Power and Politics: Plato, Machiavelli, and Locke at ISTITUTO EUROPEO

STUDY ABROAD Independent study:
Power and Politics: Plato, Machiavelli, and Locke at ISTITUTO EUROPEO


Independent study (15 contact hours, 1 contact hour: 45’, of lesson and 30 completely independently by the student)


Italy is the land of politics for politics, where politics based itself only as self-assertion, the land where prevails the lack of reforms, that is murdered by too many worthless laws.
The country where democracy has no more need of vote (now three governments have being following each other without people's consensus).
The land where the president of Italian Republic acts as an intermediary of the strong powers who rule the world.
Come down with us to the roots of Machiavelic Italian politics to understand the incomprehensible policy of Italian politics

Who should wield political power and why? This course will look at this broad question through the work of three major political philosophers: Plato, Machiavelli, and Locke. Each thinker seems to have a distinctly different idea as to what makes political authority legitimate, yet close readings of their major texts will reveal similarities and overlap even amidst the striking diversity in their outlooks. We will work chronologically, being sure to place each man in his own historical context. With this grounding, we will explore the theories espoused, linking ideas both to their cultural milieux and then thinking more abstractly, comparing and contrasting the core principles each promoted

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Love in Renaissance – Eros in the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino

Marsilio Ficino

by Olga Lenczewska


As we all realize, often with slight disappointment, virtually everything that has been said or invented in the modern times had been already thought or written in the Ancient times. Renaissance, despite being commonly thought to be the mother of Humanism with its focus on the man and his creations, only revived what had been known a long time before. With its primary mottoes renovatio humanitatis and renovatio antiquitatis, the aim of the Renaissance period was to popularise the ideas of the Ancient Greek and Roman thinkers, Plato being the most influential of them. One of the most prominent individuals thanks to whom modernity became acquainted with and interested in the works of Plato and the Neoplatonists was the Florentine academic, philosopher, and translator Marsilio Ficino.

In the 15th century, Florence was amongst the biggest and most successful cities in Europe, both culturally and economically. Governed by the Medici, the Florentine environment was perfect for Ficino, who wished to establish a philosophical school that would resemble the Platonic Academy.

But Ficino was not only a reviver of the Platonic thought and his follower; he was a philosopher who established an independent system. One of its most interesting features is the theory of the nature and function of Love or, as the philosopher preferred to call it after Plato, Eros. For Plato, Eros was the desire of beauty, and thus also of goodness and truth, the mediating force between the sensible and transcendental world. Ficino incorporated this understanding of Love into Christianity, where the Platonic ideas became associated with religious figures, and reformulated the definition of Eros as the force that drives us towards the divine world of God. It could not have been equated to Dante's love as a fundamental element in the union with God, nor to Boccaccio's love a bias and inclination towards body; Ficino's Eros was a power situated between the body and the soul, i.e., between the empirical world and the intelligible universe.

Furthermore, it had two dimensions – the moral one and the aesthetic one. Firstly, it was a tool that helped us to narrow our distance from God and reduce our mortal imperfection; it was supposed to contribute to people's moral development, pushing them to go beyond their limits in order to assimilate with God. Secondly, Love was necessarily united with beauty in the sense that it helped us understand beauty and the fact that the search for beauty is not limited to the empirical world, but is derived from God himself.

Finally, Eros was understood as a power that circulated in the world, only to return in the end returns to its proper creator, God. It was born in God as beauty; then, when it passed through men and possessed them, it meant love; and finally, when it returned to its creator, God, it became a unity with Him and functioned as moral pleasure: La bellezza divina si diffonde nelle cose e ritorna a sé stessa attraverso l'amore come in un circolo [Kristeller, Il pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino]. Eros, therefore, had to go through three phases and be three things: beauty, love, and moral pleasure. Love, we can say, was understood as a medium of communication between beauty and moral pleasure.

