On the Nature of Love

Overview

On the Nature of Love is a translation of Marsilio Ficino's commentary to Plato's Symposium. This edition makes Ficino's Tuscan version available to English readers for the first time. On November 7, 1468, nine men gathered at Careggi, outside Florence, to honour Plato's birthday. After the meal, the Symposium was read, and the guests – now reduced to seven – spoke on the nature of love. Ficino, who was also present, recorded what was said, and his report constitutes the text of his commentary. His work was eagerly taken up by court circles throughout Europe and became part of their standard fare for the next two centuries. In more recent times, Ficino's commentary has exercised the minds of theologians, philosophers, and psychologists.

Reviews

"The distilled conciseness of these writings gives us, more vividly perhaps than any other source, a sense of what Plato's wisdom meant to [Ficino] who became his apostle to the Renaissance." —Temenos Academy Review

"It fills a need, since these Ficinian works have never been translated into English before. Even those Anglophone scholars who know Latin still need a translation in order to read quickly through a large body of material." —Carol V. Kaske, Cornell University in Renaissance Quarterly

"Ficino was anxious to show that there was no separation between religion and philosophy, and that Christianity and Platonism were compatible. Neither was there a sharp distinction between human nature and the supernatural, but a 'ladder of love' existed between human love and divine love . . . A short review cannot do justice to the wide-ranging treatment of love that is dealt with in this work . . . a valuable addition to the corpus of Ficino's works translated into English." —Rosemary Arthur, Faith and Freedom

Author Biography

Arthur Farndell has been a member of the team of scholars translating The Letters of Marsilio Ficino for over forty years. He has also translated many of Ficino's other commentaries on Plato's Dialogues, published by Shepheard-Walwyn in four volumes as All Things Natural, Evermore Shall Be So, Gardens of Philosophy and When Philosophers Rule.