Sidney and Philosophy

Abstract In the Defence, Sidney satirises contemporary moral philosophy but shows great esteem for ancient philosophers, Plato and Aristotle in particular. Sidney argues that their doctrines, properly understood, support his own theory of poetic making. This chapter examines Sidney’s understanding of Plato and Aristotle and shows how it is shaped by classical intermediaries such as Cicero, Plutarch, and Renaissance interpreters including Pietro Bembo and Julius Caesar Scaliger. This analysis of his philosophical sources brings Sidney’s own Christian Neoplatonism into sharper focus. In Astrophil and Stella, Sidney incorporates Castiglione’s account of Platonic love as a subtext for the sequence’s extended presentation of the psychology of akrasia. While the limitations of Sidney’s knowledge of Plato and Aristotle are evident in both the Defence and Astrophil and Stella, they are overshadowed by Sidney’s innovative genius in these monumental landmarks of literary theory and practice.