Looking and recognizing · Lexicon

From the book

Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

Marsilio Ficino · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordThese verbs span looking at, discerning, attending to, recognizing, looking upward, and divining or dimly apprehending.
In the Platonic TheologyThe painter inspects one flower and then another; rational soul, in the parallel, thinks of or in some manner divines God and angel through a continuing light.
In this edition“Divines” for auguratur need not introduce fortune-telling in this context.
A place to readInspection of flowers exemplifies successive attention.

Meaning

These verbs span looking at, discerning, attending to, recognizing, looking upward, and divining or dimly apprehending. Their subjects and objects determine whether the attention is sensory, intellectual, or a metaphorical orientation toward higher realities.

Use in the book

The painter inspects one flower and then another; rational soul, in the parallel, thinks of or in some manner divines God and angel through a continuing light. Auguratur makes that latter description more qualified than a claim of exhaustive vision. Later, soul’s return into itself yields animadvertit, apprehension of itself and its contents; Ficino draws the inference from apprehension to cognition and from recognition of spiritual essence to intellection. The object’s character is crucial to that step. In the final vision example, a solid thing placed directly on the eyes prevents seeing, whereas an image joined through spirit permits it. Contact and cognition are thus distinguished even when the same broad looking-language extends across levels.

Selected annotated passages.

Places to read

III.1.28Inspection of flowers exemplifies successive attention.
III.1.31Cogitat sive auguratur qualifies soul’s apprehension of higher beings.
III.2.28Apprehending, recognizing, and understanding form an explicit inference.
III.2.29Sight’s relation to an image contrasts with gross contact.

Translation in this edition

“Divines” for auguratur need not introduce fortune-telling in this context. The delicate printed phrase in corporalibus rerum speciebus rationibusque in III.2.29 remains unresolved; cognitive vocabulary does not authorize silently changing corporalibus to incorporalibus. The apparatus explains animadvertit as “apprehends” and species/rationes as “forms and principles”; those glosses are not a collation resolving the delicate Latin phrase.

animadvertere / agnoscere

animadvertere / agnoscere. Printed forms: agnoscit; animadvertit.

Apprehend or attend to / recognize. Recognition of soul’s own spiritual essence makes its self-attention intellectual cognition within Ficino’s argument. References: III.2.28. See Looking and recognizing.

augurari

augurari. Printed forms: auguratur.

Divine or apprehend in some measure. Rational soul’s continuing apprehension of higher things is qualified as thinking or divining, not described as exhaustive knowledge. References: III.1.31. See Looking and recognizing.

respicere / suspicere / inspicere

respicere / suspicere / inspicere. Printed forms: inspicit; suspicit.

Regard / look upward / inspect. Inspecting flowers is sensory and successive; looking toward higher things marks soul’s orientation. These uses must be distinguished from suspicari, suspect. References: III.1.28, III.2.19. See Looking and recognizing.