Кардинал Виссарион против Георгия Трапезундского: защита Платона от обвинений в безнравственности

Диалог со временем. 2025. № 92. С. 17–32.

Рязанов П. А., Loshkareva M. E.

The article examines the counterarguments of Cardinal Bessarion (1403-1472) in response to accusations of the immorality of Platonism made by the scholar George of Trebizond. George's sharply polemical treatise “Comparatio philosophorum Aristotelis et Platonis”, written in 1458, was at that time the most expressive and defiant attack on the Renaissance Neoplatonists. Honoring Plato as a paragon of virtue and wisdom, humanists tried to ignore inconvenient parts of his writings. George, on the other hand, challenged the authority and status of the philosopher as a pious sage, expressively denouncing those parts of Plato's teachings that were at odds with Christian morality and modern mores. The accusations of such things as hedonism, corruption of youth, perverted attraction to boys, sharing of women in common and the overthrow of marriage were especially dangerous. At the same time, being a skilled pamphleteer, George handled the original source quite freely, which allowed Bessarion to focus on the deliberate distortion of the meaning or misunderstanding of the text by his opponent. The cardinal devoted the 4th book of his work “Against the Slanderer of Plato” (In calumniatorem Platonis, 1469) to exposing George's arguments regarding immorality.

Keywords: Платон, Plato, Platonism, платонизм, итальянский гуманизм, Bessarion, George of Trebizond, Italian humanism, Виссарион, Георгий Трапезундский