Event

Please join us for a new Italian Lecture with Maude Vanhaelen. The talk is titled: Plato in the Place of Marsilio Ficino: The Revival of Platonic Dialogues in 16th-century Italy.

It is generally assumed that the revival of Plato that took place in the 15th century and culminated with Marsilio Ficino’s translation of the complete Platonic corpus in 1484, determined the way in which Plato’s dialogues were interpreted up until at least the 19th century. This talk seeks to nuance this view by providing a detailed overview of the revival of Plato in the 16th century. Through a series of hitherto neglected case studies, it shows how 16th-century philosophers sought to distance themselves from Ficino’s heritage and sowed the seeds of later trends in the history of the Platonic tradition, by re-translating the dialogues, presenting Plato’s philosophy as a coherent system, and establishing an increasingly greater distinction between Plato and the Neoplatonic commentators.