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Introduction
M. V. Dougherty
Evaluations of the intellectual contributions of the Italian Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) are surprisingly varied. Large-scale summations of the merits of his philosophizing bring a diversity of results even from those well versed in Pico’s works. In 1934, prior to the great explosion of scholarly studies that occurred during the later part of the twentieth century, Lynn Thorndike would lament that “one cannot but feel that the importance of Pico della Mirandola in the history of thought has often been grossly exaggerated.”1 Three decades later, however, Frances Yates would complete her account of Pico with the conclusion that “the profound significance of Pico della Mirandola in the history of humanity can hardly be overestimated.”2 The vast disparity between excessively laudatory and sharply opprobrious appraisals from historians of the past century should not detract from the fact that Pico’s work has garnered the interest of famous European intellectuals throughout the centuries, eliciting evaluations from thinkers as dissimilar as Desiderius Erasmus,3 Niccolò Machiavelli,4 Johannes Kepler,5 Pierre Gassendi,6 and Voltaire,7 all of whom to some degree bestow praise upon this figure of the Renaissance. Among literary notables, John Donne8 and John Milton9 were readers of Pico’s writings, and perhaps even William Shakespeare can be added among those influenced by his thought.10 Even Martin Luther would cast a sympathetic glance when noting Pico’s difficulties with church authorities,11 and Blaise Pascal left evidence of having read some of Pico’s works.12 Thomas More was the first to introduce Pico to English audiences on a large scale with his early sixteenth-century translations of Pico’s letters and religious opuscula, and his liberally edited translation of Gianfrancesco Pico’s Vita of Pico has been regarded by some historians as the first English biography to see print.13 The greatest extant adulations of Pico’s achievements, however, are from those who knew him best; his contemporaries and early apologists did not appear to have exercised much restraint when crafting honorary epithets and titles while extolling his intellectual virtues.14
Without doubt, therefore, Pico has long been recognized as an important figure in Renaissance thought, although some historians have debated whether Pico is best viewed as a representative intellectual from an age replete with intellectuals or as an exceptional figure deserving of particular admiration. No matter which account is favored, it is uncontroversial that Pico was surrounded by and interacted with the leading figures of his age. At times this was a matter of his own choosing, but not always; it can be said, for example, that his fortunes fell with the condemnation by one pope and rose with his rehabilitation by another. The variety of genres representing Pico’s works also testifies to his influential cast of friends and acquaintances; his corpus includes a compendious diatribe against astrology, an ambitious metaphysical treatise, literary and biblical commentaries, a speech, a collection of conclusiones or theses, and a vast epistolary collection, and each work is intimately associated with a major personality of Pico’s day.
Pico’s famous Oratio, arguably the most anthologized text of Renaissance philosophy, has been touted at times as the key text of Renaissance humanism, yet it was merely intended to serve as the preface to a public disputation in Rome before the Roman pontiff of his 900 Theses (Conclusiones), a wide-ranging compilation of views concerning philosophy, theology, and other disciplines. A quickly penned defense, Pico’s Apologia, exhibited no contrition and spectacularly failed to persuade Roman authorities of the merits of his theses. His earliest philosophical work, the Commento, used the pretext of a commentary on a poem of Girolamo Benivieni (1453–1542) as an occasion for a philosophical examination of Neoplatonic metaphysics, and it contained an implicit critique of the views espoused by his friend, the great Florentine Neoplatonist philosopher and translator Marsilio Ficino (1433–99). Pico’s brief metaphysical treatise, On Being and the One (De ente et uno), was dedicated to Angelo Poliziano (1454–94), a poet and scholar of the Medici circle. In this work, Pico discussed the question of the relationship of being and unity in light of the traditional Aristotelian and Platonic views, and he resurrected the ancient thesis that Aristotle and Plato were not opposed on the question of the relation between being and unity. Of Pico’s correspondence, the most famous letter came from an exchange with Ermolao Barbaro (1454–93) on the relationship of philosophy and rhetoric. A “reply” to Pico, for a long time attributed to Philip Melanchthon, would surface to propel the debate for new generations. Pico’s Heptaplus, dedicated to Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–92), was a cosmological work that took the form of a sevenfold commentary on the first portion of Genesis. Pico’s last works, including short religious pieces and other biblical commentaries, are most often seen in light of the influence of Pico’s close friend in his later life, the fiery religious reformer Girolamo Savonarola (1452–98), who would ultimately clothe Pico in the habit of the Dominican order and give Pico’s funeral oration upon his untimely death. Pico’s massive anti-astrological work, the posthumously published Disputations against Divinatory Astrology (Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem), also comes from this later period and has often been championed by some historians as a key work in the struggle of scientific thought over superstition and perhaps even the beginning of the scientific revolution.15 Counted among Pico’s associates, therefore, are some the greatest figures of Italian Renaissance culture, and his involvement with them provided an important catalyst for the shaping of the parts of his philosophical corpus.
