Ziel dieser kleinen, 1492 abgefaßten und für das Verständnis der Renaissancephilosophie bedeutsamen Schrift ist der Nachweis der Vereinbarkeit der Grundlehren der platonischen und der aristotelischen Metaphysik, also die Herbeiführung der Entscheidung in einer zwischen den Neuplatonikern seiner Zeit und den Peripatetikern ausgetragenen Kontroverse, mit denen Pico in engem Kontakt stand. Der Traktat basiert auf der späteren kritischen Auseinandersetzung Picos mit seinem ehemaligen Lehrer Ficino und einer 1490 geführten, sehr intensiven Diskussion mit den beiden anderen.

Despite our admiration for Renaissance achievement in the arts and sciences, in literature and classical learning, the rich and diversified philosophical thought of the period remains largely unknown. This volume illuminates three major currents of thought dominant in the earlier Italian Renaissance: classical humanism, Platonism, and Aristotelianism. A short and elegant work of the Spaniard Vives is included to exhibit the diffusion of the ideas of humanism and Platonism outside Italy. Now made easily accessible, these texts recover for the English (...) reader a significant facet of Renaissance learning. (shrink)

The famous controversy between Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is known to regard the proper use of Platonism in humanist and Christian context. With special attention to Pico’s Commentary on a Canzone, the point of disagreement with Ficino, which is not at all obvious, is examined through a close reading. The result is that Pico sees the temptation of a pantheistic and anthropocentric understanding of the relationship between the human realm and God. Whereas Ficino engaged (...) in making pagan philosophy amenable to Christian theology, Pico was concerned with upholding the otherness of the divine. For the humanist agenda, Ficino made plausible that the human world is divinized, while Pico called for the ascent to God. In Pico’s view the Neoplatonists secularized the divine, as was evident in Ficino’s philosophical theology. (shrink)

En el presente artículo nos enfocare-mos en desarrollar las concepciones antropológicas de dos autores renacen-tistas: Marsilio Ficino y Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. En este sentido, nuestro recorrido parte de las lectu-ras propias de diversas obras de ambos autores, pero prestando especial interés en De vita libri tres de Ficino y en Oratio de hominis dignitate de Pico. En ellas nuestros autores destacan la importancia de una concep-ción antropológica regida por los ideales humanistas del Renacimiento y cómo éstas son (...) atravesadas por di-versas categorías paganas en general y herméticas en particular. Así pues, nuestro trabajo tendrá dos objetivos principales, por un lado desarrollar las concepciones antropológicas de ambos autores expuestas en las obras antes mencionadas; y por otro, demostrar cómo aun partiendo de las mismas categorías de análisis –copula mundi and magnum miraculum–, nuestros autores pueden arribar a concepciones del hombre disímiles entre sí; a saber, el hombre como microcosmos en la filosofía ficiniana y el hombre en tanto indeterminación en el pensamiento piquiano. (shrink)

The notion of human dignity stands at the core of contemporary debates on rights, politics, and ethics. Many scholars consider the Renaissance discourse on dignity as one of its main contributions to the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. This article examines the role of human dignity in the philosophies of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. In their works human dignity relates both to freedom and to a Neo-Platonic ontology, which raises the question of how they (...) reconcile these two possibly contradictory elements. I show that starting from the insight that human beings are “naturally” free and able to make right choices, Ficino and Pico argue that human dignity consists in the ability of humans to understand what is good and to act accordingly. I thus defend the thesis that their conception of human dignity is not modern because it liberates human beings from the “history of being” but rather because it paves the way for their liberation to become rational beings. (shrink)

In the early twenty-first century, we often ask whether there is life (intelligent or otherwise) in the cosmos, but almost never whether the heavens themselves are actually alive or animated, that is, infused somehow with a soul, the anima mundi, or some such entity. This was not the case in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, or the early modern period. Although Aristotelians normally answered no to this question, Marsilio Ficino (1433–99) took a decidedly Platonic turn when he answered the question (...) positively, insistently, and consistently in a broad range of works over his entire philosophical career. By contrast, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94), Ficino’s younger contemporary, began by embracing the new Platonic position but joined the Aristotelian fold in his later works. In this essay, I will briefly compare and contrast Ficino’s solid and consistent position with the changing trajectory of Pico’s views over the course of his short but intense career. This essay is an exploration of central themes and some preliminary reflections thereon. These essentially Platonic views of a living universe provide the conceptual and literary foundations for understanding this issue in the early modern period. (shrink)

