Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was born in Florence on February 2, 1463. He is considered one of the great thinkers of the Renaissance. For the humanism of philosophy, Pico della Mirandola was called "divine." Contemporaries saw in him a reflection of the high aspirations of spiritual culture, and close Pope pursued him for bold utterances. His works, like himself, were widely known throughout educated Europe. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola died at a young age (November 17, 1494). During his life, he became famous for his pleasant appearance, princely generosity, but most of all for the unusual variety of his knowledge, abilities and interests.
Pico della Mirandola: a brief biography
The Thinker was from a family of Earls and Seniors. She has been associated with many influential houses in Italy. At age 14, Pico della Mirandola became a student at the University of Bologna. Subsequently, he continued his studies in Ferrara, Padua, Pavia and Paris. In the process of training, he mastered theology, law, philosophy, ancient literature. In addition to Latin and Greek, he was interested in Chaldean, Jewish, Arabic. In his youth, the thinker sought to know all the most important and intimate from the various peoples accumulated at spiritual times at different times.
First works
Early enough, Pico became close to such people as the Medici, Poliziano, Ficino and a number of other participants in the Platonov Academy. In 1468, he composed the Canzon's Commentary on Benivieni's Love, as well as 900 Theses in Mathematics, Physics, Morality and Dialectics for Public Discussions. The thinker intended to defend his work at a dispute in Rome in the presence of famous Italian and European scholars. The event was to be held in 1487. The dispute was supposed to be a treatise prepared by Pico della Mirandola - "The Speech on the dignity of man."
Dispute in Rome
The work, written by Pico della Mirandola on the dignity of man, in short, was devoted to two main points. First of all, in his work, the thinker spoke about the special situation of people in the universe. The second thesis concerned the internal initial unity of all the provisions of an individual’s thought. The 23-year-old Pico della Mirandola, in short, somewhat embarrassed Pope Innocent VIII. Firstly, the young age of the thinker caused an ambiguous reaction. Secondly, embarrassment arose due to bold enough reasoning, unusual and new words used by Pico della Mirandola. “The Speech on the Dignity of Man” expressed the author’s thoughts about magic, bondage, free will, and other items doubtful for that era. Following his reaction, the Pope appointed a special commission. She was supposed to check out the Theses that Pico della Mirandola submitted. The Commission condemned a number of points put forward by the thinker.
The pursuit
In 1487, Pico composed Apologia. This work was created in a hurry, which led to the condemnation of "Theses". Under the threat of persecution by the Inquisition, the thinker was forced to flee to France. However, there he was seized and imprisoned in the Vincennes castle. Pico was saved thanks to the intercession of high patrons, among whom Lorenzo Medici played a special role. In fact, he was the ruler of Florence at the time where the thinker freed from imprisonment spent the rest of his days.
Work after the persecution
In 1489, Pico della Mirandola completed and published the Heptaplus (about seven approaches to explaining the six days of creation). In this work, the thinker applied subtle hermeneutics. He studied the innermost meaning concealed in the book of Genesis. In 1492, Pico della Mirandola created a small work "On the One and the One." This was a separate part of the program work, which was aimed at harmonizing the theories of Plato and Aristotle, but was never realized to the end. Another work of Pico did not see the light - the "Poetic Theology" promised by him. His last work was "Discourse on divinatory astrology." In this work, he opposed its provisions.
Pico della Mirandola: basic ideas
The Thinker considered various doctrines as aspects of a single Truth. He supported the development of a general philosophical and religious contemplation of the world, begun by Ficino. However, the thinker transferred interest from the field of religious history to the sphere of metaphysics. Pico tried to synthesize Christianity, Kabbalah and Averroism. He prepared and sent to Rome his findings, which contained 900 theses. They concerned everything that is "knowable." Some of them were borrowed, some were his own. However, they were recognized as heretical, and the dispute in Rome did not take place. The work that Pico della Mirandola created about the dignity of man made him famous in wide circles of his contemporaries. It was intended as a preamble to the discussion. On the one hand, the thinker integrated the key concepts of Neoplatonism, and on the other, he proposed theses that went beyond the idealistic (Platonic) tradition. They were close to personalism and voluntarism.
The essence of theses
Man for Pico was a special world in the universe created by God. The individual was put by the thinker at the center of everything that exists. Man is "mid-mobile, " he can descend to the animal level and even to plants. However, at the same time, a person is able to ascend to God and the angels, remaining to himself identical - not one. According to Pico, this is possible because the individual is a creature of an indefinite image, in which the Father embeds "the embryos of all creatures." The concept is interpreted on the basis of the intuition of the Absolute. It was characteristic of the late Middle Ages. The thinker's concept reflects a very radical element of the “Copernican revolution” of religious and moral consciousness in the Western Christian world. Not salvation, but creativity is the meaning of life - that is how Pico della Mirandola believed. Philosophy formulates a religious-ontological explanation of the entire existing ideological and mythological complex of spiritual culture.
