Dominion

Use in the book

The reader does not become sovereign by seizing the goods of others. The world already serves the senses, and rightful mastery begins by recognising and valuing that service. In the mind, its parts can be examined and reunited in an intelligent delight in their whole arrangement. Love carries dominion farther still: one soul can receive the riches of other persons without reducing them to possessions under coercion. The royal language remains ambitious, but the acts constituting this empire are appreciation, fellowship, and communication.

Places to read

1. I.21Esteeming the gifts already before the senses prepares the reader for further treasures and dominion.
2. I.23True reigning consists in examining creation and rejoicing in its complete order.
3. II.70The soul’s love is called a dominion exceeding Adam’s in Paradise.
4. IV.100Divine kingship is glorified through the communion of infinitely capacious subjects.

In this edition

Dominion does not consistently mean political jurisdiction or a legal property right. Its contemplative uses depend on a non-exclusive enjoyment that increases through other enjoyers.

Use in the book

Soul governs qualities and bodies while joining itself to higher realities. Its centrality is an active office, not merely a coordinate in a list. Quality, by contrast, does not master even its own matter because it depends on that matter for support; it therefore cannot independently master foreign matter. The mind within a human soul is similarly said not to command its soul’s effective power by thought alone, motivating an ascent to a more efficacious mind. The rulers in the saying attributed to Zoroaster are unmoved intellectual movers. At the book’s close, truth’s dominion reaches further than mind’s, and the Good’s dominion is at once necessary and willingly accepted. Ficino uses the range and mode of rule to distinguish causal ranks. None of this by itself establishes a programme for human political coercion.

Ficino measures a cause’s mastery by the range of the work it controls. Fire does not govern the whole effect because it does not arrange the recipient’s degrees; God governs forms and their ordering together. The later claim that God does not serve an alien good removes an external end that would determine divine action. Freedom then receives the language of becoming one’s own master as one approaches God. In God, mastery over intelligence and essence depends on the asserted identity of being, understanding, and willing. It is not a decision made by a will independent of what God is. Created agents remain free in a qualified respect, while the first cause is the unrestricted source and end of its activity. The social and juridical language makes degrees of dependence vivid without establishing a literal social hierarchy among human persons.

The twelvefold hierarchy repeatedly distributes ruling and subordinate souls, but the distribution remains within a marked Pythagorean conversation and becomes tentative at the level of twelve minds. Apollo's command governs a singing, dancing chorus; political and musical language cooperate. The rankings of reason, anger, and desire similarly concern which faculty predominates and which serves, not the isolated existence of only one faculty.

In the world-soul argument, lower members follow the higher members' nods while communicating powers within one living whole. Direction is therefore compatible with distributed activity. Soul itself is self-governing in one respect and directed by higher mind in another. The lexicon should preserve those relative scopes: being a ruler does not make a soul the first source, and following does not mean being inert.

Selected annotated passages.

Places to read

1. I.1.7Soul presides over the world’s mechanism while linking its grades
2. I.3.7Dependence on matter prevents independent mastery
3. I.5.13Human intellectual activity does not by itself command effective power
4. I.5.19; I.5.27Intellectual rulers and prophetic attendants supply different images
5. I.6.11; I.6.19The dominions of truth and goodness exceed that of mind
6. II.11.8Fire lacks mastery of the whole differentiated work.
7. II.11.38Mastery of production is linked with free disposal of effects.
8. II.12.7Sui iuris describes increasing self-mastery and divine supremacy.
9. II.12.8Compos concerns command of intelligence and essence under their identity in God.
10. IV.1.44–5223456789faculties and governing souls are ranked; Apollo directs the cosmic chorus
11. IV.1.65a self-moving thing governs itself while mediating stability and externally moved body
12. IV.1.82 and IV.1.86cosmic cooperation receives higher direction and distributes unity, order, and motion
13. IV.2.19the slightest nod figures the ease of a soul's bodily direction

Translation in this edition

“Rule,” “preside,” “guide,” “command,” and “dominion” preserve distinctions that an unspecified “cause” would lose, but do not all assert absolute sovereignty. Imperium is not automatically an earthly empire. “His own master” renders sui iuris; “command of will” at II.12.1 renders voluntatis imperio without requiring a spoken order or arbitrary decree. In IV.1.82, “commands” interprets the plural nutus as higher guidance. These expressions must remain alongside the distinctions between absolute freedom, conditioned freedom and subordinate agency.

compos

compos. Printed forms: compos.

