Thomas Leinkauf, "Der Seelenwagen als quadriga rationalis bei Marsilio Ficino", in: Verena Olejniczak Lobsien, Bernd Roling, Lutz Bergemann and Bettina Bohle (Eds.), Vom Seelengefährt zum Glorienleib. Formen aitherischer Leiblichkeit, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2018, 139–161

Abstract

The topic of the text is Ficino’s use of the concept of the vehicle of the soul. Based on an analysis of the development of this concept from Plato to Proclus it in a sophisticated way elaborates the different meanings this metaphor might adopt when Ficino gets to use it. In a first step the widely disseminated use of ochema as a space of contact and transaction between different levels of being, that is between the immaterial and intelligible soul on the one hand and its material body on the other, is explained. In this function the ochema takes up the multifunctional position as a medium of activity conveyed from the intelligible into the material realm. Secondly the text analyses Ficino’s unique usage of the ochema metaphor as a war-chariot drawn by four horses. This according to the thesis of this paper shall illustrate the space of capability the soul possesses according to its capability of noeric self-explication and noeric-self-reference. Thus the meaning of the ochema-concept shifts from the cosmological to the mental-noeric and therefore gains a new aspect of meaning in the context of the neoplatonic doctrine of the soul. Namely it is used to explain the rational soul’s special capability of self-realization in reflexive unity in all its breadth and depth as well as to illustrate in a topological as well as a dynamic way the tension of the metaphysical kinetics of explication/progression and reversal.

Published In

Verena Olejniczak Lobsien, Bernd Roling, Lutz Bergemann and Bettina Bohle (Eds.), Vom Seelengefährt zum Glorienleib. Formen aitherischer Leiblichkeit, Berlin: Edition Topoi, 2018