In recent times, scholars working with Pico’s philosophical writings have depended upon the magisterial editions of several of Pico’s works edited by Eugenio Garin in the 1940s and 1950s.16 For those texts left unedited by Garin, scholars have relied largely on modern reprintings of sixteenth-century editions, which themselves were indebted to the 1496 editio princeps of Pico’s Opera edited and published by Pico’s nephew and biographer, Gianfrancesco Pico.17 In the last two decades or so, however, a significant number of new editions of Pico’s works have appeared, at times supplemented with modern translations, and they collectively testify to the growing interest in Pico’s work.18 This increase in editions and translations has been matched by a rise in the amount and quality of scholarly commentary on Pico’s literary corpus. The study of this secondary literature on Pico has been greatly enhanced with the recent appearance of substantive bibliographies that reliably catalogue the secondary literature on Pico along with the printed editions and translations of Pico’s works,19 and reference works like these join the other standard tools at the disposal of the contemporary student of Pico.20 Special mention should be made also of significant collaborative projects in Pico studies. Proceedings from conferences marking the fifth centenaries of Pico’s birth and death featured essays from prominent historians of the Renaissance period.21 Further, in addition to online electronic editions of Pico’s Oratio and the 900 Theses with an accompanying collaborative commentary, hosted by Brown University and the University of Bologna, there has appeared a series dedicated to editing and translating the volumes composing Pico’s Kabbalistic library collection.22 Additionally, the appearance of philological studies on Pico,23 as well as historiographical accounts,24 suggests that the present state of studi pichiani is a healthy one and that interest in this Renaissance thinker will continue to grow.
The present collection of essays seeks to assess the philosophical merit of the work of the Count of Mirandola. Pico’s legendary erudition and command of a variety of disciplines have made the mastery of his literary corpus a formidable task for any individual. The format chosen for this volume is a joint approach by scholars working in the fields of philosophy and intellectual history. Established authorities in the study of Renaissance philosophy as well as younger scholars were invited to contribute; it is hoped that, for English-speaking readers, the results will serve as a reliable guide to the wide range of the subject matter covered in Pico’s literary corpus, including works beyond the well-known and celebrated Oratio. Additionally, the volume seeks to acquaint readers with the scholarly landscape of Pico studies over the last century as well as indicate new departure points for appreciating Pico’s place in the history of philosophy. To this end, the collection comprises nine chapters, each highlighting an essential element of Pico’s extant writings.
In her contribution to this volume, Jill Kraye discusses the famous epistolary confrontation between Pico and Ermolao Barbaro on the age-old question of the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric. Pico’s contribution to this debate – a June 3, 1485, letter to Barbaro – has puzzled commentators, because while it contains some sharp arguments championing the superiority of plain scholastic philosophical Latin over embellished rhetorical Latin, the letter is written in a manner that is rhetorically proficient and replete with classical allusions. This apparent contrast between the style and the substance of the letter has led to opposing interpretations of Pico’s intentions in penning his contribution to this ancient debate, one that is exacerbated by Pico’s use of the rhetorical convention of prosopopoeia for the larger part of the letter, where an imagined scholastic philosopher condemns the superficiality of rhetoric and champions instead the search for and presentation of unadorned truth by philosophers. That Pico would use the conventions of rhetoric to criticize rhetoric may appear as a kind of performative contradiction, since standard rhetorical techniques are employed in an apparent criticism of the discipline. Kraye approaches the Pico-Barbaro debate by locating Pico’s retort in the larger context of the views of Latin defended both by Barbaro and the humanist Angelo Poliziano and in the context of other letters penned by Pico. In approaching the letter to Barbaro, Kraye finds an interpretive solution in Pico’s Oratio, where Pico appealed to the resources of humanism to defend and praise scholastic philosophy and theology. The same approach is present in the letter to Barbaro; Pico joins scholastic substance with the rhetorical humanist style to offer a persuasive account of the value of philosophy and theology.
