Abstract

This paper is a comparison of some of the central ontological claims on the nature of prime matter of the Renaissance Platonist Marsilio Ficino, and the nature of space of Frane Petrić, the sixteenth century Platonist from the town of Cres. In it I argue that there are two respects in which the natural philosophies of both Platonists resemble one another, especially when it comes to the ontological status of the most basic substrate of the material world. First, both Ficino and Petrić argue for the basic existence of matter and space. Second, both philosophers attribute an “ontological priority” to matter and space over what are seen as the fleeting qualities of the material world