platonic writers as
part
of an ancient theological tradition
antedating even Moses himself. His translations
—
which were undertaken at
the command of Cosimo de' Medici
—
were
part
of
an effort to recover this
tradition. Cosimo's commission to
translate
Plato's dialogues was accompa-
nied by the command to put into Latin the works
of
Hermes Trismegistus,
the mythical Egyptian sage who was believed to have been, along with
Orpheus, Zoroaster and Pythagoras, the remote source
of
Plato's teaching.
The
translation of the Hermetica was completed in 1463,
that
of Plato's
works
by 1469. In the course of his
life
Ficino commented on the most
important
of the dialogues: Timaeus,
Symposium,
Philebus, Parmenides and
Phaedrus. He translated and commented on Plotinus, making this writer
available
to the western world for the first time. He supplemented the
medieval
versions
of
Neoplatonic works by translating works
of
Porphyry,
Iamblichus and Proclus. Of Byzantine writers he translated Psellus' De
demonibus and copied out with his own
hand
the Greek text
of
several
works
of
Pletho.
Ficino's
translations of Plato opened a
third
period in the history of
Florentine Platonism. Whereas in the period before the Council
of
Florence
both Plato and Aristotle were read, above all as works of Greek literature,
the Council had
turned
attention
to the speculative side of Greek thought.
In the second period which
thus
began, not only the Greek controversy
about the relative superiority of Plato and Aristotle but also the exclusive
Aristotelianism of the Averroists in the
arts
faculties and the Thomists
among the theologians gave rise to the notion
that
the philosophical
approaches of the two thinkers were fundamentally opposed
—
an
attitude
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Metaphysics
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which
neither the ancients nor the Byzantines would have understood. In
the period immediately after the Council many humanists at Florence
showed
a distinct inclination towards the Platonic approach. Conducive to
this was certainly the flourishing cultural
life
at Florence. Brunelleschi's
cupola had been completed just before the Council, and
under
Cosimo de'
Medici
the construction
of
new palaces was transforming the city. But
there
was
a darker side to the exclusiveness
of
the
turn
to Plato which marked the
beginning of the
third
period.
The
fall
of
Constantinople in
1453,
the financial crisis of
1464-5,
the death
of
Francesco Sforza in 1466 along with the collapse of the alliances
dependent upon him, the assassination
of
Galeazzo
Maria in 1476, the Pazzi
conspiracy of 1478: all contributed to the pessimism which pervades the
work
of
Ficino
and his contemporaries. The withdrawal
of
wealthy
families
from
civic
life
—
expressed both in the spaciousness
of
the inner courtyards of
the new palaces and in the flight from the city to extravagant villas in the
countryside
—
presaged the approaching end of an age and a change in
humanism itself. About the time
that
Florence shifted her allegiances from
Venice
to Milan, reflection among humanists shifted from the virtues of
civic
responsibility to
literature
and artistic creativity. Speculation on the
divine meaning behind mythological tales, on the
nature
of
beauty, on
true
nobility, on the purpose
of
friendship, on the precedence
of
the contempla-
tive
over the active
life,
on man as creative and perfectible, characterised the
new era. The discussion
of
man's dignity shifted from his place in the
state
to
his place in the hierarchy of being. Humanists were no longer active
politicians, like Leonardo Bruni, interested in moral philosophy and the
models they could find in Plutarch's Lives. Rather they were teachers and
professional philosophers, dedicated to a
life
of
reflection far removed from
political
activity. They were, moreover, courtiers, dependent on the
benevolence
of a prince. Although Cosimo actually belonged to the older
generation which sought guidance in the moral philosophy of both Plato
and Aristotle, Ficino often made appeal to his Platonism and to his
association with Pletho, in an effort to establish a connection between
Mistra and the Platonic Academy in Florence. In reality, his appeals were
concealed
admonitions to Lorenzo de' Medici. Whereas earlier generations
had praised Cosimo
as
pater patriae, and
then
as the Maecenas who made the
scholarly
life
possible, for Ficino he was an Augustus who had presided over
a now lost golden age.
The
Platonism of Marsilio Ficino defined man by his aspirations, by his
yearning for a
better
world. The significance of his great undertaking was
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570
Metaphysics
not limited to making available for the first time in Latin the works
of
Plato
and the Platonists.