Master or possessor of. God’s possession of intelligence and essence through will presupposes their identity, not competing independent powers within God. References: II.12.8. See Governing, serving and dominion.

dominari

dominari. Printed forms: dominatur.

Exercise mastery over. Fire lacks control of the whole differentiated work; God’s causal scope includes its forms, ordering, and degrees. References: II.11.8, II.11.10. See Governing, serving and dominion.

To exercise command or predominance. Nature's command of matter explains its closer correspondence to its work; anger's rule distinguishes one two-faculty life. References: IV.1.12, IV.1.49. See Governing, serving and dominion.

dominor

dominor. Printed forms: dominabitur; dominari; dominatur.

To master or exercise control. Dependence on matter prevents quality’s independent mastery; nature’s better mastery than art later implies both closer presence and greater substantial independence. References: I.3.7, I.3.17. See Governing, serving and dominion.

dux / lex superioris

dux / lex superioris. Printed forms: ducem; lege alicuius superioris.

A guide; a law from a superior source. Mutable rational self-motion requires stable direction for perpetual uniformity, excluding God as a sphere's soul. References: IV.1.28. See Governing, serving and dominion.

imperium

imperium. Printed forms: imperii; imperio; imperium.

Dominion or range of rule. Truth’s dominion exceeds mind’s because even formless matter truly is matter; the metaphor concerns explanatory reach. References: I.6.11. See Governing, serving and dominion.

Dominion or scope of rule and action. Supremacy is treated as desirable good; inferior causes have a narrower domain of efficacy. References: II.1.5, II.7.30. See Surpassing and comparison.

Command or effective rule. The chapter opens by placing production under will’s command, then asks how that will can be free and necessary together. References: II.12.1. See Governing, serving and dominion.

impero / domina

impero / domina. Printed forms: dominam; imperat.

To command and to be mistress of. The human mind does not by its act alone command effective psychic power; a superior mind is therefore proposed as efficacious in its own act. References: I.5.13. See Governing, serving and dominion.

libera voluntate disponere

libera voluntate disponere. Printed forms: libera voluntate disponens.

Dispose or arrange by free will. Mastery of production includes the choice of effects, rather than necessary simultaneous production of all intelligible possibilities. References: II.11.38. See Governing, serving and dominion.

machina / praesideo

machina / praesideo. Printed forms: machinae; praesidet.

A structured mechanism or fabric; to preside over. The soul’s excellence is linked to governance of the world’s mechanism, while blessedness is linked to its intimacy with divine things. References: I.1.7. See Governing, serving and dominion.

minister / assisto

minister / assisto. Printed forms: assistebant; ministrabant.

To minister or serve, and to stand in attendance. The quoted prophetic multitude supports angelic abundance through the image of service to a ruler. References: I.5.27. See Governing, serving and dominion.

officium / perseverare

officium / perseverare. Printed forms: officio; Perseverat.

An office or task; to persist in it. Soul's mutable motion remains in one governing task through the higher unity of God. References: IV.1.86. See Governing, serving and dominion.

praeesse

praeesse. Printed forms: praeest; praesunt.

To stand over or govern. Repeated governing relations organize the hierarchy from first unity to subordinate souls without making every ruler a first cause. References: IV.1.52. See Governing, serving and dominion.

princeps

princeps. Printed forms: principem; principes.

Ruler or principal source. Twelve leading souls rule a multitude in the excursion; the Magian three rulers distribute unity, order, and motion; the final motion argument distinguishes a chief source from subordinate movers. A princeps need not be an embodied political ruler. References: IV.1.41, IV.1.86, IV.2.27. See Governing, serving and dominion.

se regere / se sistere

se regere / se sistere. Printed forms: se ipsam regit; se sistit.

To govern itself and remain grounded in its nature. Self-moving soul shares mutability with body and self-maintenance with stability, making it a mediator. References: IV.1.65. See Governing, serving and dominion.

servire / alienus

servire / alienus. Printed forms: alieno; servit.

Serve / belonging to another or alien. God cannot serve an external good as final cause, because that would make all goodness subordinate to a particular good. References: II.11.35. See Governing, serving and dominion.

subiectus, ruled subject

subiectus, ruled subject. Printed forms: subiectis.

Those subject to a dominion. At the close of Book I, the Good’s rule is necessary and voluntary for its subjects; these are governed beings, not merely the material substrates called subiecta elsewhere. References: I.6.19. See Governing, serving and dominion.

sui iuris

sui iuris. Printed forms: sui iuris.

One’s own master or under one’s own right. The juridical idiom expresses relative independence, brought to its maximum in God. References: II.12.7. See Governing, serving and dominion.