Oration on the Dignity of Man

By Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

The Oration on the Dignity of Man was written in 1486 by the then 23-year-old Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, as an introduction to a public debate he was planning to host in Rome the following year, to discuss with the scholars of his day and the leaders of the Catholic Church (who had near absolute power at the time) 900 theses of his

• Language: English
• Publisher: Optimist Books by Optimist Creations
• Release date: Mar 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781642556605

Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola

Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) was an Italian Renaissance philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the famous Oration on the Dignity of Man, which has been called the "Manifesto of the Renaissance", and a key text of Renaissance humanism and of what has been called the “Hermetic Reformation."

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Reviews for Oration on the Dignity of Man

[themythbookshelf · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Delivered in Rome in 1486 by a twenty-four year old scholar before a platoon of erudite theologians and philosophers, Oration on the Dignity of Man is clearly the masterpiece of Renaissance humanism. Della Mirandola's oration fearlessly prepares the ground for debate around the 900 theses he proposed to such an audience, with which he sought to ignite passionate, intellectual discourses on every subject relevant to man.The speech typifies the Renaissance mind and spirit, celebrating man's most precious gift from God – free will – and our divine potential for good. For della Mirandola, man was made unique in his capacity to choose between dwelling in the carnal, earthy world or to ascend into the heavenly spheres to reach a height that equals the cherubiums: “unable to yield to them” he calls, “and impatient of any second place, let us emulate their dignity and glory. And, if we will it, we shall be inferior to them in nothing” (13).Yet this brilliant soul proves to be quite a mystic as well, as it becomes known in the last twenty pages -- by delicately deviating from Christian doctrine, della Mirandola veers off into the territory of esotericism and the occult, peppering his discourse with mentions of the Kabbalah and gnostic references. He goes as far as to propose a philosophy based upon “divine arithmetic”, which extends the works of Pythagoras, while also defining the two branches of "magic" – that of demonic evil, and that of "the highest realization of natural philosophy" (53). Of course, his esoteric references make certain parts of the oration very inaccessible, but for myself, it exposed me to thinkers and philosophies unheard of, which only delighted me. In a time in which many of the respected thinkers rejected intimate examinations of non-Christian texts and doctrines, this man daringly calls upon those of us yearning to initiate into the spiritual realms, to explore different paths of knowledge to become “a pure contemplator…wholly withdrawn into the inner chambers of the mind” (11).

[jburlinson_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A classic description of the "great chain of being," in which human beings are unique in their ability to change their ontological identities: descending lower than the beasts and/or ascending higher than the angels. Aren't we the lucky ones!