Of
even
greater importance was the fact
that
in Plato he
found the key to the most important knowledge for man - the knowledge
of
the divine and immortal principle within himself. His own Platonic tracts
inaugurated a metaphysical tradition in the Italian Renaissance, a meta-
physical
tradition different from any
that
had gone before. Earlier
humanists
—
even in writing on the theme of man's dignity
—
manifested a
great diffidence in confronting metaphysical questions. But their influence
set Ficino's Platonic metaphysics
apart
from
that
of a Bessarion, in whose
thought man's place in the universe, his experience
of
the contemplative
life
and the theory of love had little importance. Humanist concerns also
distinguished his metaphysics from the optimistic speculations
of
a Nicholas
of
Cusa,
for whom the idea of man's mortality did not constitute the point
of
departure for philosophy.
The
turn
to metaphysics
thus
made Florentine Platonism a phenomenon
unique in the history of philosophy. Of the factors which led to this
development, the weightiest was perhaps the need to formulate a religious
creed which was broader
than
that
of medieval Latin Christianity. This
need was felt at Florence in a special way. From the time of Cosimo de'
Medici
the horizons of the city were no longer limited to the Italian
peninsula. Her growing fleet and profitable Turkish
trade
made her
increasingly a challenge to the interests of Venice in the Levant. The
Council
of Florence had made the city the meeting-place of eastern and
western religious convictions
—
as Cosimo had foreseen when he brought
the Council to the city. The sight
—
in the streets and squares
of
the city
—
of
richly
attired eastern dignitaries and bearded Byzantine prelates attended by
Moslem
and Moorish servants gave the question
of
the agreement between
philosophy and religion a new urgency.
The
traditional scholastic metaphysics
of
being,
which had experienced a
rebirth as a result of the outcome of the Council
of
Basle,
was incapable of
meeting this challenge. The victory of the papacy over conciliarism was
accompanied by a narrowing of the Catholic vision and a
return
to an
official
metaphysics meant to supply a guarantee for the Latin clergy's
view
of
itself as the unique interpreter of revelation. On the other hand, the
nominalism which flourished in
northern
universities, by denying the
possibility of man's knowledge
of
universal concepts, rendered any sort of
philosophical justification of revealed doctrines
—
doctrines like
that
of the
immortality of the human soul — impossible. At the same time, the
Averroist
Aristotelianism which had grown up in Italy had a secular
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Metaphysics
57i
character and tended to disregard the religious dimension in philosophical
problems. Although the professors in the
arts
faculties had come increasing-
ly
to concern themselves with questions like
that
of
man's immortality, the
orientation of their teaching was towards the study of medicine and paid
little
attention
to ecclesiastical concerns. Furthermore, their
treatment
of
the problem of the soul was not able to meet the exalted demands of the
Renaissance idea
of
man's transcendent dignity since the doctrine
of
the soul
belonged, in accordance with the Aristotelian classification of the sciences,
not to the science of immaterial reality but to physics.
An
approach was needed which avoided the fideism of the nominalists,
the secularism of the Averroists and the clericalism behind the Christian
Aristotelianism of the Thomists. As a consequence of the notion
that
the
philosophies of Plato and Aristotle were opposed, Ficino sought an
alternative to these Aristotelianisms in Platonic metaphysics. He proposed a
very
subtle reading
of
Plato, a reading
that
not only insisted
—
as Pletho and
Bessarion had done
—
on the basic agreement between Christian theology
and the philosophical tradition to which Plato belonged, but also stressed
—
in accord with the Hermetica — the harmony of cosmic processes and the
animate
nature
of
the universe. For Ficino God is the One beyond being. He
is
the perfect Truth who collects into the ineffable simplicity of his own
nature
the endless multiplicity of the ideal archetypes of things. He is the
infinite Good who diffuses himself in all things and remains present, more
interior to them
than
they are to themselves. The universe which emanates
from God constitutes a hierarchy in which each being has its place according
to its degree of perfection, a hierarchy descending through the orders of
angelic
minds and rational souls to corporeal forms and unformed
matter.
God
pours the ideas of all things into the angelic mind. Mind generates the
reasons for governing things in soul. Soul generates forms in
matter.
The
entire
cosmos is an active,
living
being. Its Soul possesses as many seminal
reasons as
there
are ideas in Mind. By way
of
these reasons Soul generates the
forms
of
material things. The world-soul is united to the body
of
the world
by
spirit, a fifth, ethereal essence, containing all the qualities of the four
elements. Through spirit the divine power passes from the celestial spheres
to the sublunar world. The human soul,
thus
situated between time and
eternity, participates in the
nature
of
the universal soul.