Paul Richard Blum examines Pico’s forays into theology and the subsequent reactions Pico elicited from church officials. Focusing especially on those 13 of the 900 theses that were selected by Pope Innocent Ⅷ’s investigating commission as either outright heretical or at least savoring of heresy and examining key elements of Pico’s hastily written defense of his orthodoxy, the spirited Apologia, Blum proposes several principles that help to explain the seemingly paradoxical interaction between Pico and the church. Noting that the 13 controversial theses give the appearance of being a random collection insofar as they range over a variety of topics – including issues in magic, Christology, worship, and epistemology – Blum offers an interpretation that maintains that the investigating church commission was seeking to uphold a barrier between natural philosophy and theology and that Pico’s collection of theses – at least the 13 controversial theses – did not uphold this division between disciplines. Blum examines the notable variety of techniques that Pico uses in the Apologia to defend his views, which include his selective use of scholastic writers, his defense of a “hidden linkage” among his theses, an argumentative procedure that alleges the absurdity of a contrary position for the sake of lending plausibility to an original position, the difficulty of identifying true heresies, and, most importantly, Pico’s contention that the loose manner of proposing issues for disputation is different in kind from the rigorous manner that attends ordinary academic writing. Ultimately the commission members’ failure with regard to the last item signals their failure to appreciate Pico’s early attempts to explore the relationship between language and thought, a theme that Pico continues in later writings. In the latter part of his paper, Blum examines this theme in the context of Pico’s last works, focusing especially on Pico’s biblical commentaries.
Michael Sudduth treats several of Pico’s works from the standpoint of contemporary philosophy of religion. While noting that such an approach to Pico’s writings may strike some readers as anachronistic, Sudduth argues that many of Pico’s explicit concerns overlap with pressing issues within contemporary discussions. The paper explores Pico’s rational reflections on religious belief and considers the relation of this activity to Pico’s larger philosophical outlook; along these lines Pico is presented as a philosopher of the Christian religion. After examining the De ente et uno and the Heptaplus, along with some texts from the Oratio, for evidence of Pico’s manner of demarcating the disciplines of philosophy and theology, Sudduth emphasizes the religious contours of Pico’s syncretic approach to various faith traditions, ultimately underscoring the latent medievalism that pervades Pico’s outlook. He evaluates Pico’s syncretic approach within a taxonomy provided by contemporary discussants of religious pluralism, ultimately concluding that Pico defends a Christosyncretism that does not treat all religious traditions as equal. Rather, Pico’s syncretism is one that privileges the specifically Christian revelation of the divine. Although Pico’s expressed desire to find truth in all traditions may seem to be congruent with contemporary philosopher of religion John Hick’s defense of religious pluralism, Pico’s motivations are ultimately those of a religious exclusivist, since Pico’s syncretic project privileges Christianity and seeks affirmation of Christian truths in other traditions. Thus, Pico’s Christian framework separates his syncretic project from the seemingly similar twentieth-century projects espoused by contemporary philosophers of religion.
In his contribution, Michael J. B. Allen presents Pico as a hermeneut working within the Platonic tradition. Noting Pico’s broad Platonic education, Allen examines several works of Pico’s for evidence of a methodological commitment to finding allegorical and figurative readings of ancient classical literary texts for the sake of discovering divine mysteries and veiled metaphysical principles. Such a hermeneutic approach presupposes that the ancient poetic texts contain hidden truths that could be analogous to Hebrew and Christian revelation. On this view, an interpreter versed in Christian and Platonic truths is in a uniquely privileged position to unpack the hidden metaphysical truths in the ancient classical texts, and Pico’s interpretive exercises in his earliest work, the Commento, exhibit his success with such a mode of exegesis. After discussing the complex history of the various versions and editions of the Commento, Allen lays out how Pico finds in Plato’s account of the Orpheus myth a veiled discussion of the soul’s relationship to Platonic ideas or forms and how, elsewhere in the work, Pico treats of the three hypostases of Neoplatonic metaphysics. Allen then turns to a later work, the Heptaplus, which is Pico’s symbolizing account of the early chapters of Genesis, arguing that the work is “in effect, a triumph of Platonically inspired analysis.” Pico considered Moses to be a Platonic philosopher of the highest order, and access to the philosophical principles hidden in the texts of Genesis requires a subtlety and inventiveness of interpretation that presupposes a background in Neoplatonic metaphysics. Allen completes the chapter with some conclusions concerning Pico’s interpretation of the “proto-plastic man” of the Oratio along Neoplatonic lines. Pico’s hermeneutic approach to these texts – the Commento, the Heptaplus, and the Oratio – shows him to be an important speculative philosopher of his age.
