by Matthew Gaetano

I had a lovely and thought-provoking conversation with colleagues about how the word wisdom has become almost meaningless for many students today. Even some of our peers who are seeking or who have earned a Ph.D. degree do not really appreciate that this makes one a doctor philosophiae and that philosophia is the love of wisdom.

Wisdom is a major theme in Renaissance thought. Perhaps the writers of this era can help us to enrich our own conception of this fundamental idea. At the same time, some of the accounts of the notion of wisdom or sapientia in this period suggest that this period may be one of the reasons why this notion poses so many difficulties today. In his important work, The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (1958), Eugene Rice argues that, in recovering ancient conceptions of wisdom, Renaissance humanists brought about a “progressive transformation of the idea of wisdom from contemplation to action and from knowledge to virtue [which] defines its final secularization” (177). Rice acknowledges, however, that this shift towards activity and towards a naturalized conception of wisdom was a matter of debate during the period; indeed, Renaissance writers posed many of these questions in open-ended dialogues rather than scholastic disputations.

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries opened up new lines of controversy about the shape of the life of wisdom, but renewed access to ancient sources also enriched the contemplative and divinely oriented vision of wisdom that Rice associates with the Middle Ages. The figures discussed in my previous post, Ficino and Pico, are seen as having “restated the contemplative idea in a perspective and vocabulary derived from a new and direct contact with the pagan mysticism of Plotinus and Proclus” (58). For readers of TRF, it is also noteworthy that Rice associates the “revelational wisdom” that remains a part of Renaissance discussions — a wisdom received by grace and oriented to contemplation of God — with the Pauline piety of the early Reformation. Interestingly enough, rather than seeing the Reformation as a profound break with medieval Christendom, Rice argues that the Reformation vision of wisdom was “the last major reassertion of the medieval Christian conception. It was a living ideal in the sixteenth century; but it faced powerful and ultimately destructive competition from the more secular enthusiasms of humanism” (149). (I drew substantially on Richard Douglas’s review of Rice’s book.)

I have my doubts that the Reformation was the “last major reassertion” of the Christian conception of wisdom. And I am not sure that the conflict between the Christian conception of wisdom and the focus on the active and the natural in some Renaissance humanists is quite so stark. Nonetheless, it is useful to consider that Ficino, Pico, and other Renaissance figures were offering a vision of wisdom when there were genuine alternatives on offer. Just as today, there was not a simple definition of wisdom with which almost everyone agreed.

Marsilio Ficino’s On the Christian Religion begins with the claim, in his preface for Lorenzo de’ Medici, that “the eternal wisdom of God has established that divine mysteries are to be explained strictly by those who are genuine lovers of true wisdom” (see Eric Parker’s translation). What do lovers of wisdom do? They “investigate the works of the first causes of things” and “diligently administer sacrifices to the highest causes of things.” The link between wisdom and religion is fundamental here, as discussed here, but wisdom-seeking is associated with the investigation of first or ultimate causes which then gives way to worship and sacrifice. This is why, according to Ficino, the wise men of most ancient cultures, such as Persia, India, Egypt, Ethiopia, and even Greece and Rome, were priests.

But at a number of points in this work, Ficino contrasts divine and human wisdom. For Ficino, philosophy and religion are not merely human pursuits found in most ancient civilizations. John the fisherman was not formed like these ancient sages; the wisdom that poured forth from his apostolic pen came from above. As Ficino puts it, “What shall we say to this: that though all other writers wander about and move back and forth, nevertheless, these never doubt anything, but the children of the omnipotent God speak with so much certitude that they complete every [argument] with the most unwavering courage.” And he quotes the opening of 1 John, particularly the confident words: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

The contemplative vision of wisdom in Ficino thus does not come merely from the “pagan mysticism” of Plotinus and Proclus. The Platonic tradition recognizes that truth points to something infinite, something that transcends human intellectual powers. Ficino sees this Platonic longing as enriching the Christian experience of the fact that the transcendent God is also “our Father” who has chosen to communicate himself to us through prophets and apostles and preeminently through the Word Incarnate, “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24), Jesus Christ.

