Tuesday, June 21, 2005
PICO
Richard Tarnas speaks of him in The Passion of the Western Mind. He writes:
Perhaps the young and brilliant Pico della Mirandola best summed up this new spirit of religious syncretism, broad scholarship, and optimistic reclamation of man's potential divinity. In 1486, at the age of twenty-three, Pico announced his intention to defend nine hundred theses derived from various Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic writers, invited scholars from all over Europe to Rome for a public disputation, and composed for the event his celebrated ORATION ON THE DIGNITY OF MAN. In it Pico described the Creation using both Genesis and the TIMAEUS as initial sources, but then went further: When God had completed the creation of the world as a sacred temple of his divine wisdom, he at last considered the creation of man, whose role would be to reflect on, admire, and love the immense grandeur of God's work. But God found he had no archetypes remaining with which to make man, and he therefore said to his last creation:
"Neither an established place, nor a form belonging to you alone, nor any special function have We given to you, O Adam, and for this reason, that you may have and possess, according to your desire and judgment, whatever place, whatever form, and whatever functions you shall desire. The nature of other creatures, which has been determined, is confined within the bounds prescribed by Us. You, who are confined by no limits, shall determine for yourself your own nature, in accordance with your own free will, in whose hand I have placed you. I have set you at the center of the world, so that from there you may more easily survey whatever is in the world. We have made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so that, more freely and more honorably the molder and maker of yourself, you may fashion yourself in whatever form you shall prefer. You shall be able to descend among the lower forms of being, which are brute beasts; you shall be able to be reborn out of the judgment of your own soul into the higher beings, which are divine."
To man had been given freedom, mutability, and the power of self-transformation: thus Pico affirmed that, in the ancient mysteries, man had been symbolized as the great mythic figure of Prometheus. God had bestowed to man the ability to determine freely his position in the universe, even to the point of ascending to full union with the supreme God. The classical Greeks' sense of man's own glory, of man's intellectual powers and capacity for spiritual elevation seemingly uncontaminated by biblical Original Sin, was now emerging anew in the breast of Western man. (p. 214-215) (Matthew Fox, call your office!)
"You shall be able to descend among the lower forms of being, which are brute beasts; you shall be able to be reborn out of the judgment of your own soul into the higher beings, which are divine" sounds heretical to me.
"You, who are confined by no limits, shall determine for yourself your own nature, in accordance with your own free will, in whose hand I have placed you." In other words, man creates himself. The Masons think so, anyway. A Catholic, on the other hand, recognizes the need for grace.
We have made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, See CCC 407. Man is mortal. Pico's thinking was closer to Classical Greek than to Catholic.
This affirmation of the human being's self-defining autonomy and epistemological freedom has a historical background going back at least to the Renaissance and Pico's ORATIO, appearing in different forms in the ideas of Emerson and Neitzsche, William James and Rudolf Steiner, among others, but has been given new support and further dimensions by a wide range of contemporary intellectual developments, from philosophy of science to sociology of religion.(ibid. p. 406-407)
On page 232, Tarnas refers to Pico's ORATION ON THE DIGNITY OF MAN as the "manifesto of Renaissance Humanism".
The Church may have rehabilitated Pico after he denounced his ORATION, but the Church could hardly rehabilitate his ORATION, based as it was on man's self-salvation.
The Grand Master of The Regular Grand Lodge of Italy offers some comments on Pico:
The platonic theory of love, that the Florence Academy tried to merge with Christianity, is in fact to be twisted by Giordano Bruno, who sees in Eros the proof of the titanic force of the man. It is Eros that equips the man with the "heroic fury" which enables him to have a vision of the infinite Universe and to break the snares that tie him to religion. So, if Pico della Mirandola and Marsilio Ficino never look for the conflict with the Christian theology, trying to have the platonic concepts coexist with Christian theology, in Bruno, on the contrary, the platonic doctrine of Eros will become a real weapon against the Christian doctrine.
Why then, if Eros becomes a "weapon against the Christian doctrine" would von B try to revive this coexistence? "Eros"--"love"--is what we are hearing about constantly in the RCC. Now we see that interreligious "mysticism" uncoupled from doctrine--the equivalent of a "vision of the infinite Universe" that will "break the snares that tie [man] to religion"-- is becoming the newest trend within the Church. And we have a widespread sexual abuse scandal with no explanation for how it got in. Might I suggest MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT might have had something to do with it?
It is noteworthy that Giordano Bruno was recently rehabilitated.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
