Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Abravanel, Judah ben Isaac ?

« prompting the received opinion that Leone meant to compose a concluding fourth dialogue.

This inference isunwarranted.

The twenty years between the completion of Dialoghi d'amore and Leone's death suggests that he had ample time to complete the work had he considered it either possible or necessary.

Rather, the lack of anexplicit resolution mirrors the structure of the Platonic dialogues, especially the Symposium , the model for all Renaissance writings on love.

3 Philosophical significance of Dialoghi d'amore The Platonic form that situates Dialoghi d'amore among other Renaissance discussions of love unfortunately obscures as much about its philosophical lineage and import as it discloses.

Western scholars typically read Renaissance Platonic texts inChristian perspective, ignoring or misconstruing the influence of Islamic and Jewish philosophy, traditions that areseen as predominantly Aristotelian and thus fundamentally at odds with Renaissance Platonism, especially as regardsthe central issues of the Dialoghi d'amore .

As a result, the influence here of such thinkers as Maimonides, Avicenna and Averroes tends to be judged rather superficially and on the basis of the few explicit references to them.

Forexample, the possible influence of Avicenna's Risalah fi'l-'ishq (Treatise on Love) , or of Maimonides' focus on the intellectual love of God are rarely mentioned, and the Jewish aspect of Leone's work is reduced to its biblicalallusions, for example Leone's claim that the Platonic ideas have a Mosaic origin.

Presuming that the literary genre ofDialoghi d'amore reflects sheer Christian Platonism, moreover, occludes the subtlety of Leone's resolution of the tension between the Platonic and Aristotelian approaches and covers over the contributions which the Aristotelianview of the soul can make to an understanding of desire, love and knowledge.

Indeed, Leone's literary style mayreflect a deliberate intention to occlude the radical thesis of the dialogue, a deistic conclusion that identifies Godwith the totality of the world.

Rather than contribute further to the obscuring of Leone's subtle and originalcontribution to Renaissance philosophy by offering an overview of Dialoghi d'amore , with its numerous, circuitous, subordinate discussions, lengthy and popularizing disquisitions on ancient mythology, astronomy and astrology, weshall focus on Leone's nuanced resolution of the primary disagreement about the relations between desire and love,that is, the apparent contradiction between the claims that desire and love are the same, and that they areopposites.

But we must note at the start that, while the first claim does not require a strict identity, the secondassumes that any opposition implies a contradiction.

From the outset, Sophia's resistance to Philo depends oninterpreting the Platonic position as requiring a strict division between body and soul.

It also requires real divisionswithin the soul, making its most noble part, the intellect, a distinct entity, absolutely independent of embodiment.Thus Sophia, the personification of wisdom, repeatedly and severely insists that if Philo truly loves her he shoulddesire to satisfy that alone which pleases her, her mind.

There is a poignant irony here in the inverted relationbetween the male and female personae.

Philo the male, or formal principle of the dialogue denies the real distinctionbetween body and soul and, hence, between desire and love, whereas Sophia, the female, traditionally material,principle insists on such distinctions.

But the resolution of the apparent contradiction between the Platonic andAristotelian positions will establish body and soul, desire and love, male and female as natural correlatives: neithercould be without the other.

The same natural correlation is found between God and the world, as is mentionedbriefly in passing, in the philosophical parts of the dialogues, thus protecting its radical theses from 'vulgar' view.

Inthe third, as in the preceding dialogues, Philo's philosophical analyses (as distinct from the long poetic digressions)are distinctly Aristotelian in form, and often in content.

Sophia's objections continuously challenge the Aristotelianposition with a Platonic one.

In view of Philo's pedagogic role in Dialoghi d'amore , the text can be read as the re- education of Sophia, whose Platonism reflects the dogma of Christian Neoplatonism.

Thus, before he reverts to thedefinition of love, Leone makes amply evident his Aristotelian view of the soul: The soul is in itself one andindivisible, but by distributing its powers throughout the body and permeating even its surface and extremities, itbranches out to certain activities pertaining to perception, movement and nutrition among various organs anddivides itself among many diverse faculties.

This view of the relationship between body and soul will be reflected inLeone's view of the relationship between the One and the many, that is, God and the world.

Again, in the discussionof beauty as the form of the object which originates the motion of desire, Leone 'corrects' the Platonic doctrine ofknowledge as recollection with an Aristotelian view of knowledge as arising from sensation.

Forms do not existindependently of their corporeal manifestations but are embodied.

They are abstracted by the intellect, which isinitially mere receptivity to form.

The 'correction' here is in fact a reconciliation of Plato with Aristotle, transposingthe Platonic myth of anamnesis into a philosophical mode while simultaneously retrieving it from Christianinterpretations: You must know, therefore, that all forms and Ideas do not spring from bodies into our souls,because to migrate from one subject to another is impossible; but their representation by the senses makes thesesame forms and essences to shine forth which before were latent in our soul.

This enlightenment Aristotle calls theact of understanding and Plato memory, but their meaning is the same, although differently expressed.

Plato's andAristotle's views are not only compatible, they are interdependent.

Their harmony makes evident the insufficiency ofeither position taken in isolation.

Plato's teachings may be divinely inspired, but his mode of presentation lacksphilosophical precision and so might lead to error.

The resolution of the tension between Plato and Aristotle, fullyand finally articulated in the third dialogue, makes clear that the opposition is only apparent and reflectsterminological differences and a failure to recall that natural opposites belong to a single motion from potentiality toact.

Returning to the discussion of love in the third dialogue, Philo proceeds in an exemplary Aristotelian manner,pointing out that the questions 'What is love?' and 'What is its first cause or origin?' presuppose that love exists.

Herepeats the definition of love as desire and answers Sophia's insistent objections that love and desire are not the same, since we love what is and what we actually possess, but desire what we lack and what may or may notexist, by pointing out that reason demonstrates that love and desire are the same, although 'in the vulgar tongueeach has its own significance'.

Sophia has taken a mere linguistic, conventional distinction for a real one, aconfusion that Philo finds to be common among 'certain modern theologians'.

Love and desire are different wordsdenoting a single affection of the soul.

Desire is a motion towards a desired object, love, a motion towards thebeloved, which is the desired object.

The cause of this motion, that is, the origin of love, is the desire for thepleasure of union with the beloved.

Furthermore, pace Plato, love and desire are found in God.

Indeed, God is their. »