Brian P. Copenhaver. Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico della Mirandola and His Oration in Modern Memory.

Abstract

Magic and the Dignity of Man is a remarkable book. In it, Brian Copenhaver challenges a series of widespread assumptions about one of the best-known statements of Renaissance humanist ideology, Pico della Mirandola’s “Oration on the Dignity of Man,” forcing his readers to reconsider several major assumptions about the Renaissance as a whole. In so doing, he has produced a veritable tour de force, which offers an impressive range of reflections on philosophical developments over the last five centuries, the course of Renaissance historiography, the ways in which that movement has been conceptualized, and the creation of the celebrity of one of its major players. All of this is delivered with a dry sense of humor and a frequently sharp turn of phrase. The so-called “Oration on the Dignity of Man” was written by Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494) in 1486, when Pico was only twenty-three years old. Despite the name by which it is now known, the “Oration” was never delivered to an audience. Rather, it was intended as an introduction to his “900 Conclusions,” a vast set of theses derived from wide reading in many different intellectual and philosophical traditions, which he proposed to debate in Rome with anyone who wished. That debate did not happen either: Pope Innocent VIII swiftly intervened, forbidding their discussion while their orthodoxy was assessed; thirteen of the nine hundred propositions were duly deemed to be heretical; and in due course the entire book was banned. Pico initially wrote a defense of the “Conclusions,” but later, in an attempt to save his reputation, he wrote another work in which he repudiated many of the ideas he had previously embraced. He died in 1494, at the age of thirty-one, in somewhat mysterious circumstances.