Attuning to the cosmos: the ethical man's mission from Plato to Petrarch

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    Abstract

    This essay discusses music and silence as two important paradigms for articulating spiritual progress in the Platonic corpus and its reception by Neoplatonic and Christian thinkers. After examining the importance of music in Plato's theory in the soul, mainly in the Republic and the Timaeus, I argue that he appreciated music as a spiritual awakening, as preparation for the truth which is always experienced in deafening silence. Proclus, a sensitive reader of Plato, and later thinkers such as Proclus and Boethius, provided a secure path for the survival of Platonic ideas in the West. Petrarch, a meticulous reader of Augustine, grappling with the same Platonic notions that frustrated the fourth-century theologian, experiments boldly with Platonic silence in the Secretum and his Rime Sparse.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationThe intellectual dynamism of the High Middle Ages
    EditorsClare Monagle
    Place of PublicationAmsterdam
    PublisherAmsterdam University Press
    Pages249-275
    Number of pages27
    ISBN (Electronic)9789048537174
    ISBN (Print)9789462985933
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2021

    Publication series

    NameKnowledge Communities
    PublisherAmsterdam University Press

    Keywords

    • Plato
    • Neoplatonics
    • Proclus
    • Augustine
    • Petrarch
    • Music
    • Silence

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