DiotimosReading Desk

Cause dependence and production

Productive and designing power

effectrix Dei potestas; mentis potentia machinatrix

Effectrix is productive or bringing about; machinatrix is capable of devising or designing.

From the book

Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I

Marsilio Ficino · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordEffectrix is productive or bringing about; machinatrix is capable of devising or designing.
  • In the Platonic TheologyII.12.17 distinguishes God's power to produce from the mind's capacity to conceive or design.
  • In this editionThe edition’s apparatus explicitly retains productive and designing as distinct.
  • A place to readThe conceptual character of being provides the modal boundary.

Meaning

Effectrix is productive or bringing about; machinatrix is capable of devising or designing. Both qualify powers, but one concerns making and the other conceptual range. The feminine forms agree with potestas and potentia.

Use in the book

II.12.17 distinguishes God's power to produce from the mind's capacity to conceive or design. Ficino argues that, once contradiction is excluded, thought ranges through an immeasurable scope of possible being; the productive power of its divine source cannot be narrower. This supports possibilities beyond the existing world. It does not mean that every imagined object is coherent or that every possible thing is created. The paired terms concern different kinds of power, not a single act of mental invention producing its object.

Further passage references. II.12.16–1823; apparatus

Places to read

  1. II.12.16The conceptual character of being provides the modal boundary.
  2. II.12.17Productive divine power is compared with mind’s designing capacity.
  3. II.12.18Possible but unactualized arrangements demonstrate the gap between ability and actual creation.

Translation in this edition

The edition’s apparatus explicitly retains productive and designing as distinct. Neither word licenses treating every imagined combination as coherent: the argument repeatedly excludes contradiction before comparing the scopes of mind and divine production.

effectrix / machinatrix

effectrix / machinatrix. Printed forms: effectrix; machinatrix.

Productive / capable of devising or designing. The two adjectives distinguish God’s making-power from mind’s conceptual range, whose breadth supports the inference. References: II.12.17. See Productive and designing power.