CAREY POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW 2006-07
Sarah Powrie
University of Toronto
From Metaphysics into Metaphor: the Changing Purposes of Renaissance Plationism
From Metaphysics into Metaphor: the Changing Purposes of Renaissance Platonism will examine the reinterpretations of Macrobius’ Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis in literary and philosophical texts between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Macrobius’ commentary describes the Platonic myth of the soul’s descent, narrating how the soul abandons its celestial home and travels earthward through a geocentric system of planets to be born into its body and begin its earthly life. The character of Macrobius’ thought is symbolic, not empirical, and in a manner similar to the Timaeus, he assumes that the human microcosm and the world macrocosm are structurally interrelated and, in some sense, necessary to each other. Thus the presence of this text is unexpected in an age which allegedly marks the decline of symbolic mentalities and the rise of empiricism. This book-length study will consider the attraction of the early modern to this myth by examining its recurrence in the writings of Marsilio Ficino, John Donne and the Cambridge Platonists. The chapters will consider how each writer, or group of writers, refashions the myth to advance their philosophical purposes.
Marsilio Ficino forms the logical starting point for such a study, since any investigation of Renaissance Platonism must take into account Ficino’s particular recasting of that tradition. While Macrobius describes the soul’s passage through the planets as encumbering the spirit with material conditions, Ficino reverses the direction and intention of this passage, describing instead the soul’s progressive advancement. Thus, Ficino celebrates the power of human ingenuity to surmount its material restrictions. The second chapter will examine the poetry of John Donne, perhaps the most prominent of the metaphysical poets to unfold the poetic possibilities in the mythography of Platonism. John Donne refashions Macrobius’ cosmology in his Second Anniversary, so as to present his counter-response to the New Science and Francis Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning.” The final chapter will consider how Henry More uses the narrative of the soul’s progress in his Psychathanasia to defend the validity of transcendence and to critique the rise of moral relativism and scientific empiricism. Though often disregarded as being cryptic or obscure, Cambridge Platonists nonetheless signalled the deficits implicit in instrumental reason and a mechanized model of the universe; thus, their concern resonates with contemporary voices which critique these thought-systems as precipitating the malaise of modern experience.
Thus, in broadest terms, this study proposes to investigate the origins of modern science and its relationship to the humanities. Such an investigation would seem especially relevant in light of the contemporary debates surrounding the ethics of science and the rise of environmental concerns, since each of these debates has signalled the potential dangers of any scientific practice which would present human life as autonomous from natural systems.
|
