Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: The Philosopher of Human Dignity
Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) was one of the most remarkable thinkers of the Italian Renaissance. A nobleman from a small Italian state, Pico mastered not only Latin and Greek but also Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic, and he assembled a sweeping philosophical synthesis that aimed to combine the wisdom of every available tradition — Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and pagan — into a single system. His Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486) is one of the founding documents of Renaissance humanism, and it remains one of the most eloquent statements of the humanist vision ever written.
The Young Prodigy
Pico was born in 1463 in Mirandola, a small principality near Modena, into one of the ruling families of the town. He was educated at home by a private tutor, and he showed such precocity that by the age of fourteen he had reportedly mastered the trivium and the quadrivium — the seven liberal arts that formed the basis of the medieval university curriculum.
Pico then undertook a course of study that was unprecedented in its ambition. He went to Bologna, then to Ferrara, then to Padua, then to Paris — the leading centers of learning in Europe — studying not only Latin and Greek but also Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean (Aramaic), and other languages. He also studied the major philosophical and theological traditions: Aristotelianism, Platonism, Scholasticism, the writings of the Church Fathers, the Jewish Kabbalah, the works of the Muslim philosophers.
By the time he was twenty-three, Pico was convinced that he had mastered all the available philosophical traditions. He published a set of 900 Conclusiones (Conclusions), propositions drawn from every field of learning, and he offered to defend them in public disputation in Rome. He was so confident of his synthesis that he offered to pay the expenses of any scholar who would come to Rome to challenge him.
The Oration on the Dignity of Man
To introduce his 900 Conclusions, Pico wrote a prefatory discourse, the Oratio de hominis dignitate (Oration on the Dignity of Man). The work, which has been called “the manifesto of the Renaissance,” is a passionate defense of the dignity and the freedom of the human being.
The Oration begins with a famous passage in which Pico imagines God addressing Adam after the creation. God, he says, has placed Adam at the center of the world, but he has not given Adam a fixed nature or a determined place. Instead, he has given Adam the freedom to choose what he will be. Adam can descend to the level of the beasts or rise to the level of the angels, depending on his own choices.
This radical affirmation of human freedom is the heart of the Oration. It marks a decisive break with the medieval view of the human condition as fixed by original sin. The human being, in Pico’s vision, is not a fallen creature whose highest duty is to obey the will of God. The human being is a free agent, capable of shaping his or her own destiny through the exercise of reason and will.
The Oration goes on to develop a sweeping philosophical synthesis. Pico argues that the various philosophical and theological traditions — Christianity, Platonism, Aristotelianism, the Kabbalah, the Hermetic writings — all contain elements of the truth. The philosopher’s task is to combine these elements into a comprehensive system, to reconcile the different traditions, and to find the underlying unity of all wisdom.
The Roman Disputation
Pico traveled to Rome in 1486, with the intention of holding the great public disputation on his 900 Conclusions. He was convinced that his synthesis would convince the learned world, and that the disputation would be a triumph of humanist learning.
The disputation never took place. Pope Innocent VIII, alarmed by some of Pico’s propositions — especially those that drew on the Kabbalah and seemed to challenge the authority of the Church — condemned thirteen of the 900 Conclusions and forbade the disputation. Pico, who had been preparing to defend the conclusions in person, was forced to flee Italy.
Pico wrote an Apologia (Defense) of his conclusions, arguing that the thirteen condemned propositions had been misunderstood or taken out of context. The Defense, written in elegant Latin, is one of the great documents of Renaissance scholarship. But the papacy refused to budge, and the condemned propositions were eventually included in the Index of Forbidden Books.
Exile and Reconciliation
Pico spent the next few years in exile, traveling through France and trying to win support for his position. He was eventually captured by agents of the Pope, but he was rescued by a combination of political pressure and personal connections, including the intervention of the Medici pope and the king of France.
In 1493, Pico was finally reconciled with the Church. Pope Alexander VI (the notorious Rodrigo Borgia) absolved Pico of all charges and allowed him to return to Florence. The reconciliation came only about a year before Pico’s death in November 1494, at the age of thirty-one; he spent those months working on the Heptaplus and other writings but didn’t complete the comprehensive philosophical synthesis he had once planned. According to a tradition recorded in the 16th century, his secretary, Cristoforo da Casalmaggiore, was bribed to poison him.
The unfinished work, eventually published as the Heptaplus (a sevenfold commentary on the creation account in Genesis) and other writings, contains Pico’s most ambitious philosophical efforts. The works show a mind of extraordinary range, capable of moving with ease between Christian theology, Platonic philosophy, Jewish mysticism, and Arabic science.
Pico and the Platonic Academy
Pico spent much of his short career in Florence, where he was a member of the Platonic Academy of Marsilio Ficino. The relationship between Pico and Ficino was complex. Ficino was the leader of the academy, the translator of Plato, and the leading figure of the Florentine humanist movement. Pico was the brilliant young upstart, anxious to surpass his master.
