Pico della Mirandola Philosophy Summary

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Summarize this Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article Giovanni Pico della Mirandola First published Tue Jun 3, 2008; substantive revision Wed Aug 21, 2024 A few paragraphs from a speech that Giovanni Pico (1463–1494) did not write about human dignity have drawn more comment than any other statement by a philosopher of his day. No philosophers of post-medieval, pre-Cartesian Europe are better known now than the prince and his contemporaries, Erasmus (b. 1466), Machiavelli (b. 1469) and Thomas More (b. 1478). Unlike them, he was fully committed to philosophia, as he understood it, and he was remarkably original—indeed, idiosyncratic. His persistently esoteric and aggressively recondite manner helps explain why the period identified with him—the Renaissance—has had so little attention in the canonical history of the discipline as presented today in Anglophonia, where aims, assumptions and attitudes of philosophers are so different. 1. Life 2. Works and Reputation 2.1 Conclusions and Oration 2.2 Other Works and Gianfrancesco’s Life 2.3 Christian Kabbalah and the Heptaplus 2.4 Oratory but not Dignity 2.5 Being and the One and Astrology Bibliography A. Primary Literature B. Bibliographies C. Secondary Literature Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries 1. Life Pico was born on 24 February 1463, to a noble Italian family, the counts of Mirandola and Concordia near Modena in the Emilia-Romagna north of Tuscany. Around the age of 14 he enrolled at Bologna to study church law, but within two years he put his lawbooks away and moved to Ferrara, then shortly afterward to Padua, where he met and studied with Elia del Medigo, a Jew and an Averroist Aristotelian. By the time he left Padua in 1482, he had felt the contrary attraction of the Platonism that Marsilio Ficino was reviving in Florence. By 1484 he was writing letters to other Florentine luminaries, Angelo Poliziano and Lorenzo de’ Medici. In 1485 the prince traveled to Paris, where aftershocks of conflict between nominalists and realists were still shaking this citadel of Aristotelian scholasticism. At the age of 22, before leaving Italy, he had already presented himself as a philosopher—by defending the technical terminology that since Petrarch’s time had incited philological critics to attack philosophical Latin as a barbaric breach of classical norms. Having refined his literary talent while adding new skills in philosophy, Pico issued this manifesto as a letter to Ermolao Barbaro, an eminent Venetian scholar. He used the occasion and the genre to show, like Plato in the Phaedrus, how rhetoric could arm philosophy against rhetorical assault. After a short stay in Paris, Pico returned to Florence and then Arezzo, where he caused a ruckus by abducting a young woman already married to Giuliano Mariotto de’ Medici. Support came from Lorenzo, a more formidable Medici cousin, but the commotion and then a plague kept the young lord on the move. By this time, while writing a Commento in Italian on a friend’s love poem, he already had plans for a more ambitious project: to bind up philosophy’s sectarian wounds. He started with harmony (concordia) that he saw beneath the surface of conflict between Platonists and Aristotelians. His peacemaking soon became global, aiming for a single symphony of ideas that would harmonize all schools of thought, past and present. To call attention to this hopeless enterprise, Pico decided to underwrite a magnificent conference in Rome early in 1487. In preparation he assembled 900 propositions from dozens of authorities—ancient and medieval, pagan and Christian, Muslim, and Jewish—and challenged all comers to debate them in public. He had these Conclusions printed in Rome at the end of 1486, and to introduce them he composed a speech that he never gave or had published. After he died in 1494, others mistakenly called this address an Oration on the Dignity of Man: Pico never gave it a title. Intervention by the Holy See derailed Pico’s plans and blocked the conference. Innocent VIII indicted 13 of the 900 theses and appointed a commission that soon declared 6 of them suspect and condemned 7 others. The defendant’s hasty response was an Apology that provoked Innocent to denounce the whole collection of 900 propositions. The prince, dishonored and in danger, left Italy for France again, but authorities there detained him at the pope’s request and jailed him briefly. By the summer of 1488 he was back in Tuscany as Lorenzo’s guest, and in 1489 he dedicated his Heptaplus to his benefactor, describing it as a Sevenfold Account of the Six Days of Genesis. Lorenzo’s protection gave his escapades better cover than his own considerable resources could provide. Since 1483 he had a third of the income from his family’s estates, which along with his Mirandola property he transferred in 1491 to his nephew Gianfrancesco. This other Pico, younger by a few years, became an influential philosopher in his own right—an early voice for reviving scepticism as an instrument of Christian faith. During this period, as memories of the disastrous Conclusions faded, people still worried about the elder Pico’s orthodoxy. The Kabbalist exegesis of the Bible in the Heptaplus—tame by the author’s earlier standards—was not understated enough to resolve all doubts. Philological conversation with Poliziano was less risky, however, and produced a fragment On Being and the One after 1490. Pico told Poliziano that he envisioned De ente et uno as the first installment of a great work that would find Platonism beneath the surface of Aristotle’s thinking: those who alienate Aristotle from Plato also alienate themselves from me, for I hold that their views are in harmony. Not everyone was pleased by the harmonizing—least of all Antonio Cittadini, a professor at Pisa who was still fighting Gianfrancesco about it two years after his uncle’s death. In 1493 Giovanni achieved reconciliation with a higher authority when Pope Alexander VI pardoned his earlier misadventures. By this time, the prince and his nephew were in the orbit of Girolamo Savonarola, the fiery Dominican who had been elected Prior at the Convent of San Marco, a Florentine landmark. Pico had already known the oracular friar before his sermons persuaded the city to try his theocratic rules. Mesmerized by Savonarola and ever more pious, he gave more properties away, some to the Church and some to his family, as his needs became less worldly. When death took him on 17 November 1494—by poison, some said, where rumors of poisoning were like complaints about runny noses—Florence fell on the same day to French armies. The turmoil of invasion ended the city’s age of glory, illuminated by Pico’s genius—though only intermittently. Ficino, his older friend, occasional rival and a steadier soul, survived him by five years. 2. Works and Reputation Pico’s major works were the 900 Conclusions in 1486, the Oration written to introduce it, the Apology that defended the Conclusions in 1487, the Heptaplus in 1489 and the Disputations against Predictive Astrology, left unfinished when he died in 1494, without ever making the Oration public. 2.1 Conclusions and Oration Pico’s modern fame rests on a speech about the dignity of man that he never gave and that got its title after he died. His public debut was the 900 Conclusions, printed without a title near the end of 1486. It was more like a pamphlet than a book, just three dozen sheets of paper and three dozen lists of unsupported statements. These 900 propositions, less than 20 words each, were the only messages sent by the 17,000 words of Pico’s booklet. He called them ‘conclusions’, but he gave them no backing, and some were outrageous theological novelties—including the claim that magic and Kabbalah proved Christ’s divinity. He wrote this proposition, like all the others, in preparation for the debate that he planned to stage in Rome, the capital of Christendom. His flimsy little handout, crudely printed, was also a script and an advertisement. The prince expected to draw a crowd. Instead he drew down the wrath of God through his Vicar on earth, Pope Innocent. Legal proceedings against the Conclusions started. Planning for a disputational spectacle stopped. Years of disgrace and danger began for Pico and his first public work. He divided the pamphlet into two parts: the first had 402 theses; the second had 498 theses. He took credit and assumed responsibility only for the second part, having listed propositions in the first part under names of other persons and groups of persons who were eminent in philosophy, theology and theosophy. This was the layout of the first part: Albert the Great Aquinas François de Meyronnes Scotus Henry of Ghent Egidio Romano Ibn Rushd Ibn Sina Al-Farabi Isaac Albalag Ibn Marwan Maimonides Tolletinus Ibn Bajja Theophrastus Ammonius Simplicius Alexander Themistius Plotinus Adeland Porphyry Iamblichus Proclus Pythagoreans Chaldeans Egyptians Kabbalist Jews And this was the second part, where Pico highlighted his own ambitions more than older authorities: Concord Dissent Novelty Deviance Platonism Causes Numbers Chaldeans Magic Orphica Christian Kabbalah All this was in print before the pope stopped the rash project. To make matters worse, the prince defended his blunder in a recalcitrant Apology whose preface was part of the still unpublished Oration—though not the part that later became famous. Pico’s words in the Conclusions were deeds, and they were reckless. His propositions were performative speech-acts, eristic and illocutionary, not just declarative and endoxic or apodictic. Theatrical combat continued throughout the booklet, despite eye-catching claims about concordia that introduced the second part: There is no inquiry, natural or theological, where Aristotle and Plato don’t agree in meaning and content (sensu et re) even though they seem to disagree in words (verbis). [Pico, Conclusiones, 1486, 28] Pico detected philosophical harmony not only in Aristotle versus Plato but also in Ibn Sina versus Ibn Rushd, Aquinas versus Scotus, and other notorious quarrels. He meant his proclamation of concord to be startling. He called it ‘contrarian’ (paradoxus), but it wasn’t original: ancient commentators on Plato and Aristotle had the same view. Simplicius of Cilicia, a Platonist of the sixth century known to Pico, had written that a worthwhile interpreter of Aristotle’s writings … should examine not just the language (λέξιν) of what he says against Plato … but look also at the meaning (νοῦν) and search out the harmony (συμφωνίαν) between them on most matters. [Simpl. In Cat. 7.23–32, translation by the author of this entry] Pico chose propositions because he could defend or attack them convincingly, and he stated them in forms that would optimize his advantages—logical and philosophical but also rhetorical. In this disputatious framework, a thesis secundum Thomam, secundum Averroem or secundum Proclum might or might not have been a fair statement of anyone’s position—including Pico’s. Fidelity in presentation was not the prince’s aim; his aim was victory in debate. The first part of his book attached its conclusions to names of authorities: Aquinas, Ibn Rushd, Proclus, and two dozen others. Readers who saw works by these sages as sources of Pico’s theses were sometimes correct: thinkers named by him had indeed stated some of his conclusions verbatim or nearly so. But words printed under their names seldom presented their teachings clearly, often altered them and sometimes could not have been theirs because of anachronisms or incompatibilities: Pico’s many presentations of authority in the first part of the Conclusions did not simply follow the views of these authors—or his own. The excessive brevity of his propositions, constricted by reflexive secrecy, made it hard to diagnose his intentions or follow his trains of thought. Most propositions in the Conclusions were scholastic theology; many others were Kabbalah; together this was two-thirds of the book. Kabbalah was unintelligible to Christian theologians, just as their theology horrified the few learned Jews who had studied Kabbalah. The Platonism of late antiquity, from Plotinus through Proclus and his followers, dominated the other third of the book. Ficino had set a high standard for Pico’s Platonic propositions, not just the philosophy but also the philology. It’s safe to say, all in all, that there wasn’t much competent readership in Italy for the prince’s book at the time it was published. Some individuals might have understood it, but not many. The few Christians whose education had prepared them for Greek texts on Neoplatonic metaphysics—unusual people like Barbaro, Ficino and Poliziano—were developing a new way to read, write, talk and teach, grounded in a philology of ancient languages, that came to be called ‘humanism’—though not until the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, four centuries earlier, there was nothing ‘humanist’ about Pico’s Conclusions, whose content, milieu and presentation were thoroughly medieval. On the Latin Christian side, his authorities had flourished in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. On the Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Jewish, and Muslim side, his texts were earlier, in place before the thirteenth century ended. For Greek thought his mainstay was Proclus from the fifth century. Only three traditions were prominent in the Conclusions: Kabbalist, Peripatetic, and Platonic. Pico’s Platonism, centered on Proclus and his followers, was post-Hellenistic and medieval, not Hellenic. ‘Peripatetic’ was his label for the scholastic Aristotelianism—Jewish and Muslim as well as Christian—that peaked in the thirteenth century. He explained in the Oration that ‘Kabbalah’ was “the Hebrew word for our ‘reception’”. A related word, ‘tradition’, would have done just as well. As for a tradition called ‘Hermetic’, the Conclusions had nothing good to say. Imitating Proclus, Pico preferred Chaldean prophets and Orphic bards to the Egyptian Hermes. The prince was so well informed about celebrated Peripatetics—Aquinas, Farabi, Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Scotus, and others—that he spotted flaws in their theology and tried to fix them with Platonic metaphysics. His main informant about mistakes made by Christians was Jean Cabrol (Capreolus, d. 1443), a Dominican explicator of Aquinas. Pico owned Cabrol’s huge commentary in an incunable edition of 1483. By that time Cabrol’s Dominican followers had given his work a militant new title, Defensiones, treating it as a manual for Thomism on the attack. Cabrol’s defense of Thomas instructed Pico about the opposition to Thomism, showing him how to express Averroist and nominalist objections to the communis via—his term for the rigidified Thomist consensus. Statements in the Conclusions showed contempt for teachings endorsed by Aquinas. Propositions that insulted the saint by name were among those condemned. Elia del Medigo surveyed Pico’s path through quarrels about and among Muslims. This learned Jew from Crete introduced him to a Jewish commentary tradition on Ibn Rushd, both in Hebrew and in Arabic. Just as Pico learned how to oppose Thomism from Cabrol, a doctrinaire Thomist, he also learned how to refute criticisms of Averroism from Elia, a zealous Averroist. Philosophers attacked by Ibn Rushd—Farabi, Ibn Bajja, Ibn Sina, and others—were vulnerable voices in Pico’s theses, along with Aquinas, Albertus, and Scotus, also Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, and the Greek commentators. The Conclusions were, among other things, Pico’s egregious advertisement of his own learning—a polyglot catalog of propositions that challenged orthodoxy and defied common opinion. When he called some of these conclusions paradoxae, he wasn’t thinking of semantic puzzles like the Liar or of Zeno’s arresting tales. His model for contrarian propositions was Cicero’s account of Stoic paradoxes. These provocations, labeled as such, were only a few dozen out of 900 statements, all of them presented as quodlibetal theses like those debated in medieval universities. Nonetheless, the 900 theses in Pico’s little book were more inflammatory than the 7,000 words of his Oration: the oblique oratory in the speech was conventional as rhetoric and entertaining in its eloquence. Besides, the scandal of papal condemnation in 1487 was old news by 1496, when Gianfrancesco first had the Oration printed in a posthumous collection of his uncle’s works (Commentationes). Pico’s nephew, also a philosopher, was and still is the primary source for stories about his uncle. Giovanni’s silenced oratory embarrassed Gianfrancesco. He recalled that his uncle regretted the speech as a juvenile mistake. For the next several centuries, few of Pico’s admirers challenged this verdict, despite the orator’s continuing fame. Until the Oration charmed post-Kantian historians, it had few readers. But dignitas got plenty of attention before Pico was born Shortly after 1450, Giannozzo Manetti completed his De dignitate et excellentia hominis. Unlike the Oration, Manetti’s book was actually about dignitas, but as ancient Romans and medieval Christians used the word for ‘rank’, ‘status’, ‘value’, or ‘worth’—not good fits for what Kant would say about Würde as distinct from Wert. Manetti’s dignitas was essentially Christian but slightly secularized by late medieval interest in ancient pagans like Cicero and by changed conditions of life in fifteenth-century Italy. Manetti attacked a twelfth-century treatise On Human Misery by Cardinal Lotario dei Segni, who later became Pope Innocent III. Two contemporaries of Manetti—Antonio da Barga and Bartolomeo Facio—had written less impressively on his topic. These treatments of dignitas were well known, but Pico’s undelivered speech paid no attention to them because dignitas was not his subject. His larger project—advertised by the Conclusions but not well presented—was to convince people that they could save their souls by using magic and Kabbalah to change themselves into angels. Awareness of the speech—unpublished in Pico’s lifetime—was erratic after he died. Bad publicity lingered from the pope’s denunciation of the Conclusions, which the speech was meant to introduce. Except in the author’s collected works, the Latin text was printed only once before the 1940s, when the first English translation also appeared, just after the first Italian version in 1936. What readers had seen on the title page of the Commentationes in 1496 was just A Very Elegant Oration. By 1530—in the only separately published Latin text of the pre-modern period—these words expanded into On Man by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Explaining the Loftier Mysteries of Sacred and Human Philosophy. Meanwhile, the front matter of the 5 collected editions or reprints between 1498 and 1521 stayed with the 1496 formulation, Oratio quaedam elegantissima, which in 1557 finally became On the Dignity of Man in a Basel collection and, in a Venice edition of the same year, A Very Elegant Oration on the High Nobility and Dignity of Man. The words de dignitate hominis had first described the speech, less conspicuously, inside the 1504 edition. Later in 1572 and 1601, two other collections used a new format that no longer displayed contents by title at the front of the book. 2.2 Other Works and Gianfrancesco’s Life The British Library Catalog, listing about 1300 books by Erasmus printed before 1701, has about 100 contemporary entries for Pico. During the same period, when Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres went through more than 30 editions, Pico’s Oratio—far better known today than Ficino’s Three Books on Life—attracted few publishers. Of the five dozen or so titles by the prince that were printed in this period, about half were collections of letters: the first two, called Golden Letters, were incunables. Letters also appeared in early collections with Pico’s other works: title pages named Ficino and Poliziano as his correspondents, and all of them were durable celebrities. Pico’s letters succeeded commercially because of the writer’s fame and the needs of readers. Latin was still a medium of learned communication in the late seventeenth century, when Isaac Newton published his Principia in that undead language, and educated people still learned to write by imitating stylists like Pico. His epistolary Latin was elegant, and his fame had lasted. He was renowned as a critic of astrology, as an expert on Kabbalah and as the talented Count Pico—a Phoenix who blazed through a brief life in the triple glare of an old aristocratic society, a new mandarin culture of classical scholarship and, in his last years, the apocalyptic carnival that raged in Savonarola’s Florence. Noble origins, fashionable friends, physical beauty, prodigious learning, capacious memory, scholarly journeys, youthful sins, trouble with the Church, eventual repentance, and a pious death: these were motifs of the family hagiography by his nephew Gianfrancesco that kept Giovanni Pico famous for being famous as the centuries passed. Because he died so young, the prince finished very little and published less: he neither completed nor published the vernacular Commento; the Conclusions were just bare statements of theses; the preface in the rushed Apology was a piece of the unpublished Oration; On Being and the One, also unpublished, was left over from a plan to harmonize Plato and Aristotle; and Gianfrancesco found the unfinished Disputations bundled with his dead uncle’s papers. The only works that Giovanni sent to a printer while he lived were the Conclusions, the Apology, and the Heptaplus. The Apology, defending the Conclusions against heresy charges, was Pico’s longest piece of philosophical writing. Mostly it was conventional scholasticism in the manner of Aquinas, Ockham and Scotus. This imprudent book—extensively informed by Cabrol’s Defenses of Aquinas—also relied on Durand de Saint-Pourçain, Henry of Ghent, Jean Quidort, Robert Holcot, and a dozen lesser medieval masters. The Conclusions, in most of its content and all of its presentation, was also thoroughly scholastic. The fashionable classicism of Barbaro and Poliziano made no impression on Pico’s first two printed works, which framed his living reputation—except at home in the Emilia-Romagna and in Tuscany, where people knew him personally. He wrote his two long letters on poetry and philosophical language in the new classical Latin, but few saw them while the writer lived: in later university settings, these brilliant apprentice pieces would have been prize essays. 