ABSTRACT
Aquinas, many philosophers and theologians strongly affirmed that reason could demonstrate the immortality of the soul. The most important figure arguing against the secular Aristotelians was Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), who launched a thorough campaign for the demonstrability of the immortality of the soul. Before the Lateran Council, as the authors have seen, philosophers could support the doctrine of the immortality of the soul by referring to faith, but after 1513 this strategy was ruled out, and for nearly two centuries individual immortality was viewed as a critical and pressing philosophical problem. But in his Commentaria in De anima Aristotelis (1509), Tommaso de Vio changed his view, denying that the immortality of the soul could be philosophically demonstrated and arguing that it is a doctrine that must be accepted simply by faith, a position that he held for the rest of his life. Pomponazzi maintains that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul must be accepted as revealed truth.
