What Renaissance ideals are represented in Pico della Mirandola's "Oration on the Dignity of Man"?

Question

To what extent are these ideals relevant to contemporary society?



I have read this, I just need some ideas here please.

Answer 1

Pico was a philosopher and writer of the Renaissance. His most famous work is a collection of 900 philosophical treatises in which he expresses his belief in the free will of man and the ability of individuals to commune with God without the medium of a priest. Pico was declared a heretic, and only saved from demise by the intervention of Lorenzo de Medici.


If there is such a thing as a "manifesto" of the Italian Renaissance, Pico della Mirandola's "Oration on the Dignity of Man" is it; no other work more forcefully, eloquently, or thoroughly remaps the human landscape to center all attention on human capacity and the human perspective. Pico himself had a massive intellect and literally studied everything there was to be studied in the university curriculum of the Renaissance; the "Oration" in part is meant to be a preface to a massive compendium of all the intellectual achievements of humanity, a compendium that never appeared because of Pico's early death. Pico was a "humanist," following a way of thinking that originated as far back as the fourteenth century. Late Medieval and Renaissance humanism was a response to the dry concerns for logic and linguistics that animated the other great late Medieval Christian philosophy, Scholasticism. The Humanists, rather than focussing on what they considered futile questions of logic and semantics, focussed on the relation of the human to the divine, seeing in human beings the summit and purpose of God's creation. Their concern was to define the human place in God's plan and the relation of the human to the divine; therefore, they centered all their thought on the "human" relation to the divine, and hence called themselves "humanists." At no point do they ignore their religion; humanism is first and foremost a religious movement, not a secular one (what we call "secular humanism" in modern political discourse is a world view that arises in part from "humanism" but is, nevertheless, essentially conceived in opposition to "humanism").


Where is humanity's place on the "chain of being?" What choices do human beings have? How might these views have arisen from the views expressed in Boccaccio's story of Ser Ciappelletto?


GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA. Oration on the Dignity of Man.
Washington D. C.: Regnery Gateway, 1956.

Jason Carr

Mirandola's Oration is a useful and interesting look into the
Renaissance mind. The increasing dependence on the human mind,
and the concept of the (infinite?) perfectibility of man. Part
of this noble works is Mirandola's attempts to achieve a workable
syncretism between the Greek classical philosophers and the more
mystical sides of the Judaism and Christianity.
This loosely structured work typifies the mindset of the
hungry thinkers of the fifteenth century. Mirandola's attention
is spread thin, from numerology to Orphean poetry. The reader's
awareness of this tendency is heightened when reading that
Mirandola's intention was to argue nine-hundred points (almost
one order of magnitude over Luther's later Ninety-Five Theses!).
Mirandola's work is praised in this edition for having clung
to the "fundamental Christian teachings" while exploring other
fields. On the contrary, Mirandola has taken a wide range of
interests and has imposed on them, neurotically, a then-modern
Christian facade. Mirandola seems to place Yahweh in Plato's
ideal realm, but shrinks from saying so directly. Rather than
making the point that all philosophies point to one transcendent
reality, he tells the audience that all philosophies, except
Christianity, point to the final philosophy which is enlightened
Christianity itself.
This concept misses the point that Christianity is just
another attempt to put some structure on the chaos that surrounds
the human experience. Admittedly, this tendency towards
Christian-directedness may have been difficult to overcome in the
fifteenth century. Europe was still restructuring itself after
the warring fourteenth century. Perhaps the only sense of
structure in the post-plague-and war-world was the Church, such
as it was. Perhaps this is why Mirandola holds on so tightly to
Christianity as a base.
Another possibility is that Mirandola's dabbling into
Numerology and Magic worried him (or his contemporaries). A man
found playing with spells or the Cabala might be in serious
trouble if he did not try to relate the practice to Christianity.
One disturbing outcome of this reliance on a Christian base,
however, is the worrisome realization that man may be perfectible
but only because of the assistance or allowance of God himself.
Mirandola (either out of pious belief, neurosis, or self-
preservation) credits all advances to God. In this way, he is
crediting his ability to think and philosophize to God. In a
roundabout fashion, then, God himself is responsible for
Mirandola's development and study. This absence of personal
(existential?) responsibility is the most disturbing of the
underlying currents in early Renaissance thought, if Mirandola is
to be held up as a typical thinker of the times. It is, of
course, unfair to fault Mirandola for not adhering to a self-
deterministic philosophy that would not be fully realized for
another four hundred years, but modern observers cannot
completely divorce themselves from their perspective at the late
end of the historical line. Given some of Mirandola's more
radical ideas this step should not have been beyond him.


http://www.mousetrap.net/~mouse/uta/

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

I'm afraid that I am unfamiliar with this person or his work.