2.3 Christian Kabbalah and the Heptaplus Besides the Conclusions and the Apology, the only project that Pico completed for publication in print was the Heptaplus (1489), his Kabbalist commentary on the first 26 verses of Genesis. These lines presented the Account of the Beginning (Ma‘aseh Bereshit), a favorite of Menahem Recanati, Abraham Abulafia, and other Kabbalists known to Pico through learned Italian Jews, especially Flavius Mithridates, Elia del Medigo, and Yohanan Alemanno. They gave him ingredients for a Christianized Kabbalah, a Jewish complement to Ficino’s ancient theology, and he put it on display in the 900 Conclusions: 119 of them, including the final 72, were explicitly Kabbalist and outlandishly so from a Christian point of view. While Pico tried half-heartedly to harmonize all of Europe’s philosophies, Christianizing Kabbalah was his main project. He found Christology and trinitarian theology in an oral Torah confided to Moses and passed on secretly through Esdras and other sages. Because its origin was Mosaic, Kabbalah was more hallowed than the pagan wisdom that Ficino had traced to Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus in ancient Chaldea and Egypt, where Platonic philosophy supposedly had its roots. Pico was the first Christian who had the expertise—including a little Hebrew, Aramaic and possibly Arabic—to make the astonishing claims that he published about Kabbalah as the core of a holier ancient theology. Books of Kabbalah were being read by the twelfth century, but Christians knew almost nothing about them before Pico. The Kabbalah that he revealed to Latin Europe was a theory as well as a practice—biblical hermeneutics with devotional intent. For some Kabbalists, then as now, textual studies underwrote a spiritual practice whose aim was mystical ascent and prophetic ecstasy achieved by ritual techniques, including magic and theurgy. Kabbalists believed that the Hidden God, the No-End, revealed himself not only in the Bible but also through ten aspects, attributes or emanations, the sefirot or ‘numberings’ of God’s myriad faces. Personalized in myths, visualized in images and symbolized by letters and numbers, the sefirot acted in theosophical dramas that framed devotional practices. Names of God that resonated in scripture were the other main focus of Kabbalah. link to extended description below Figure 1: Sefirot in the Standard Array. [An extended description of figure 1 is in the supplement.] The Bible’s Hebrew text was God’s speech, infinite in meaning. Kabbalists took their bearings even from its smallest particles—not only the sacred words but also their letters (which were also numbers) and even the shapes of letters. God’s names were the most potent words; the holiest of them, the Tetragrammaton, could not be spoken. Written as יהוה (yhwh), the unutterable Name was read aloud as Adonai, a speakable name like Elohim, Ehyeh, El Shaddai, and others used of God in the Hebrew Bible. Names of the sefirot, unknown as such to scripture, were also words of power. They were names not of God, however, but of God’s manifestations, some more remote than others. The Creator stayed hidden in his highest essence. Creatures below cognized the No-End only in descent from his secret heights. His lowest downward moments filled the world of human awareness with perceptible creatures. The first moments, far beyond the reach of ordinary cognition, were the ten sefirot. Much of the literature of Kabbalah described these numberings as shown in Figure 1: there were ten of them, S1 through S10, and fruit on the branches of this tree had many names. Common designations of S4, for example, were Gedullah and Hesed, meaning Greatness and Love or Piety, Latinized as Amor or Pietas by Pico’s instructors in Kabbalah. A divine name associated with S4 was El, but Kabbalists used many other words and names (Abraham, Michael, the South, Water) to describe S4 and other sefirot: Pico’s term was numerationes, which he learned from his main informant, the learned Jew and clever forger who called himself Flavius Mithridates. Pico was the first Christian who described Kabbalah in detail or treated it as worthwhile, hoping to persuade other Christians that this Jewish mysticism could help save their souls. Flavius, his prolific helper and deceiver, translated and mistranslated thousands of pages of Kabbalah from Aramaic and Hebrew into Latin. To make his work pleasing to Pico, Flavius added words and phrases—not found in the originals—that carried Christian messages. This convert to Christianity was a talented linguist who had worked at the Vatican. His translations were almost entirely sound; otherwise, the faking would have been obvious. Portions of the Oration, drawing on this tainted material, were informed by Kabbalah in ways that no contemporary Christian could have noticed—especially if they lacked clues provided by more than a hundred theses in the Conclusions. Pico’s esoteric intentions, proclaimed emphatically in the unpublished Oration and publicized by impenetrable propositions in the Conclusions, distanced his project not only from post-Cartesian philosophies in Anglophonia and elsewhere but also from earlier European systems outside the Platonic tradition. Wishing not just to mystify but also to provoke, Pico succeeded and paid the price of his Church’s anger. Theology, spirituality and philosophy—all in the broadest sense—were the main content of Pico’s Kabbalah, which showed (or hinted) how God revealed himself in the sefirot, in divine names and in words of scripture. In 72 Kabbalist theses at the finale of the Conclusions, this revelation became Christology and trinitarian theology. From a Kabbalist point of view, the sefirot and the divine names were characters in stories about theology, cosmology, anthropology and angelology; major themes were exile, death, atonement and redemption, tales told by Jews that Pico applied to the Trinity, with Jesus as the messianic hero of a new theosophy and the focus of a liturgy strange to Christians. Devotions advocated by the Conclusions were prayer and ritual as preparations for ecstasy and ascent to mystical union with God. This practical theosophy was also the main message of the Oration, where Pico’s ladder up to divinity had rungs of magic and theurgy. Propositions in the Conclusions confirmed this endorsement of magic and showed in more detail than the speech why Pico linked magic with Kabbalah. He saw the combination as a pious practice which—like the higher theurgy of Iamblichus and other Platonic philosophers—explored routes to God that were usually hidden. The practice of Kabbalah started with theory because these channels, concealed in scripture, had to be disclosed and interpreted before anyone could reconnoiter them: spiritual progress relied on hermeneutics. Kabbalist exegesis was the most obscure material in the Conclusions, especially Pico’s accounts of Hebrew words and letters. Language was his gateway to wisdom, and elements of language were letters and numbers that proliferated in secret codes. Pico’s genius and ambition, which the Church deplored as impudence, attracted him to this challenge, a cryptic theology of the hidden word, whose enigmas and ambiguities fed his hunger for the esoteric. The Kabbalist theology in the Conclusions, hence the Kabbalah promoted by the Oration, was deliberately mystifying but finally Christological and trinitarian. Prior exhibitions of Kabbalah in support of Pico’s grand theory focused on particular biblical texts, whose messages he also excavated from the gentile wisdom of ancient theologians—Orpheus, Pythagoras, Zoroaster and Chaldean prophets, though not the Egyptian Hermes. In the Heptaplus of 1489 readers now recognize the Kabbalist voice of the Conclusions: Pico’s earlier works since the Commento of 1485 have prepared them to hear it. These impetuous texts advertised Kabbalah brazenly, unlike the cautious Heptaplus, and they damaged Pico with enemies in Rome more than they helped him with friends in Florence—Ficino, Poliziano and others. Roberto Salviati, a learned Florentine friend of the prince, called the Heptaplus “the first fruits of his studies” when he arranged to have it printed [Pico, De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus (10), 168]. Was Salviati embarrassed by earlier works—the Commento, Conclusions, and Apology? It’s likelier that he thought them forgettable than that he knew nothing about them. But simple ignorance explains silence about the unpublished Oration: Pico’s nephew testified that even his uncle kept quiet about it. Readers disturbed by the Kabbalah in the Conclusions reacted predictably, but the Heptaplus was less threatening because the author had sanitized it. After nearly 20 years, Crofton Black’s book (2006) is still the best account of the Heptaplus. Although the creation narrative was the topic of Patristic commentaries by Ambrose and Basil of Caesarea, the first verses of Genesis, examined in the Heptaplus, interested fewer Christian interpreters than passages of Job or the Psalms. Like all scripture, the opening of Genesis was thought to have three layers of meaning—allegorical, tropological, and anagogical—beyond a literal or ‘historical’ sense: “history talks about events”, according to the commentators, allegory about how one thing is understood from another, tropology discusses morals, … and anagogy is the spiritual meaning … that leads to higher things. [Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria (1480), Gen. prol. 1:6] But the Heptaplus presented a new kind of allegory, a method derived from the structure of creation itself and directed toward a new type of anagogy, which was mystical ascent to the Godhead through Kabbalah. Pico provided a key to this practical exegesis only in the last part of the Heptaplus, which looked like an appendix tacked on at the end—just another showing of virtuoso skill in biblical languages. But to learned Jews of the day—Kabbalists or not—Pico’s analysis of the Hebrew letters of the first word of Genesis (Bereshit, “In the beginning”) would have seemed crude. There was nothing exotic in it except for Christians, and for them the effect would have been superficial—dazzling them with art. The arcane ending of the Heptaplus that looked extraneous was actually a grand finale. Pico hinted at a secret that no Christian of his day could have known: that Moses himself, whose words recorded the creation story, had passed through 49 Gates of Understanding—7 × 7 sefirotic stations—on his way to a 50th Gate, the supreme and final portal to union with God. The 49 prior passages traversed vestibules of creation, demonstrating Pico’s allegorical method by exemplifying it: the universe of existence was also a universe of understanding that showed a path to mystical union, and the map was indeed the terrain. Without explaining the Gates, the Conclusions said enough about them so that later scholars—Johann Reuchlin especially—could find paths through Kabbalah and try to follow them. Short and schematic directions, unlike Kabbalah in both ways, would go like this: Wisdom, the second sefirah (S2 in Figure 1), built a palace in eternity for Intelligence at S3 and carved 50 Gates there, 7 to be opened at each of the 7 lower sefirot, S4 through S10, leaving another Gate beyond and still shut. The 50 Gates, also called the Jubilee, corresponded to the 50-year festival ordained in Leviticus and also to a Great Jubilee of 50,000 years, when 7 sabbatical cycles or weeks of 7,000 years came to an end. After a final age when the lower sefirot collapsed into S3, the millenarian cycle restarted, having been completed in the previous thousand years—in the Sabbath of the Shekinah, God’s Dwelling at S10. This Sabbath, a 7th day of rest after 6 days of creating, was Pico’s ultimate allegory of mystical union, a secret encoded not only in the letters of Bereshit but also in the 7-fold structure of the Heptaplus itself. But who knew or could have known? In 1489, when Pico published the Heptaplus, its only competent readers in Italy were a few learned Jews who knew Latin—the very voices of Aramaic and Hebrew who had told the prince enough about Kabbalah to load his Conclusions with it. In most of the Heptaplus, however, even where the book’s structure and content plainly depended on Kabbalah, Pico kept the mysteries hidden until the final exposition of Bereshit that could only have baffled Christian readers and scandalized them. As in earlier works, Pico intended to mystify. He believed, and he said, that plain language would defile the holiest wisdom. He uncovered God’s secrets only for an elite clever enough to unravel his allegories and break the ciphers that concealed them. A salient fact and also a surprise—given European and Anglophone conceptions of philosophy—is that Pico thought of this mystification as philosophical and claimed passionately to be a philosopher. 2.4 Oratory but not Dignity In the first few pages of the Oration—which eventually confused more people in more languages than any other Latin text of its time—the Creator tells Adam that he, alone of all creatures, can make himself what he wants to be. This overture misled Wilhelm Tennemann (1761–1819), a Kantian historian of philosophy: like others after him, he treated Pico’s stirring prelude as evidence of a morality grounded, like Kant’s, in human freedom and dignity. This miscarried reading of the speech gathered strength from the Enlightenment, acquired a romantic aura and in 1860 became thematic for a new partition of cultural history, the Renaissance, established by Jacob Burckhardt. Half a century later, Ernst Cassirer—an eminent Neo-Kantian—authenticated the Oration as a modern secular gospel. Nazis drove Cassirer and Paul Kristeller, also a Kantian Jew, to North America, where they brought Burckhardt’s Renaissance and Pico’s oratory to thrive after World War II in college textbooks on ‘Western Civilization’. Meanwhile, in Fascist Italy, just before Mussolini’s racial laws were enforced, Eugenio Garin had published his foundational study of Pico (Garin 1937). The opening of the Oration is the most conspicuous part of the speech, praised by Garin and others as a declaration of dignity, freedom and ‘humanism’. Assured by initial statements that we can be what we want to be, we are then told—contrary to Garin’s view and the usual reading—that what we ought to be isn’t human at all. Our task is to become angels: bodiless, sexless and ultimately—that most unromantic of all conditions—selfless in the strictest sense. Living like Cherubs, not quite the highest angels, was the first post-human peak to be scaled. To go there, we must shed not only the gendered bodies that imprison us but also identities and personalities that distinguish every one of us from God and from everyone else. Personal extinction by mystical union with God was Pico’s goal: for people to be divinized, selves had to be discarded. “Let a holy ambition possess our spirit”, he wrote, let us climb for the heights, panting; and let us strive with all our might to reach them, since we can do it if we will it. Let us scorn the things of earth, let us despise those of heaven, and then, leaving behind whatever belongs to the world, let us fly up to the hypercosmic court nearest the most exalted divinity…. As we emulate the Cherubic life on earth, checking the impulses of the emotions through moral knowledge, dispelling the darkness of reason through dialectic, let us cleanse the soul by washing away the dirt of ignorance and vice so that emotions will not rage in fury nor reason go mad and foolish. Then let us flood the soul, purified and well tempered, with the light of natural philosophy so that finally we may perfect it with knowledge of divinity…. [Then] we will fully enjoy the peace that we have longed for—the holiest peace, the unbreakable bond, the friendship of the single-souled wherein all our spirits do not so much converge in the one mind above every mind as in some unsayable way emerge as absolutely one. This is that friendship which the Pythagoreans say is the end of all philosophy. This is that peace which God gives on high and angels descending to earth have announced to men of good will so that through this peace these same men, ascending to heaven, might be made into angels…. Ever forgetful of herself, [the soul] will wish to die in herself that she might live in her spouse, in whose sight the death of his saints is most precious—death, I say, if one should use the word ‘death’ for that fullness of life whose contemplation the sages have said is the aim of philosophy…. Lifted now to the topmost height of her watchtower, for all eternity looking out without interruption over what is, what will be and what has been, we shall sing prophecies like Phoebus, and, gazing up at primeval beauty, we shall be its winged lovers, until at last, with a love that cannot be described, driven wild by desire and transported beyond ourselves like burning Seraphs, full of divine power, we shall be ourselves no longer, but shall be Him, the very one who made us. [Pico, Oration, (39), 88–102] At the lowest level of this self-annihilating paideia, the initiate began as a student of philosophy, learning ethics, logic, natural philosophy and theology and then ascending, through arcana of magic and Kabbalah, to drown the self in God’s bottomless lake. This was not a Kantian project, and the Oration on the Dignity of Man that located the human condition in freedom and dignity was written—and still is being written—by us post-Kantians, not by Giovanni Pico. The outline of the Oration below was also not Pico’s. Its 7 parts may or may not have been his plan. But the deep structure of the Conclusions was numerological, and the Heptaplus, by its title and organization, showed that 7 was a special number for the prince—as for so many stewards of secrets. The book’s subtitle was a Sevenfold Account of the Six Days of Genesis, plainly an invitation to calculate arithmetic mysteries. In 1489 the Heptaplus invoked a theme—ascending to supreme happiness—that had occupied Pico for years, at least since he started the Commento. So it wouldn’t be surprising if hebdomads in the Heptaplus reflected earlier statements, including the Oration, which can be analyzed as follows: Humans are amazing because they can choose to change what they are. To choose well, however, they must change into angels. And to emulate angels, they must live like Cherubs. Humans can learn this lesson from ancient saints: Paul and Dionysius, Jacob, Job, Moses, Orpheus, Plato, Plotinus, Socrates and other gentiles, Pythagoras, Abraham, Chaldeans, Jeremiah and Zoroaster. Because philosophy leads to the Cherubic life, Pico proclaims himself a philosopher. Philosophy has informed him about new practices, including magic and Kabbalah. Assured of philosophy’s benefits, Pico will ignore his critics and debate a philosophy of his own. A curriculum reviewed 7 times in the middle of the Oration, at step 4 of 7, taught lessons leading to mystical union with God. Ancient Platonists discussed this regimen, and Church Fathers absorbed it into Christian piety. Books of Kabbalah gave similar instructions. Students started with moral philosophy and then moved up through dialectic and natural philosophy toward theology until discursive thought dissolved in ecstasy, pure contemplation and finally unification. Stages of Pico’s paideia were moral philosophy dialectic natural philosophy theology magic Kabbalah mystical union Magic and Kabbalah were preliminary but necessary. Magic, propelling the soul through the heavens toward supercelestial divinity, fueled a transition from natural philosophy to natural theology and beyond. And then Kabbalah, rising above discursive theology, climbing higher than magic, changed embodied humans into pure spirits: entirely purged of matter, these souls were then fit for henôsis—absolute unification with God. The philosophy behind this self-abnegating spirituality went back to pagan commentators on Aristotle. Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and other Muslim and Jewish sages made it more explicit. Pico’s advice—in philosophical terms that were controversial yet more familiar to Christians than Kabbalah—was for human persons to conjoin with the Agent Intellect. 2.5 Being and the One and Astrology The last major item in Pico’s bibliography, the Disputations Against Astrology, is textually problematic—like the prince’s letters—because Gianfrancesco may have meddled with both. Otherwise, the best account of the Disputations is Anthony Grafton’s article, listed in Quaquarelli and Zanardi’s bibliography. Pico’s big book was unwelcoming—unfinished, ragged presentation, sources technical and obscure. Much of it repeated ancient and medieval objections to astrology. Ptolemy’s doubts about particular types of prediction, for example, turned into a general restriction on celestial influence, which was too diffuse or too slight to produce reliable foreknowledge. Astrologers were exposed for contradicting themselves and for violating canons of reason and experience that natural philosophy relied on. Complaints restated by Pico—epistemic, logical, methodological and observational—had been made even before ancient sceptics recorded their characteristic objections. The prince’s innovation, without entirely rejecting astrology, was to weaponize philology against it. Astrology’s credibility rested on its pedigree—descent through the ages from ancient Chaldea and Egypt. The Oration and Conclusions verified this genealogy and sanctified it with Kabbalah, a tradition that was sacred, not just venerable. Like Kabbalah and because of its age, astrology could be confirmed (or disconfirmed) by the new classicism that linked authority with antiquity. Astrology’s record of watching planets and stars was an experience of deep time that certified its findings, compiled over the millennia. But the Disputations that Pico died too soon to finish reformed this static mytho-history by bringing it down to earth and back to life with new evidence. Informed by breakthroughs in biblical and secular chronology, he relocated primordial icons like Zoroaster in living landscapes of human time, subjecting them to criticism that later experts would call ‘historical’. And yet Pico’s critical sense was far from modern. When he attacked the stargazers as superstitious, he mistook strengths for weaknesses and dismissed their mathematical skills as credulity. The arithmetic in his own Conclusions was numerology, and his treatment of mathematics was generally unprogressive—more like Aristotle’s attitude than Plato’s. But Kepler noticed the Disputations, and philologists, weighing Pico’s doubts about exotic sages, took the shine off the bronze of prisca theologia. Ficino’s ancient theology was a Platonic historiography. But the prince’s least eccentric work of philosophy took an Aristotelian position against a Platonic distinction between being and the One that made the One higher than being in the order of the All. Since Ficino supported just such a distinction, Pico’s fragment On Being and the One challenged the senior philosopher, who saw it that way and objected politely. A larger purpose, harmonizing Aristotle with Plato, would have been germane. But the Conclusions had subverted its own assertion of concordia just after stating it. Even if Pico hadn’t defaced his irenic coinage, he wasn’t Platonic enough to suit Ficino, just as he wasn’t Aristotelian enough for doctrinaire Aristotelians. The future marched to his music, however, if not under a banner of concordia. Friends of the prince—Barbaro, Ficino, Poliziano and others—promoted the philology that informed later Aristotelians about all the ancient schools: not just Platonists but also Epicureans, Pre-Socratics, Sceptics, Stoics and others. Later, during the Enlightenment, philosophers scrutinized old texts recently recovered to enforce the comparative ‘eclectic’ criticism promulgated by Jacob Brucker and popularized by the Encyclopédie. Brucker and the philosophes despised Pico’s concordia, mocking it as the ‘syncretism’ that muddled eclectic reasoning. Ficino’s geniality had encouraged Pico’s urge to harmonize, and his half-baked concordia was more than just compatible with the ancient theology that was Ficino’s way of Christianizing pagan wisdom. The warm personal language of correspondence between the two philosophers shows Ficino welcoming Pico as a junior ally. But Ficino’s letters, which he published in 1495, testify better to his friendship with Pico than Pico’s letters. Gianfrancesco published them a year later, after preparing the Disputations for the press at the same time. Comparing the two epistolaries suggests that the younger Pico, at least as close to Savonarola as his uncle, intervened to select letters by the elder Pico—those that made it into the collected works of 1496 overseen by the nephew—and arranged them to match the pious Life that introduced the whole collection. The all too human protagonist of the Life was a Savonarolan saint who renounced the world, the flesh and the devil just in time. This was not the eager Pico who had hunted for fame in Rome a few years before and dared the world in a failed philosophical extravaganza; nor the cocksure prince who bungled an attempt to carry off a woman whose husband was named Medici—no less; nor the unsettled journeyman thinker calmed by Ficino’s bantering in letters decorated with astro-mythology. The disasters of 1487 may be enough to explain Pico’s jarring reversal on astrology in the Disputations, also his muffling of Kabbalah in the Heptaplus. But since Gianfrancesco, who edited the Disputations, also edited and chose letters to support a tendentious Life of his uncle, and since the nephew was not just a devout fideist but also a prodigiously productive scholar and original thinker, the Disputations may have been another pendant to Gianfrancesco’s Life of Pico—dubious in that setting as proof of penitence when his uncle’s meteor flamed out.