Like
the world-soul,
it
is
joined to a corruptible body by the unifying power of spirit, the soul's
ethereal vehicle and immortal garment, the seat of imagination and the
instrument
of perception and bodily movement. Man is a microcosm,
imitating God with unity, the angels with mind, soul with reason,
brute
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Metaphysics
animals with sensation, plants with nutrition and inanimate things with
simple being. He is the
true
bond of all things, the knot tying the world
together, who can ascend in thought from the forms evident to the senses to
the world-soul, from the seminal reasons in Soul to Mind and from the
ideas in Mind to the Good itself.
47
The
Neoplatonic inspiration of this world-view is evident. Following
Plotinus' division of reality into a hierarchical series of realms or spheres of
being emanating from a transcendent One, Ficino proposed a set of
five
ontological
hypostases: the One, Mind, Soul, Quality (forms in matter) and
Body.
48
As in Plotinus, Ficino's metaphysics centred on the relationship of
man to the divine,
that
is, of Soul to the One, a relationship mediated by
the intelligible-intellectual world
of
the ideal archetypes
of
things,
that
is, by
Mind. Nevertheless, Ficino made profound changes in this Platonic
theology.
His God is not the absolutely impersonal One, who, blessed in his
solitude, cares not for the world which proceeds from him. Ficino's God is a
personal God who knows
himself
and all things in
himself
as their first cause.
Although
he saw an anticipation
of
the Christian doctrine
of
the Trinity in
Plato's triad of unity,
truth
and goodness in the act of creation, Ficino
rejected any attempt to assimilate Plotinus' first
three
hypostases to the
Father, Son and Spirit of Christian theology. Because Mind, which is the
corner-stone of Plotinus' metaphysics, is not of the same substance as the
One,
but
rather
subordinate to it—as is also Soul to Mind—Ficino broke with
the Plotinian concept, assigning some
of
Mind's attributes to God, others to
the angels. In his
view,
the status of Mind as supreme thinker and supreme
thought and as creator
of
the universe belongs to the One. Moreover, Ficino
does not devaluate finite being as Neoplatonic metaphysics does. Although
he speaks
of
things as emanating from God, he thinks
of
emanation as an act
which
has its roots in God's free goodness. God has created the world not by
necessity of nature, but in accordance with a certain purpose of his
will.
God's
relationship to things is not subject to the determinism implied by
emanation, but is contingent on his love
of
the world.
Love
not only ascends
from man to God, but also descends from on high. God loves the world as
his creature and, as such, the world is worthy
of
love.
Ficino's hierarchy of
being is, accordingly, not static in the sense
that
an ontological
gulf
separates
its spheres. For the philosopher of the Florentine Academy, all things are
interrelated. The universe has a dynamic unity and its various degrees and
parts
are bound together by active affinities.
49
47.
Ficino
1964-70,
1, pp. 73-173
(II-IV).
48. Ibid., 1, pp. 39, 128 (1.1; in. 1). 49. Ibid., 1, pp.
73-127
(11).
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Metaphysics
573
The
specifically humanistic character
of
Ficino's
approach
-
setting
it off
from
that
of
the ancient Neoplatonists
-
appears most clearly
in
his doctrine
of
Soul.
Whereas
in
Plotinus
the
world-soul
is
simply
the
prime individual
instance
in the
generic category
of
soul, Ficino identified Soul with
the
world-soul
and
maintained
that
individual human souls participated
in its
nature.
As the
universal bond
of
things, Soul
has the
role
of
mediating
between
the
ideal
and
material worlds.
The
world-soul impresses
the
seminal reasons which
it
possesses
as
forms
on the
corporeal world.
The
forms
are
conveyed from
the
celestial spheres
to the
sublunar world
by the
spirit
of the
world.
The
seminal reasons
in
things
are
conceived
as
active
powers,
as
individual spirits
or
deities ruling
the
celestial signs.
The
signs
are
the reservoirs
in
which these powers
are
stored.
50
Man's task
—
the
task
of
the human soul
—
is to
perfect himself and
the
world
in
which
he
lives.
To
this purpose
he can
make
use
of
the seminal powers
in
things.
The
arts
he has
invented
are
founded
on the
universal harmony which exists
in the
world.
They
seek
to
exploit
the
natural affinities
and
occult qualities
in
things.
The
physician,
for
example, seeks
to
bring together celestial influences
in the
medicines
he
prescribes
in
order
to
effect favourable physical dispositions
in
the human body.
The
influences transmitted
by the
signs
and
planets
can
also work
on
man's imagination
and
enable
him to
produce poetry, music
and works
of
art.