Own "I"
Its formation explains anthropocentrism. Pico della Mirandola justifies the freedom and dignity of the individual as the sovereign creator of his own "I". An individual, absorbing everything, can become anything. Man is always the result of his efforts. While maintaining the possibility of a new choice, it will never be exhausted by any form of its own being in the world. Pico, therefore, claims that man is not created by God in his likeness. But the Almighty provided the individual to independently create his own "I". Due to its central position, he possesses the intimacy and influence of everything else created by God. Having adopted the most important properties of these creations, a man, acting as a free master, has fully formed his essence. So he rose above the rest.
Wisdom
According to Pico, she is not associated with any restrictions. Wisdom flows freely from one teaching to another, choosing for itself a form that meets the circumstances. Different schools, thinkers, traditions, previously mutually exclusive and opposed, in Pico become interconnected and mutually dependent. They show a deep kinship. At the same time, the entire universe is created on correspondences (hidden or explicit).
Kabbalah
Interest in it during the Renaissance increased precisely thanks to Pico. The young thinker was interested in learning the Jewish language. On the basis of Kabbalah, his Theses were created. Pico was friends and studied with a number of Jewish scholars. He began the study of Kabbalah in two languages. The first was Jewish, and the second - Latin (translated as a Jew who converted to Christianity). In the era of Pico, there were no special differences between magic and Kabbalah. The thinker used these terms often as synonyms. Pico stated that the theory of Christianity is best demonstrated through Kabbalah and magic. The scriptures with which the scientist was familiar, he attributed to the ancient esotericism preserved by the Jews. At the center of knowledge was the idea of Christianity, which could be understood by studying Kabbalah. Pico used post-biblical writings, including the Midrash, Talmud, the works of rational philosophers and Jews who interpreted the Bible.
Teaching of Christian Kabbalists
For them, the discovery of the various names of God and creatures that lived in heaven was a discovery. Transmutations of the Jewish alphabet, numerological methods have become a key element of knowledge. Having studied the concept of the divine language, adherents of the doctrine believed that with the correct pronunciation of the names of the Almighty, one can influence reality. This fact led to the belief of the Renaissance school that magic acts as the greatest force in the universe. As a result, everything that was commonplace in Judaism became key in the worldview of adherents of Christian Kabbalah. This, in turn, was combined with another theory derived by humanists from Jewish sources.
Hermetic concept
She was also interpreted as Christian. At the same time, Ficino's hermeticism had a strong influence on Pico. This concept explained salvation by collecting particles of light presented as truth. Along with this, cognition developed as a memory. Hermeticism indicated 8 circles (arcana) of ascent. Based on the Gnostic and mythological interpretations of human origin, the concept describes the individual divine abilities of the individual. They contribute to the autonomous implementation of the actions of memory-resurrection. At the same time, Hermeticism itself changed somewhat under the influence of Christianity. In the concept, salvation through individual knowledge was replaced by the idea of the finiteness, sinfulness of the individual, the good news of the atonement, repentance, and mercy of God.
Heptaplus
In this essay, the thinker used Kabbalistic tools to interpret words. The work speaks of the agreement of the human principle, fire and mind. It is about three parts of the big and small world - macrocosm and microcosm. The first consists of a divine or angelic mind, a source of wisdom, from the sun, symbolizing love, and also from heaven, which acts as the beginning of life and movement. Human activity is likewise determined by the mind, genitals, heart, which give love, intelligence, the continuation of life and kind. Pico does not just use Kabbalistic instruments to confirm Christian truths. It includes the latter in the ratio of macro- and microcosm, which is explained by the Renaissance method.
Harmony
Of course, Kabbalah greatly influenced the formation of the Renaissance concept of macro- and microcosm. This was reflected not only in the writings of Pico della Mirandola. Subsequently, the influence of Kabbalah is also noted in the works of Agrippa of Nostesheim and Paracelsus. The harmony of the big and small worlds is possible only as an active interaction of man and God. When comprehending the interpreted ideas of consent within the framework of the Kabbalistic concept, one should pay attention to the fact that for the Renaissance, man acted as the subject of knowledge as a microcosm. It was a harmony of all the insides and parts of the body: blood, brain, limbs, abdomen and so on. In the medieval theocentric tradition, there was no sufficiently substantial adequate conceptual apparatus to comprehend such a living, bodily agreement of a different and uniform.
