Idea duszy w neoplatonizmie florenckim na przykładzie koncepcji Marsilia Ficina

The article treats on the idea of the soul and its importance for the concept of man as disputed in the Florentine community of Platónica Familia. One approach to the problem is exemplified by the work of Marsilio Ficino. Similar to Plotinus’s, his vision of the world assumes the basis and source of the reality to be God understood as an Absolute. He is wholly transcendent, unlimited by any laws of the perceptible world which is crowned by the cosmic mind - nous. That mind potentially contains in itself all ideas later realized in the empirical world. Below nous, at the center of the universe’s structure, is the cosmic soul (anima mundi), with nature composed of flora and fauna further below. In the human soul, Ficino recognizes two levels: one involved in its functioning in nature and the other reaching out into the sphere where a union with God is possible. Through love and cognition, he claims, it is possible to overcome the original fracture of being and achieve unity with the Absolute. He understands cognition as a unremitting, deep process to know oneself, properly accompanied by overcoming one’s limitations. This last faculty depends both on the love of the Absolute and the love of man for God. Ficino describes the redeification process in an anthropological perspective.