These are Pico's Conclusions. Translate them and give explanations of the vocabulary and grammatical features of the sentences, then explain their philosophical contexts. Point out what's original or just a paraphrase of a philosopher, and evaluate how close Pico's conclusion is to the conventional view.

To help you with the task of translating and explaining Pico's Conclusions, I would need to focus on a few specific theses from the 900 Theses and provide you with detailed analyses. Given that the work contains hundreds of these propositions, I’ll select a small representative sample to show how Pico's ideas are formulated, explain the vocabulary and grammar, and place each proposition in its philosophical context. We'll start with his theses on Plotinus. Explain what Pico is doing with Neoplatonism. conclusiones secundum ploti|num numero .xv. unannotated I.20.1. Primum intelligibile non est extra primum intellectum. unannotated I.20.2. Non tota descendit anima quum descendit. unannotated I.20.3. Omnis vita est immortalis. unannotated I.20.4. Anima quae peccavit vel in terreno vel in aereo corpore post |mortem bruti vitam vivit. unannotated I.20.5. Anima irrationalis est idolum animae rationalis ab ea depen|dens sicut lumen a sole. unannotated I.20.6. Ens: vita: et intellectus in idem coincidunt. unannotated I.20.7. Foelicitas hominis ultima est cum particularis intellectus no|ster totali primoque intellectui plene coniungitur. unannotated I.20.8. Civiles virtutes: virtutes simpliciter non sunt appellande. unannotated I.20.9. Non fit assimilatio ad divina per virtutes etiam purgati ani|mi nisi dispositive. unannotated I.20.10. In Ratione similitudines rerum sunt et species: in intellectu ve|ra ipsa entia. unannotated I.20.11. Consumatae virtutis est etiam primos motus amputare. unannotated I.20.12. Improprie dicitur quod intellectus ideas inspiciat vel intueatur. unannotated I.20.13. Quae necessaria animali sunt: necessaria possunt dici: sed non bona. unannotated I.20.14. Sicut accidentalis foelicitas animadversione indiget: ita sub|stantialis foelicitas per carentiam animadversionis non solum non |deperditur: sed roboratur. unannotated I.20.15. Homo qui ad foelicitatem iam pervenit per frenesim aut litar|giam ab ea non impeditur.

conclusiones secundum ade|landum arabem numero .viii. unannotated I.21.1. Intellectus agens nihil est aliud quam pars animae quae sursum ma|net et non cadit. unannotated I.21.2. Anima habet apud se rerum species: et excitatur tantum ab |extrinsecis rebus. unannotated I.21.3. Ad complementum praecedentis conclusionis quam non so|lum Adelandus: sed omnes Mauri dicunt dico ego illas species |actu et substantialiter esse in parte quae non cadit: et recipi de no|vo et accidentaliter in parte quae cadit. unannotated I.21.4. Maior pars rerum quae in somnis innotescunt aut per purgati|onem animae: aut per indemoniationem: aut per meram spiri|tus revelationem innotescunt. unannotated I.21.5. Quod scribit Tabet Chaldeus de dormitione super Epar in re|velatione somniorum recte intelligetur si ad hoc dictum dicta |Platonis in Timeo concordaverimus. unannotated I.21.6. Quia sicut dixit Abdala videre somnia est fortitudo imagi|nationis: intelligere ea est fortitudo intellectus: ideo qui videt |ea ut plurimum non intelligit ea. unannotated I.21.7. Anima est fons motus et gubernatrix materiae. unannotated I.21.8. Transcorporationem animarum crediderunt omnes sapientes |Indorum Persarum Aegiptiorum et Chaldeorum. Annotations

conclusiones secundum por|phyrium numero .xii. unannotated I.22.1. Per patrem apud Platonem intelligere debemus causam quae |a seipsa totum effectum producit: per factorem eam quae materi|am accipit ab alio. unannotated I.22.2. Opifex mundi est supermundana anima. unannotated I.22.3. Exemplar non est aliud quam intellectus ipsius opificis animae. unannotated I.22.4. Omnis anima participans vulcanio intellectu seminatur in lu|nam. unannotated I.22.5. Ex praecedenti conclusione elicio ego cur omnes Teutones bo|nae corporaturae et albi coloris. unannotated I.22.6. Ex eadem conclusione elicio cur omnes Teutones apostolicae |sedis sint reverentissimi. unannotated I.22.7. Sicut Apollo est intellectus solaris: ita Aesculapius est intelle|ctus lunaris. unannotated I.22.8. Ex praecedenti conclusione elicio ego cur luna in ascendente |dat sanitatem nato. unannotated I.22.9. Duplex est malorum demonum genus: alterum animae sunt |et substantiales demones: alterum materiales potentiae et acciden|tales demones. unannotated I.22.10. Duplex genus demonum de quibus dixit secundum Porphirium prae|cedens conclusio nihil credimus esse aliud quam membrorum legem |et potestates harum tenebrarum: de quibus apud Paulum: Quam|vis de quiditate et substantia harum potestatum eos non credo |convenire. unannotated I.22.11. Plato in principio tractatus Timei de extremis tantum deter|minat id est de eo quod vere est nullo modo genitum: et de eo |quod vere genitum nullo modo ens. De mediis nihil: quorum |alterum ens et genitum alterum genitum et ens. unannotated I.22.12. Deus ubique est quia nullibi est: Intellectus ubique est quia nulli|bi est: Anima ubique est quia nullibi est: Sed deus ubique et nullibi |respectu omnium quae post ipsum: Intellectus autem in deo quidem |est ubique autem et nullibi respectu eorum quae post ipsum. Ani|ma in intellectu et deo ubique autem et nullibi respectu corporis.

conclu. secundum iamblicumnu. viiii. unannotated I.23.1. Intellectus speculativus est forma separata quantum ad rem |et ad modum: practicus separata: quantum ad rem coniuncta: |quantum ad modum anima rationalis coniuncta secundum rem separa|ta secundum modum: Inrationalis coniuncta secundum rem et secundum modum. unannotated I.23.2. Opifex sensibilis mundi septimus est hierarchiae intellectualis. unannotated I.23.3. Corporalis natura est in intellectu immobiliter: in animo ex |se primo mobiliter: in animali ex se mobiliter participative: in |coelo aliunde ordinate: infra lunam aliunde mobiliter inordinate. unannotated I.23.4. Elementa in octo coeli corporibus coelesti modo bis inveniun|tur: quae quis inveniet si retrogrado ordine in illa bina numera|tione processerit. unannotated I.23.5. Super hunc mundum quem vocant Theologi [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] est |alius quem vocant [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] et super hunc alius quem vocant |[gap for Greek or Hebrew word]. unannotated I.23.6. Cum excellenter ad intellectum assimilatur anima fit in vehi|culo motus perfecte circularis. unannotated I.23.7. Nulla est vis coelestium astrorum quantum est in se malefica. unannotated I.23.8. Qui finalem causam diluviorum incendiorumque cognoverit: |haec potius [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] id est purgationes quam corruptiones vocabit. unannotated I.23.9. Cum dicit Plato in mundi medio positam animam: de inpar|ticipata anima debet intelligi: quam ideo in medio dicit posi|tam: quia aequaliter omnibus adest ab omni respectu et particu|lari habitudine liberata.

conclusiones secundum pro|clum numero .lv. unannotated I.24.1. Quod est in intelligibilibus terminus et infinitum: est in intel|lectualibus mas et femina: in supermundanis idemtitas et alteri|tas: similitudo et dissimilitudo. In anima circulatio eiusdem et |circulatio alterius. unannotated I.24.2. A saturniis legibus eximuntur dei qui contentivi et perfectivi |sunt: A Ioviis legibus dei saturnii: A fatalibus legibus omnis ani|ma vivens intellectualiter. Legi autem adrastiae omnia obediunt. unannotated I.24.3. Dei appellatio simpliciter absolute uni competit qui est deus |deorum: simpliciter non absolute cuilibet supersubstantialium: |secundum essentiam: intellectualium cuilibet secundum participationem ani- |mis divinis: secundum contactum et coniunctionem demonibus: secundum si|militudinem animis humanis. unannotated I.24.4. Contentiva proprietas est medii ordinis secundae trinitatis qui |in Phedro coelestis dicitur circumductus. unannotated I.24.5. In intelligibilibus non est numerus: Sed multitudo: et nume|rorum causa paternalis ac maternalis: in intellectualibus vero |est numerus secundum essentiam et communicative multitudo. unannotated I.24.6. Idem est quod dicitur alteritas in Parmenide: et supercoelestis |locus in Phedro. unannotated I.24.7. Per unum: plura: totum: partes: finitum: infinitum: de quibus |in Parmenide habemus intelligere secundum ordinem trinitatis intelli|gibilis intellectualis secundum illius ordinis trinariam divisionem. unannotated I.24.8. Quod in Phedro dicitur dorsum coeli: in Parmenide dicitur |unum: Quod ibi profundum coeli: hic totum: Quod ibi axis |coeli: hic terminus. unannotated I.24.9. Tertium ordinem secundae trinitatis per tres terminos expri|mit Plato: extrema perfectum et secundum figuram. unannotated I.24.10. Intellectuales dii uniones habent ab uno primo: substantias |ab intelligibilibus: vitas perfectas et contentivas generativas di|vinorum: ab intelligibilibus et intellectualibus: intellectualem |proprietatem a seipsis. unannotated I.24.11. Sicut intelligibiles dei uniformiter omnia producunt: ita intelli|gibiles intellectualesque trinaliter: intellectuales autem ebdomatice. unannotated I.24.12. Inter extremales paternos deos Saturnum: et Iovem mediat |necessario Rhea per proprietatem vitae foecundae. unannotated I.24.13. Secunda trinitas ebdomadis intellectualis: est trinitas curetum quos vocat theologia intemeratos deos. unannotated I.24.14. Proprium curetum est reddere opus paternae trinitatis imma|culatum: mansionem primi: processum secundi: illustrationem |tertii. unannotated I.24.15. Per deorum cedes tragice a theologis septima unitas discreti|va intellectualis ebdomadae designatur. unannotated I.24.16. Eadem quae Rhea dicitur ut Saturno coexistens secundum suam sum|mitatem: ut Iovem producit et cum Iove totales et partiales de|orum ordines: dicitur Caeres. unannotated I.24.17. Licet ut tradit Theologia distinctae sint divinae hierarchiae in|telligendum est tamen omnia in omnibus esse modo suo. unannotated I.24.18. Sicut paternalis proprietas est solum in intelligibilibus: ita con|ditoria sive factiva solum in deis novis paterna simul et condito|ria: in exemplaria intelligibili conditoria: et paterna inopificia. unannotated I.24.19. Quaecunque vel deorum vel naturae operationes duplices sunt |immanentes et transeuntes: per immanentes seipsum unumquodque |continet: et quae in ipso sunt rationes per transeuntes ad exterio|ra se convertit. unannotated I.24.20. Post intellectualem ebdomadem ordinandi sunt immediate |supermundani dei a partibus universi exempti: et incoordinabi|les ad hunc mundum: et secundum causam eum undique circumplectent|tes. unannotated I.24.21. Proprium est supermundanorum deorum assimilare et trade|re entibus compassionem illam et invicem communionem: quam |habent ex similitudine unius ad alterum. unannotated I.24.22. Licet assimilativum ducalium de quibus dixit praecedens con|clusio proprium sit: appropriatur tamen medio ordini trinitatis |suae primo ordine intellectualibus deis immediate secundum substanti|am coniuncto. et tertio secundis generibus se commiscente. unannotated I.24.23. Iupiter de quo in Gorgia: non est ille qui est universalis con|ditor tertius inter intellectuales: Sed summus et primus inter |ducales. unannotated I.24.24. Ducalis trinitatis Iupiter est substantificativus: Neptunnus vi|vificativus: Pluto conversivus. unannotated I.24.25. Quadruplex est fabrica: prima universalia universalium ex |toto perornat: secunda universa quidem sed particulariter: ter|tia secundum divisa secundum universalitatem: quarta partes ar|ticulariter contexit universalibus. unannotated I.24.26. Iupiter Neptunnus et Pluto Saturni regnum partientes: a Sa|turno Regnum non accipiunt nisi per medium conditoris Io|vis. unannotated I.24.27. Sub primo ducalis trinitatis est esse substantiale. Omnis ani|ma nobilis generationi non subdita primum mobile ignis et su|prema aeris pars quae super terram crescunt: et pars orientalis. unannotated I.24.28. Sub secundo ducalis trinitatis est vita et generatio. Omnis ani|ma sub generationem veniens erraticae spherae aqua et infima |aeris pars quae sub antra minerae et terremotus: media pars ter|rae et circa centrum. unannotated I.24.29. Sub tertio eiusdem ordinis est specialium divisionum conver|sio: animarum purgatio: sphera activorum et passivorum terra |cum terrestribus quae circa tartarum et pars occidentalis. unannotated I.24.30. Et si secunda trinitas deorum supermundanorum tota dicatur |Proserpina: tamen prima eius unitas apud graecos dicitur Diana: |¶Secunda Persephone: tertia Minerva: apud barbaros vero: pri|ma Hechate: secunda anima: tertia virtus. unannotated I.24.31. Secundum precedentem conclusionem ex Procli mente po|test exponi unum ex dictis Zoroastris secundum quod apud Graecos legi|tur: quanquam apud Chaldeos aliter et legitur et exponitur. unannotated I.24.32. Tertia trinitas deorum supermundanorum dicitur Apollo et |conversivum ei appropriatur. unannotated I.24.33. Trinitatem Proserpinae comitantur a latere trinitas custoditi|va et conservativa. unannotated I.24.34. Duodecim dei de quibus in Phedro: dei sunt medii inter su|permundanos et mundanos vinculum illorum. unannotated I.24.35. Dei de quibus in Phedro: in quatuor Trinitates sunt distin|guendi: Opificativam: Custoditivam: Vitalem: et Conversi|vam. unannotated I.24.36. Quatuor sunt exercitus iuniorum deorum. Primus habitat |a primo coelo usque ad principium aeris: Secundus inde usque ad di|midium aeris. Tertius inde usque ad terram. unannotated I.24.37. Cuilibet istorum proportionaliter correspondet quadruplex |exercitus Angelorum: Demonum: et Animarum. unannotated I.24.38. In per se vivente aparet primo quaternitas: unius entis: uni|us entalis: et entis unialis. unannotated I.24.39. Opifex ad quaternitatem respiciens per se animalis quatuor |fabricat partes principales mundi. unannotated I.24.40. In quantum opifex ad exemplar formae unius in per se viven|te respicit: primam partem corporis mundani facit. unannotated I.24.41. Inquantum opifex in forma unius videt unum unius essentia|lis: facit deos mundanos illius partis: inquantum ens unius essenti|alis: facit angelos in eadem parte: inquantum videt unum entis |unialis: facit demones ibi: inquantum esse entis unialis: animalia |ibidem facit. unannotated I.24.42. Facit opifex alias partes proportionaliter ad suarum forma|rum exemplaria sicut de primo est dictum: nec opportet explica|re quia quilibet sciens: viam analogizandi ex se poterit dedu|cere. unannotated I.24.43. Ad sapiens: pulchrum bonumque dominum: per intellectum: |amorem et fidem ascendimus. unannotated I.24.44. Sicut fides quae est credulitas est infra scientiam: ita fides quae |est vere fides est supersubstantialiter supra scientiam et intelle|ctum nos deo immediate coniungens. unannotated I.24.45. Sicut non omne corpus: Sed perfectum anima participat: ita |non omnis anima sed perfecta intellectu participat: omnia ta|men uno participant. unannotated I.24.46. Sicut secundum causalitatis ambitum: ita secundum nature et gradus subli|mitatem haec per ordinem se invicem excedunt. Anima: Intelle|ctus: Vita: Ens: et Unum. unannotated I.24.47. Omnis ordo medius manet in antecedente stabiliter: et in se |firmat consequentem. unannotated I.24.48. Sicut prima trinitas post unitatem est omnia intelligibiliter: |commensurate: et finiformiter: ita secunda trinitas est omnia vi|taliter: vere: et infinitiformiter. Tertia est omne secundum mixti proprie|tatem et pulchriformiter. unannotated I.24.49. Prima trinitas manet tantum: secunda manet et procedit: ter|tia post processum convertit. unannotated I.24.50. Aevum est supra per se animal in secunda et media Trinitate. unannotated I.24.51. Sicut intelligibilia causae sunt universarum serierum: ita intel|lectualia divisionum secundum genera communia supermunda|na differentium secundum speciem: mundana differentium se|cundum individuum. unannotated I.24.52. Per supercoelestem locum habemus intelligere quod de secun |da trinitate plus est intelligibile quam intellectuale: per subcoelestem |concavitatem quod magis intellectuale quam intelligibile. Per coe|lum id quod aeque utroque participat. unannotated I.24.53. Quaecunque de supercoelesti loco in Phedro affirmative dicun|tur: de eo dicuntur non ut simpliciter primum: Sed ut habet an|te se superiora genera quibus participat. Quaecunque negative |dicuntur: dicuntur ut analogice se habet ad primum bonum quod |est absolute caput omnium non determinati ordinis huius vel il|lius. unannotated I.24.54. Ambrosia est analoga termino: et nectar infinito. unannotated I.24.55. Sicut intellectus perfectus ab intelligibilibus quaerendus est: |ita virtus sursum ductiva ab intellectualibus: operatio absolu|ta et sequestrata a materia: ab ultra mundanis vita alata: a mun|danis expressio divinorum: vera ab angelicis choris repletio eius |quae a diis est aspirationis: a bonis demonibus.