 It goes without saying that the contemporary understanding of Love (if one believes in this concept at all) differs substantially from that of Ficino and the Renaissance. Love is nowadays believed to be a result of a chain of chemical reactions that have little to do with moral perfection, ideal beauty, or narrowing the distance between us and the divine. And yet it is everyone's own decision what he or she believes in, a choice that is not without consequence to one's life. Personally, I feel inclined towards Ficino’s world-view, but the readers have the responsibility to make up their own minds on such an important subject.

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Florence as the home city of ice cream

via www.gelatofestival.it

by Ilaria Gelichi

Ice cream has a long history, and it’s much older than one could imagine. Something similar to ice cream already existed in ancient times but it was quite different from ours: the custom of cooling milk, fruit and honey was already widespread in the Far East, Greek and Turkey but also the Romans during their banquets used to consume chopped fruit mixed with honey and snow. However, these "mixtures" looked more like a sorbet than our ice cream, and it is in fact during the Middle Ages that in Sicily are prepared the first sorbets and ices, thanks to a new technique of freezing fruit learned from the Arabs and refined by the Sicilians.

But it’s during Renaissance and in Florence in particular that comes the luck of ice cream, which at this point looks quite similar to the one we know. According to legend, a poultry seller named Ruggeri won with his sorbet a contest held by the lords of Florence, the Medici, becoming famous throughout the region. The "ice cream" was put into moulds of various shapes, realizing sculptures that amazed the diners. When in 1533 Caterina de' Medici married Enrico d'Orleans and moved to Paris, wanted Ruggeri with her, who brought to France the tradition of ice cream, giving rise to its spread throughout Europe. In the same period, another Florentine contributed to the birth of the ice cream as we know it today: Bernardo Buontalenti, who was famous mostly as an artist and animator at the court of Cosimo I de 'Medici and was the first to freeze a cream made with milk and eggs. Having received the task of organizing the festivities to welcome a Spanish delegation, Buontalenti organized theater performances in the gardens and along the river Arno, a great show at the Fortezza da Basso, fireworks and prepared a cream flavored with bergamot, lemon and orange, frozen with a mixture of his own invention. Historical records show that it was the brilliant artist in person to think up an important innovation to conserve the snow. During the winter, the snow was normally collected and pressed in cellars lined with straw to keep it longer. Buontalenti created special cellars with an interspace, filled with cork and lined with wood to allow the flow of water as the ice melted. These cellars were located outside the city walls, in Via delle Ghiacciaie (ghiacciaia means icebox) - a road that still exists.

So nothing better than enjoying an ice cream in its home city, Florence!

The festivity of San Giovanni in Florence

written by Ilaria Gelichi

A very important date for the city of Florence is coming: June the 24^th, the feast of the patron saint of the city, San Giovanni.

San Giovanni was chosen as patron saint of Florence during the Longobards’ domination (7^th -11^th century) for the clearness of his teachings and for his brave and combative personality. It is in fact in this same period that the Baptistery of San Giovanni was built. San Giovanni was celebrated for the first time in the 13^th century and also nowadays it is in front of the Baptistery in Piazza del Duomo that the celebrations end.

Since Middle Ages, San Giovanni has been considered a great festivity by the Florentines. Nowadays the celebration starts with the Mass in the morning, then it goes on with historical re-enactments, flag-wavers shows and parades. The parade in the morning goes from Piazza della Signoria to Piazza del Duomo with people dressed in Renaissance style carrying the banner of the city. Then in the afternoon you can watch the final match of Calcio Storico Fiorentino (Calcio in Costume), in Piazza Santa Croce.

Despite its name, the game of Calcio in Costume does not look like football (“calcio” means football or soccer in Italian), but it is much more similar to rugby. It was not played as a sport originally: it was probably invented in military camps as training for soldiers during periods of rest, so that they would not loose the skills for fighting. It has been played from the 16^th to the end of the 18^th century, then again since 1930 to present day. Nowadays there are 3 matches of Calcio in Costume, the final one being played on the 24^th of June. There are 4 teams, one for each historic neighbourhood of Florence: “Bianchi” (White) for Santo Spirito, “Azzurri” (Blue) for Santa Croce, “Rossi” (Red) for Santa Maria Novella and “Verdi” (Green) for San Giovanni.

