Sources of P. D. Mirandolla’s “Oration on the Dignity of Man”

Subject: Philosophy
Pages: 2
Words: 331
Reading time:
2 min

Pico Della Mirandola’s “Oration on the Dignity of Man” is considered a manifesto of the Italian renaissance. This manuscript more forcefully, expressively, or clinically draws human nature. Pico Della Mirandola is one of the well-known renaissance philosophers and is also recognized as a Neo-Platonist and a humanist. “His work synthesizes all the strains of Renaissance and late medieval thinking: Neo-Platonism, Humanism, Aristoteleanism, Averroism (a form of Aristoteleanism), and mysticism.”

Pico evaluated lots of philosophical theories from great philosophers and they are executed in his masterpiece work ‘Oration on the Dignity of Man.’ His manuscript reviews the major philosophical problems in western culture and Christianity. This philosophical problem is very old and it occurred in western philosophy in Greece. Christians believe that the universe was created by God. But the philosophical point of view totally opposes the belief of Christians. Pico was chiefly inspired by Plato, Marsilio Ficino and Aristotle.

To understand the universe and human nature, Pico attracted the philosophy of Plato and he could get the real answer from Neo-Platonism. Conversely, the Neo-Platonists’ position was that the universe was God’s emanations. But the authentic birth of the renaissance took place in the middle ages of Aristoteleanism and which tries to describe physical events by glancing at their rapid and determined reasons. “This is what Pico faced in trying to understand the universe; these three completely opposed ways of understanding the universe in relation to God were irreconcilable.”

Pico’s curiosity to understand the universal truth led him to analyze Augustine’s assertion that is often recognized with rescuing Christianity from the intimidation of corruption from false God’s influences. Aristotle and Augustine have distinct views about the nature of the soul. Aristotle’s concept is that “soul is a universal substance which imparts “essential whatness” to the body.” The other philosopher called Cusanus inspired Pico who stated that “humans could do is understand God in a negative sense.