Fifteen of these essays by one of the leading authorities on Renaissance Platonism explore the complex philosophical, hermeneutical, and mythological issues addressed by the Florentine, Marsilio Ficino (1433-99). Ficino was the pre-eminent Platonist of his time and a distinguished philosopher, scholar and magus who had an enormous influence on the intellectual and cultural life of two and a half centuries, and who is one of the most important witnesses to the preoccupations of his age, above all to its fascination with (...) ancient poetry and philosophy and their uneasy accommodation as an ancient "theology" with Christianity. Two further essays treat of cognate themes taken up by Ficino's younger friend and rival, the dazzling prince of Concordia, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-94), who was fascinated by Platonism in his youth but also by other philosophical legacies from the past, including Cabala and the Scholastic Aristotelianism of the Middle Ages. This volume's initial essay serves as an introduction to the comprehensive phenomenon of Renaissance Platonism. (shrink)

The Oration on the Dignity of Man makes a claim, characteristic for the Renaissance, that the dignity of man, the real “excellency of human nature,” is not present in any specific human quality or ability. Neither is it present in the role of the human soul as the “tie of the world”, as Marsilio Ficino has taught. Even higher than this eminent human role in the world is the freedom of man to choose his role and task himself. At the (...) same time, Pico believes that Man was created as the image of God, in the sense that no man is determined in advance: human free will reflects God’s free will in creation. From the point of view of the mainstream modern dualism, this is a paradox, even a contradiction. This paper argues the opposite: that the human free will is even nowadays, not less than in the Renaissance period, compatible with the belief in God. However, this is only the case if God does not command anything, if God does not demand anything – except love. Violence and killing are eo ipso prohibited, especially in the name of faith. Therefore, freedom and faith are perfectly compatible. Even more, modern humans are fatally unfree either in the secular “radicalization” of faith or in the atheistic secularization of the world. Unfree due to their existence, enslaved by the Angst of “mere nothing.”. (shrink)

Tommaso Giannini was a prominent professor at the ferrarese Studium between sixteenth and seventeenth century. Probably influenced by Platonic sympathies nurtured by the Court and partly by the University milieu, in 1587 he published his first work titled De providentia ad sententiam Platonis et Platonicorum liber unus, which was a catalyst for his academic career. A compilative work in essence, the De providentia displays a large amount of sources always tacitly used: Marsilio Ficino, Jacques Charpentier, Giulio Serina, Stefano Tiepolo, Teofilo (...) Zimara, Bessarion, Agostino Steuco and amid the ancients Plotinus, Plutarcus, Sirianus, Proclus, Giamblicus, Apuleius, Calcidius, Ammonius, Psellus. A small place is reserved to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and precisely to his Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem. The aim of the paper is to provide a supplement of analysis of Giannini’s interest in Pico’s works considering his later writings, each one commonly identified as Disputationes Aristotelicae. (shrink)

The person most often credited as the first to free humanity from its bonds in the chain of being was the Renaissance humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Scholars have asserted that Pico's chain-of-being doctrine was either inspired or predated by earlier European thinkers, namely Marsilio Ficino, Nicholas of Cusa, Allan of Lille, and John Scotus Eriugena. By analyzing the works of the previously listed philosophers, this article argues that Pico's philosophical doctrine was in fact predated by no (...) European writer. Instead, as the analysis of his works will show, the Muslim mystic al-Ghazali was the first to elucidate the ideas that are presently attributed to Pico. Furthermore, after researching Pico's library and scholarly development, the possibility that Pico was inspired by al-Ghazali's writings is assessed. It may be the case that a large part of the philosophical underpinning of Renaissance Humanism has its origins in eleventh-twelfth century Muslim thought. (shrink)

Paul Richard Blum Et nuper Plethon – Ficino's Praise of Georgios Gemistos ABSTRACT Most authors who refer to Marsilio Ficino's famous Prooemium to his translation of Plotinus, addressed to Lorenzo de'Medici, discuss the alleged foundation of the Platonic Academy in Florence, but rarely continue reading down the same page, where – for a second time – Georgios Gemistos Plethon is mentioned. The passage contains more than one surprising claim: 1. Pletho is a reliable interpreter of Aristotle. 2. Pletho and (...) class='Hi'>Pico are the most recent Aristotelians, more precisely, they are the latest candle bearers of true Aristotelian tradition. 3. Pletho, alongside with the other authors mentioned, is religiously orthodox. In this paper I show that these statements are contrafactual, and discuss the reasons for Ficino's attempt at making Plethon and Pico his allies. Ficino suggests that Pico and Pletho are representatives of such "philosophic religion" that eventually might convert the Aristotelians to the same piety that unites Pico, Plethon, and the Platonizing interpreters of Aristotle. Pletho's agenda was to restore ancient pagan wisdom in order not to supplant Christianity. Ficino's device to counter corrupt Aristetelianism is to create a counter-tradition, that parallels Platonism, namely the pious reading of Aristotle. He employed the figure of young Pico as having urged him to translate Plotinus. Pico serves as a step stone between the Council of Florence, when in 1439 Cosimo encountered Pletho, and the new translation of Plotinus. The divine inspiration, instilled by Pletho and forwarded from Cosimo via Pico to Ficino christianizes the project, which would sound dubitable, if related only to Pletho. Thus Pico was to help saving Ficino's reputation as a religious philosopher. For this purpose, Ficino had to parallel Pletho with the unsuspected Pico, to the effect that Pletho becomes so to say christened. (shrink)

