The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization

by Arthur Herman

The third realm, the great spine of Michelangelo’s plan, are the panels depicting the Book of Genesis, where the soul experiences God’s presence directly. The entire work gives us a visual tour of what a disciple of Ficino would call deificatio, or the soul’s return to God, the final consummation of spiritual enlightenment. The Sistine ceiling contains no direct references to Christianity or Christ. Michelangelo the Platonist didn’t feel the need for any, because his message is more universal. Instead all the scenes are from the Old Testament, which every Renaissance Platonist knew to be the ground zero of docta religio, the true religion shared by all peoples and faiths. In the same way, Michelangelo has paired each male biblical prophet with a female Roman pagan prophet, the sibyls who had prophesied the coming of a future Savior. This symbolizes the harmony of the religious revelation of the Hebrews not only with Christianity, but with the religion of the ancients.