Oration On the Dignity of Man - Pico Della Mirandola (1486)

Read by: Dan Attrell

This is a reading of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man, originally composed in Latin. I decided to make this recording widely available as it is an emblematic landmark of Renaissance literature and was meant to be heard rather than read. In many respects, it is as relevant today in 2019 as when it was assembled by the young Pico in 1486.

Text available here: http://web.mnstate.edu/gracyk/courses...

[From Wikipedia] The Oration on the Dignity of Man (De hominis dignitate) is a famous public discourse composed in 1486 by Pico della Mirandola, an Italian scholar and philosopher of the Renaissance. It remained unpublished until 1496...

Pico's Oration attempted to remap the human landscape to center all attention on human capacity and human perspective. Arriving in a place near Florence, he taught the amazing capacity of human achievement. Pico himself had a massive intellect and 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 della Mirandola intended to speak in front of an invited audience of scholars and clerics of the dignity of the liberal arts and about the glory of angels. Of these angels he spoke of three divisions in particular: the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. These are the highest three choirs in the angel hierarchy, each one embodying a different virtue. The Seraphim represent charity, and in order to obtain the status of Seraphim, Mirandola declares that one must "burn with love for the Creator". The Cherubim represent intelligence. This status is obtained through contemplation and meditation. Finally, Thrones represent justice, and this is obtained by being just in ruling over "inferior things". Of these three, the Thrones is the lowest, Cherubim the middle, and Seraphim the highest. In this speech, Mirandola emphasizes the Cherubim and that by embodying the values of the Cherub, one can be equally prepared for "the fire of the Seraphim and the judgement of the Thrones". This deviation into the hierarchy of angels makes sense when Pico della Mirandola makes his point that a philosopher "is a creature of Heaven and not of earth" because they are capable of obtaining any one of the statuses.

In the Oration, Pico justified the importance of the human quest for knowledge within a Neoplatonic framework. He writes that after God had created all creatures, He conceived of the desire for another sentient being who would appreciate all His works, but there was no longer any room in the chain of being; all the possible slots from angels to worms had been filled. So, God created man such that he had no specific slot in the chain. Instead, men were capable of learning from and imitating any existing creature. When man philosophizes, he ascends the chain of being towards the angels, and communion with God. When he fails to exercise his intellect, he vegetates. Pico did not fail to notice that this system made philosophers like himself among the most dignified human creatures.

The Oration also served as an introduction to Pico's 900 theses,which he believed to provide a complete and sufficient basis for the discovery of all knowledge, and hence a model for mankind's ascent of the chain of being. The 900 Theses are a good example of humanist syncretism, because Pico combined Platonism, Neoplatonism, Aristotelianism, Hermeticism and Kabbalah. They also included 72 theses describing what Pico believed to be a complete system of physics. Pico also argued in this oration that his youth should not discredit any of the content of his 900 theses (he was in his twenties).

Pico had "cosmic ambitions": in his letters and early texts, he hinted that debate of the 900 theses (the first printed book ever universally banned by the Church) might trigger Christ's Second Coming and the end of the world. Innocent VIII condemned the theses in general but declared the author to be free from censure.

Recommended Reading:
Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems (https://amzn.to/2WrTNyw)
Oration on the Dignity of Man: A New Translation and Commentary (https://amzn.to/2HZ7gd5)


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