Come And Get Your Pico!

Giovanni Pico, Count of Mirandola and Concord

I hear you! I hear you, you bunch of red hot, overzealous fanatics! You have been so eager in the search for ultimate truth that you have been pursuing me relentlessly for tiny scraps of the gargantuan knowledge that I keep locked inside my gallant brain. You have been clamoring at me, begging me, pleading me, entreating me, imploring me, beseeching me to share my prolific understanding with you and raise your inapt intellects to some more elevated (yet still decidedly humble) heights. At times it has been quite pathetic. But I am not one to judge or hold in disdain, thrustworthy followers! Here is the unabridged text that laid the basis for my first advent into the public gaze! Never again waste away tears, sobbing about how you would like to know more about Pico della Mirandola and Renaissance philosophy! It will all be periodically laid out for you in the coming days! FOR FREE!* Starting now:

“Let a certain holy ambition invade the mind, so that we may not be content with mean things but may aspire to the highest things and strive with all our forces to attain them: for if we will to, we can. Let us spurn earthly things; let us struggle toward the heavenly. Let us put in last place whatever is of the world; and let us fly beyond the chambers of the world towards the most lofty divinity.” 

Strong, haughty words and elegant humanist rhetoric are what characterize Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s (1463-1494) renowned Oration (1486), often carrying the further designation On the Dignity of Man, though its author never intended to add this extra heading and it expressly misses the thought underlying the original text. The Oration has been hailed as one of the defining texts of the Renaissance because it supposedly celebrates notions of human dignity and freedom and inspired the progression of the human intellect towards superior reason and the uncovering of the laws of nature. However, such a misreading was the result of a centuries-long process in philosophy which intended to reframe its illustrious history in Kantian terms, stressing the opposition between the passive reception of phenomenal nature and the noumenal freedom of the human mind to rise above this and eventually perceive the “thing-in-itself”, i.e. reality as it actually is. 

This approach remained fashionable until at least the middle of the previous century, while at present Pico’s text is more generally recognized for what it really is: the introductory speech for the great public debate of 1487 in Rome, where the then 23 years old Pico intended to take on all comers in a dispute resolving the most vexing questions in magic, philosophy and theology and during which the young count of Mirandola wanted to defend his belief in the long chain of knowledge running through all ancient wisdom traditions (the prisca theologia) and the quintessential role of Kabbalah (Pico himself spelled it “Cabala”) in the illumination of Christian religion and salvation. Pico had drafted 900 specific propositions** for this occasion, ranging in subject matter from the nature of intelligible images to Christ’s descent into Hell to Egyptian symbolism in the Kabbalah. Sadly this proposed debate would never come about because a papal commission denounced thirteen of Pico’s theses and considered three of these to be explicitly heretical. 

This led Pico to hastily write a defence, his Apology (1487), in which he attempted to justify the condemned propositions and offer some explanatory insights on the nature of heresy, its relation to matters of faith (namely, what is put forth in Scripture) and opinion (the insights of the Church Fathers) and thus ultimately the authoritative basis of Christian religion. In reaction to this Pope Innocent VIII put Pico under inquisitional observance and eventually denounced all the nine hundred theses and prohibited their use and distribution under threat of excommunication. The brash Pico therefore stole off to Paris, but at the Pope’s request he was there apprehended by the authorities and jailed. The timely intervention of Lorenzo de’Medici saved him however, and by the next year he was back safely in Tuscany, taking up residence in a villa in Fiesole provided to him by Lorenzo “the Magnificent”.

To be continued.....

*I am of course not responsible for any damaging influence that this text can have on the relatively poor quality of your grey mass, such as a sudden enlargment of the dorsolateral prefontal lobe (where the executive and logical functions are housed, natch).

**Nowadays commonly referred to as the 900 Theses or Conclusions (1486), Pico’s original publication of December 1486 carried no title, most probably because it was meant as a guide book accompanying the debate and not a pleasant read for long, cold winter nights.

Interlude

We’re gonna keep on going like a freight train running at Mach 5 (which is hypersonic speed, of course) through the abandoned wastes of humanity’s once great condition, where now the inevitable decline of brazen lethargy and rampant overpopulation have set in to which also you, dear reader, generously contribute. So for God’s sake, SAVE YOURSELF! Fixate those dilating pupils at least one hour daily on this hallowed websegment while sitting in the Lotus position and reciting the Mahabharata backwards in the original Sanskrit, in order to avoid the pitch black darkness of asinine oblivion that is more commonly known as life. Here you will occupy and train the occipital lobes of your incommensurate brain so that eventually you will reach the sweet, joyful rapture of enlightenment and will move on to the higher planes of existence where pregnant dolphins launch giant skippy balls at helpless Zionists and headless swans recite Psalms to each other. But there is some ways to go just yet before that happens, grasshopper!