In the evening, at 10 pm, there is the most long-awaited event of the day: the fireworks, or as Florentines say, “i fochi”. They are fired from Piazzale Michelangelo, so the best places to watch them are Ponte Santa Trinita or Lungarni. You will admire the Ponte Vecchio with fireworks in the background, reflecting in the river Arno. Amazing and not to be missed!

Florence as the new model of ethical virtus in the world

Time has come for a New Humanism. In an age of globalization and crisis of values we urgently need to reconsider  humanistic values.

Martha C. Nussbaum aroused a public debate on Humanism with her book “Not for profit. Why democracy needs the humanities”. At the London City the traders are required to take a test in ethics.

A new wind is blowing and ethics can be the new direction of the world.

Florence has been the centre of Humanism and this city had powerful Humanistic thinkers.

In such a dark age as Italy is going through, after a technocrat government that completely alienated Italians and their humanistic traditions, it can be useful to remember two of the most fervid minds of Florence: Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini.

Both men belonged to the Florentine oligarchy, although Guicciardini’s family was wealthier and more prominent than Machiavelli’s.

Both thinkers during those tormented years were stimulated by Italian tragedy to examine the historical events.

Their reaction in a time of political crisis was creative in the highest degree, for it contributed to the formulation of new concepts of politics and of the historical process, which is indeed what we lack of today.

Today we live in a world populated by an entitlement culture, made of egotism and primarily concerned with financial interests that tend to favor a selected oligarchy.

We live in a culture where personal success is principally measured on compensation. We live in a time where the policies of democratic systems have been infected by financial power provoking a vacuum in terms of culture and values.

Following the example of those fervid thinkers today we should educate our society in visualizing virtus, which means to relaunch ethics as a primary value for the future leading classes.

For this reason, for its history and tradition and as a symbol of Humanism in the world, Florence should become an open space for training (visualization) the future ruling classes in ethics.

International symposiums and meetings on ethics should be organized in this city. Teaching Ethics to the world could be the new economy for this city, in virtue of her glorious past.

