Procedere aristotelico per approdi platonici. Il Dialogo della infinità di amore di Tullia d'Aragona

The Dialogo della infinità di amore by the sixteenth-century writer, musician, philosopher, and courtesan Tullia d'Aragona (1501/5-1556) is part of the prolific production of love treatises initiated by Marsilio Ficino with his translation and commentary of Plato's Symposium (first printed in 1484). Thanks to her canzoniere and dialogue, both published in 1547, d'Aragona carves out a role for herself as a writer in the centre of a circle of admiring intellectuals. This paper aims to demonstrate that her contribution to the philosophical issues discussed in the text is fundamental to the definition of the contents of the dialogue. In the central section of the work, Tullia leads the conversation, by dominating the mechanisms of logic and syllogistic operations. Although she proceeds according to the argumentative schemes of Aristotelian logic, showing a competence in dialectic that would usually imply a university education, nonetheless the final outcome of the dialogue may be regarded as "Platonic", that is, a "Socratic" love that admits women into the exclusive circle of the most virtuous and spiritually refined lovers. After all, from a historical point of view, the adjectives "Platonic" and "Socratic" have always been applied to love as the highest and purest human experience.