conclusiones secundum mathema|ticam pythagorae numero .xiiii. unannotated I.25.1. Unum: Alteritas: et id quod est sunt causa numerorum: Unum |unitorum: Alteritas generativorum: id quod est substantiali|um. unannotated I.25.2. In participatis numeris alie sunt species numerorum: alie speci|erum uniones. unannotated I.25.3. Ubi unitas punctalis cadit in alteritatem binarii: ibi est primo |triangulus. unannotated I.25.4. Qui .i.ii.iii.iiii.v.xii. ordinem cognoverit: providentiae distri|butionem exacte tenebit. unannotated I.25.5. Per Unum: Tria: et Septem scimus in Pallade unificativum |discretionis: causativam et beatificativam intellectus potesta|tem. unannotated I.25.6. Triplex proportio Arithmetica: Geometrica: et Harmonica: tres nobis themidos filias indicat: Iudicii: Iusticiae: Pacisque existen|tes symbola. unannotated I.25.7. Per secretum radii recti: reflexi et refracti in scientia perspecti|ve: triplicis naturae admonemur: intellectualis: animalis et cor|poralis. unannotated I.25.8. Ratio ad concupiscentiam habet proportionem diapason. unannotated I.25.9. Irascibilis ad concupiscentiam habet proportionem a diapen|te. unannotated I.25.10. Ratio ad iram habet proportionem diatessaron. unannotated I.25.11. Iudicium sensus in musica non est adhibendum: sed solius in|tellectus. unannotated I.25.12. In formis numerandis non debemus excedere quadragenari|um. unannotated I.25.13. Quilibet numerus: planus aequilaterus animam symbolizat. unannotated I.25.14. Quilibet numerus linearis symbolizat deos.

conclusiones secundum opinio|nem chaldeorum theologo|rum numero .vi. unannotated I.26.1. Ordo separatorum principialis non est primus: ut putant aegyp|tii: Sed super eum est ordo fontalis unialiter superexaltatus. unannotated I.26.2. Fatum non est necessitas primae potentiae seminalis: Sed est in|tellectualiter participata habitudo animalium rationum indecli|nans a superioribus: inevitabilis ab inferioribus. unannotated I.26.3. Substantiales rerum visibilium qualitates non a virtute sepa|rata particulari ut credunt aegyptii: sed a primo receptaculo fon|tis luminum per animalem splendorem dependenter resultant. unannotated I.26.4. Animae partiales non immediate ut dicunt aegyptii: Sed medi|antibus totalibus animis demoniacis ab intellctuali splendore |illuminantur. unannotated I.26.5. Coordinatio intelligibilis non est in intellectuali coordinatio|ne ut dixit Amosis aegyptius: Sed est super omnem intellectua|lem hierarchiam in abysso primae unitatis et sub caligine prima|rum tenebrarum inparticipaliter abscondita. unannotated I.26.6. Quicquid est a luna supra:purum est lumen: et illud est substan |tia orbium mundanorum.

conclusiones secundum pri|scam doctrinam mercurii tris|megisti aegyptii numero .x. unannotated I.27.1. Ubicunque vita: ibi anima: ubicunque anima: ibi mens. unannotated I.27.2. Omne motum corporeum: omne movens incorporeum. unannotated I.27.3. Anima in corpore: mens in anima: in mente verbum: tum ho|rum pater deus. unannotated I.27.4. Deus circa omnia atque per omnia: mens circa animam: anima |circa aerem: aer circa materiam. unannotated I.27.5. Nihil est in mundo expers vitae. unannotated I.27.6. Nihil est in universo passibile mortis vel corruptionis. Correlarium: Ubique vita: ubique providentia: ubique immortali|tas. unannotated I.27.7. Sex viis futura homini deus denuntiat: per Somnia: Porten|ta: Aves: Intestina: spiritum et Sybillam. unannotated I.27.8. Verum est: quod non perturbatum: non determinatum: non |coloratum: non figuratum: non concussum: nudum: perspicu|um: a seipso comprehensibile: intransmutabile bonum ac penitus |incorporeum. unannotated I.27.9. Decem intra unumquemque sunt ultores: ignorantia: tristitia: |inconstantia: cupiditas: iniustitia: luxuries: deceptio: invidia: |fraus: ira: temeritas: malitia. unannotated I.27.10. Decem ultores de quibus dixit secundum Mercurium praece|dens conclusio: videbit profundus contemplator correspondere |male coordinationi denariae in cabala: et praefectis illius de qui|bus ego in cabalisticis conclusionibus nihil posui quia est secre|tum.

conclusiones cabalistice nume|ro .xlvii. secundum secretam |doctrinam sapientum hebreo|rum cabalistarum quorum me|moria sit semper in bonum. unannotated I.28.1. Sicut homo et sacerdos inferior sacrificat deo animas animali|um irrationalium: ita Michael sacerdos superior sacrificat ani|mas animalium rationalium. unannotated I.28.2. Novem sunt angelorum hierarchiae quarum nomina. Cheru|bim. Seraphim. Hasmalim. Haiot. Aralim. Tarsisim. Ophanim. |Tephsraim. Isim. unannotated I.28.3. Quamvis nomen ineffabile sit proprietas clementiae: negan|dum tamen non est quin contineat proprietatem iudicii. unannotated I.28.4. Peccatum Adae fuit truncatio regni a coeteris plantis. unannotated I.28.5. Cum arbore scientiae boni et mali in qua peccavit primus ho|mo creavit deus soeculum. unannotated I.28.6. Magnus aquilo fons est animarum omnium simpliciter sicut |alii dies quarundam et non omnium. unannotated I.28.7. Cum dicit Salomon in oratione sua in libro Regum. Exaudi |o: coelum: per coelum lineam viridem debemus intelligere quae |gyrat universum. unannotated I.28.8. Animae a tertio lumine ad quartam diem: et inde ad quintam |descendunt: inde exeuntes corporis noctem subintrant. unannotated I.28.9. Per sex dies geneseos habemus intelligere sex extremitates |aedificii procedentes a Bresith: sicut procedunt cedri a Libano. unannotated I.28.10. Rectius dicitur quod paradisus sit totum aedificium quam quod sit deci|ma: et in medio eius est collocatus magnus Adam: qui est Tiphe|ret. unannotated I.28.11. Dictum est ex Heden exire fluvium qui dividitur in quatuor |capita ad significandum quod ex secunda numeratione procedit ter|tia: quae in quartam: quintam: sextam et decimam dividitur. unannotated I.28.12. Verum erit omnia pendere ex fato: si per fatum: fatum supre|mum intellexerimus. unannotated I.28.13. Qui noverit in Cabala mysterium portarum intelligentiae: |cognoscet mysterium magni Iobelei. unannotated I.28.14. Qui noverit proprietatem meridionalem in dextrali coordi|natione: sciet cur omnis profectio Abraam semper fit versus au|strum. unannotated I.28.15. Nisi nomen Abraam [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] id est he addita fuisset: Abraam |non generasset. unannotated I.28.16. Omnes ante Moysen prophetarunt per cervam unicornem. unannotated I.28.17. Ubicunque in scriptura fit mentio amoris maris: et feminae: no|bis mystice designatur coniuncto Tipheret et Chieneseth Isra|hel: vel Beth et Tipheret. unannotated I.28.18. Qui media nocte cum Tipheret copulabitur: prospera erit ei |omnis generatio. unannotated I.28.19. Eaedem sunt litterae nominis cacodemonis qui est princeps mun|di huius et nominis dei Triagrammaton: et qui sciverit ordina|re transpositionem deducet unum ex alio. unannotated I.28.20. Cum fiet lux speculi non lucentis sicut speculi lucentis: erit nox |sicut dies ut dicit David. unannotated I.28.21. Qui sciet proprietatem quae est secretum tenebrarum: sciet cur |mali demones plus in nocte quam die nocent. unannotated I.28.22. Licet fiat multiplex coordinatio curruum: tamen inquantum |attinet ad phylatteriorum mysterium duo sunt currus ordinan|di: ita ut ex secunda: tertia: quarta: quinta: fiat unus currus: et |sunt quatuor phylatteria quae induit Vau: et ex sexta: septima: |octava et nona fit secundus currus: et sunt phylatteria quae indu|it ultima He. unannotated I.28.23. Supra proprietatem penitentiae non est utendum verbo dixit. unannotated I.28.24. Cum dixit .Iob. qui facit pacem in excelsis suis: aquam intelle|xit australem et ignem septentrionalem: et praefectos illorum de |quibus non est ultra dicendum. unannotated I.28.25. Idem est bresith id est in principio creavit: ac si dixisset in sapien|tia creavit. unannotated I.28.26. Quod dixit anchelos chaldeus becadmim id est cum aeternis vel |peraeterna: triginta duas vias sapientiae intellexit. unannotated I.28.27. Sicut congregatio aquarum est iustus: ita mare ad quod ten|dunt omnia flumina est divinitas. unannotated I.28.28. Per volatile quod creatum est die quinta: debemus intellige|re angelos mundanos qui hominibus apparent: non eos qui non |apparent nisi in spiritu. unannotated I.28.29. Nomen dei quatuor litterarum: quod est ex mem: sade: pe: et sa|de: regno Davidisdebet appropriari. unannotated I.28.30. Nullus angelus habens sex alas unquam transformatur. unannotated I.28.31. Data est circumcisio ad liberationem a virtutibus immundis |quae in circuitu ambulant. unannotated I.28.32. Ideo circumcisio fit octava die: quia est superior quam sponsa uni|versalizata. unannotated I.28.33. Nullae sunt litterae in tota lege quae in formis: coniunctioni|bus: separationibus: tortuositate: directione: defectu: superabun|dantia: minoritate: maioritate: coronatione: clausura: apertura: |et ordine: decem numerationum secreta non manifestent. unannotated I.28.34. Qui intellexerit cur sit dictum quod Moyses abscondit faciem su|am: et quod Ezechias vertit facies suas ad parietem: sciet quae esse de|beat orantis habitudo et dispositio. unannotated I.28.35. Nulla res spiritualis descendens inferius operatur sine indu|mento. unannotated I.28.36. Peccatum Soddomae: fuit per truncationem ultimae plantae. unannotated I.28.37. Per secretum orationis antelucanae: nihil aliud debemus intel|ligere quam proprietatem pietatis. unannotated I.28.38. Sicut extrinsecus timor est inferior amore: ita intrinsecus est |superior amore. unannotated I.28.39. Ex praecedenti conclusione intelligitur cur in Genesi a timore |laudatur Abraam: quem tamen scimus per proprietatem pieta|tis omnia fecisse ex amore. unannotated I.28.40. Quotienscunque ignoramus proprietatem a qua est influxus |super petitione quam petimus: ad dominum naris recurrendum |est. unannotated I.28.41. Omnis anima bona: est anima nova veniens ab oriente. unannotated I.28.42. Ideo Ioseph ossibus tantum sepultus est et non corpore quia |eius ossa erant virtutes et militie arboris superioris vocati Sadich |influentis ad terram superiorem. unannotated I.28.43. Ideo Moysis sepulchrum nemo novit: quia exaltatus est in Io|beleo superiore: et super Iobeleum misit radices suas. unannotated I.28.44. Cum anima comprehenderit quicquid poterit comprehende|re: et coniungetur animae superiori: expoliabit indumentum terrenum a |se: et extirpabitur de loco suo et coniungetur cum divinitate. unannotated I.28.45. Sapientes Israhel post cessationem prophetiae per spiritum: pro|phetarunt per filiam vocis. unannotated I.28.46. Non punitur Rex terrae in terra: quin prius humilietur mili|tia coelestis in coelo. unannotated I.28.47. Per dictionem Amen ordo habetur expressus quomodo |numerationum procedant influxus.

Without repeating anything that you've already written, can you give just the number of the conclusion and suggest sources in the books of the philosophers he's quoting for further reading to illuminate the conclusion. Give chapter and verse if you can, and rough or exact dates

I like the format. Do the Conclusions according to the Platonists. If you can cite quotations from those authors that resemble the Pico material, add that.

continue

continue

Continue. We don't need the "sources" heading just give the sources.

do the same for the conclusions on the pythagoreans chaldeans and hermetics

Write an essay about Pico's conclusions according to the platonists that speculates about what his intentions might have been for intervening in Renaissance Christian Theology. Consider his texts Oration, Apology, Heptaplus, On Being and Unity, and Commento. Explain how his takes on the platonists are relevant to his disagreements with Ficino.

Write an essay on Pico's understanding of number in Neoplatonism and how it relates to his own theories on number such as the contrast between the "numbers of the merchants" i.e. material numbers vs the higher category of real numbers, and his influence on thinkers like Agrippa and Dee, along with the Christian Cabalist tradition

Translate these conclusions of Pico's own opinions on mathematics and explain them in the light of these theories of number conclusiones de mathematicis se|cundum opinionem propriam nu|mero .lxxxv. unannotated II.7.1. Mathematicae non sunt verae scientiae. unannotated II.7.2. Si foelicitas sit in speculativa perfectione: mathematicae non |faciunt ad foelicitatem. unannotated II.7.3. mathematicae scientiae non sunt propter se: Sed ut via ad alias |scientias quaerendae. unannotated II.7.4. Sicut subiecta mathematicorum si absolute accipiantur: intel|lectum nihil perficiunt: ita si ut imagines accipiantur superiorum: |immediate nos ad intelligibilium speculationem manu ducunt. unannotated II.7.5. Sicut dictum Aristotelis de antiquis dicentis quod ideo errarunt |in physica contemplatione: quia mathematice res physica tra|ctarunt: verum esset si illi materialiter mathematica non forma|liter accepissent ita est verissimum modernos qui de naturalibus |mathematice sidputatnt naturalis philosophiae fundamenta de|struere. unannotated II.7.6. Nihil magis nocivum theologo quam frequens et assidua in ma|thematicis euclidis exercitatio. unannotated II.7.7. Sicut medicina movet spiritus principaliter ut regunt corpus: |ita musica movet spiritus ut serviunt animae. unannotated II.7.8. Medicina sanat animam per corpus: musica autem corpus per |animam. unannotated II.7.9. Per arithmeticam non materialem: Sed formalem habetur op|tima via ad prophetiam naturalem. unannotated II.7.10. Ioachin in prophetiis suis alia via non processit quam per numeros |formales. unannotated II.7.11. Per numeros habetur via ad omnis scibilis investigationem et in- |tellectionem: ad cuius conclusionis verificationem polliceor me ad |infra scriptas. lxxiiii. questiones per viam numerorum responsurum. previous next Prev Next

Rewrite the essay to use the correct term "formal number" and take into account these conclusions. Cite a significant number of the them.

