6 - Platonism

Summary

In 1939 Raymond Klibansky published a programmatic essay entitled The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition during the Middle Ages, in which he presented a new project: the Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi, meant as a counterpart of the Aristoteles Latinus. The term “continuity” in the title of the essay had a polemical intent: the principal aim of the planned collection of texts was, as it is stated in the Preface, “to reveal a neglected link” in the history of thought. In the study of medieval philosophy there existed a strong tendency to regard this period as an era dominated by Aristotelianism; it was not until the Renaissance that Plato would have been rediscovered. Against this prejudice Klibansky’s essay pointed to the continuity of the Platonic tradition throughout the Middle Ages. Medieval Platonism originated from two sources, a direct tradition, based on translations of Plato’s own works, and an indirect one through the intermediary of authors who transmitted essential doctrines of Platonism in their own accounts. This chapter will be focusing on the Latin Plato – a clear restriction, because, as Klibansky stresses, a full understanding of the role of Platonism in the Middle Ages has to take the Arabic tradition into account.

PLATO LATINUS

Boethius, one of the “founders of the Middle Ages,” saw it as his mission to make the treasures of philosophy accessible to the West. He tried to realize Cicero’s exhortation to transfer philosophy from the Greek to the Latin world and formulated to that end an ambitious program: he wanted to translate the complete works of Plato and Aristotle into Latin and to show the fundamental accordance between the two philosophers by commentaries on their works. But Boethius could only realize a fraction of this project, namely, translations of and commentaries on Aristotle’s logical works.