Idea

Use in the book

One report under Pythagoras’s name pairs ideas with forms, placing them in numbers, harmonies, and geometrical things. In the Phaedrus excerpt, the discussion turns to the soul’s form and immediately distinguishes stating what soul is from saying what it resembles.

Places to read

1. I.12.1a.2The words for forms and ideas occur together in a Pythagorean report.
2. I.49.11.5The soul’s form introduces the comparison with a winged team and charioteer.

Translation in this edition

“Ideas” keeps the paired Greek nouns distinct in I.12.1a.2. “Form” suits the question about soul in I.49.11.5, without deciding that the passage asserts a separate Form of soul.

Images and comparisons

The winged team is offered as a likeness. The text expressly acknowledges the difference between an image and an adequate account of what the soul is.

Use in the book

A divine idea is the divine essence considered as the exemplar of a particular kind, rather than a separate substance or added quality within God. Ficino explains plurality by the distinct ways in which the single divine perfection can be imitated. God understands those determinate relations through his own intellect; created things do not first produce the relations in him. Several ideas are therefore several intelligible accounts of one essence, contemplated through one form and a single act of vision. Ficino explicitly calls the relations intellectual rather than real relations of the kind by which persons are said to be distinguished. This comparison marks a difference in the status of the relations; it does not make created things independent constituents within God.

Universal order is the principal idea because the world's ordered whole stands first in divine purpose. Knowing a whole requires the proper accounts of its parts, as an architect must conceive a building's components. The idea of a house also explains features belonging to it from its original construction, whereas additions such as paintings can require further ideas. These distinctions allow specific patterns without sacrificing divine simplicity. Many things can be known and made under one idea, and not everything needs an independent idea on the same footing. Evil and privation are known through good and possession; a substance's properties through its idea; common qualities are assigned proper ideas. Ficino reports, with the qualification that some think so, that matter is known through the idea of form.

The vocabulary changes its setting below God. Angel receives intellectual formation and ideas; soul possesses images of higher realities and exemplars of lower ones. Book IV then gives productive principles a determinate causal role: earth-soul generates vines through the vine's natural idea and principle, and flies through the principle of flies. Natural art must possess patterns corresponding to its specific products, just as an artisan works according to designs. In celestial souls, the intellectual part possesses ideas together, while lower motive powers hold seeds that are realized successively. Idea, seed, and bodily form consequently name connected but differently situated modes of determination; they are not mechanically interchangeable or necessarily duplicate entities.

The Latin ratio can name these productive principles, but also an account, an argument, or reason as a faculty. At IV.1.17 the base reading rationalibus qualifies powers; the later reading rationibus would name principles. The supplied edition retains the former and should not be cited as though its base text had the latter. Ficino strongly claims this account of ideas for Plato and the Platonists; that historical attribution remains his, distinct from an independent adjudication of every Platonic source.

Further passage references. II.11.17–2223456; II.12.15; III.1.12; III.2.23; IV.1.9–IV.1.132345; IV.1.17; IV.2.9–IV.2.15234567; apparatus.

Places to read

1. II.10.5The infinite exemplar admits further possible likenesses beyond any finite collection
2. II.11.18The divine essence is considered in distinct relations as an exemplar
3. IV.1.17The rationalibus reading concerns the intellectual powers shaping substantial productions
4. IV.2.10Ideas held in mind are distinguished from seeds held by the lowest motive powers

Translation in this edition

The prior discussion’s caution at II.11.17 is retained: its compressed wording must not be silently repaired. At IV.1.17 the supplied base text reads rationalibus, qualifying powers, rather than the alternative rationibus, which would name principles. The edition’s apparatus reports that difference; this lexicon has not newly collated the witnesses.

designare

designare. Printed forms: designantur.

Assign or designate. Common qualities are assigned their own ideas; the verb marks a differentiated explanatory treatment. References: II.11.20. See Ideas and exemplars.

exemplar / exprimere / imitari

exemplar / exprimere / imitari. Printed forms: exemplar; exemplaris; exprimi; imitari.

Pattern, expression in its likeness, and imitation. No finite creature or collection exhausts the possible modes of imitating the infinite exemplar. References: II.10.5. See Ideas and exemplars.

sententia

sententia. Printed forms: sententia.

Position, teaching, or judgment. Ficino asserts the account as Plato’s and the Platonists’ certain teaching, so the claim of consensus remains attributed to him. References: II.11.22. See Ideas and exemplars.

species / idea

species / idea. Printed forms: idea; ideae; idearum.

Idea as exemplary account. The whole’s principal idea includes proper accounts of its parts, while one divine essence remains simple. References: II.11.18. See Ideas and exemplars.

Jupiter as the form of all things (Greek quotation)

Ζεὺς εἶδος πάντων

Ficino’s gloss, Iupiter species omnium, makes this an expression of the all-containing causal source. The chapter immediately asks how the forms are in God and rejects a mode of plurality that would compel production by natural necessity. The quotation therefore does not license a simple identification of God with the aggregate of bodily forms.

Place. II.11.1. See Ideas and exemplars.