questiones ad quas pollicetur |se per numeros responsurum:. unannotated II.7a.1. Utrum sit deus. unannotated II.7a.2. Utrum sit infinitus. unannotated II.7a.3. Utrum sit causa omnium rerum. unannotated II.7a.4. Utrum sit simplicissimus. unannotated II.7a.5. Utrum sit intelligens. unannotated II.7a.6. Quomodo deus intelligat. unannotated II.7a.7. An sit dare naturam superiorem natura intellectuali. unannotated II.7a.8. An esse quiditativum rei sit intimius esse quod habeat res. unannotated II.7a.9. Quid de humanitate in sua precisissima abstractione possit prae|dicari: et quid non. unannotated II.7a.10. Quomodo elementa sint in caelo. unannotated II.7a.11. Quis modus debeat teneri in investigatione uniuscuiusque scibilis. unannotated II.7a.12. Utrum supra naturam rerum corporalium sit dare naturam ra|tionalem incorpoream. unannotated II.7a.13. Utrum supra naturam rationalem sit dare naturam intellectualem. unannotated II.7a.14. Utrum inter naturam rationalem et intellectualem sit aliuqa |natura media. unannotated II.7a.15. Utrum inter naturam intellectualem et deum sit aliquam natura media. unannotated II.7a.16. Utrum in aliqua natura: contradictioria se compatiantur. unannotated II.7a.17. Utrum in aliqua natura coincidant contradictoria. unannotated II.7a.18. Quis numerus annorum sit naturaliter debitus vitae boni hominis. unannotated II.7a.19. Quis sit numerus annorum naturaliter debitus vitae mali hominis. unannotated II.7a.20. Quot sint gradus principales naturarum universi. unannotated II.7a.21. Utrum natura corporea ut talis sit activa vel tamen sit passiva. unannotated II.7a.22. Quid dicat corpus. unannotated II.7a.23. Utrum sint in materia dimensiones interminate. unannotated II.7a.24. Utrum sit melius deum causare res quam non causare. unannotated II.7a.25. Utrum creatio rerum ad extra: procedat necessario a divina es|sentia in tribus personis hypostatizata. unannotated II.7a.26. Utrum inter causam et causatum necessario mediet aliquid. unannotated II.7a.27. Utrum recte multitudo scibilium ad decem praedicamentorum |numerum sit reducta. unannotated II.7a.28. Quae sit differentia inter modum intelligendi angelorum: et |animarum rationalium. unannotated II.7a.29. Quae sit differentia inter modum intelligendi dei et angelo|rum. unannotated II.7a.30. Utrum natura angelica sit quodammodo omnia. unannotated II.7a.31. Utrum natura rationalis sit quodammodo omnia. unannotated II.7a.32. Utrum possint esse plures dei. unannotated II.7a.33. Utrum detur infinitum in natura. unannotated II.7a.34. Quomodo differat infinitas quam theologi attribuunt deo: |ab illam quam dicunt philosophi impossibile esse dari. unannotated II.7a.35. Utrum deus sit omnia in onmnibus. unannotated II.7a.36. Quomodo differat esse creaturarum ab esse dei. unannotated II.7a.37. Quae pertineant ad condiserationem theologi. unannotated II.7a.38. Quando futura sit saeculi consumatio. unannotated II.7a.39. Quis et qualis erit rerum status in saeculi consumatione. unannotated II.7a.40. Quae opinio verior de trinitate Arrii. Sabellii. Eucliph. aut fi|dei catholicae. unannotated II.7a.41. Utrum formae sensibiles sint intelligibiliter in angelo. unannotated II.7a.42. Utrum in angelo sit aliud quam intelligens: intellectio et intelle|ctum. unannotated II.7a.43. Utrum haec in angelo realiter: an ratione distinguantur. unannotated II.7a.44. Utrum sit eadem natura moventis et moti motu physico. unannotated II.7a.45. Utrum sit dare aliquid quod secundum suam naturam sit pura poten|tia: quam philosophi vocant materiam primam. unannotated II.7a.46. Utrum mediate vel immediate et quomodo materia prima de|pendeat a deo. unannotated II.7a.47. Utrum omne quod est infra deum sit compositum ex actu et |potentia. unannotated II.7a.48. Utrum sit materia eiusdem rationis in omnibus. unannotated II.7a.49. Utrum aliqua res creata possit esse inmunis ab imperfectione. unannotated II.7a.50. Quae naturae sint aptae foelicitari. unannotated II.7a.51. Utrum foelicitas consistat in intellectu an in voluntate. unannotated II.7a.52. Utrum quantitas sit per se vel participative visibilis. unannotated II.7a.53. Utrum natura intellectualis sit deo semper unita. unannotated II.7a.54. Utrum in natura intellectuali plus sit imperfectionis quam perfe|ctionis. unannotated II.7a.55. Cuius naturae propria sit vera mobilitas. unannotated II.7a.56. Utrum animae conveniat modus scientiae per viam numerorum. unannotated II.7a.57. Quis sit primus modus praedicandi per se. unannotated II.7a.58. Quis sit secundus modus praedicationis per se. unannotated II.7a.59. Utrum diffinitio investigetur per demonstrationem. unannotated II.7a.60. Quare solum de inherentia passionis ad subiectum habetur |scientia. unannotated II.7a.61. Utrum anima rationalis sit materialis. unannotated II.7a.62. Utrum sit incorruptibilis. unannotated II.7a.63. Utrum universaliter intelligat. unannotated II.7a.64. Utrum sicut est dare mundum sensibilem: ita sit dare mundum |intelligibilem. unannotated II.7a.65. Utrum sit maior vel minor numerus separatarum specierum |quam materialium. unannotated II.7a.66. Quare in opere secundae diei non est dictum. Et vidit deus quo|niam bonum. unannotated II.7a.67. Quare sexta numeratio homo dicitur. unannotated II.7a.68. Quare sex diebus dicitur deus omnia perfecisse. unannotated II.7a.69. Quid significet deum septima die quievisse. unannotated II.7a.70. Utrum distinguatur irascibilis a concupiscibili. unannotated II.7a.71. Quae sit distinctio inter potentias animae cognoscitivas. unannotated II.7a.72. Cur homines naturaliter appetant victoriam. unannotated II.7a.73. Cur naturalis sit homini modus cognoscendi per rationem phan|tasiae coniunctam. unannotated II.7a.74. Utrum in caelo sint descripta et significata omnia cuilibet sci|enti legere.

Translate these You said: These are Pico's Conclusions. Translate them and give explanations of the vocabulary and grammatical features of the sentences, then explain their philosophical contexts. Point out what's original or just a paraphrase of a philosopher, and evaluate how close Pico's conclusion is to the conventional view. questiones ad quas pollicetur |se per numeros responsurum:. unannotated II.7a.1. Utrum sit deus. unannotated II.7a.2. Utrum sit infinitus. unannotated II.7a.3. Utrum sit causa omnium rerum. unannotated II.7a.4. Utrum sit simplicissimus. unannotated II.7a.5. Utrum sit intelligens. unannotated II.7a.6. Quomodo deus intelligat. unannotated II.7a.7. An sit dare naturam superiorem natura intellectuali. unannotated II.7a.8. An esse quiditativum rei sit intimius esse quod habeat res. unannotated II.7a.9. Quid de humanitate in sua precisissima abstractione possit prae|dicari: et quid non. unannotated II.7a.10. Quomodo elementa sint in caelo. unannotated II.7a.11. Quis modus debeat teneri in investigatione uniuscuiusque scibilis. unannotated II.7a.12. Utrum supra naturam rerum corporalium sit dare naturam ra|tionalem incorpoream. unannotated II.7a.13. Utrum supra naturam rationalem sit dare naturam intellectualem. unannotated II.7a.14. Utrum inter naturam rationalem et intellectualem sit aliuqa |natura media. unannotated II.7a.15. Utrum inter naturam intellectualem et deum sit aliquam natura media. unannotated II.7a.16. Utrum in aliqua natura: contradictioria se compatiantur. unannotated II.7a.17. Utrum in aliqua natura coincidant contradictoria. unannotated II.7a.18. Quis numerus annorum sit naturaliter debitus vitae boni hominis. unannotated II.7a.19. Quis sit numerus annorum naturaliter debitus vitae mali hominis. unannotated II.7a.20. Quot sint gradus principales naturarum universi. unannotated II.7a.21. Utrum natura corporea ut talis sit activa vel tamen sit passiva. unannotated II.7a.22. Quid dicat corpus. unannotated II.7a.23. Utrum sint in materia dimensiones interminate. unannotated II.7a.24. Utrum sit melius deum causare res quam non causare. unannotated II.7a.25. Utrum creatio rerum ad extra: procedat necessario a divina es|sentia in tribus personis hypostatizata. unannotated II.7a.26. Utrum inter causam et causatum necessario mediet aliquid. unannotated II.7a.27. Utrum recte multitudo scibilium ad decem praedicamentorum |numerum sit reducta. unannotated II.7a.28. Quae sit differentia inter modum intelligendi angelorum: et |animarum rationalium. unannotated II.7a.29. Quae sit differentia inter modum intelligendi dei et angelo|rum. unannotated II.7a.30. Utrum natura angelica sit quodammodo omnia. unannotated II.7a.31. Utrum natura rationalis sit quodammodo omnia. unannotated II.7a.32. Utrum possint esse plures dei. unannotated II.7a.33. Utrum detur infinitum in natura. unannotated II.7a.34. Quomodo differat infinitas quam theologi attribuunt deo: |ab illam quam dicunt philosophi impossibile esse dari. unannotated II.7a.35. Utrum deus sit omnia in onmnibus. unannotated II.7a.36. Quomodo differat esse creaturarum ab esse dei. unannotated II.7a.37. Quae pertineant ad condiserationem theologi. unannotated II.7a.38. Quando futura sit saeculi consumatio. unannotated II.7a.39. Quis et qualis erit rerum status in saeculi consumatione. unannotated II.7a.40. Quae opinio verior de trinitate Arrii. Sabellii. Eucliph. aut fi|dei catholicae. unannotated II.7a.41. Utrum formae sensibiles sint intelligibiliter in angelo. unannotated II.7a.42. Utrum in angelo sit aliud quam intelligens: intellectio et intelle|ctum. unannotated II.7a.43. Utrum haec in angelo realiter: an ratione distinguantur. unannotated II.7a.44. Utrum sit eadem natura moventis et moti motu physico. unannotated II.7a.45. Utrum sit dare aliquid quod secundum suam naturam sit pura poten|tia: quam philosophi vocant materiam primam. unannotated II.7a.46. Utrum mediate vel immediate et quomodo materia prima de|pendeat a deo. unannotated II.7a.47. Utrum omne quod est infra deum sit compositum ex actu et |potentia. unannotated II.7a.48. Utrum sit materia eiusdem rationis in omnibus. unannotated II.7a.49. Utrum aliqua res creata possit esse inmunis ab imperfectione. unannotated II.7a.50. Quae naturae sint aptae foelicitari. unannotated II.7a.51. Utrum foelicitas consistat in intellectu an in voluntate. unannotated II.7a.52. Utrum quantitas sit per se vel participative visibilis. unannotated II.7a.53. Utrum natura intellectualis sit deo semper unita. unannotated II.7a.54. Utrum in natura intellectuali plus sit imperfectionis quam perfe|ctionis. unannotated II.7a.55. Cuius naturae propria sit vera mobilitas. unannotated II.7a.56. Utrum animae conveniat modus scientiae per viam numerorum. unannotated II.7a.57. Quis sit primus modus praedicandi per se. unannotated II.7a.58. Quis sit secundus modus praedicationis per se. unannotated II.7a.59. Utrum diffinitio investigetur per demonstrationem. unannotated II.7a.60. Quare solum de inherentia passionis ad subiectum habetur |scientia. unannotated II.7a.61. Utrum anima rationalis sit materialis. unannotated II.7a.62. Utrum sit incorruptibilis. unannotated II.7a.63. Utrum universaliter intelligat. unannotated II.7a.64. Utrum sicut est dare mundum sensibilem: ita sit dare mundum |intelligibilem. unannotated II.7a.65. Utrum sit maior vel minor numerus separatarum specierum |quam materialium. unannotated II.7a.66. Quare in opere secundae diei non est dictum. Et vidit deus quo|niam bonum. unannotated II.7a.67. Quare sexta numeratio homo dicitur. unannotated II.7a.68. Quare sex diebus dicitur deus omnia perfecisse. unannotated II.7a.69. Quid significet deum septima die quievisse. unannotated II.7a.70. Utrum distinguatur irascibilis a concupiscibili. unannotated II.7a.71. Quae sit distinctio inter potentias animae cognoscitivas. unannotated II.7a.72. Cur homines naturaliter appetant victoriam. unannotated II.7a.73. Cur naturalis sit homini modus cognoscendi per rationem phan|tasiae coniunctam. unannotated II.7a.74. Utrum in caelo sint descripta et significata omnia cuilibet sci|enti legere.

you froze up in the middle of question 60. Please finish starting from question 60.

you froze up in the middle of question 60. Please finish starting from question 60.

I'd like you to return to the format given above where you explain the philosophical context, unpack vocabulary, and comment on Pico's originality with each conclusion, rather than doing all that after the translations. conclusiones secundum propri|am opinionem numero .lxii. in do|ctrina platonis de qua pauca |hic adducuntur: quia prima pa|radoxa conclusio totam sibi as|summit platonis doctrinam dis|cutiendam. annotated II.5.1. Per numeros triplares qui a Platone in Timeo ponuntur in |triangulo animam significante admonemur quousque in formis |numerandis Sit progrediendum per naturam illius quod est pri|ma forma formans. Per numeros vero duplares ibidem positos |admonemur quatenus positis duobus extremis terminis coordi|nanda sunt media per naturam eius quod est medium in universo. annotated II.5.2. Cum quaeritur a Platone an ad exemplar genitum an ingeni|tum factus sit mundus: nihil aliud quaeritur nisi an ad animales |rationes: an ad ideas intellectuales. annotated II.5.3. Qui noverit modum illuminationis superiorum super media |intelliget idem significare et Platonicos per congregationem ani|marum in monte Ida: et hebreos per animarum congregationem |in monte Synao in auditione legis. annotated II.5.4. Qui sciverit rationem causae praesupponere rationem perfecti: |intelliget iuxta Platonicam doctrinam Quare dixerit Phere|cides non prius Iovem mundum fabricasse quam in amorem fuerit |transformatus. annotated II.5.5. Empedocles per spheram intelligibilem a Venere contentam: |nihil aliud intelligit quam mundum archetipum ab ordine intra se |manentis primae providentiae contentum. annotated II.5.6. Ideo amor ab Orpheo sine oculis dicitur quia est supra intelle|ctum. annotated II.5.7. Cum dicit Plato in Timeo in medio mundi positam animam: |quicquid dicant coeteri Platonici ego per medium lunam intelligo. annotated II.5.8. Infra ambitum terminati entis recte quinque illa Platonis pro |transcendentibus ponuntur. Ens. Idem. Alterum. Status. et Mo|tus. annotated II.5.9. Platonice loquendo de anima dico animam vivere cum Satur|no vitam contemplativam: cum Iove politicam et practicam: cum Mar|te irascibilem et ambitiosam: cum Venere concupiscibilem et vo|luptuosam: cum Mercurio vegetalem cum stupido sensu. annotated II.5.10. Ex precedenti conclusione habetur quae sit virga Mercurii so|porifera. annotated II.5.11. Primus septennarius vitae humanae est sub Mercurio: Secun|dus sub Venere: Tertius sub Marte: Quartus sub Iove: Quin|tus sub Saturno: et reliqui septennarii secundum eum qui fuerit praedo|minatus in praecedentibus. annotated II.5.12. Predictis vitis cooperantur sol et luna ut causae universales: et |per appropriationem. Luna: Mercurio: et Saturno. Sol: Veneri |et Marti. simul uterque Iovi. annotated II.5.13. Si Syriani theologiam sequamur: rationabile est ecclesiasticae |hierarchiae sacerdotes in coelesti hierarchia anagogicis virtuti|bus proportionari. annotated II.5.14. Cum Platonem audimus Palladem et amorem philosophos |deos vocantem: ita intelligamus: ut amor sit philosophus ratio|ne viae Pallas ratione termini. annotated II.5.15. Per extremorum et medii rationem cognoscere possumus conve|nienter universi gradus sic in quinque posse dividi. in super ens. ve|re ens. non vere ens. non vere non ens. vere non ens. annotated II.5.16. Per ipsum tale. vere tale. semper tale in Platonis doctrina de|bemus intelligere proprietatem intellectus: animae et primorum |corporum. annotated II.5.17. Si Syriani doctrinam sequamur: conveniens est post unitatem |totalis intellectionis quae et trifariam dividitur in substantialem |potentialem et operativam ponere trinarium intellectionis: par|tialis scilicet participatae et imaginariae. annotated II.5.18. Quicquid dicant coeteri Platonici de rationalis animae parti|um distinctione: assero ego si [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] id est rationalem partem |in [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] et [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] dividamus: eandem partem ut |phantasiae coniungitur [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] dici: ut intellctui [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] ut |sibiipsi [gap for Greek or Hebrew word]. annotated II.5.19. Possibile est ut pars rationalis animae nostrae quam secundum peripa|teticos possibilem intellectum voco ad hoc perveniat: ut sine con|iunctione ad phantasmata discurrat et operetur. annotated II.5.20. Perfectius et verius reperitur pulchritudo in intelligibilibus quam |in sensibilibus. annotated II.5.21. Cum dicit Plato amorem natum ex congressu peniae et Pori |in ortis Iovis: in natalibus Veneris: diis discumbentibus nihil ali|ud intelligit quam in angeli mente tunc primum amorem id est desideri|um pulchritudinis esse natum cum in eo idearum splendor: im|perfectius tamen refulxit. annotated II.5.22. Amor de quo in Symposio loquitur Plato: in deo nullo mo|do esse potest. annotated II.5.23. Per duplicem Venerem de qua in Symposio Platonis: nihil |aliud intelligere debemus: quam duplicem pulchritudinem sensibi|lem et intelligibilem. annotated II.5.24. Amor de quo Plotinus loquitur non est coelestis amor de quo |Plato in Symposio: Sed illius vera et proxima imago. annotated II.5.25. Pugnantia quae videtur in dictis Orphei et Agathonis: quo|rum alter amorem antiquiorem omnibus diis dicit: alter iunio|rem perfecte solvemus si ad duplex deorum esse intelligibile et |naturale respexerimus. annotated II.5.26. Pulchritudo est in deo per causam: in totali intellectu vere essen|tialiter totaliter: in particulari intellectu vere partialiter essentiali|ter: in anima rationali vere participaliter: in visibilibus coeli acciden|tibus imaginarie essentialiter totaliter: in subcoelestibus quali|tatibus visibilibus imaginarie partialiter essentialiter: in quan- |titatibus imaginarie participaliter. annotated II.5.27. Cum dicit Plato Omne quod fit a causa fieri: referendum est |per se ad per se: et per accidens ad per accidens. annotated II.5.28. Cum dixit Plato in Timeo ex individua dividuaque substantia |conflatam animam: per individuam substantiam animalem in|tellectum significavit: per dividuam animalem rationem. annotated II.5.29. Non est credendum in doctrina Platonis animam quicquam intel|ligere per inspectionem ad ideas nisi cum pervenit ad illum statum |qui est supremus gradus contemplativae perfectionis. Correlarium. Errant qui credunt secundum Platonem quod ea quae nos quo|tidie cognoscimus et intelligimus: in idearum lumine cognoscamus. annotated II.5.30. Modus cognoscendi per ideas est ille: cuius dixit Plato in Ti|meo paucos homines esse participes: Sed bene deos omnes. annotated II.5.31. Exponere in Fabula Critiae per quinque partus: quinque formas |corporis omnino est inconveniens. annotated II.5.32. Per aliam vitam in epinomide intelligere debemus connexio|nem partis cum suo toto: et credo idem esse quod apud Cabali|stas dicitur soeculum venturum. annotated II.5.33. Qualiter verum sit quod in epinomide dicitur arithmeticam |scientiam inter omnes speculativas maxime facere ad foelicitatem: |intelligi potest per conclusiones nostras de mathematicis. annotated II.5.34. Per coelum in epinomide quod dicit Plato esse nobis causam |omnium bonorum: non ideam coeli: Sed ipsum coelum quod est |coeleste animal intelligere debemus. annotated II.5.35. Per necessitatis regnum in Symposio Platonis: nihil aliud in|telligere debemus quam superabundantiam naturae alterius supra na|turam eiusdem: et infiniti supra terminum. annotated II.5.36. Per demonstrationem Platonis in Phedro de animae immor|talitate: nec de nostris animis ut Proclus. Hermias. et Syrianus |credunt: nec de omni anima ut Plotinus et Numenius: nec de |mundi tantum anima: ut Possidonius: Sed de coelesti qualibet ani|ma probatur et concluditur immortalitas. annotated II.5.37. Tempus essentialiter est in incorporeis: participative in corporeis. annotated II.5.38. Tempus ubi habet esse essentiale: habet esse totaliter extra ani|mam. annotated II.5.39. Tempus habet ab anima suum esse participatum: a prima qui|dem anima per modum effectivae causalitatis: ab ultima vero per |modum obiectivae consequtionis. annotated II.5.40. Motus primi coeli: et universaliter quilibet motus sive localis |sive alterationis secundario et per accidens tempore mensuratur. annotated II.5.41. Licet natura intellectualis simul omnia intelligat: non tamen |hoc est per virtualem et unitivam contintentiam: Sed per mutu|am penetrationem formarum: et indissociatam concatenationem |totius esse participati id est formalis. annotated II.5.42. Per demonstrationem Platonis in Phedro de immortalitate |animae firmius demonstratur aeternitas mundi quam per ullam ratio|nem Aristotelis in .viii. Physicorum. annotated II.5.43. Sicut et videtur et auditur homo ab homine per motionem sen|sus ad extra: ita et videtur et auditur demon ab homine et a de|mone per motionem sensus ad intra. annotated II.5.44. Cur homo non possit non videri si sit presens a recte disposi|to in potentia visiva: demon autem tunc solum videatur cum vult |videri: ex modo quo unusquisque eorum videtur haberi potest. annotated II.5.45. Sensus naturae quem ponunt Alchindus. Bacon. Guilielmus |Parisiensis: et quidam alii: maxime autem omnes magi nihil est ali|ud quam sensus vehiculi quem ponunt Platonici. annotated II.5.46. Cum dicit Plato neminem nisi invitum peccare: nihil aliud in|telligitur quod illud quod Thommas tenet: scilicet non posse esse pec|catum in voluntate nisi sit defectus in ratione. annotated II.5.47. Providentia est statuitive in deo: ordinative in intelligentia: |exequtive in anima: denuntiative in coelo: terminative in toto |universo. annotated II.5.48. Non solum per dicta in epinomide et Philebo a Platone in |quibus dialogis expresse ponit Plato foelicitatem in contempla|tione: Sed per dicta in Phedro de furore amatorio constat secundum |Platonem non esse foelicitatem in actu amoris quia furor non est |foelicitas: Sed impetus et aestrum concitans: urgens et impellens |ad foelicitatem. annotated II.5.49. Ex eo nomine quo dei nominant amorem patet diligenter ad|vertenti quod in actu amoris non est foelicitas. annotated II.5.50. Ista propositio in Phedro. Omnis anima totius inanimati cu|ram habet: simpliciter de quacunque vere anima intelligenda est. annotated II.5.51. Ex dicto illo Platonis in Phedro: quod nisi anima hominis ea que |vere sunt intuita esset in hoc animal non venisset. Si recte intel|ligatur intelligetur quod opinio Plotini ponens transmigrationem |animarum in bruta non est ad mentem Platonis. annotated II.5.52. Ex oratione Socratis in Phedro ad pana: habetur complete opi|nio Platonis de foelicitate. annotated II.5.53. Opinio Cratyli de nominibus ita est intelligenda: non quod talia |sint nomina: Sed quod talia esse debent si sint recta. annotated II.5.54. Ideo dixit Socrates in Cratylo se somniare circa ideas: quia ide|is non utimur in hoc statu: Sed earum imaginibus proximis vel |secundariis. annotated II.5.55. Per unum in sophiste: intellige unum in alteritate. annotated II.5.56. Dictum illud in sophiste. Qui unum non dicit nihil dicit: il|lud est quod ab Aristotele dicitur. Qui unum non intelligit ni|hil intelligit. annotated II.5.57. Dictum illud Platonis in sophiste de simulachris quae dicit de|monica machinatione conficta: et si multis aliis modis possit ve|rificari: conveniens tamen est exponere per hoc: quod illa ut gradum |medium in entitate tenent demonico ordini proportionantur. annotated II.5.58. Venatio illa Socratis de qua in Prothagora: convenienter per |sex gradus potest sic distribui: ut primus sit esse materiae extrin|secae: Secundus esse particulare immateriale. Tertius esse univer|sale: Quartus esse rationale: Quintus esse particulare intelle|ctuale: Sextus esse totale intellectuale: In septimo tanquam in sabba|to cessandum est a venatione. annotated II.5.59. Quod dicitur in Euthydemo non in habitu: Sed actu consiste|re foelicitatem: intellige de actu reflexo. annotated II.5.60. Per id quod in Lachete dicitur. Quorumcunque est scientia: non |esse aliam eorundem ut preteritorum: aliam ut presentium: aliam |ut futurorum: illud potest intelligi tritum apud peripateticos non |esse scientiam nisi universalium. annotated II.5.61. Dictum illud Platonis in Gorgia: Si orator scit iusta est iustus |dico absolute secundum se non ut ad hominem tantum posse salvari: si |unum ab alio esse intelligamus non formaliter: Sed illative. annotated II.5.62. Licet ratio Platonis in Phedone per viam contrariorum absol|lute non concludat: expositis tamen a Cebete ad hominem ali|quid concludit. Annotations