I’ve had a full plate these last few months, and there is a lot of stuff that I should educate you on, especially because the penetrating stink of your incompetence is almost rendering my deft, graceful fingers inert. I’m tempted to tell you about the mythical side of Venice, which I explored just last week, even more so because I also read Peter Ackroyd’s Venice: Pure City before I went. Now, Ackroyd is a very good writer, but he lacks in the synoptic department and is kind of incoherent at times. Needless to say, you should not concern yourself with his inadequate prose, as my blog exists to bring you all wisdom and all literacy, all the time (packed in a stylish overcoat of erudition and omniscience, if I may say so myself) and it is therefore not necessary to consult other sources. Anyway, it wasn’t difficult to experience the glorious transcendence of the Venetian experience despite the endless drones of overweight Germans stamping around, but I will leave that story for another time because I recently received an actual request, devout subscribers!

It has been brought to my attention that there still remains a widespread ignorance on the 15^th century Italian philosopher and mystic Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494)! Oh, lament of indignation! Sorrow of boundless insufficiency! I will rectify this situation over the coming weeks! You see, I was fortunate enough to attend and present at a conference on inspired creativity and numinous experience last May at the University of Canterbury, Kent (http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/researchcentres/myth/events/daimonic/cfp.html) and I wrote a paper on my man Pico for that, which I am going to share with you in a move of incomparable goodness! So rest assured, loyal disciples, the spirit of truth will not cease to inform you in the near future! In my own humble opinion, I think that I wrote this paper in clear enough language, but we will see about that shortly, won’t we?

So check back soon for the blazing start! And stop drooling at your keyboard, please.....it’s making me shy.

Ave!

Fin

Man, just look at that grand old pipe of his...

  

Yes, trusty followers, I have yet again returned from a brief hiatus to kindle a light in the darkness of being! Last week I was on a sacred voyage to Verona and Venice, and I managed to put in a brief stop in Florence as well! Now what did I learn from this travel, loyal acolytes? Enough to keep your humble minds running around in confusion while chasing the miraculous bait of splendid and grandiose illumination that my blessed website will leave dangling in front of your eager and zealous noses! But lest ye collapse in pitiful catatonia and sordid apathy, clutching the armrests of your cheap, ignominious Ikea-chairs and abundantly soiling your menial undergarments, let me offer some concluding remarks on Jung, so that we can next move on to other topics!

                            

For Jung, myth is of fundamental importance: it is an assertion of the unconscious that comes closest to capturing the meaning of the archetypal experience in words. Without it we are lost and separated from the connection with the unconscious that is necessary for individuation, the process which Jung considered to be the objective of all human existence. Through individuation every human being comes to his own in the world as a single, unique individual, fully self-realized and morally conscientious. But Jung was always quick to add a clinical dimension to his theories, for he was first and foremost a psychiatrist, though one that was not completely free of any self-inflating tendencies, I must add. Myth was also a practical tool for Jung, as he believed that it could form a sort of signpost to which you could guide yourself as the unconscious kept on bombarding you with superfluous symbols and meaningful images. Remember that Jung thought that schizophrenics simply lacked the ability to properly prevent the unconscious from dominating the conscious, and that however much we would like to block out the unconscious altogether in our modern society (although now that Jung’s been dead for so long, maybe I should speak of post-modern society, or beyond-post-modern, or in the words of German dance music-luminary Scooter: “Hyper, hyper!”), it would always find a way to express itself.

In any case, Jung himself already skated close to the edge of pseudo-mysticism with his analytical psychology (and especially the ardent devotion that his followers brought to bear on it), but in these days Jung has for an important part been claimed by New Age-enthusiasts as the principal agitator against the maladies and insecurities of the digital age, who unquestionably demonstrated that, yes, there really is a Goddess in every woman! (You are wrong; there is only one in MY girlfriend). These witless dolts of course never bother to read one letter of his vast oeuvre in the original German, nor do they concern themselves with the many clinical papers that he wrote. Thank the stars therefore that there is this blog, and that you found it!

I bet you experienced my glorious return not unlike this: “I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.” (Revelation 1:12-16)

 Is this what you saw with your mind's eye while reading this post, devoted reader!? Be honest!

Oh yeah, I took this in the dome of Verona.

Keep on truckin’!

Until the next!