Although in his later years Giovanni Pico della Mirandola vehemently rejected astrology, he earlier used it in a variety of ways, but primarily to provide further evidence for positions to which he had arrived by other means. One such early use appears in his commentary on his friend Girolamo Benivieni’s love poetry, the Canzone d’amore, of 1486–1487. In the passages discussed here, Pico presents an intensive Platonic natural philosophical analysis based on a deep astrologically informed understanding of human (...) nature as he attempts to explain a perennial question, namely, why one person is attracted to a certain person , and another to others. I will place this discussion of the mysteries of attraction and desire in historical perspective by tracing Pico’s changing relationship to astrology during the course of his short but passionate life, and in historiographic perspective by revising Frances Yates’s still influential views concerning Pico’s contribution to Renaissance thought and his relationship with Marsilio Ficino. (shrink)

Die Geschichte dieses Buches spiegelt eindrucksvoll den Lebensweg eines heute beruhmten Emigranten der dreissiger Jahre, des Renaissance-Forscher und Philosophen Paul Oskar Kristeller. Unter dem Einfluss Martin Heideggers 1931 in Freiburg i.Br. begonnen und nach der Auswanderung nach Italien dort 1937 beendet, wurde von dem deutschen Manuskript 1938 eine italienische Fassung hergestellt. In den USA, wohin Kristeller 1939 emigrierte, wurde das Manuskript ins Englische ubersetzt und 1943 von der Columbia University Press in New York gedruckt - Ernst Cassirer wies damals in (...) einer ausfuhrlichen Besprechung auf die Bedeutung des Buches hin. Die italienische Fassung erschien erst nach dem Krieg 1953 in Florenz, und wiederum erst fast zwanzig Jahre spater konnte die ursprungliche deutsche Fassung des Buches bei Vittorio Klostermann erscheinen. Das Buch gilt heute als die klassische Darstellung der Philosophie des Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), der zusammen mit Cusanus, Pico und anderen den Platonismus der Renaissance begrundete. Diesen Rang behalt das Buch unbestritten auch unter der in der Zwischenzeit erschienenen neueren Literatur uber Ficino. (shrink)

Among the main themes introduced by the Ficinian renovatio platonica, love and beauty are certainly ones of the most outstanding and philosophically relevant for the metaphysical, cosmological and anthropological doctrines they convey. Pupil and recognised successor of Marsilio Ficino, Francesco Cattani da Diacceto is the author of an organic and complex philosophy of love and his contribution is extremely significant amid De amore Renaissance treatises. Cattani’s attitude is twofold and ambiguous: he heavily depends on Pico and on his Commento (...) sopra una canzona de amore, however, he also shows his disapproval to Pico’s positions by quoting and commenting negatively large portions of his texts − always keeping the lid on Pico’s name. In addition to doctrinal dissent there seems to be a certain resentment: maybe it is the attempt to throw Pico’s figure and cultural legacy into the shade and to display himself as the only and worthy successor of Ficino; certainly it is the will to defend his master from Pico’s harsh criticism, a defence that became more compelling with the publication of the Commento in 1519, which probably inspired Cattani’s last and unfinished work, the In Platonis Symposium enarratio. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetiva, ao revisitar a obra Oratio de hominis dignitate composta pelo humanista renascentista Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, um duplo intento: sustentar que as noções de dignidade e liberdade, presentes nessa obra, se distanciam do pensamento cristão tradicional, de modo crítico, justamente porque derivam de uma leitura filosófica da teologia cristã da criação; e mostrar que a conclusão a respeito da noção de liberdade apresentada por Sartre no pensamento contemporâneo pode ser encontrada de modo germinal, guardada as (...) devidas proporções, na leitura piquiana da criação. Para tanto, exporemos uma breve retomada do contexto histórico-filosófico que permitiu ao filósofo engendrar a Oratio bem como suas pretensões para com essa obra; falaremos, em um segundo momento, como o platonismo religioso de Marsílio Ficino, principal matriz teórica a partir do qual os conceitos de dignidade e de liberdade foram modulados, foi recebido e desenvolvido no pensamento de Pico; e como as influências e as rupturas com pensamento de Ficino e a leitura filosófica da teologia cristã da criação são importantes para recolocar os conceitos de dignidade e de liberdade, permitindo assim entrever, por meio deles, semelhanças com o pensamento satreano. (shrink)

An ardent treatise for the Dignity of Man, which elevates Humanism to a truly Christian level, making this writing as pertinent today as it was in the Fifteenth Century.