The
arts
thus
give
man
magical power over nature. They
have been bestowed
on him by the
spirits ruling
the
heavens.
By
listening
to
God's
voice
in the
seminal powers
of
things,
man is
able
to
transform
the
world.
This type
of
magic works through
the
spirit
of the
world
and is
good.
There
is
another magic which
is
illicit, because
it
seeks
to
operate
through
the
soul
of the
world
and
involves demons.
But
natural magic
ministers
to the
powers
of
nature
and
wants
to
assist
the
world
in its
tendency
to
perfection.
It is,
therefore,
the
most sublime
part
of
natural
philosophy.
51
Ficino's
conception
of
the power
of
Soul
over
nature
enabled
him to
give
a systematic place
to the
Renaissance theme
of
man's dignity. Like
that
of
Nicholas
of
Cusa,
his
praise
of man is
founded
on
human creativity.
But
whereas Nicholas stressed man's intellectual inventiveness, Ficino appealed
to
the
miracles
man
has worked
in the
arts
and in
government.
Man
does
not
only
use nature,
but
adorns, beautifies
and
transforms it.
The
great cities,
the
wonders
of
sculpture, painting
and
architecture,
the
endless tools
and
instruments
that
man has
brought forth prove
that
he is not the
subject
of
50.
Ibid.,
1, pp. 128-43 (in). 51. Ficino 1576, 1, pp.
531-72
(De
vita
m).
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574
Metaphysics
nature, but
rather
its master. Man is not like the animals dominated by the
one element in which they
live;
he uses all the things
of
the world, as lord of
all.
He is able to unfold his potentialities in all the spheres
that
make up
reality. He
lives
the
life
of
plants by cultivating his body,
that
of
animals by
sharpening his senses,
that
of
man by
living
in accord with reason,
that
of
the
angels by his penetration into the divine mysteries.
52
Referring to the
planetarium
of
Archimedes,
Ficino exclaimed
that
man's genius approaches
that
of the creator of the heavens because, having observed the regularity
and order reigning in the spheres, he could,
given
the necessary materials,
bring them forth himself.
53
Man's creativity situates him at the centre
of
the
universe, between spiritual and sensible reality. In spite
of
his corporeality,
his mind is divine. It is because - as a god on earth - he cares for all things
that
he is the knot holding the
parts
of the world together.
54
Ficino
thus
anticipated a concept
—
that
of genius
—
which would gain
increasing importance in the late sixteenth century. But this positive vision
of
man was, at the same time, tempered by an opposed concept which he
could
have found in Augustine and the medieval mystics —
that
of
alienation. For Ficino,
there
is a latent absurdity in man's condition.
Immutable like higher things, but subject to change like inferior ones, he is
at once the most and least perfect
of
creatures. Through his intelligence, he
is
able to dominate temporal things and is open to eternal realities. Not
satisfied by dominion over the world, he seeks restlessly the reasons for
things. Compelled ceaselessly to pursue potentialities, he is the most
wanting and the most unhappy of creatures. His constant struggle to
transcend himself situates him on the horizon between eternity and time
and makes his
nature
a historical one, always projected into the future. In
this inquietudo
animi
Ficino finds the
proof
of
the divinity
of
man's soul. It is
because he possesses the divine fire
that
man is
—
like Prometheus
—
unable to
find repose. His longing to be united with all reality can be stilled only by
God's
own infinity. But
if
man is destined for the infinite, his desire can only
find
definitive
fulfilment beyond death. If man were not immortal, he
would
be an incomplete
nature
- which would be contrary to God's
wisdom
and goodness and to the place he has assigned to man at the centre of
creation.
55
The
human soul is an immaterial reality, using a body. As such, it is not
confined to a determined sphere
of
being.
Man has no
fixed
essence, but can
descend to the
level
of the beasts or ascend in thought to the sphere of the
52.
Ficino
1964-70,
11, pp.
196-296
(XIII-XIV).
53. Ibid., 11, pp.
223-9
(xin.3).
54. Ibid., 1, pp.
137-43
(111.2). 55. Ibid., 1, pp. 38-9 (1.1); 11, pp.
269-73
(xiv.7).
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Metaphysics
575
angels
or even to
that
of God himself. Ficino used Neoplatonic terminol-
ogy,
but gave it a dynamic
turn
by emphasising the circularity in Plotinus'
scheme.
The One goes out to Mind and
Soul,
but Soul
returns
to Mind and
Mind
to the One. Soul seeks to become the plenitude of all the species, by
turning back to the one act of mind. Mind seeks to become all things in
act, to comprehend the highest One in all the species, by turning back to
their one act.
