Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil · Lexicon

From the book

Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Marsilio Ficino · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordContraries oppose and can destroy one another in matter.
In the Platonic TheologyMind understands heat and cold, good and evil, useful and useless, beauty and deformity, light and darkness, voice and silence, sweet and bitter.
In this editionThe apparatus preserves both modes of corruption.
A place to readThe examples of contraries lead to separate replies about contrary destruction and loss of preservative causes.

Meaning

Contraries oppose and can destroy one another in matter. Their intelligible forms need not exercise that opposition within a knower. Privation and defect name lacks or failures; knowing such a lack is different from acquiring it as one's own condition.

Use in the book

Mind understands heat and cold, good and evil, useful and useless, beauty and deformity, light and darkness, voice and silence, sweet and bitter. In cognition one contrary can clarify the other, so their co-presence helps rather than destroys the act of knowing. Ficino infers that mind cannot be governed by the bodily mode of contrary reception.

Two proposed sources of corruption are addressed. First, destruction by a contrary fails because mind reconciles the intellectual forms of contraries. Second, separation from preservative causes is challenged because a power able to reconcile alien opposites should be able to draw itself to its own causes and preservers. The second argument should not disappear into the more memorable list of contrasts.

VIII.13 adds that greater knowledge includes knowledge of privations, defects and evils. Mind becomes more perfect by discerning them than by remaining ignorant. Harmful things thus become cognitive goods under the aspect of being known. This does not make harmful acts morally good, declare suffering beneficial in itself, or erase the real differences between good and evil. The conversion occurs in the mode of reception: knowledge of an evil is not the evil itself afflicting the knower in its original manner.

Places to read

VIII.12.1The examples of contraries lead to separate replies about contrary destruction and loss of preservative causes.
VIII.13.2Knowledge of defects and evils perfects mind without turning it into what it knows.

Translation in this edition

The apparatus preserves both modes of corruption. The translation's “wholesome” for salubria is part of the intellectual good/harm contrast, not medical advice. Quae in se ipsis mala sunt and in mente fiunt bona explicitly distinguish the objects in themselves from their cognitive reception.

aqua / ignis / calor / frigus

aqua / ignis / calor / frigus. Printed forms: aqua; aquae; aquam; caliditatem; calidum; calorem; frigiditatem; frigus; ignem; igneum; ignis.

Water, fire, heat and cold, recurring elemental examples with different explanatory jobs. Water drops illustrate homogeneous parts; heating water illustrates replacement of qualities; knowing heat and cold together illustrates reception without material contrariety. References: VIII.4.3, VIII.7.1, VIII.10.1, VIII.13.1, VIII.13.2. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

bonum / malum

bonum / malum. Printed forms: bona; bonam; boni; bonis; bonum; mala; malis; malum.

Good and evil as evaluative objects, whose nature differs from the benefit of knowing them. The natural-desire argument seeks true good, while the contrary-reception argument makes accurate knowledge of evil an intellectual good without approving the evil itself. References: VIII.1.1, VIII.1.2, VIII.2.7, VIII.2.8, VIII.4.9, VIII.12.1, VIII.13.2. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

conciliare / pax

conciliare / pax. Printed forms: conciliat; conciliet; inimica; pace.

Reconciling and peace, metaphors for the co-presence of contrary intelligible forms. Mind removes their destructive opposition in knowing without eliminating their distinction in the objects themselves. References: VIII.12.1. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

conservator / servator

conservator / servator. Printed forms: admovet; causis; conservatoribus; servatoribus.

Preserving causes or preservers to which a dependent being remains related. The second anti-corruption argument concerns separation from these sources, distinct from destruction by an opposite. References: VIII.12.1. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

contraria elementa

contraria elementa. Printed forms: contraria; contrariorum; elementorum; interimunt.

Contrary elements and their destructive opposition in material coexistence. Their forms can be known together without fighting in mind; this difference of reception supports incorporeality. References: VIII.12.1. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

converti / convertere

converti / convertere. Printed forms: convertat; convertatur; convertit.

Being converted or converting another into oneself, literally or through assimilation. The food argument leaves two alternatives for truth and soul; later cognition converts harmful objects into beneficial knowledge without changing the objects' moral status. References: VIII.2.8, VIII.13.2. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

corrumpere / interire / perdere

corrumpere / interire / perdere. Printed forms: corrumpetur; corrumpi; corrumpitur; interimatur; perdat.

Being corrupted, destroyed or lost, distinct from merely changing one's attention. Ficino argues that mind's mode of reception excludes the material contrariety and loss of preservative causes that would explain its destruction. References: VIII.2.8, VIII.8.2, VIII.12.1, VIII.13.2. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

dulce / amarum / utile / inutile

dulce / amarum / utile / inutile. Printed forms: amarum; dulce; inutilia; utilia.

Sweet and bitter, useful and useless, further contrary objects of joint knowledge. The range moves from bodily qualities to evaluative distinctions while preserving the same nonhostile cognitive reception. References: VIII.12.1. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

lucrari

lucrari. Printed forms: lucrari; lucratur.

Gaining or profiting, even through knowledge of harmful things. Discernment of privation and evil perfects understanding more than ignorance does, without converting mind into those defects. References: VIII.13.2. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

lux / tenebrae / vox / silentium

lux / tenebrae / vox / silentium. Printed forms: lucem; silentium; tenebras; vocem.

Light and darkness, voice and silence, examples of contraries known together. Knowing one sharpens judgment of the other, rather than one mental content physically destroying the other. References: VIII.12.1. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

mens (additional inflections)

mens (additional inflections). Printed forms: menti.

To or for mind, the dative form in claims about its objects, contraries and fitting end. The recipient's intellectual mode governs why bodily forms or evils known by it need not alter it as a body. References: VIII.1.5, VIII.2.8, VIII.4.6, VIII.12.1. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.

privatio / defectus / malum / noxius / salubris

privatio / defectus / malum / noxius / salubris. Printed forms: defectus; mala; malis; noxia; privationes; salubria.

Privatio is a lack, defectus a defect, and malum an evil. Noxius means harmful and salubris wholesome or beneficial; the printed neuter plurals noxia and salubria characterize what is known. Their becoming intellectual goods does not declare the original harms morally good; it contrasts knowing an evil with undergoing it. References: VIII.13.2. See Contraries, privations, and knowledge of evil.