Antonio Degli Agli’s Treatise On the Immortality of the Soul

Abstract

The article contains a translation of Antonio degli Agli’s treatise On the Immortality of the Soul. The translation is preceded by an introduction in which its author explains the popularity of the issue of immortality in the fifteenth century, presents the figure of Antonio degli Agli, and shortly analyzes the content of the treatise.

Agli was a clergyman of the Catholic Church and a humanist associated with the millieu of Florentine intellectuals gathered around the philosopher Marsilio Ficino. Agli was a prolific author of philosophical, theological, literary and historical works, although only few of his texts have survived to our times. Among them is a relatively short treatise On the immortality of the soul, in which, with reference to certain biblical fragments and philosophical concepts, he argued that the human soul is necessarily eternal. The reasoning used here regards the metaphysics of light and the relationship of the human mind to its most perfect objects of cognition. The analysis of the content allows the conclusion that the arguments used in the treatise largely coincide with those found in Ficino’s opuscula theologica and Platonic Theology.

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Published
2022-06-30
Section
Translations