Recognition and Religion A Historical and Systematic Study

In one of his letters, Ficino has an almost identical passage.^134
Instead ofrecognosco, he employs the verbagnosco(in amante se
amatus agnoscat). While he speaks of reciprocity (vicissitudo)inDe
amorethe letter employs the phrase‘mutual benevolence’(mutua
benivolentia). These words and phrases are fairly close to the tradition
of Augustine and Bernard, as they depict the bond of lovers in terms
of personal allegiance.
Later inDe amore, Ficino extends his epistemic concept of recog-
nition towards an ontological view. He claims that the likeness
between lovers is founded on astrology, lovers being born under the
same star and participating in the same astral body. The material
bodies imitate the astral body; however, as some material bodies have
grown from better seeds, they are more beautiful, that is, more closely
related to the astral body. Both lovers nevertheless possess the inner
image of the perfect astral body.^135 The event of seeing the material
body of the other is connected with the relative beauty of the lovers:

Those who...are born under the same star are so constituted that the

image of the more beautiful of them [imA], penetrating through the

eyes into the soul of the other [B], matches and corresponds completely

with a certain similar image, which was formed in the astral body of that

soul, as well as its inner nature from the creation [inner-imB]. The soul

[B] thus stricken recognizes the image before it [imA] as something

which is its own (tanquam suum aliquid recognoscovit).^136

Ficino remarks that the imA is in fact almost exactly like the inner-
imB which B has attempted to imprint on its own body without
success. The event ofre-cognoscothus means a connection between
imA and inner-imB; we could also say that in this event Bfinally
manages to visualize its inner-imB in seeing A. This means both that
the second resurrection or revival of B as described above and the
inner-imB also manage to make imA even more beautiful than it
actually is:

The soul [B] then puts the visual image [imA] beside its own interior

image [inner-imB], and if anything is lacking in the former as a

perfect copy of the Jovial body, the soul [B] then restores it [imA] by

(^134) Opera, 672–3.
(^135) De amoreVI, 6, Laurens, 139–43; Jayne, 113–15.
(^136) De amoreVI, 6, Laurens, 141; Jayne, 114. Letters within square brackets are my
clarifications.
82 Recognition and Religion