In the late 1300s, some Italian thinkers began to talk about a rebirth or "renaissance." They wrote in a disparaging manner of the "Middle" or "Dark Ages," depicting it as a period of barbarian ignorance from which they had just emerged. They saw themselves as awakening to their classical past and continuing the civilizing work of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Although there are few scholars today who would not modify this self-characterization, there does seem to have been something different about the late medieval/early modern period. Whereas the medievals had access to some classical texts, the Renaissance thinkers had a wide, and often contradictory, variety of ancient Greek and Roman works. Whereas the philosophers of the Middle Ages tended to use ancient materials to reinforce their Christian beliefs, the early modern thinkers found new uses for these ancient texts. But most important, whereas the Middle Ages tended to be vertically oriented, focusing on God and God's Kingdom, the early modern period became more and more horizontally oriented, examining the created world and celebrating its most important inhabitants, human beings.
The person who most typifies this use of ancient texts to express the importance and "dignity of man" is Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Pico was born in Mirandola, near Ferrara, northern Italy. The son of a minor Italian prince, his education included a variety of subjects and a diversity of institutions. In 1477, he went to the University of Bologna to study canon (church) law. After two years, he moved to study philosophy at the universities of Ferrara and Padua. Finally in 1482, he concluded his studies by examining Hebrew and Arabic thought while in Florence and Paris.
BASIC THOUGHT
Pico believed it was possible to reconcile the seeming contradictions among the various systems of thought he had studied. Drawing out what he considered the best in each thinker and system he encountered, he developed a philosophy known as "syncretism." Syncretism holds that all schools of philosophy have some truth and so should be examined and defended; but no system of thought has all the truth, and so one must also expose the errors in each scheme.
Applying his philosophy of syncretism, in 1486 Pico drew up a list of nine hundred true theses (or propositions), using various Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, and Roman thinkers who summarized his views. He invited scholars from all over Europe to come to Rome, where he would defend his positions against all challengers. However, the disputation never occurred. Pope Innocent VIII suspended the debate and appointed a commission to investigate the nine hundred theses. Seven of the propositions were subsequently declared unorthodox and six more held to be dangerous. Pico publicly protested the decision by publishing a defense of his positions. This succeeded only in infuriating the pope. The pope condemned all nine hundred propositions, reportedly commenting, "That young man wants someone to burn him." Pico fled to France but was arrested there by papal envoys. Through the intervention of friends in Italy, Pico was released by the French king. He spent the rest of his short life in Florence under the protection of the powerful Lorenzo de Medici.
The Oration on the Dignity of Man was intended as an introductory speech for the proposed debate in Rome. In it, Pico exhibits his syncretistic willingness to draw from many different sources. Quoting from a wide variety of writings, he argues that God has given all creatures besides humans a unique, fixed nature. They have a certain kind of being that they cannot change. But we as human beings do not have a given being--we alone have the freedom to choose what we will become. Even though we can choose to become animals or "couch potatoes" or angelic philosophers, it is the ability to choose that gives us dignity.
From Forrest Baird, Human Thought and Action (University Press of America, © 1992)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pico's life was chronicled by his nephew in the difficult-to-find Giovanni Francesco Pico, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: His Life by His Nephew Giovanni Francesco Pico, translated by Sir Thomas More, edited by J.M. Rigg (London: D. Nutt, 1890). For a general overview of Pico, see William G. Craven, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Symbol of His Age: Modern Interpretations of a Renaissance Philosopher (Geneve: Droz, 1981).
For collections of primary source readings in Renaissance philosophy, see Ernst Cassirer, Paul O. Kristeller, and John H. Randall, Jr., eds., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), and Arturo B. Fallico and Herman Shapiro, eds., Renaissance Philosophy, two vols. (New York: Random House, 1967-1969). For general studies of Renaissance thought, see Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, translated by Mario Domandi (New York: Harper & Row, 1963); Paul O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979); Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, and Eckhard Kessler, eds., The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); and Brian P. Copenhaver and Charles B. Schmitt, Renaissance Philosophy, Vol. 3 of History of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).
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