Throughout his construction, Ficino maintains a firm conviction that comes to him from the Greeks. It is the radical identification of Truth and Beauty. The aesthetic vision is an organ of decidedly metaphysical apprehension that, to be set in motion, requires the impulse of love. The articulated set of entities communicates thanks to the active possibility of love, and this achieves its inciting tension in the human soul. In this way, amorous delirium is the most powerful and eminent of all, since the others need its support. Neither poetic, mystical, nor prophetic delirium is achieved without fervent piety, without serious application and assiduous worship of divinity. And love finds its counterpart in the corporal violence of passion or "libido." Because love, Ficino insists Platonically, is nothing other than an effort engendered by the vision of corporal beauty to launch oneself ...read more