Athens and Florence: the Foundational Relation of Western Culture

Piazza della Signoria shines in the sun of June. The severe solidity of Palazzo Vecchio, the graceful and spacious arches of the Loggia de' Lanzi, the crowd of classical and Renaissance statues staring at the passersby with their eloquently silent gaze- all this conjures up a sense of harmony, lightness and luminosity as one could find only on the Acropolis, when the summer sun and its reflections on the Aegean immerse the Parthenon and the temple of Poseidon in a bath of light. Florence as the new Athens: the proofs of this equation are under the very eyes of the one who looks at the city on the Arno through that idea of beauty first incarnated on Greek soil. One would have no difficulty thinking that Plato would have found himself at ease under the porch of the Uffizi or strolling along the benches of the Arno: he would have admired here that same sense of equilibrium and profoundly discrete beauty that nourished his soul in his native Attica, where he spent his days walking out and about with Socrates through the Stoá Poekíle and the Agorá. We know for sure that his alleged reincarnation -if we want to agree with Cardinal Bessarion- enjoyed Florence very much. Georgios Gemistós, called the Plethon, lived here for four years during the period of the Council of Ferrara and Florenze (1437-39), teaching at the Studium on the differences between Aristotle and Plato and reintroducing to the West the texts of the latter. He was among those Greek scholars and prelates who came as the delegation from the fading Byzantine Empire to discuss the re-unification of the Eastern and Western churches. When he arrived, the power of the Medici had just begun and Florence was not yet very far from the violence and austerity of its Middle Ages. The city was not yet adorned with statues purposefully remindful of Classical Antiquity and the dome of Brunelleschi had still to gentrify the fierce skyline formed by the multitude of spear-like towers. Born in Greece and raised on the texts of divine Plato, Plethon is among those, who bringing Platonism back to the West contributed immensely to giving Umanesimo its form. Benozzo Gozzoli represented him in the center of his fresco in the Cappella de' Magi: the philosopher stands side by side to the artist, as if the latter wanted to underline a spiritual offspring from the former. Plethon stands out from the middle of the crowd for his intense look and his penetrating eyes that provoke the observer. He was indeed a father-like figure to many geniuses who populated that period: Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Poliziano, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Botticelli, Piero della Francesca, Michelangelo all fed and debated (sometimes harshly) on the rediscovered words of Plato and Plotinus, Proclus and Damascius opened up to them by Plethon: from this fermentation the idea of homo copula mundi finally came out as an unshakable cornerstone, on which Europe and the Western world founded its astonishing development. Maybe there is no more powerful symbol of this new spirit and its view on man and the world than Michelangelo's David: a miracle of beauty, balance and nobility incarnated in the decisive and strong gaze of a young boy, who stands in front of Palazzo Vecchio as an image of the daring attitude of this new Athens that is Florence. Constantinople was then agonizing, the whole of Greece was already under foreign yoke: yet, in its ultimate struggle the Greek world gave us its most delicate and fruitful flower. Without Greece there would have been no Renaissance, no Michelangelo, no Ficino, no Botticelli. Maybe, it is worth keeping this in mind, in this period in which Greece seems again caught in an agonizing struggle.

The Florence Newspaper: Uffizi Gallery Now Available on iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the oldest museum in modern Europe and one of the most visited in the world, has become the first Italian museum to go on iPod, iPad, and iPhone.

The ArtFirstGuide “Uffizi” Apple application allows users to discover the Uffizi’s great masterpieces of Italian and European art via iPod, iPad, and iPhone. The platform includes a virtual tour of the museum and close-ups of thirty-three masterpieces including Botticelli's Venus, Leonardo's Annunciation, Raphael's Madonna del Cardellino, Michelangelo's Tondo Doni and Caravaggio's Medusa.

Developed by the Parallelo and ArtFirstGuide, ArtFirstGuide “Uffizi” provides expert descriptions and videos of the Uffizi’s most famous masterpieces as well as information on opening hours, ticket bookings, and upcoming events.

The application can be downloaded from the Apple and iTunes online stores.

Aplpication Details:

ArtFirstGuide “Uffizi”
Version 1.14
$1.99
93.7 MB
Available in English, Italian, Spanish
Created by Parellelo and ArtFirstGuide
Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
*Requires iPhone OS 3.1.2 or later

www.florencenewspaper.it

Istituto Europeo: Istituto Europeo History Courses

HY 328. 19th- Century Europe
HY 329. 20th- Century Europe
HY 350 History of Florence
HY 350 History of Modern Italy: From Unification to Present
HY 350 History of the Italian Renaissance
HY 350 History of the Italian Renaissance (in Italian)

Istituto Europeo: Arts and Humanities Courses Offered at Istituto Europeo

Art History
ARH Art History A - Classical Greece to Renaissance
ARH Art History B - High Renaissance to 19th century
ARH Italian Medieval Art History
ARH Early Italian Renaissance - 15th century
ARH Early Italian Renaissance - 15th century (in Italian)
ARH High Renaissance and Mannerism
ARH High Renaissance and Mannerism (in Italian)

History of Architecture
ARH Survey of Florentine Architecture
ARH History of Renaissance Architecture

Literature
LIT 215 Survey of Italian Literature
LIT 225 The Age of Dante
LIT 325 Contemporary Italian Literature
LIT 330 Contemporary Italian Literature (in Italian)
LIT 335 Italian Women Writers

Performing Arts
EH 310 History of Italian Cinema
WL 325 Contemporary Italian Cinema (in Italian)