Journal of Philosophy, Inc.

Review
Reviewed Work(s):
Pléthon et le Platonisme de Mistra
by François Masai
Review by: Paul Oskar Kristeller
Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 56, No. 11 (May 21, 1959), pp. 510-512
Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2022554
Accessed: 06-05-2021 02:50 UTC

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510 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

which has been ignored or misunderstood by Hesiod, our earliest

source. Cornford's explanation may still be correct for some un-
known earlier cosmologist; but we see how easily the primitive
views elude our grasp.
Such criticisms do not touch the general excellence of the book
which Kirk and Raven have given us. The judicious selection of
material, the careful translation of each ancient text, and the un-
usually competent commentary will make this work a valuable
instrument for every student of early Greek thought, whether clas-
sicist or philosopher.
CHARLES H. KAHN
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Plethon et le Platonisme de Mistra. FRANgOIS MASAI. Paris: Les

Belles Lettres, 1956. 422 pp.

Georgios Gemistos Plethon (ca. 1360-1452), Byzantine political

reformer and Platonist philosopher, has never been completely for-
gotten or neglected by historians, but his work is not as well known
as it would seem to deserve, and several important aspects of his
work and career are just now being made the subject of serious
scholarly investigation. Important studies have been published in
recent years by various Greek scholars, and by Milton Anastos of
Harvard University. Dr. Masai, a distinguished Belgian scholar,
who, with the assistance of Mme. Masai, has spent many years in
exploring the manuscripts of Pletho's works (see the Bulletin de
la Classe des Lettres, Academie Royale de Belgique, 1954, pp. 536-
555) and is preparing a critical edition of several of them, has
now published a monograph on Pletho which represents the most
comprehensive picture of his life, thought, and influence available
so far.
Dr. Masai describes the political conditions of the Peloponnesus
during the first half of the fifteenth century where princes of the
Byzantine imperial house exercised a semi-independent rule from
their capital of Mistra near the ancient Sparta. Pletho, who was
born in Constantinople, spent the later and better known half of
his life in Mistra, as a high official and political adviser of those
princes. It appears from several extant political memorandums
of Pletho and from other testimonies that he tried to bring about
a reform of the declining state, and to strengthen its resources and
defenses against the mounting Turkish threats and Western pres-
sures. The greater part of the book is given to a discussion of
Pletho's philosophical views. Dr. Masai rightly stresses Pletho's
appeal to the argument from the universal consent of mankind,

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 BOOK REVIEWS 511

and his belief in a continuous philosophical tradition which goes

back to Plato and, beyond him, to Zoroaster, Hermes, and Py-
thagoras, and constitutes a kind of "philosophia perennis." He
describes Pletho as a reviver of Platonism who considers the Pla-
tonic Ideas as real entities and causes. According to Dr. Masai,
this theory of Ideas constitutes the basis for Pletho's polytheism,
and for his advocacy of a return to the pagan religion of the
Greeks, a tendency which was concealed from the public during
his lifetime, but known to an intimate circle of disciples, and sub-
sequently disclosed by his opponents, especially by Georgios Scho-
larios Gennadios, who was also responsible for destroying the auto-
graph manuscript of Pletho's main work, the Laws, from which
but a few fragments have survived. In general philosophy, Dr.
Masai describes Pletho's position as deterministic and at the same
time optimistic; in reporting Pletho's moral theories, emphasis is
placed on his rationalism, and on the absence of any mystical or
ascetic tendencies. A last chapter deals with Pletho 's visit to
Italy, where he attended the Council of Ferrara and Florence
(1438-39), and with the influence he exercised, through his writ-
ings and through his pupils, upon the later history of Renaissance
thought. The learned appendices deal with a few detailed ques-
tions of chronology.
The book is based on an impressive command of the primary
sources, and it is written with subtlety, eloquence, and enthusiasm.
As a result, the picture which it presents is forceful and suggestive,
and in many ways convincing. Dr. Masai rightly shows that Ple-
tho, in spite of his professed Platonism and his responsibility
for the later controversy between Platonists and Aristotelians, de-
pended on Aristotle for many of his ideas, and was not consistently
opposed to him. Yet when Dr. Masai states that Pletho 's Platonism
had few precedents in the Byzantine tradition, and that Byzantine
orthodoxy was more Aristotelian than Platonic, he tends to take
Gennadios' position as typical of the medieval Byzantine tradition,
and to underestimate the Western influences on this late theologian
whom Masai himself sometimes calls a Thomist. Yet Masai does
not consistently hold on to this view, for at other points he admits
that Aristotle never held among the Byzantines the same dominant
position as among the Arabs or in the West (p. 345). I also can-
not quite see how the acceptance of Platonic Ideas as such implies
a polytheistic religion. It hardly did in Plato, or Plotinus, or
Augustine, although it may have done so in Pletho's case. Masai
also tends to emphasize Pletho's direct dependence on Plato, and
to underestimate his indebtedness to the Neoplatonists, and espe-
cially to Proclus who seems to have inspired both his enthusiasm

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512 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY

for the ancient theology of Hermes and Zoroaster, and his hier-
archy of pagan divinities. It is not clear what Pletho has to say
on the transmigration of souls, and, when his "rationalism" is
compared with that of Plotinus, we wonder whether it was entirely
free of mystical or ascetic elements. Yet the greatest puzzle of
all is that of Pletho's paganism. The statement that they were
secret unbelievers has been made about many medieval and renais-
sance thinkers, and the factual basis for such statements, the value
and importance attached to them, and the methods and evidence
through which they may be confirmed or refuted, have been a
matter of lively discussion among historians. Obviously, each case
has to be examined on its own merits. In the case of Pletho, Pro-
fessor Masai adopts the view that he was promoting an actual
revival of pagan religion (a view also held by Professor Anastos).
Masai discusses the methodological difficulties with great finesse,
but in dealing with the evidence he makes much use of innuendo,
and of the charges of Pletho's opponents, and dismisses all contrary
evidence as due to hypocrisy, and to the understandable attempt
to avoid persecution. I confess that this kind of reasoning does
not convince me. I admit that the case for Pletho's paganism is
strengthened by the pagan hymns and liturgy preserved from his
Laws, but I wonder whether they may not have been preserved by
Gennadios to substantiate his charge of Pletho's paganism, and
whether the lost sections of that work might not have put them
into a different perspective. The fact that Cardinal Bessarion, in
a letter of sympathy written to Pletho's sons after his death, uses
a similar "pagan" language, seems to lend strength to such a
suspicion. Yet I express these reservations with some hesitation
since I am quite willing to yield to Masai's expert knowledge of
this subject. Yet whatever view we may choose to adopt on this
particular issue, Pletho's paganism and his philosophical position
are of intrinsic interest, and also historically important through the
discussions which he provoked, and through the influence he exer-
cised, both directly and indirectly, upon the Western Platonists
of the Renaissance.
PAUL OsKAR iRISTELLER
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

1 Que son los valores? Introduc,cw6n a la axiologia. RisIERi FRON-

DIZI. Mexico-Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Economica,
1958. 138 p.

The importance of a book does not depend on its size. This

pocket-sized booklet shows it again. Its author, Professor Risieri
Frondizi, one of Argentina's most distinguished philosophers, has

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