In the 1576 edition of Ficino’s complete works, the editors organize Ficino’s “most beautiful judgments” below major terms or ideas. There are quite a few statements under the term sapientia.

The following statements are from his commentaries on Plato’s dialogues:

• Wisdom (sapientia) is knowledge (scientia) of the absolute and divine good.
• Knowledge (cognitio) of the divine mind and of the ideas is called wisdom.
• Wisdom is knowledge (scientia) that presupposes nothing at all; it is the knowledge of things which always exist; it is the knowledge which contemplates the cause of all things.
• Wisdom is a a comprehension of a thing with certainty.

Ficino here understands the Platonic vision of wisdom as knowing what is unchanging, what is divine, what is the source of all the changing things within our experience. Ordinary knowledge of the changing world around us points towards this more ultimate sort of knowing.

In the statements on wisdom from Ficino’s (often quite lovely) letters to friends and others, he repeats that what is truly wisdom never wanders, is never mistaken. How is such knowledge possible for human beings? In a letter, he writes:

Wisdom is the knowledge of divine things, but Plato demonstrates in the first book of the Republic that divine things cannot become known to our minds other than with God enlightening us, just as the forms of bodies are seen only when the sun illuminates our eyes.

The knowledge of divine things must come from the divine light, not from human power. Indeed, the planet Mercury is a sign of wisdom precisely because it was considered the smallest of the heavenly bodies. Wisdom is “not constituted in the size of one’s body”; indeed, “sometimes human beings who are the smallest in body, audacity, and fortune are the greatest in wisdom.” The closeness of Mercury to the sun also signifies that “the soul is only wise which never abandons God.” A recognition of human weakness can be a source of wisdom because it directs one to cleave to divine truth.

Wisdom: the pursuit of ultimate things, first causes, and transcendent goodness which gives way to worship, sacrifice, and a recognition of a need for divine revelation and union with Him. This is a powerful vision, but does Ficino engage the role of practical wisdom, the turn to the active life in this period discussed by Rice and others?

Quite a few of the statements in his letters do that very thing. In the same image about Mercury and the sun, he recognizes that princes are often compared to the sun. Princes should keep wise men (signified by Mercury) close to them.

Another statement about the political dimension of sapientia is that “wisdom is just as necessary for rulers as the soul is to the body.”

The aspiration to peace in a period of conflict is found in the following judgment: “For the defense of wisdom, it is not so much the soldiers or Mars as the priests of Pallas Athena” who are fit for the task.

The first of the Ficino’s judgments under sapientia drawn out of his works by the editors comes from On the Christian Religion, where Ficino says, following Eric Parker, “Wisdom without audacity is indeed beneficial, thought not very magnificent, but it never stands in the way.” He says this in the context of invoking Plato’s opinion that young people should not rashly adopt opinions about divine things but trust in custom, the laws, their parents, and so on until they are prepared by instruction, experience, and the self-restraint of old age. Audacity without wisdom is something savage, untamable, and unbridled. So, if one has a choice between wisdom without audacity and audacity without wisdom, the choice is clear. But a magnificent sort of wisdom would be one that is united with audacity, with courage. A vision of the divine goodness and ultimate truth points not only to divine revelation and worship but also to bold action as a member of one’s political community.

Ficino’s Christian Platonism thus appears to unite the contemplative and the active lives, the search for union with God and for peace in late fifteenth-century Italy. I trust that this vision of wisdom may enrich our attempts to articulate this idea. Renaissance theologians like Nicholas Cusanus, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and Giles of Viterbo also take up the issue of wisdom; discussions of their conceptions of sapientia in future posts should help to deepen, refine, clarify, and perhaps challenge elements of Ficino’s outlook discussed above.