And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at Kings College London and the LMU in Munich, online at History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, I'd like to thank the Academy, Florentine Platonism.

When I was younger, by which I mean before I did the research to write this episode, I always

used to think that the ideal life was the one enjoyed by Marsilio Ficino.

Admittedly, living in the 15th century as he did, he would have lacked access to indoor plumbing,

modern dentistry, and almond quasants, the consumption of which makes the need for dentistry all the more urgent.

But apart from that, he had it made.

His patron, Lorenzo de Medici, gave him a country house in Kareji just north of Florence.

In this pleasant Tuscan setting, he could while away the hours reading and translating Plato

and the works of the Neoplatanists with his friends and students who we are told

formed something like a new academy. Now I am older and wiser though and realize that

Ficino's situation may have been less enviable. He was as often out of favor with Lorenzo as in favor.

And it turns out that like reports of Mark Twain's death and everything Donald Trump has said

about himself since he was four years old, the stories of the Florentine Academy are greatly exaggerated.

Then perhaps most decisively, proximity to power in Renaissance Florence was actually pretty dangerous, as shown by the events of April 26, 1478.

Encouraged by the Pope, the Pazzi family, conspired to murder Lorenzo, trying to stab him to death while he was attending church.

Lorenzo was wounded but made a narrow escape and lived to offer patronage another day.

Indeed, this event incidentally highlights the close connections of the Medici to the humanists they sponsored. One of the movement's greatest exponents, Angelo Poliziano, was standing right near Lorenzo during the assassination attempt and one of the conspirators was Pojo Bracolini's son Jacapo.

Along with their patronage of artists like Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Boticeli, the Medici's sponsoring of

humanist scholarship continues to burnish their reputation to the present day.

It is thanks to the Medici that we associate Renaissance philosophy more with Florence than with any other city.

And the intellectual tradition we associate most strongly with Florentine philosophy is Platonism.

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