you froze up. resume please.

you froze up. resume please.

Write an essay on Pico's intervention in the tradition of Christian Platonism placing him in the context of Aquinas and Pseudo-Dionysius. Include a discussion of this text. Of Being and Unity (De Ente et Uno) By Giovanni Pico della Mirandola translated by Victor Michael Hamm, 1943.1 NOTES: 1. In this translation I have used the text of the 1557 (Venice) edition of Pico's Opera Omnia, as reprinted by Festugière in Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Littéraire du Moyen Age Vol. VII (1932), pp. 208-224, which text I have compared with that of the 1519 edition, available to me at the Newberry Library, Chicago. I have been aided by Father Festugière's French version of the Latin original, as well as by his notes. I have accepted Festugière's emendations of the text. To Angelo Poliziano PREFACE You were telling me lately of the dispute which you and Lorenzo de' Medici had concerning being and unity, and how, taking his stand with the Platonists, that man of a genius so powerful and versatile that he seems made for all things, who finds (wonderful to relate!) even in the incessant occupations of the State leisure for some literary study or conversation, argued against Aristotle, whose Ethics you expounded publicly this year. And since those who estrange Aristotle from Plato estrange themselves also from my point of view -- for I hold to the concord of both systems --, you ask me how we might defend the Stagirite on this point and bring him into agreement with his master, Plato. I have told you what came into my mind at that time, and it was rather a confirmation of your own objections against Lorenzo than a contribution of anything new. But you are not content with that. Without waiting for the developments which will come to the subject in my future Concord of Plato and Aristotle,2 you beg me to run over for you now, in the shape of a brief commentary, those things which I told you in the presence of our friend Domenico Benevieni, so dear to us for his knowledge and his integrity. How can I refuse you? Especially in a literary matter like this, and in the case of a friend who is almost my self? Pardon me, nevertheless, if I risk at times to employ words which perhaps have not yet received the stamp of true Latinity. The novelty of the subject, and I might almost say necessity, have demanded this license. Do not then expect a style too elegant and chaste. As our Malius3 says, the subject itself needs no ornament; simple exposition is enough. The following, therefore, if I remember well, were the things about which we had a discussion. 2. This was the projected work left unwritten because of Pico's early death. 3. "Malius" cannot be identified. Chapter I. For the Neo-Platonists Unity precedes Being. In more than one place Aristotle says that unity and being are convertible and reciprocal (the same is true of truth and goodness, but we shall speak of these later). This the followers of the Academy4 denied, saying that the one is anterior to being; by which they meant that they regarded the former as a concept more simple and universal. Wherefore they would define even God, the Sovereign Simplicity, as the One rather than as Being. Similarly, say they, prime matter, that crude and formless matter which is found in all things, ought to be included under the category of the one, and therefore they would exclude it from the category of being. Then, they say, unity and being have not the same opposites: to being is opposed non-being, to the one, the many. By the same law, therefore, by which their opposites are reckoned as two, being and unity are to be considered non-convertible and non-reciprocal. 4. Pico means especially the Neo-Platonists Plotinus and Proclus. Cf. L. Robin La théorie platonicienne des Idées et der Nombres d'après Aristote, (Paris 1908), passim: E. Brehier, Les idées philosophiques et religieuses de Philon d'Alexandrie, (Paris, 1908), 71 ff. Chapter II. Plato nowhere says that the one is superior to being, but rather that the two are equal. Such are the reasons they rest upon. Before we refute them, it would not be impertinent to find out what Plato himself thought on this point. I discover that he treats twice of being and unity: namely, in the Paramenides and in the Sophist. In these two places, therefore, according to the Academy, Plato gives the one priority over being. I shall say at once, as regards the Parmenides, that in this entire dialogue one does not find a single strict affirmation,5 and that, in any case, even if there were such an affirmation, nothing would allow one to draw such an inference with certitude. Actually there is nothing less dogmatic than this hook, which, taken in its totality, is nothing else than a sort of exercise in dialectic.6 Indeed, so far are the words of this dialogue from being opposed to my opinion, that all the attempts of critics to read something else into them achieve only arbitrary and willful interpretations. But let us dismiss all the critics. Let us instead inquire into the argument of the dialogue itself, and examine its beginning and its development, its promises and its performance. 5. Cf. Dié, ed. Parmenides, pp. 46: 'L'argumentation de Parmenide est donnée comme un jeu laborieux. Les Neo-platoniciennes, qui prennent 'laborieux' au sens de 'sérieux' . . . ont tiré de ce jeu toute une argumentation.' Cornford, Plato and Parmenides, (London, 1939), p. vii, writes: 'The conviction that Plato's purpose was serious and not merely destructive grows, the more clearly the Hypotheses are studied. If it is justified, the theory of the humorous polemic falls to the ground. 6. Cf. Cornford, op. cit., 131: 'What Parmenides offered Socrates was a gymnastic exercise, not the disclosure of a supreme divinity.' Here, then, is the content of the Parmenides: The discussion having started with the question whether all things that exist are one or many,7 Socrates turned it in the direction of the problem of ideas and overwhelmed Parmenides with questions on that subject,8 whereupon the latter exclaimed how he admired that transport, that energy of mind, which drove Socrates on to the definition of the highest truths.9 'Exercise yourself,' -- these are Parmenides' words -- 'train yourself thoroughly in this gymnastic while you are still young. Many will call it vanity, and accuse you of trifling and prating; yet if ever you cease from it, truth will escape you.'10 Everyone recognizes, -- and what follows makes it plain -- that Parmenides is here referring to dialectic. 7. Parmenides, 127d-130a. 8. Ibid., 130b-135c. Actually it is Parmenides, not Socrates, who directs the interrogation. 9. Ibid., 135d 2-3. 10. Ibid., 135d 3-5. Pico's translation of Plato's words follows that of Marsilio Ficino pretty closely. Cf. Ficino, Divini Platonis Opera Omnia, (Lugd., 1588), 46: 'Caeterum collige teipsum, diligentiusque te in ea facultate exerce, quae inutilis esse videtur multis, et quaedam garrulitas nuncupatur, dum iuvenis es, alioquin te veritas fugiet.' Thereupon, a propos of a new query of Socrates -- 'But in what, Parmenides, does this gymnastic consist?' -- the sage answered by first referring him to Zeno's argument as his model. Then, passing on to a more particular instruction, he with ingenious subtlety invites his adversary to consider not only what would follow from the existence of an object, but also what would follow from its non-existence; for example, in the case of this thing (the one) of which we posit or deny the existence, one must inquire what would follow both as regards the thing in itself, and in regard to other things, and, as regards other things, both in themselves and in respect to the one.11 While he is preparing to develop these points, Socrates cries out: "What a difficult task you set me there! I do not completely understand. But why do you not demonstrate this method which you vaunt so highly, by giving me a model on some point? I should then understand it better." Parmenides replies that this would be a great labor for a man of his advanced years. Thereupon Zeno insists that Parmenides ought to speak because the assembly is not numerous; if it were, the case would be different, for it is not becoming that an old man treat of such matters before a large public, since few people understand that it is necessary to consider questions so discursively in order to attain the truth.12 11. Pico is here translating the Greek text, 136a 3, in a somewhat too condensed form. 12. Parmenides, 136c 6-e 1. These words of Zeno fully confirm what we have said concerning the nature of the subject which Parmenides is going to treat. They do so at any rate if one agrees with Zeno that 'it is not becoming that an old man treat of such matters before a large public.' If, as some pretend,13 it were a question here of the divine hierarchies, of the first principle of all things, what discourse could we imagine more appropriate to an old man, or less calculated to make him blush? But it is beyond all dispute (unless we want to deceive ourselves) that Parmenides' subject is the dialectic method; besides, Socrates had demanded nothing else. Now, it is precisely such a subject which is, to Zeno, appropriate to a young man rather than to an old one. But for those who want other proofs, let us run through this dialogue. We shall nowhere find any dogmatic assertion, but everywhere only this question: 'If this is, what follows, and what if this is not?' 13. i.e. Proclus and the symbolists. The Academy, however, has taken occasion to defend its doctrine regarding being and unity because, in the first hypothesis,14 where he attacks the problem: if all things are one, what follows? Parmenides answers that that one of which existence is posited would be without parts, limitless, and therefore would be nothing;15 among many conclusions of this kind, he brings up this: 'that sort of one would not be being.'16 But is this not a mere exercise in dialectic? Is it really a dogmatic discourse on unity and being? There is a great difference between these two assertions: 'the one is above being,' and 'if all things are one, that one is not being.' But enough of the Parmenides. 14. 'if the One is one,' 137c-142b. 15. 137c-138b 6. 16. 141d 8-142a 8. As regards the Sophist, Plato there rather indicates the equivalence of unity and being17 than the priority of the one over being. Nowhere, indeed, do I find him speaking of priority, whereas there is an abundance of texts indicating equivalence. Take for example this passage: 'considering the question thus, you will confess that to say "something" is to say "some one thing;" and soon after: "He who says "not something" necessarily says "not some one thing," that is, he says nothing." '18 17. "Esse unum et ens aequalia" (Mirandula). 18. Sophist, 237d-e. Thus Plato. Not-one and nothing are therefore for him the same, rather, identical. Then the one and something are equal. After this he proves in the same way that it is impossible to say that not-being is one, and concludes thus: 'Being cannot be coupled with non-being;19 therefore unity cannot be coupled with non-being.'20 Now, he is speaking here of the unity which he had already called equal to that which is something. It seems then that he holds the identity of being and unity to be beyond doubt. 19. 238a 7. 20. 238c 4-7. Very well. We may agree that Plato arrived at that affirmation, though we do not find it explicitly stated in any of his writings. Let us see, then, in what sense it might have been so stated. And first of all let us discuss in these terms the foundations of the doctrine of Aristotle.21 21. Cf. Cornford, op. cit., 110-111: "It was from the Parmenides and from countless discussions to which it must have given rise that Aristotle learnt the maxim he so often repeats: 'One' and 'being' are used in many senses. But whereas Aristotle as a rule sets out with a systematic enumeration of the meanings of ambiguous terms, Plato makes his point by indirect procedure. . . . As we proceed, we shall find that Plato, in scattered passages, unobtrusively indicates the many ambiguities lurking in the phrase: 'If a One (or the One) is.' . . . Owing to certain peculiarities of Greek grammar, 'the one' (to en) can mean (1) Unity or Oneness in general; (2) the unity of anything that has unity or is one thing; (3) that which has unity, anything that is one; (4) the one thing we are speaking of as opposed to 'other ones,' and so on. The words for 'being' (to on, einai, ousia) are even more ambiguous, 'Being' can mean (1) the sort of being that belongs to any entity, whether it exists or not; (2) an entity which has being in this sense, any term that can be the subject of a true statement (3) the essence or nature of a thing; (4) existence; (5) that which has existence, or (collectively) all that exists." Chapter III. From the testimony of Parmenides, of Dionysius, and of Simplicius, we conclude the convertibility of unity and being. This word being, concerning which there is doubt whether it is equal to the concept unity, can be taken in two senses. The first is this: When we say 'being' we may mean anything that is outside of nothing. This is the sense of the word with Aristotle, wherever he makes being equivalent to unity. And this meaning is not unreasonable, for, as it is truly said, we ought to think with the few, but talk like the many. We think and judge for ourselves; we speak for the multitude, and we speak so that we may be understood. The vulgar, then, the unsophisticated, so understand being that they call anything 'being' (ens) which does not lack existence (esse), and which cannot properly be called nothing. But do we not find that those who are considered the wisest among the opposition22 have not understood being in any other way? 22. I.e. the Neo-Platonists who make unity superior to being. When Parmenides the Pythagorean said that the one is that which is, he meant God, if we credit Simplicius23 and all the many others who want to defend Parmenides against those who falsely accuse him of saying that all things are one.24 For they all agree in answering that, in employing the word 'one', Parmenides never believed that division, multiplicity, and plurality do not attach to things, since in other passages of his poems he himself openly affirms the contrary. But, they say, when he said 'one' what he meant is that to which the name of being truly applies, and which is truly the one being (esse), which one is God. Thus, for Parmenides and his defenders, even the 'Platonists,' the one cannot be above being unless it be above God. However, far from denying that God is being, it is to God alone that Parmenides accords, as is in truth fitting, the name of being. And so we solve the first difficulty of the 'Platonists.' 23. Simplicius, In Phys., (ed. H. Diels, Berlin, 1882) t. I, p.147, 12. 24. The universe -- a pantheistic interpretation, the only legitimate one, Cf. Cornford, op. cit., 29: "This One Being is not a mere abstraction; it proves to be a single continuous and homogeneous substance filling the whole of space." As regards Dionysius the Areopagite,25 whom our opponents invoke in favor of their opinion, he will not deny that God verily said to Moses: 'I am who am,' which reads in Greek: egw eimi o wn, that is, 'I am being' (ens). Of a truth, they themselves, when they say that nothing, or non-being is opposed to being as the many to the one, concede that of necessity that which is not being is nothing or non-being, in just the same way that what is not one is multiple or plurality. However, if they observe the same manner of speaking, they must say either that God is nothing, which appalls the ears, or that He is being. But to understand being in this fashion is to return to that which we have established as the first axiom and universal proposition, namely, that concerning anything it is necessary to say that it is or is not, and that concerning anything it is impossible to say or think both together at the same time. Since, therefore, outside of everything there is nothing but nothingness itself, if being understood in this sense excludes nothing but only nothingess, it is evidently necessary that being encompass all that is. Therefore the extension of unity cannot be greater unless it included nothingness itself, a possibility which Plato denies in the Sophist when he says that non-being or nothing cannot be called one. Besides, if unity cannot have less extension than being, it follows that being and unity must be convertible concepts. 25. Cf. The Divine Names, I, paragraph 6 (Patrologia Graeca, vol. III, 596 A-B). A convenient English translation of this work as well as of the Mystical Theology may be found in C. E. Rolt, Dionysius the Areopagite, (Macmillan, 1920). Chapter IV. In what sense one can say that something is superior to being. We have explained one of the senses which we said could be given to being. Understanding it so, -- a perfectly legitimate usage of the word -- one affirms most truly that there is nothing more common than being. It remains to explain the second sense, according to which it will be manifest that one can no less justly say that there is something that surpasses in eminence being itself. Words are either concrete or abstract. Concrete are, for example, hot, bright, white, man; abstract: heat, light, whiteness, humanity. This is their power and diversity: that what is called abstract connotes that which is such by itself (a se), not by another (ab alio), while concrete signifies that which is what it is not by itself, but by virtue of another. Thus the luminous is such in virtue of light, the white is such through whiteness, and man is man by virtue of his humanity. Moreover, since there is nothing which participates in itself, and since the same thing cannot possess the same quality at the same time by itself (a se) and by participation in another thing, it follows that the abstract cannot take its denomination from the concrete. Wherefore it is incongruous to say that whiteness is white, blackness black. Indeed, it is ridiculous to speak thus, not because whiteness is black or heat cold, but because such is the distance of the one from blackness and of the other from coldness, that all that is white is so by participation in the first, and all that is hot is so by participation in the second. When, then, we refuse to attribute such or such qualities to such or such an object, it is either because that object does not possess them, for example in the expression "black is not white," or because we want to signify that it possesses them in a more excellent and more perfect way than we do: as when we deny that whiteness is white, not because it is black, but because it is whiteness itself. But let us return to the subject. The word 'being' (ens) has the aspect of a concrete word. For to say 'being' (ens) and to say 'that which is' (id quod est) is to say the same thing. The abstract of this would seem to be the word esse, in that one calls ens that which participates in esse, in the same way that one calls luminous that which participates in light.26 If we look at this meaning of being which we have thus defined, we shall have to deny being not only to that which is not, and to that which is nothing, but also to that which is so that it is that being (esse) itself which is of itself (ex se) and by itself (a se), and by participation in which all things are: just as we not only deny that that is hot which lacks heat, but also that which is heat itself. Now, such is God, the plenitude of all being, the sole being a se, and from Whom alone, without the intervention of any intermediary, all things have come to be. 26. The language here is Platonic. We have, therefore, the right to say that God is not being but is above being, and that there is something to being, namely God Himself. If we give to God the name of the One, it follows that we avow the one to be above being. However, in calling God the One, we do so less to indicate what He is than to show in what manner He is all that is, and how other beings are through Him, 'God is called the One,' says Denys, 'because He is in a unique way all things,'27 and again: 'God is called the one because He is the principle of all things, just as unity is the principle of all numbers.28 Wherefore if (as the Academy pretends) Plato, in the first hypothesis of the Parmenides, affirms that the one is superior to being, that one will be nothing else than God. They (the Academy), indeed, themselves recognize this, since they admit by universal consensus that Plato here treats of the first principle of all things.29 27. The Divine Names, I, paragraph 7. (P. G., III, 596 D). 