Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

I, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, am philosopher from the renaissance period. I was born on February 24, 1963, to a noble family in Italy. I am indeed, very well known for “Oration on the Dignity of Man”, one of the most famous Renaissance texts I wrote, a text considered to epitomize Renaissance humanism. I am also the first Christian scholar to use Kabbalistic doctrine in support of Christian theology. My father, Giovanni Francesco Pico, prince of the small territory of Mirandola, provided for my thorough humanistic education at home. When I was 14 years old, I went to Bologna to study canon law. And soon, I also studied Aristotelian philosophy at Padua, he met his most important teachers, one of them, Elia del Medigo. In 1485 I visited Paris…

those superior to humans. Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, the author of, “The Dignity of Man”, suggests that God, who is all-powerful…

(1304-1374), Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, and Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) were a few of the most influential thinkers during that time. Petrarch also known as “Father of the Humanism” devoted his life to the recovery, copying, and editing of Latin manuscripts. He believed that the Middle Ages were only darkness and the new movement called Humanism needed to set itself apart. In the late fifteenth century, the Florentine writer Marsilio promoted the movement called “Neoplatonism”. Neo meaning…

is to Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man. Pico Della Mirandola’s definition of summum bonum is a cultivated mind and spirit that is unified with God. He asserts: he[sic] withdraws into the center of his own unity, his spirit made one with God, in the solitary darkness of God…shall surpass them all. Who would not admire this our chameleon? (396) In order to attain this oneness with God, Pico Della Mirandola suggests a balance between many forms of religions.…

One ideal shown was the idea that man is equal to God. In Act II Scene II Hamlet is talking to his friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and goes on to say “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!”(page 50, lines 319-321), Hamlet’s amazement with man coincides perfectly with Pico della Mirandola’s, and other Humanist thinkers, ideal that man is an…

Europe was greatly due to men with common convictions of human potential and achievement such as Ficino, Pico, and Alberti, while men such as Machiavelli contributed to humanism’s idea of freedom of expression with the acceptance of immoral and unlawful conduct. Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499),…

Human beings having an absolute free will to choose their moral and spiritual path were taught by Pico della Mirandola. I do not agree with what Pico della Mirandola had taught because human beings do not have absolute free will to choose their moral and spiritual path. Pico della Mirandola once said “therefore, every human being has absolute freedom to choose whatever place in the “great chain of being” he or she may choose.” By saying “great chain of being” Pico della Mirandola is using that…

Italy in the 1300s and 1500s. It developed in Italy then spread north. “Renaissance” meaning rebirth began a new way of thinking throughout Europe. Merchants and traders influenced the Renaissance by promoting art and education. Although Petrarch was the “father” of Humanism, Dante included characteristics of humanism in his works during the Middle Ages. Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy provides little hints of the Renaissance and humanistic views in Florence during the 1300s. Humanism was…

During the Renaissance, there was a rebirth in human dignity. Pico Della Mirandola (1463-1494) wrote the “Oration on the Dignity of Man”. Pico explained that humans are a miracle. He says a “…man’s place in the universe is somewhere between the beasts and the angels, but, because of the divine image planted in him, there are no limits to what man can accomplish…” (Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Pico Della Mirandola on the Dignity of Man). Pico emphasis humans being the center of the universe and…

Are human beings just a small world within a hierarchy, or are they individuals who were created to be great, intelligent, and one with God? A hierarchy is the process of classifying individuals and/or objects above and below each other, according to their superiority to one another. A continuum is a comparison of similar beings that are different by degree and compared based on their quantitative difference. The Great Chain of Being, which consists of having both a hierarchy and continuum,…