Evermore Shall Be So

With the publication of Arthur FWith the publication of Arthur Farndell's Gardens of Philosophy (Shepheard Walwyn 2006), there remained only four of Ficino's commentaries on Plato's dialogues which had not yet been translated into English. With the publication of this volume there remain only three. Farndell's translation of the commentaries on the Republic and the Laws will comprise the third volume under the title When Philosophers Rule (9780856832574 - due 2009) and the fourth, All Things Natural (9780856832581 - due 2010), will contain the Timaeus. As Carol Kaske of Cornell University wrote when reviewing Gardens of Philosophy in Renaissance Quarterly, these translations fill 'a need. Even those Anglophone scholars who know Latin still need a translation in order to read quickly through a large body of material' The central message of Parmenides, that everything depends on the One, resonates with the growing awareness around the world of the interrelatedness of all things, be it in the biosphere, the intellectual or spiritual realms. Philosophers in ancient Greece appreciated this unity and employed reason and dialectic to draw the mind away from its preoccupation with the material world and attract it towards contemplation of the soul, and ultimately of that Oneness which embraces, but is distinct from, the multifarious forms of creation. Thus Parmenides carefully instructed the young Socrates, and Plato recorded their dialogue in this work which he named after the elderly philosopher. Nearly 2000 years later, Marsilio Ficino made Parmenides available to the West by translating it into Latin, the language of scholars in his time. Ficino added a lengthy commentary to this translation, a commentary which Evermore Shall Be So puts into English for the first time, more than 500 years after its original composition.