This article examines Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s detailed reaction against the condemnation of some of his famous Theses by a papal commission, through a careful reading of his Apology of 1487. This text, which was never studied in detail and still waits for a critical edition, reflects Pico’s remarkable familiarity with the scholastic thinkers up to his own times. As part of his self-defense, Pico deals with the relation between opinions and faith, probable knowledge and certain truth, philosophy and theology, (...) thus developing a method for examining theological opinions. To some extent, this method was based on the classical notions of probabile and veri simile, coming from the ancient Academic skeptics, which Pico knew from Cicero and Augustine. This, I argue, was part of Pico’s humanist theology, his solution for the authority crisis of his time and for what he regarded as an unsolved tension in scholastic philosophy between human opinions and the revealed truth of faith. (shrink)

Pico della Mirandola, one of the most remarkable thinkers of the Renaissance, has become known as a founder of humanism and a supporter of secular rationality. Brian Copenhaver upends this understanding of Pico, unearthing the magic and mysticism in the most famous work attributed to him, The Oration on the Dignity of Man.

The story of the beliefs and practices called 'magic' starts in ancient Iran, Greece, and Rome, before entering its crucial Christian phase in the Middle Ages. Centering on the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino - whose work on magic was the most influential account written in premodern times - this groundbreaking book treats magic as a classical tradition with foundations that were distinctly philosophical. Besides Ficino, the premodern story of magic also features Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Aquinas, Agrippa, Pomponazzi, Porta, Bruno, Campanella, (...) Descartes, Boyle, Leibniz, and Newton, to name only a few of the prominent thinkers discussed in this book. Because pictures play a key role in the story of magic, this book is richly illustrated. (shrink)

This volume provides a comprehensive presentation of the philosophical work of the fifteenth-century Renaissance thinker Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. In essays specially commissioned for this book, a distinguished group of scholars presents the central topics and texts of Pico's literary output. Best known as the author of the celebrated 'Oration on the Dignity of Man', Pico also wrote several other prominent works. They include an influential diatribe against astrology, an ambitious metaphysical treatise attempting to reconcile Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysical views, (...) and writings on a range of subjects such as magic, Kabbalah, the Church, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of knowledge. The first volume of its kind in English, this collection of essays will be of value not only to advanced students and specialists of late medieval and Renaissance thought, but also to those interested in Italian humanism and Renaissance Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism. (shrink)