Luigi Mussini, "Birthday and Parentalia of Plato, Celebrated at Villa di Careggi by Lorenzo the Magnificent", 1862. Pico can be seen in the background with his arm over the shoulder of one his philosophical sparring buddies (probably Angelo Poliziano). If you look closely you can see me standing over there by the fig tree.........no just kidding, I wasn't even born then.
All this we should keep in mind when we approach Pico’s method of philosophy and its ultimate aim of reconciling man with his divine origin. Pico’s cosmology consisted of a tripartite, or rather quadripartite structure in which all levels of reality are interlinked and each world reflects the other, although in varying degrees of perfection and fulfilment. At the highest level there is the angelic or intelligible realm, where the angels dwell and where the eternal fire of the seraphic[1] intellect burns with love for God. Below that, there is the celestial world containing all the planets, and at the bottom the sublunary world of the plants and animals which we also inhabit. God presides over the angelic domain, but at the same time he transcends it, for God is the foundation of existence out of which everything else emanates, the act of existence itself.[2]
However, there is also a fourth world which incorporates all the elements found in the others and has the ability to infringe on the terrain of all the others. This is man himself, who moreover possesses the unity and likeness of God, through which he may aspire to journey back to the godly source of existence. But man is not only the fourth world, he is also the “bond and union” of the others, and as God contains all things in himself as their origin, man contains all things in himself as their center. What Pico is thus trying to establish is the ontological supremacy of man, which consists not only of material finiteness but of incorporeal immutability as well. So when Pico adds his own episode to the creation story of Genesis in the Oration, he does so with the express purpose of justifying his idiosyncratic theurgical methods and theological opinions.
“Thou, like a judge appointed for being honourable, art the molder and maker of thyself; thou mayest sculpt thyself into whatever shape thou dost prefer. Thou canst grow downward into the lower natures which are brutes. Thou canst again grow upward from thy soul’s reason into the higher natures which are divine.”
If we are to believe Pico this is part of the speech God gave to Adam before sending him out into the world and it forms the groundwork for Pico’s subsequent philosophizing on the nature of man and his desired goals. As stated before, for Pico the ultimate source of felicity in human life consists of attaining mystical union with God, a sort of blissful ecstasy of deification in which a supernatural salvation and regeneration of the soul is obtained. There is some matter of dispute as to whether Pico meant this salvation to be personal or collective, owing to the question of Pico’s supposedly millenarian speculations on the rapidly approaching end of world, fuelled by the ominous looming of the year 1500, which was just around the corner, and perhaps also by Savonarola’s fulminating sermons. Farmer[3] interprets Pico’s work, especially the 900 theses and the Oration, as a covert plan of grand cosmic resurgence in which mankind was to be prepared for its final marriage with Christ on the eve of the Second Coming. However, Pico himself remains ambivalent on this point and we cannot know for certain. It seems more likely that Pico had in mind an individual program of philosophical preparation owing to the fact that he repeatedly stresses the importance of keeping the true religion secret and the necessity of moral and ethical purification before even attempting a mystical ascent.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that we should disregard the power that an event like the Second Coming could have on Pico’s mind. Pico was strictly orthodox in his faith, and there was something that drew him to Savonarola’s repeating claims of painting the invasion of Charles VIII as a punishment sent by God to eliminate moral laxity in the Church, so far that Pico forsook his worldly possessions, denounced his earlier forays into poetry and Egyptian and Chaldean (the presumed teachings of Zoroaster) wisdom and donned the black and white robes belonging to the Dominican order of which Savonarola was head in Florence. When Pico died, most certainly by poisoning, Savonarola delivered his eulogy and he was buried in the church of San Marco, the stronghold of Savonarola’s enterprise.
What emerges from all this, is the point that Pico was no religious radical, but a man perfectly in tune with the prevalent beliefs of his surroundings. But what made him unique however, was his elaborate scheme, replete with Kabbalah, of spiritual ascension as regards the moral and religious duty of man. According to Pico, the prerequisites of this endeavour are grounded in knowledge and understanding. As creatures with the capability to move between different natures, we are able to view the world from different perspectives and judge the merit and ethical worth of each one. Even so, the most worthy choice is to aspire to God, and not to debase oneself to the lower nature of the “brutes”, the plants and animals. This is an important point to remember. Pico repeatedly stresses the fact that there is a tension inherent in the rational soul to either gravitate toward “bestial” sensation or angelic intellect. The soul of man is posed at an intermediate level between the senses, signified by appetite, and the intellect, symbolizing will. We are thus either pulled down to the level of the brutes or lifted up to the supreme abodes of the angelic intellect, depending either on our desire to satisfy our basic urges or our need for spiritual contemplation.
Oof! And there's still more coming! With a heave, and a ho!
[1] Pico adheres to Pseudo-Dionysius’s division of the 9 angelic hierarchies with the top 3 consisting of the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Who’s Pseudo-Dionysius, you say? Good question.
[2] See Pico, “On Being and the One”: “For God, who is the plenitude of all existence, is of this nature. He alone is of himself, and from him alone, with no interposing medium, all things proceed to existence.”
[3] Some guy who wrote a book about Pico’s 900 Theses. If you’re him: I liked the book, man. Really.
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