Imagination Between Immaterial Forms and Material Forms in Marsilio Ficino’s Thought

Abstract

The imagination plays an imposing role in the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. Halfway between immaterial and immaterial forms, this faculty enables the connection between different, and even opposite, levels of reality and knowledge: the material world and the intelligible world, sense-perception and thinking, the body and the mind. Therefore, it is essential to the soul for acquiring awareness of both the external world and itself as an intelligible, yet incarnated, form.