The two men disagreed on several points, especially on the value of Aristotelianism and the Jewish Kabbalah. Ficino was a committed Platonist who saw Aristotle as inferior to Plato. Pico, by contrast, believed that Aristotle and Plato were fundamentally in agreement, and he tried to reconcile the two traditions. Pico also placed much more weight on the Kabbalah and on Jewish mystical texts than Ficino did.
Despite these disagreements, Pico and Ficino remained friends and collaborators. Pico’s presence in Florence helped to broaden the Platonic Academy and to introduce new ideas, especially from the Jewish and Arabic traditions. The two men, working together, helped to shape the intellectual climate of late 15th-century Florence, the most creative intellectual community of the era.
The Christian Kabbalah
Pico was one of the first Christian scholars to make a serious study of the Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition. He believed that the Kabbalah contained profound truths that could be reconciled with Christianity, and he used Kabbalistic ideas in his philosophical synthesis.
Pico’s approach to the Kabbalah was unusual. He didn’t convert to Judaism, nor did he treat the Kabbalah as a rival tradition. He believed that the Kabbalah, properly understood, was a confirmation of Christian truth. The mystical interpretations of the Torah, the special powers of the Hebrew language, the sefirot (the ten divine emanations) — all of these, in Pico’s reading, pointed toward the Christian God.
Pico’s Christian Kabbalah was influential in the development of Western esotericism. It helped to inspire the Christian Kabbalistic tradition of the 16th and 17th centuries, which included such figures as Johannes Reuchlin, the German humanist who wrote the first Christian defense of Jewish studies. The tradition, with its blending of Christian theology, Jewish mysticism, and Neoplatonic philosophy, became an important part of the Western esoteric tradition.
The Dignity of Man
The Oration on the Dignity of Man has been called “the manifesto of the Renaissance,” and it’s the work by which Pico is best remembered. The vision of human freedom and dignity that it presents has been enormously influential in Western thought.
The Oration presents a view of the human being that’s fundamentally optimistic. The human being, unlike the rest of creation, has no fixed nature. We can be whatever we choose to be. We can descend to the level of the beasts or rise to the level of the angels, depending on our own choices. This is the source of our dignity: not that we’re fixed in a particular place in the cosmic order, but that we have the freedom to choose our place.
The vision has been criticized for its anthropocentrism, its individualism, and its assumption that human freedom is unlimited. But it has also been a powerful source of inspiration for those who have fought for human dignity and human freedom. The Declaration of Independence, with its assertion that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” is in many ways a continuation of the Pico tradition.
The Death of Pico
Pico died in Florence on November 17, 1494, at the age of thirty-one. He had been ill for some time, and the cause of his death is uncertain. According to a famous story, his secretary, Cristoforo da Casalmaggiore, was hired by Pico’s enemies to poison him. The secretary, who had been bribed, was arrested and confessed to the crime. He was executed, but only after he had already killed his master.
The story may be a legend, but it captures the sense of tragedy that has always surrounded Pico’s short life. A man of extraordinary gifts, he was cut off in his prime, before he could complete his philosophical synthesis. The work that he left behind — the Oration, the Conclusions, the Apologia, the Heptaplus, and other writings — is a tantalizing fragment of what might have been.
The Legacy of Pico
Pico’s legacy is complex and far-reaching. As a philosopher, he helped to develop the Neoplatonic tradition that was central to Renaissance humanism. As a scholar, he helped to introduce the Kabbalah and the Jewish mystical tradition into Christian thought. As a thinker, he articulated a vision of human freedom and dignity that has been a major source of Western liberalism.
The Oration on the Dignity of Man has been called the founding document of Renaissance humanism, and it continues to inspire those who believe in the dignity and the freedom of the human being. The work, written by a man of thirty-three who was soon to die, has a kind of prophetic power. It is as if Pico, knowing that he wouldn’t have time to complete his synthesis, distilled the essential vision into a single, luminous text.
If you want a single recent book to read next, see the suggestions at the bottom of the page. The standard monograph is also listed; it’s not always the most recent, but it is usually the one a working scholar will have on the shelf.
An honest gap. The standard accounts of this period are, in many ways, the accounts of the literate, the urban, and the relatively well-off. The picture you get from the literature is necessarily a partial one, and any responsible overview has to flag the parts it is leaving out.
Sources & further reading
For non-specialists, the most accessible single book on this topic is usually the first in the list. The other two are denser but more thorough.
- Brian P. Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy (1992)
- Michael J. B. Allen, Synoptic Art: Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation (1998; useful for the Florentine context)
- Pico’s Latin works are available in the standard Garin edition; translations vary in quality
If you want to go further, the bibliographies at the back of any of these books will lead you to the scholarly literature. The standard journal for the field is Renaissance Quarterly (English-language) and, for the Italian period, Rinascimento (Italian).