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[英文摘要] :
The Ascent as the Return? The Ficinian Idea of Love
In Plato’s Symposium, the various discourses on love point to a diversified emanation and manifestation of love, which culminates in Socrates’ elaboration of the ascent of love toward beauty, an ultimate return to the origin. Love, hence, is not only the physical or spiritual bonds between friends or lovers, the connection between the ultimate reality and the shadow world, but also, according to Marsilio Ficino’s attempt to reconcile Platonism and Christianity, the connection between the creator and the creature and the innate desire of the effects toward their causes, which generates “a circle which begins and ends with God” (James A. Devereux 163). This attempt of the return, when put under the scope of human reciprocity, is also construed as a “voluntary death,” which involves self-giving and mutual self-abandonment (Devereux 164), and may run counter with the attempt of spiritual self-fulfillment realized in the unity with God. In other words, the attempts of ascent and descent are both involved in the (Neo)Platonic trajectories of love. This paper, therefore, endeavors to examine these apparently contradictory paths of love, based primarily upon Ficino’s philosophy.
Key words: Plato, Symposium, Marsilio Ficino, Love, Beauty