28. Ibid., II, paragraphs 4 and 11; V, paragraph 6. 29. Plotinus, Ennead V, I, 8. The Parmenides of Plato distinguishes the First One, or the one in the proper sense of the word; the second, which he calls the One-Many; and the third, or 'One-and-Many.' The First One is for the Neo-Platonists God Himself. But, some will say, on this point at least Aristotle differs from Plato, for Aristotle never understands being as subordinate to the one and as not including God in its extension. Those who speak in this way have not read Aristotle, for he does this very thing, and much more plainly than Plato. In the sixth book of his Metaphysics30 he divides being into being-by-itself (per se) and being-by-accident (per accidens). When being-by-itself (per se) is divided into ten categories, there is no doubt on the part of good interpreters of the philosopher that God is not included under this being, since He is neither being-by-accident nor is He contained under any one of the ten classes into which being per se is divided. Nothing is more of a commonplace among the Peripatetics than that division of being into substance and accident. Since this is so, we understand being so that God is above being and not below it, as St. Thomas himself teaches in the first book of his Commentaries on the Theological Sentences.31 I shall add that certain Platonists do wrong in vaunting themselves as if they possessed a secret unknown to Aristotle, when they say that God has two proper appellations, namely, the One and the Good, as if the good and the one were superior to being. Just as we have demonstrated that it did not escape the Peripatetics in what sense God can be understood as superior to being, so we are able to show that it was particularly these two names, the Good and the One, that Aristotle gave to God. 30. Metaphysics, E, 2, 1026 ff. 31. Commentum in libros IV. Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi I, dist. xix, q. 4, ad 2 and esp. dist. xxiv, q. I, a. 1. In the second book of the Metaphysics,32 after having treated of being in its totality and of separate minds,33 he asks finally (as if, after all the rest, he wanted to turn to the investigation of the attributes of God alone), if, besides the good which is in the universality of things as in an army, there were some separate good like the person of the chief of this army, and he answers that this good exists, and that it is God. Of this God, in the same chapter, he demonstrates the unity, citing in testimony of this, after strong arguments, the phrase of Homer; eiz koiranoV estw, eiV basileuV.34 Where then is his error? Where is Aristotle at odds with Plato? Wherein is he profane? Wherein does he fail to give God the honors which are due to Him? 32. Metaphysics, A. 33. This book of the Metaphysics first studies sensible substance in its elements and its structure (ch. 1 to 5), then incorporeal immobile substance (ch. 6 to 10). The complex problem of the different first movers is touched on in ch. 8. The comparison with the army occurs in ch. 10, 1075 a 11 ff. 34. 10, 1076 a 4. Cf. Iliad II, 204. Pico misquotes Aristotle, who quotes Homer correctly: ouk agaqon polukoiranih: eiV koiranoV estw. Chapter V. In which is shown why the Peripatetics attribute to God many qualities which the Platonists deny Him, and how one may ascend through four degrees even to the cloud which God inhabits.35 35. This entire chapter is inspired by the Mystical Theology of the Pseudo-Denys. Let us respond now to the arguments which the Platonists invoke to sustain against Aristotle -- not in the sense with which we agree, but absolutely speaking -- the superiority of the one over being. We have, I think, already answered adequately the first of these arguments by which God is considered one and nevertheless is not being, but it is worth the labor to pursue the discussion in order to show that not only with the Platonists and Peripatetics, who disagree with one another, but often in the same single writer, there can be, with respect to the divine attributes, many affirmations and many negations equally just. God is everything, and he is everything in the most eminent and perfect way. Now, He would not be this unless He included in Himself all perfections in such a manner that He rejected all that has to do with imperfection in things. However, one must distinguish two kinds of imperfection. On the one hand, that is imperfect which in its class does not attain the perfection of that class or type. On the other, that is imperfect which, although perfect of its kind, is not absolutely perfect, because it has only the perfections of its kind, and there exist outside of it a number of kinds of things enriched with perfections that are proper to them and which, on its part, it does not include. As an example of the first case consider sense-knowledge, the imperfection of which comes not only from the fact that it is merely knowledge, and not appetition, but also from the fact that it is an imperfect kind of knowledge, both because of the organs which it must use, and which are brute and corporeal, and because it attains only to the superficial aspects of things and does not penetrate to the innermost reality, namely, the substance. So likewise is that human knowledge which one calls rational an imperfect knowledge, being vague, uncertain, mobile, and laborious. Even the intellectual knowledge36 of those divine intelligences called angels by the theologians, is nothing but an imperfect knowledge, if only because of the obligation it is under to seek without that which it does not possess within, at least in plenitude, namely, the light of truth which it needs for its actuation. 36. 'Intellectualem cognitionem,' (Mirandola) This is the classical distinction between discursive thought, logoV dianoia, and intuitive thought, nomsiV According to the Mystical Theology, ch. 3, It is necessary to pass beyond both before attaining God. Take another example: life. The life which resides in plants, indeed that which moves every body, is imperfect not only because it is life and not appetition, but because it is not pure life, but rather an influx of life derived from the soul in the body, constantly flowing, constantly mixed with death, fitter indeed to be called death than life. Are you unaware of it? We begin to die as soon as we begin to live, and death extends along with life, so that we stop dying only at that instant when corporeal death delivers us from the body of this death.37 But even the life of the angels is not perfect: unless the unifying ray of the Divine light incessantly vitalized it, it would slip completely into nothingness. So for all the rest. When therefore you make God knowing and living, attend first to this, that the life and knowledge which you ascribe to Him be understood as free from all these detriments. 37. Cf. I Corinthians XV, 31; Romans VII, 24. But this is not enough. There remains the second kind of imperfection, of which the following is an example.38 Imagine the most perfect kind of life possible, a life completely or perfectly alive, having in it nothing mortal, nothing mixed with death, a life which needs nothing outside or itself by means of which to remain stable and permanent. Imagine likewise a kind of knowledge which perceives everything at once and perfectly. Add this: that he who thus knows all things, knows them in himself and need not search outside himself the truth to be known, but be himself the very truth. Nay, to whatever high degree of perfection this life and this knowledge have attained in their proper natures, and though one could find them nowhere except in God, if, even in this degree of perfection one divides the one from the other, they are unworthy of God. 38. On this point cf. the Mystical Theology, chapters 4 and 5. For God, in short, is perfection in all its modes and in an infinite manner, but He is not such perfection merely because He comprehends in Himself all particular perfections and those in infinite number. For in that case, neither would He Himself be perfectly simple, nor would the perfections which are in Him be infinite; but He would be nothing more than a unique infinite, composed of many things infinite in number but finite in perfection.39 Now, to think or speak so of God is blasphemous. However, if the most perfect life possible is nonetheless only life, and not knowledge, and the same for all other similar perfections which are assembled in God, there will manifestly ensue a divine life of finite perfection, since it will have the perfection which pertains to life and not that which pertains to knowledge or to appetition. Let us then take from life not only that which makes life imperfect, but also that which makes it life merely, and do the same as regards knowledge and the other qualities which we have ascribed to God. Then what remains of all this will necessarily correspond to the idea which we want to have of God, namely, a Being one, absolutely perfect, infinite, altogether simple. And since life is a certain particular being, and wisdom likewise, and justice, if we remove from them this condition of particularity and limitation, that which remains will not be this or that being, but being itself, simple being, being universal, not with the universality of attribution but with the universality of perfection.40 Similarly wisdom is a particular good, because it is that good which is wisdom, and not that other which is justice. Take away, says St. Augustine,41 this, and take away that, that is to say, this limitation of particularity by which wisdom is that good called wisdom, and not that good called justice, and by which, similarly, justice has the particular goodness of justice and not that of wisdom; then only will you see in an obscure way42 the face of God, i.e. all good in itself, simple good, the good of all good. So also as life is a particular thing, it is one particular thing. For it is a certain perfection; and similarly wisdom is a certain perfection. Cast off the particularity, and there remains, not this or that unity, but the one itself, the absolute One. Since therefore God is that being which, as we said in the beginning, when the imperfections of all things are removed, is all things, certainly that which remains when you have rejected from all things both that imperfection which each one possesses in its kind, and that particularity which reduces each to one kind, will assuredly be God. God is, then, Being itself, the one Himself, the Good, and the True. 39. On this distinction between the quantitative infinite and the infinite of perfection, cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 7, a. 1 to 4. 40. That is to say, not abstract analogous being, but this concrete infinite being which is God. 41. Cf. Enarrationes in Psalmos, (Migue Patrologia Latina vols. XXXVI-XXXVII, 1490, 1741) in Ps. cxxxiv: "Dixit (Deus) Ego sum qui sum . . . non dixit Dominus Deus ille omnipotens, misericors, justus . . . Sublatis de medio omnibus quibus appellari posset et dici Deus, ipsum esse se vocari respondit et tamquam non esset ei nomen, hoc dices eis, inquit, qui est misit me." 42. 'In enigmate' (Mirandola). Cf. the Mystical Theology on this matter of the Divine darkness. In thus purifying the Divine names of all the stains that come from the imperfection of the things signified by them, we have already moved two steps in the ascent to the cloud which God inhabits. There remain two more, one of which indicates the deficiency of language, the other the weakness of our intelligence. These terms: being (ens), true, one, good, signify something concrete and as it were participated; wherefore we say again of God that He is being (esse) itself, truth itself, goodness itself, unity itself. Thus far indeed we are in the light, but God has placed His dwelling in the shadows.43 We have then not yet come to God himself. So long, in short, as that which we say of God is fully understood and entirely comprehended, we are in the light. But all that we say and perceive thus is a mere trifle, considering the infinite distance which separates Divinity from the capacity of our minds. In climbing to the fourth step we enter into the light of ignorance,44 and, blinded by the cloud of the Divine splendor, we cry out with the Prophet: 'I have fainted in Thy halls, O Lord,'45 finally declaring this one thing about God, that He is incomprehensibly and ineffably above all that we can speak or think of most perfect, placing Him pre-eminently above that unity and that goodness and that truth which we had conceived, and above being (esse) itself. Thus Denys the Areopagite, when he had written his Symbolic Theology, his Theological Institutes,46 the treatise on the Divine Names, and the Mystical Theology, and come to the end of the last-mentioned work, like a man already, so to speak, standing in the darkness and trying to find words most adequate to God, after some essays exclaimed: 'He is neither truth nor kingdom, nor unity, nor divinity,47 nor goodness, nor spirit, as we know it; one cannot apply to Him the names of son or of father or of any other things in the world known to us or to any other being. He is nothing of that which is not, nothing of that which is. Things which are do not know Him as He is, nor does He know things as they are.48 of Him there is no definition, neither is there a name nor a science of Him. He is neither darkness nor light, neither error nor truth,49 in short, every affirmation and every negation in regard to Him is equally impossible.' This is how that divine man expresses it. 43. Psal. XVII, 12: 'Et posuit tenebras latibulum suum, in circuitu ejus tabernaculum; tenebrosa aqua nubibus aeris.' 44. Cf. the 'superessential light of the Divine darkness' in the Mystical Theology, ch. I, paragraph 1, and the De Docta Ignorantia of Nicholas Cusanus. The latter work is available in a new critical edition by E. Hoffmann and R. Klibansky (Leipzig, 1932). 45. Psal. LXXXIII. 3: 'Deficit anima mea in atria Domini.' 46. I.e. the Hypotyposes theologicae. Cf. the Mystical Theology, ch. 3, where all these works are named. 47. Cf. C. E. Rolt's note (Dionysius the Areopagite, N.Y., 1920, p. 200, No. 2): "Godhead (divinity) is regarded as the property of deified men, and so belongs to relativity." 48. Cf. Rolt (ibid., 200, No. 3): "It (God) knows only Itself, and there knows all things in their Super-Essence-sub specie aeternitatis." 49. Rolt (200, No. 4): "Truth is an object of thought. Therefore, being beyond objectivity, the ultimate Reality is not Truth. But still less is it Error." I should rather say that truth is a relation or quality, and that since God transcends all relationship and all quality, He is not truth but THE TRUE. Let us gather up our conclusions. We learn, then, in the first degree, that God is not body, as the Epicureans say, nor the form of a body, as those say who affirm that God is the soul of the sky and of the universe -- the opinion of the Egyptians, according to the testimony of Plutarch50 and Varro the Roman theologian,51 whence they draw great nourishment for idolatry. Yet there are some even among the Peripatetics52 so stupid as to hold this the true doctrine and moreover as the teaching of Aristotle. How far they are from knowing God truly! They rest in the starting-place as if they had already reached the goal, and believe themselves already come to the heights of the Divinity while in fact they are lying on the ground and have not even begun to move a foot towards Him. For from this point of view God could be neither perfect life nor perfect being nor even perfect intelligence. But we have elaborately confuted these profane opinions in the fifth section of our Concordia.53 50. De Iside et Osiride, 49. Osiris is the nouV of the world-soul, Typhon its paqhtikon, seat of the passions. 51. De lingua latina, V, 10. 52. Allusion to the Averroist school at Padua. 53. I.e. the Symphonia Platonis et Aristotelis described in my Introduction, p. 4, above. We learn, in the second degree, a truth which few men understand correctly, and in regard to which we risk deceiving ourselves the more however little we deviate from true intelligence, namely, that God is neither life nor intelligence nor intelligible, but something better and more excellent than all these. For all these names state one particular perfection, and there is nothing of the sort in God. Mindful of this, Denys54 and the Platonists have denied God life, intellect, wisdom, and the like. But since God unites and gathers up in Himself by His unique perfection which is His infinitude, in short, Himself, the totality of perfection which is found is these divided and multiplied, and because He does this not as a unity composed of these multiple perfections, but as a unity anterior to them, certain philosophers, especially the Peripatetics,54a imitated insofar as is permissible on almost all these points by the theologians of Paris,54b concede that all these perfections are in God. We agree with them, and we believe that in so doing we are not only thinking justly but that we are at the same time in agreement with those who deny these same perfections, on condition that we never lose sight of what St. Augustine says,55 namely, that God's wisdom is not more wisdom than justice, His justice not more justice than wisdom, nor His knowledge more knowledge than life. For all these things are in God one, not by confusion of mixture, or mutual penetration of distinct entities, but by a simple, sovereign, ineffable, and fundamental unity in which actuality, all form, all perfection, hidden as if in the supreme and pre-eminent jewel in the treasury of the Divine Infinity, are enclosed so excellently above and beyond all things that it is not only intimate to all things, but rather united with all things more closely than they are with themselves. Assuredly words fail us, altogether unable to express this concept. 54. Mystical Theology, chapter 5. 54a. Pico is no doubt referring here to the authentic Aristotelian tradition of Alexander and Thimistitis (the latter lately edited by Ermolao Barbaro) which found itself opposed, in the 15th century, to the Arabianizing tradition and to the Averroism of Padua. 54b. Especially St. Albert and St. Thomas. 55. Cf. Sermo CCCXL, I, ch. 5 (P. L. 38, 1482); ch. 7 (ibid., 39, 1498). But see, my dear Angelo, what folly possesses us! While we are in the body we are able to love God better than we can know or describe Him. In loving there is for us more profit, and less labor , the more we obey this tendency. Nevertheless, we prefer constantly to seek through knowledge, never finding what we seek, rather than to possess through love that which without love would be found in vain. But let us return to our subject. You already see plainly by what convention one can call God spirit, intelligence, life, wisdom, and on the other hand place Him above all these determinations, both having good proofs to witness to their truth and their accord. Nor does Plato dissent from Aristotle, because when, in the sixth book of the Republic,56 he calls God "the idea of the Good" which surpasses intelligibles, he shows Him giving to Intelligence the power of intellection, and to intelligibles their intelligibility,57 while the latter of them (Aristotle) defines God as the being who is at once intelligence, intellect, and intelligible.58 Denys the Areopagite, also, though he talks like Plato, is nevertheless obliged to affirm with Aristotle that God is ignorant neither of Himself nor of other beings; wherefore, if He knows Himself, it is because He is both intelligence and intelligible; for he who knows himself is necessarily both knower and known. And yet, if we consider these perfections as particular perfections, as I have said, or if, when we say intelligence, we mean to signify that nature which tends to the intelligible as to something exterior to itself, there is no doubt that Aristotle, like the Platonists, would firmly deny that God is intelligence or intelligible. 