Reflecting the broad range of interests of a major Renaissance philosopher and his distinctive brand of syncretism, this anthology offers in their entirety three central works of Pico's. _On the Dignity of Man,_ the quintessential expression of Renaissance humanism, appears in the context of two lesser known but equally representative mature works: _On Being and the One_, a treatise defending what Pico held to be the agreement between Aristotle and Plato on the relation between unity and being, and (...) _Heptaplus_, an interpretation, influenced by a blend of cabalism and Christian doctrine, of the first verses of Genesis. New Selected Bibliography. (shrink)

t. 1. Scripta in editione Basilensi anno MDLXXII collecta.-- t. 2. Rime, Carmina, Commentaria in psalmos, Epistolae; Appendix; I. Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica.

El artículo aborda la responsabilidad médica penal por omisión en situaciones de emergencia de salud, debido a las dudas que aún existen sobre el accionar médico en estas circunstancias y las posibles consecuencias jurídicas por negligencia, impericia e imprudencia. La responsabilidad médica incluye la obligación moral de responder de los propios actos y reparar o indemnizar las consecuencias perjudiciales para terceros. Se identifican las falencias en las normativas ecuatorianas con relación al actuar médico en situaciones de emergencia de salud y (...) se busca aportar a la academia con publicaciones de conocimiento. Se analizan los elementos normativos y fácticos de la responsabilidad médica penal por omisión en situaciones de emergencia de salud en la República de Ecuador, y se busca identificar el marco normativo en la legislación ecuatoriana para superar la inadecuada actuación médica en estas situaciones. El conocimiento de la normativa legal contribuye a superar la responsabilidad médica penal por omisión en situaciones de emergencia en el Ecuador y se menciona y se analiza el art.146 del COIP que es la normativa vigente. El artículo concluye que el objetivo no es criminalizar la práctica médica, ya que no toda muerte es homicidio y no todo proceso judicial implica el encarcelamiento de los involucrados. (shrink)

To początkowy fragment mowy O godności człowieka Pico della Mirandoli." Wstępem poprzedział Danilo Facca, przełożyli Zbigniew Nerczuk i Mikołaj Olszewski. -/- This is an excerpt from the Polish translation of Pico della Mirandola's De dignitate hominis. The preface to the translation by Danilo Facca. Translation by Zbigniew Nerczuk and Mikołaj Olszewski.

Nerve processes elongate, branch and form synaptic contacts in a highly regulated and specific manner. Long‐distance axon elongation is restricted to the main phase of axon formation during development, but can be reinduced upon lesions in the adult (regeneration). It correlates with the expression of defined genes, including proteins involved in signalling (e.g. src, NCAM, integrins), transcription factors (e.g. c‐jun) and structural proteins (e.g. actin and tubulin isoforms). Activation of an axon elongation program may require bcl‐2. The formation and growth (...) of local branches (sprouting) is controlled by mechanisms in the target region. In addition, the expression of growth‐associated proteins such as GAP‐43 and CAP‐23 in neurons lowers the threshold for nerve sprouting and potentiates its vigour. Recent studies suggest that nerve sprouting and long‐distance elongation depend on the expression of different intrinsic components in neurons. One implication of these findings is that the differential expression of genes facilitating local branching may affect structural plasticity in the intact adult nervous system. (shrink)

In this study, we explore the relation between scientific literacy and unwarranted beliefs. The results show heterogeneous interactions between six constructs: conspiracy theories poorly interact with scientific literacy; there are major differences between attitudinal and practical dimensions of critical thinking; paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs show similar associations ; and, only scientific knowledge interacts with other predictor of unwarranted beliefs, such as ontological confusions. These results reveal a limited impact: science educators must take into account the complex interactions between the dimensions (...) of scientific literacy and different types of unwarranted beliefs to improve pedagogical strategies. (shrink)

The problems which troubled people's minds during the Italian Renaissance were much the same as today. In trying to cope with them, many deep thinking people turned to Marsilio Ficino for help. Through his letters he advised, encouraged, and occasionally reproved them. Fearlessly he expressed the truth and his wisdom influenced many of the finest Western minds. He numbered statesmen, popes, artists, scientists, and philosophers amongst his circle.