When Philosophers Rule

Overview

Searching for a definition of good government, this commentary from Marsilio Ficino examines three Platonic dialogues that have had a profound effect on Western statesmen and jurists. A leading scholar of the Italian Renaissance—who translated all the works of Plato into Latin—Ficino prepared these notes for Lorenzo de' Medici, ruler of the republic of Florence, who aspired to be the kind of enlightened ruler Plato described.

Reviews

"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." —Renaissance Quarterly

"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 the apostle to the Renaissance." —Temenos Academy Review

"Anyone longing for a better world should read this book. As with Farndell's other translations, this is a good, readable translation of Marsilio Ficino's Latin commentary. The book should be required reading for all politicians and lawyers." —Faith and Freedom

"All that we regard as the norm of Western European art—Botticelli's paintings, Monteverdi's music, Shakespeare's philosophical lovers—has flowered from Ficino's Florence." —London Times

Author Biography

Arthur Farndell is the translator of Evermore Shall Be So and Gardens of Philosophy and the author of A Mahabharata Companion.