El concepto de melancolía en Marsilio Ficino

Abstract

The melancholy, like a temperament which is linked with sadness or sorrow, has produced in the history of philosophy many questions that converge on the same problem: Is in the melancholic subject where creative ability gets at his maximum expression? This paper explores the answer that Marsilio Ficino formulated in De vita triplici. Despite the fact that it is not the only work in which Ficino has an argument about melancholy, we chose the De vita, specifically his first book, On Caring for the Health of Those U'ʹho Devote Themselves to Literary Studies, because we consider that a more attention to the positive and negative effects of the melancholic state was given in this book by the author. We will analyze the text of Ficino in order to expose the construction of a doctrine which understands melancholy as a state that promote an anthropological instability between both physical and spiritual aspect of man, between the voluntary and the involuntary. Thus we devote to understand the relationship proposed by the author between “black bile "ʺ , as it was understood in antiquity, and the planet Saturn, central according to Ficino. Throughout the work will demostrate that for Ficino, Saturn, like as symbol of melancholy, influences men leading them to a state of fervor for contemplation and, thus, it determines the creative genius. However, to achieve that state must also take a number of remedial measures in order to "ʺ self care "ʺ and that allowed intellectuals to enjoy the intellectuals benefits of melancholy and reduce physical disturbance that she carries.