Heavenly Journeys: Marsilio Ficino and Girolamo Cardano on Scipio’s Dream

The report of a dream about a disembodied soul in Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis (Dream of Scipio) is a narration of a heavenly journey that reflects a belief in the existence of a perfect harmonic world beyond the world of the senses. During the Renaissance it was used by many scholars to understand the transitory nature of earthly life and to find peace of mind. By comparing Marsilio Ficino’s interpretation of Scipio’s Dream with the one of Girolamo Cardano I will argue in this article that their fictional reports of heavenly journeys led to entirely different interpretations of the meaning of life. While Ficino, in his interpretation, focused on perfect cosmic harmony that he used as a model for a utopian view of a peaceful society, Cardano took the cacophony of his everyday life as point of departure, using the dream as a model that justifies one’s selfinterest.