56
In speaking of ascending in thought to the One, Ficino
distinguished - in a way similar to
that
of
Lull
and Nicholas of Cusa -
between
logical
understanding and dialectical contemplation. The thought
by
which the human soul is able to transcend itself is not the process of
discursive
reasoning based on the abstraction of universal ideas, but
rather
an intuitive vision
of
intelligible
reality which ascends in stages from forms
in things and innate ideas to the eternal ideas and ultimately to the idea
of
the
Good
itself. Ficino regarded the contemplation of immaterial things to be
the proper task of the metaphysician. The soul is led to this science by
ascending from moral to natural philosophy and thence to mathematics
before
arriving at this supreme form of contemplation.
The
dignity
of
man is founded on his innate desire for this highest degree
of
contemplation. This desire is not purely intellectual, but has also a
voluntary component. Turning to Augustine and the Christian tradition,
Ficino
went beyond the Platonic notion of eros.
Just
as the act of creation
requires the union of the divine intellect with the divine liberality, so also
man's innate desire to comprehend the One forms one act with his free
choice
of the One. The contemplation to which Ficino refers involves not
only
the thought which actively constitutes its objects, but also the
love
which
actively binds them together. The innate attraction and occult
qualities which were encountered on the
level
of natural philosophy
become,
in metaphysics, the desire for transcendence, the intellectual
love
of
God. In the highest act of contemplation the knowledge of the divine
truth
coincides with the enjoyment
of
the divine goodness. In one
of
his last
works,
Ficino interpreted the myth of the Phaedrus in accordance with this
vision.
Plato's charioteer is the youth at the foot
of
Diotima's
ladder, intent
on leading the individual soul by divine inspirations to the notion of Soul's
immortality, so
that
Jove,
the celestial world-soul, might conduct it thence
together with all human souls as a company
of
gods
beyond the intellectual
heaven,
to the gates of the transcendent One, to God himself.
57
In spite - or perhaps because - of the originality of his project, Ficino
56.
Ficino
1975, pp.
306-9
(1.31). 57-
Ficino
1981, pp.
82-129
(In Phaedrum comm. 4-11).
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576
Metaphysics
seems to have been very hesitant about the reception his ideas would find.
Not
only did he take a great deal of time to complete his translations and
commentaries, but the publication
of
his works was often long delayed after
their completion. He seems especially to have wanted to have his project
seen not as something new, but
rather
as continuing a long tradition of
Platonism. Towards the end of his
life,
in a letter to a friend who had
requested instruction about Platonic philosophy, he sought to relate his
writings to a distinguished line of Latin Platonists: Augustine, Boethius,
Chalcidius
and Macrobius in the patristic period; Henry of Ghent and
Duns Scotus among the medievals. He presented his versions of Plato and
Platonist
authors
as supplementing the medieval translations of Pseudo-
Dionysius,
the Liber de causis, Avicebron and Avicenna, as
well
as the
translations of Proclus made by Moerbeke in the
thirteenth
century. In his
list of Platonic works he included both Bessarion's In calumniator em and
'quaedam speculations' of Nicholas of Cusa, wanting apparently to have
these two cardinals appear as underwriting the orthodoxy of his own
approach. The omissions he makes in the letter lead to the same conclusion.
No
mention is made
of
Origen
or Pletho,
of
Lull
or the writers
of
the School
of
Chartres, no doubt because of scholastic reservations about their
teaching.
58
It was certainly for a different reason
that
Ficino made no reference to
Thomas Aquinas in this history. In his Theologia platonica he had used
Thomas'
Contra gentiles extensively and extended, as Thomas had done, the
Aristotelian notions of act and potency to explain the finitude of
participated being. Both he and Thomas wanted to show the fundamental
agreement between philosophy and Christian doctrine, but their ap-
proaches differed radically. Although Thomas had made much use of
Neoplatonic sources, he tended increasingly to distance himself from the
platonici as the incompatibility between Platonic philosophy and the
apologetics
he had based on Aristotle became clear to him. He had sought to
show
that
revelation was necessary because, although philosophy could
demonstrate the existence of God and man's immortality, knowledge of
God's
essence and man's
true
destiny was beyond its comprehension and
belonged to the realm of
supernatural
theology. It was this separation of
philosophy from theology
that
had made scholasticism abstract and
intellectualistic and led to the introduction - so repugnant to the Byzantines
58.
Letter
to
Prenninger
in
Klibansky
1981, pp. 45-7.
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