In his writings, Ficino combines various aspects of Plato and Plotinus in a philosophy that includes God in a much greater role when searching for truth, beauty, and goodness. For Ficino, the main way of reaching the divine is through the idea of love. He feels that love encompasses everything that is beautiful and that it also drives us to seek a balance and harmony within our soul. Love is what gives form to chaos and orders everything into a oneness.

Like other philosophers, Ficino works with the concept of God and sensation. Certain actions lead toward divinity whereas others just please the senses and lead away from the One to evil. In following this idea, the senses are placed into a hierarchy. He sight first with, hearing, smell, taste and touch following in that order. The soul can use sight and hearing to lead toward the divine, as they are able to perceive remote things. The other senses are too close to the material form in what they are able to detect. Ficino feels that these senses are too caught up in sensation to be used in the search for the divine. These sensations lead to madness and lust.

Ideas, Concepts and Forms are also placed in a hierarchy. Ideas are the closest to God as they are given to the mind by Him. Concepts cross from the mind into the soul. Forms go into nature from the soul. Like Plato, this places the material at the bottom of the hierarchy as forms refer more to mortal things. They lead away from the truth and point towards the shadows of truth. Therefore, the idea of the beauty of forms is a false notion. Ficino warns that the body does not represent beauty. He gives the example that the same body can undergo changes, due to time or circumstance that will alter its material form but can still be beautiful (pg. 221). Instead beauty is an incorporeal thing that exists outside of shape.

I find it interesting that Ficino warns against the idea of body beautiful, particularly in the structure of today's society. Modern advertising focuses on the whole notion that beauty is found in the form. Mass media passes on the concept that bodies of certain shapes and sizes are what the whole concept of beauty is based on. This is so prevalent and forced upon society that many societal mechanisms use the concept of body beautiful, often without conscious thought. I think that perhaps this warning has some truth as within today's society it appears that we are so caught up in the materiality of things that we have drifted away from the divine.

Ficino's whole philosophy is based on the idea of will to love rather than will to power. I think that this is the greatest flaw in his thinking when looking at how his philosophies apply today. I think that today's thinking is based on the idea of will to power. In this case, power is the motivation and, I would assume, beauty is found in power. Therefore, any means to power is acceptable and there are no divisions between good and evil actions. Ficino's writings set up divisions between good and evil that are necessary in the will to love philosophy. That makes the philosophy impossible to fit into the dominant thinking of today. The only time I can think that will to love would be a major force in society would be during the 1960's. In this case the will to love philosophy was a protest against the dominant structures that were based on will to power.

The final point that I found confusing was the idea of madness. In the beginning of his writings, Ficino splits the senses between divinity and sensation. He says that a person who relies on sensation will get away from divinity and go towards madness (pg.207-8). In the final writings, he gets into the concept of divine madness. This is made up of four parts, poetic madness, mysteries, prophecy, and love. Through these four steps chaos is unified and ordered, eventually leading the soul back to the One. Ficino doesn't explain the madness of sensation, nor does he differentiate the two when he gets into explaining divine madness. It leads to the question of whether the madness of sensation and divine madness really are different. Since it isn't clearly stated, it seems to be more of a way to keep the appearance of division between good and evil his philosophy is based upon.