In my own chapter, I locate Pico’s ambitious plans for the 1487 Roman debate of the 900 Theses within the trajectory of three medieval academic exercises and argue that such a placement allows one to approach afresh the problem of interpreting the Oratio, Pico’s planned introductory speech that was to open the debate. A more traditional reading of Pico’s Roman plans can help to narrow the competing interpretations that commentators have offered regarding the celebrated account of human nature in the Oratio. I argue, first, that rather than representing a late incarnation of a medieval quaestiones quodlibetales disputation, where a disputer would be compelled to entertain questions on any topic whatsoever, Pico’s publication and promulgation of his theses prior to the debate models a quaestiones disputatae debate, where the issues to be debated were set forth and agreed upon in advance. Second, I focus on the fact that Pico’s collection of theses largely comprises short texts or summaries of authorities of philosophy, theology, and other disciplines, and for this reason his work can profitably be considered as a late instance of florilegia writing or sentence collecting, patterned after such works as ancient philosophical compendia or even Peter Lombard’s magisterial Sententiae in Ⅳ libris distinctae. Third, I emphasize Pico’s commitment to classical dialectic, understood generally as the method of arguing on the basis of appeals to reputable opinions. When Pico’s Roman project is located within these three traditions of the quaestiones disputatae, florilegia or sentence collecting, and dialectic, Pico’s proposal seems less like an exercise in vainglory and more like traditional academic affair. Such an approach mitigates the temptation to view Pico as a twenty-three-year-old prodigy whose proposal to debate before the pope, the College of Cardinals, and scholars is merely an exhibition of hubris on an unprecedented scale. Having placed the debate within these three historical contexts, I review the diverse approaches commentators have taken to Pico’s famous account of human nature presented in the Oratio. Emphasizing that Pico’s Oratio is largely a dialectical work, I suggest that it contains a highly original solution to a significant medieval problem concerning the possibility of human deification and conclude that the fact that the Oratio’s view of human nature was frequently plagiarized by papal orators and others in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries testifies to its early influence.
In her chapter, Sheila Rabin assesses Pico’s views on the topics of magic and astrology, arguing that Pico’s treatment of them in the Conclusions, Heptaplus, and Disputations significantly shaped the discipline of Renaissance natural philosophy. Underscoring the point that Pico’s acquaintance with magic and astrology was essentially theoretical rather than practical, since Pico was an actual practitioner of neither, Rabin begins by reviewing the status of these disciplines in relation to the Renaissance university tradition. The practice of magic was not an explicit part of the university curriculum but was at times studied by students of medicine and philosophy. Magic divided into demonic magic and natural magic; the former was the often-condemned discipline that appealed to demonic powers, whereas the latter sought out hidden powers of nature and is often indiscernible from what is traditionally regarded as early modern scientific activity. Pico joined in the condemnations of demonic magic, but for him natural magic was a part of natural science. Rabin carefully explores Pico’s views on the relationship between natural magic and Kabbalah, examining Pico’s explicit claim that magic requires an annexation to Kabbalah to be efficacious.
The discipline of astrology also divided into two kinds, natural astrology, which concerned itself with medical and meteorological predictions, and judicial astrology, which concerned itself with human affairs. Rabin counsels that delimiting the two kinds of astrology can be difficult, since practices such as horoscopes and nativities appear to straddle both sides of the division. Demonstrating that Pico evolved from an initial qualified acceptance of some forms of astrology in the Conclusions, Rabin surveys the manifold types of argumentation that Pico employed against both judicial and natural astrology in the Disputations. She argues that the motivation for Pico’s critique lies in his theory of truth and his views concerning the historical genesis of error in addition to his general Christian apologetic concerns.