Thought

From Pico’s epistolary corpus, the June 3, 1485 missive to the Venetian humanist Hermolao Barbaro stands out for its fame as well as its philosophical content. In this piece, which he later titled On the Mode of Discourse Appropriate for Philosophers (De genere dicendi philosophorum), Pico revived the ancient debate on the relation of philosophy and the discipline of rhetoric. Pico champions the superiority of scholastic Latinity over its classical counterpart, yet does so while employing a wide range of rhetorical techniques. The apparent contrast between the style and substance of the letter has puzzled generations of interpreters. A reply to Pico, until recently attributed to Philip Melanchthon, continued the ancient debate among later literary figures. Pico’s first philosophical work of substantive length, however, is his Commentary on a Canzone of Love of Girolamo Benivieni (Commento sopra una canzone d’amore di Girolamo Benivieni) of 1486. Using the pretext of a commentary, Pico explores issues in Neoplatonic metaphysics, and in some passages implicitly critiques the views of Marsilio Ficino.

Without doubt, Pico’s best-known work is the Oratio de dignitate hominis. The Oratio was never published in Pico’s lifetime, though in a preface, Gianfrancesco implied the work’s early circulation in manuscript form when he first published it in the 1496 Opera omnia. In the first part of the Oratio, Pico famously sets forth the view that human beings have no nature or form, and by choice humans are free to become the higher and lower natures in the hierarchy of being, where ultimate unity with God is championed as the highest option. The work can be read as a philosophical exploration of the traditional doctrine of human deification found in the Neoplatonic and Christian traditions. Pico employs the literary device of a conversation between God and the first man to expound his view, and he implies that moral choices determine an individual’s acquired form or nature. In addition to these remarks on the human condition, the Oratio also defends other views. The middle portion of the work can be read as either a protreptic or an apology for the discipline of philosophy, and the latter part of the work examines Pico’s proposal for a public debate.

Pico’s remarks on the human condition in the Oratio have been subject to a wide variety of interpretations. While the claim that human beings lack a nature or form may appear to some to anticipate elements of twentieth-century existentialist philosophy, some commentators have questioned whether a myth presented in the context of an oration can be a source for metaphysical views. At least, the style of the Oratio is far removed from the traditional genres of philosophical writing, even though Pico uses traditional scholastic terminology. Nevertheless, the Oratio is arguably the most famous philosophical text of the Renaissance period. In presenting the view that human beings lack a fixed nature, Pico is perhaps anticipated by some Patristic and medieval texts. The views of Origen and Boethius may have been direct influences on him in this view, and judging from the extant lists of the contents of his library and the references he gives to their works throughout his writings, Pico was familiar with the writings of both thinkers.

The Oratio was intended merely to serve as the opening preface to Pico’s planned disputation of his 900 Theses (Conclusiones DCCCC), which he published in Rome in 1486. The 900 Theses consisted of a collection of authoritative views garnered from well-known as well as obscure authorities from philosophy, theology, and other disciplines. Pico’s collection of theses for the Roman debate was not his first attempt to compile authoritative opinions; in the Vita, Gianfrancesco reported that as a young student of canon law, Pico anthologized a digest of decretals. At the end of the published 900 Theses, Pico appended an advertisement offering to pay the traveling expenses of any philosopher or theologian willing to join him for the disputation. Pico envisioned that the Pope would preside over the event with the College of Cardinals in attendance. The public event, however, never occurred; Pope Innocent VIII convened a group of theologians to investigate the orthodoxy of the theses. Of the 900, 13 theses were identified as either being outright heretical or exhibiting a propensity to heresy.

Pico’s response to the condemnation was a quickly penned defense called the Apology (Apologia) published the following year. In it, Pico criticized the commission’s findings severely and defended the orthodoxy of his suspect theses. He argued that his theses were set forth as proposals to be disputed, and should not be approached in the way one approaches ordinary academic writing. Pico’s Apology exhibited no contrition, and spectacularly failed to secure exoneration. Pico fled Rome to France, only to return safely to Italy with the protection and favor of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Pico’s next major work, Heptaplus, On the Sevenfold Exposition of the Six Days of Genesis (Heptaplus de septiformi sex dierum Geneseos enarratione), dates from 1489. In this biblical commentary on the early part of Genesis, Pico explicitly rejected the traditional fourfold medieval modes of exegesis that examined biblical texts in terms of the literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical senses. Instead, Pico approached Genesis as an esoteric work containing latent philosophical doctrines. Pico argued that Moses was a philosopher of the first order who placed philosophical truths under guise of images and figures in the work. The Heptaplus presupposes a complex hermeneutical theory that seeks to unpack a latent Neoplatonic emanationist metaphysical scheme from the beginning of the Hebrew scriptures.

Another metaphysical treatise, the short On Being and the One (De ente et uno), was completed by Pico in the early 1490s but not published in his lifetime. It was intended to be part of a larger planned work reconciling the metaphysical principles of Plato and Aristotle. In this treatise, Pico contends that Plato and Aristotle were not in disagreement on the relationship of being and unity, and Pico examines texts from Plato’s Parmenides and Sophist and Aristotle’s Metaphysics in his attempt to bring the two philosophers together. In attempting such a reconciliation, Pico places himself in an ancient tradition whose exponents sought a harmony between Platonism and Aristotelianism.

Pico’s longest work is his posthumously published diatribe against astrology, the Disputations against Divinatory Astrology (Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem). In 12 books, Pico engaged in a multipronged polemic against adherents of astrology. Pico was careful to distinguish between natural causes and occult ones, and he condemned the latter. He separated human causes from celestial ones, and ridiculed the presuppositions of ancient and contemporary astrological views. Finally, in the last book of the work, Pico presented a striking history of astrological theory and practice. Numbered among Pico’s works are also short religious opuscula including an unfinished commentary on the Psalms.

The works of 1486-1487 as well as the later De ente et uno exhibit Pico’s commitment to finding concordia or harmony among seemingly opposed philosophical views. For this reason, he has been regarded by some historians as a syncretist. While the designation of syncretism is in many ways a fitting characterization of his thought from the period, it should be noted that Pico did not espouse the view that all philosophers were defending the same position using different terms and expressions; Pico privileges the claims of Christianity and sought external confirmations of them. Similarly, he finds in ancient poetry veiled references to Neoplatonic metaphysics, and the writings of Kabbalah are used to confirm some tenets of Christianity. The hermeneutical tools used by Pico in his project of concordia involve allegorical and figurative readings of ancient texts. Insofar as Pico is willing to apply his interpretive techniques to classical poetry, again in search of finding confirmation of metaphysical and theological tenets, he can be rightly viewed as a sophisticated Renaissance exponent of prisca theologia.

See also: > Aristotelianism in the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew Traditions > Astronomy and Astrology in the Arab World > Metaphysics > Platonism, Renaissance