56. Republic VI, 509 b, where God is called, not an essence, but something far above essence in dignity and in power. 57. "Et intelligibilia statuat dantem illis quidem ut intelligant, his autem ut intelligantur." (Mirandola.) 58. Cf. Meta., A, 7, 1072 b 20. In the third degree, the more we approach the darkness, the more light we have to see that not only is God not (impious to say!) something imperfect or a mutilated being, as He would be if we called Him a body, or the soul of a body, or an animated being composed of soul and body, nor some particular genus however perfect, which human wisdom can fashion,59 like life, or spirit, or reason, but that we ought to conceive of Him as superior to all that these universal terms which include in their extension all things, i.e., the one, the true, the good, and being, signify. 59. Cf. I Corinthians II, 13: "Quae et loquimur non in doctis humanae sapientiae verbis sed in doctrina Spiritus, spiritualibus spiritualia comparatites." In the fourth degree, finally, we know Him as superior not only to these four transcendentals, but also to every idea which we could form, to every essence which we could conceive Him to be. Then only, with this total ignorance, does true knowledge commence. From all this we conclude that God is not only the being than which, according to St. Anselm,60 nothing higher can be conceived, but the being who infinitely transcends all that can be imagined, as David the prophet put it in the Hebrew: "Silence alone is Thy, praise."61 60. Proslogion, ch. xv (P. L., 158, 235): "Domine, non solum es quo majus cogitari nequit; sed es quiddam majus quam cogitari possit." 61. Psal. LXIV, 2: "Tibi silentium laus" (St. Jerome's translation). So much for the solution of the first difficulty. The window is now wide open for a true understanding of the books composed by Denys the Areopagite on Mystical Theology and The Divine Names. Here we must avoid two mistakes: either to make too little of works whose value is great, or, seeing that we understand them so ill, to fashion for ourselves idle fancies and inextricable commentaries. Chapter VI. In which is solved the second difficulty of the Platonists, namely that with respect to prime matter. As regards their objection on the subject of prime matter, this is frivolous. For insofar as this matter is being, it has unity. Indeed, those who wish to follow Plato's words to the letter, must concede that it has less unity than it has being. For Plato it is not nothing, but a sort of receptacle of forms, a kind of nurse, a special kind of nature and similar things, as he establishes in the Timaeus.62 It is therefore not nothing; it is not altogether outside of being, if we credit Plato, who even calls it, in his Philebus,63 not merely multiplicity -- opposed to the one as nothing is opposed to being -- but infinity. Now multiplicity, if it is finite, is not entirely outside the confines of unity, since insofar as it is finite it is one. On the other hand, an infinite multiplicity escapes equally the nature of the one and that of limit. Prime matter is then for Plato rather being than one. 62. On the cwra tiqhnh cf. Timaeus 49a, 51a, 32d, and Robin, op. cit., 573-574. 63. Philebus 16 c ff., and the long discussion on the peraV and the apeiron 23c-27e. On that discussion, cf. Rodier, "Remarques sur le Philebe," Etudes de Philosophie Grecque, (Paris, 1926), 79-93; E. Poste, The Philebus of Plato, (Oxford, 1860), Appendices A and B. However, those who have argued to prove the superiority of unity over being, have said that prime matter is not being, though it is a unity. Thus the Platonist Iamblichus, in his book On the Pythagorean Sect,64 designates prime matter as duality because duality is the first multiple and the root, as it were, of all other multiplicity. According, then, to him who is so great among the Platonists that he is called "divine," prime matter is not only not one, but a multitude, and the root of all multiplicity in things. Their own arguments condemn them. Still, prime matter does not entirely escape any more from the category of unity than from that of being. The same form that imprints being on it, also imposes unity. I pass over all the arguments pro or con the unity of prime matter since they are so well-known to all those who have gone any distance at all with Aristotle. 64. In the fifth book of his sunagwgh twn Puqagoreiwn dogmatwn. This opposition of the dyad, multiplicity, matter, and evil, and the monad, Unity, Form, and Good, is one of the classic themes of the Pythagorean doctrine. Cf. Robin, op. cit., 564-566, 641 f.; Cornford, op. cit. 4 f. Chapter VII. In which is solved the third difficulty of the Platonists, on the subject of multiplicity, and in which it is demonstrated that it is not possible to say that unity is more common than being, without coming to a conclusion which Plato rejects. The third objection is their worst error. For the opposition between multiplicity and unity is not of the same sort as the opposition between non-being and being. Here it is a case of contradiction; there, of privation or contrariety. Aristotle discusses this distinction at length in the tenth book of his Metaphysics.65 65. Meta. I, 3 (different kinds of opposition, ai antiqeseiV tetracwV, 1054 a 23), 4 (contrariety and its different modes), 6 (opposition of the one and the many). The kinds of opposition are: contradiction, privation, contrariety, relation. On the distinction between negation and contrariety in Plato, cf. Soph. 257 b-c. But see into what disaster those philosophers fall who call themselves Platonists and yet wish to say that unity is superior to being. It is certain that, when two genera are reciprocally in a relation of dependence such that one is more common than the other, an object can escape from the extension of the inferior without being excluded from the superior. That is because the latter is more common. An example off-hand --- animal is more common than man: it can happen, therefore, that a being may not be man, and yet be animal. By the same token, if unity were more common than being, it could happen that something might be non-being or nothing, which would notwithstanding be one, and thus unity might be predicated of non-being, a possibility which Plato expressly rejects in the Sophist.66 66. Sophist, 238a-d. Chapter VIII. In which is shown in what manner these four attributes: being, unity, truth, and goodness, are present in all that exists beneath God. Most true, indeed, is the statement that there are four attributes which embrace all that exists, namely, being, unity, truth, and goodness, provided that they are taken in the sense that their negations be: nothing, division, falsity, evil. Two others, something (aliquid) and thing (res), have been added to these by the late disciples of Avicenna, who interpolated the philosophy of Averroes in more than one place, wherefore Averroes attacked them vigorously.67 But, to tell the truth, on this point there is little reason for discord. For they merely divide what is subsumed under 'one' into 'one' and 'something,' a procedure that is not contrary to Plato who, in the Sophist,68 enumerates unity among the most extense genera; and that which is contained under 'being' they divide into being and thing. But of this later. To return to our subject, -- these four attributes exist in one way in God, and in another way in beings created by God, since God has them from Himself, other beings from Him. 67. Cf. Averroes, Phys. I, c. 68. On the community of genera in The Sophist, cf. 251a-253b, 254b-256d. On the inclusion of unity among the supreme genera, cf. 253d. Let us see first how they pertain to created things. All things that are beneath God have an efficient, an exemplary, and a final cause. For from Him, and through Him, and for Him, are all things. If then we consider things as constituted by the efficient causality of God, we call them beings (entia), since it is because of this efficiency that they participate in being (esse). If we consider them as conforming to and according with the Divine exemplars which we call Ideas, and according to which God has created them, namely, being, unity, truth, goodness, something, thing -- the two last due to the disciples of Avicenna --, we call them true. The true picture of Hercules is, for example, said to be that which conforms to the true Hercules himself. If, again, we consider things as tending to God as their last end, we call them good. And finally, if each thing is considered absolutely, according to itself, we call it one. Now, the order is such that each thing must first be conceived under the idea of being, since every thing, whatever it be, must be produced by an efficient agent before being anything particular in itself, lest that which it is do not depend in its totality from the efficient cause. Thus it happens that a thing which comes after God cannot be conceived without being immediately thought of as a dependent being: finite being is being by participation. To being succeeds unity. Third comes truth, since it is only when a thing exists as such that one can inquire if it corresponds to the exemplar according to which it has been formed. If it resembles that exemplar, it has only to turn towards it by its attribute of goodness, in virtue of a sort of affinity or relationship. Who does not see, however that all these attributes have equal extension? Give me any being; it is certain that it will be one. For to say 'not one' is to say 'nothing,' according to Plato's expression in the Sophist.69 For whatever is, is undivided in itself and divided from other things which are not it. When we say this we mean 'one,' or, to use Plato's words, identical with itself, different from others'; and this he declares, in the same dialogue, attributable to each thing.70 69. Soph., 237e. 70. Soph., 252c, and, on the inclusion of the same and the other among the five supreme genera, 254e-256d. Necessarily, also, this being is true. For if it is a man, it is certainly a true man. It is the same thing to say: 'This is not true gold' and 'This is not gold,' for, when you say: 'This is not true gold,' you mean: 'This appears to be gold, it resembles gold, but it is not gold.' Therefore St. Augustine gives the following definition of truth in his Soliloquies:71 "Truth is that which is." One ought not to understand this to indicate that being and truth are the same, for though they are identical in a thing, they are diverse in principle and definition; wherefore one ought not to define the one by the other. What Augustine wanted to say is that a thing is true when it is really what it is called and said to be, as for example, that gold is true when it is really gold and not something other than gold. This is the sense of the words: "Truth is that which is." Those who do not perceive this, falsely attack Augustine's definition. 71. Soliloquia, II, 5 (P. L. XXXI, 889): 'Nam verum mihi videtur esse id quod est.' Similarly, this being is good. For whatever is, insofar as it is, is good. And Olympiodorus seems to me to make a great mistake in believing that being and good are different because we desire the good absolutely and in itself.72 However, it is not being pure and simple, but well-being that he means; thus, it can happen that if we are suffering we desire not to be. Passing over the point whether, when one is suffering from misery one can, by a right and natural appetite, desire not to be, Olympiodorus did not see that good is as multiple as being. 72. Olympiodorus in Phaed., 188, 29 Norvin. Cf. Dionysius, Divine Names, chs. 3 and 5. Manuscripts of Olympiodorus were numerous in Italy in the sixteenth century. Cf. Festugiere, op. cit., p. 246, note I. For St. Thomas' criticism of this sophism, cf. Summa Theologica, I, q. 5, a. 2: "Utrum bonum secundum rationem sit prius quam ens." There is first of all the natural being of things, as, for example, of a man his humanity, of a lion his lioninity, of a stone its stoniness. To this natural being corresponds, for each individual thing, a natural goodness. But there are other modes of being, which may be called adventitious, as, for man, to be wise, to be handsome, to be sane. Now, just as wisdom and beauty are different, as regards being, from humanity, so it is with goodness. The quality of humanity by which man is man is a different good from the quality of wisdom by which he becomes, not a man merely, but a wise man. All the same, there are here two different modes of being, and one is justified in speaking of them so. Just as, therefore, all things desire being, so all desire the good, and first of all they desire that good which corresponds to their natural being, since that is the foundation of all other goods, which come to it in such a way that they are unable to stand without it. For how will he be happy who is altogether without being? That good, however, which they acquire with their being, does not suffice them; they desire to attain also all the other goods which complete and adorn this primary good. Just as, then, we rightly say that besides the first good we desire other goods, so we can rightly say that besides the first being we desire other modes of being, for it is one thing to be happy, another thing to be man. And if any one grants that it might happen that one preferred not to be if one could not be happy, it does not follow, as Olympiodorus thinks, that goodness of man is one thing, and happiness another, so that one does not desire the one (being man), except on condition that one possess also the other (happiness). I omit the consideration whether there is an exact correspondence between the good taken absolutely and being taken absolutely, or whether being taken absolutely is called a certain good, or the good taken absolutely is called a certain being. For this is not the place to discuss all things. Truly, therefore, did we say that whatever is, is good in the measure that it is. "God saw all the beings He had made, and behold, they were very good."73 And why not? They are the work of a good artificer Who engraves His image on all things that are from His hand. In the entity of things therefore, we can admire the power of the Maker, in their truth we can adore the wisdom of the Artist, in their goodness we can return love to the liberality of the Lover, in their unity, finally, we can grasp the idea of the unifying simplicity, so to speak, of the Creator, which unites all things among themselves and to Himself, calling them all to love themselves, their neighbors, and ultimately God. 73. Gen. I, i, 12; XVIII, xxi, 25. Let us examine now if the opposed terms have likewise the same extension. That the false and the non-existing are identical, we have shown above. And if we say that evil and non-being are different, philosophers and theologians will again object: to make something evil is to make nothing; therefore is one wont to say that the principle of evil is not an efficient but a deficient cause. Thus is refuted the folly of those who have posited two principles, one for good, the other for evil, as if there could exist an efficient cause of evil. But to divide a thing is the same as destroying it, nor can we take away from any thing its natural unity without at the same time robbing it of its integrity of being. For a whole is not its parts, but that unity which springs out of the sum of its parts, as Aristotle demonstrates in the eighth book of his Metaphysics.74 Wherefore if one divides a whole into its parts, these parts remain something although the whole which is divided does not remain, but ceases to exist actually, and is only potentially, just as its parts, which earlier were in potency, now commence to exist in actuality. Before, when these parts were in the whole, they had no real unity in actuality; this they first acquire when they subsist by themselves, apart from the whole. 74. Meta., H 3, 1044 a 2 ff., and H 6, 1045 a 7 ff. Chapter IX. In which it is indicated how these four attributes pertain to God. Let us examine once more how these four attributes find themselves in God. They do not pertain to Him in the relation of a cause, since there is no question of cause with God. He himself being the cause of all things, and caused by nothing. They can be considered in God in two ways, (1) either as He is taken absolutely in Himself, or (2) as He is the cause of other beings, a distinction inapplicable to created things, since God can exist without being cause, whereas other beings cannot exist unless caused by Him. We conceive God, then, first of all as the perfect totality of act, the plenitude of being itself. It follows from this concept that He is one, that a term opposite to Him cannot be imagined. See then how much they err who fashion many first principles, many gods! At once it is clear that God is truth itself. For, what can He have which appears to be and is not, He who is being itself? It follows with certainty that he is truth itself. But He is likewise goodness itself. Three conditions are required for the good, as Plato writes in his Philebus:75 perfection, sufficiency, and desirability. Now the good which we conceive will be perfect, since nothing can be lacking to that which is everything; it will be sufficient, since nothing can be lacking to those who possess that in which they will find all; it will be desirable, since from Him and in Him are all things which can possibly be desired. God is therefore the fullest plenitude of being, undivided unity, the most solid truth, the most perfect good. This, if I am not mistaken, is that tetraktuV or quaternity,76 by which Pythagoras swore and which he called the principle of ever-flowing nature. Indeed, in this quarternity, which is One God, we have demonstrated the principle of all things. But we also swear by that which is holy, true, divine; now, what more true, more holy, more divine than these four characters? If we attribute them to God as the cause of things, the entire order is inverted. First He will be one, because He is conceived in Himself before He is conceived as cause. Then He will be good, true, and finally being (ens). For since the final cause has priority over the exemplary cause, and that over the efficient (we first desire to have something to protect us from the weather, then we conceive the idea of a house, and finally we construct one by making it materially), if, as has been described in Chapter VIII above, the good pertains to the final cause, the true to the exemplary, being to the efficient, God as cause will have first of all the attribute of good, then of true, and finally of being. We shall here terminate these brief remarks on a subject teeming with many important problems. 75. Phil., 20 c-d. 76. On tetraktuV, cf. the formula ou ma ton ametera genea paradonta tetrakun, by which the Pythagoreans were wont to swear. Cornford (op. cit., 2): 'These four numbers are the tetractys of the decad: 1 2 3 4 10 . . . The tetractys was a symbol of great significance and, like other such symbols, capable of many interpretations.' Chapter X. In which the whole discussion is related to the conduct of life and the reform of morals. Let us, lest we speak more of other things than of ourselves, take care that, while we scrutinize the heights, we do not live too basely in a manner unworthy of beings to whom has been given the divine power of inquiring into things divine. We ought, then, to consider assiduously that our mind, with its divine privileges, cannot have a mortal origin nor can find happiness otherwise than in the possession of things divine, and that the more it elevates and inflames itself with the contemplation of the Divine by renouncing earthly preoccupations while yet a traveler on this pilgrimage here below, the more it will approach felicity. The best precept, then, which this discussion can give us, seems to be that, if we wish to be happy, we ought to imitate the most happy and blessed of all beings, God, by establishing in ourselves unity, truth, and goodness. What disturbs the peace of unity is ambition, the vice that steals away from itself the soul which abandons itself to it, tearing it, as it were, in pieces, and dispersing it. The resplendent light of truth, who will not lose it in the mud, in the darkness of lust? Avarice and cupidity steal from us goodness, for it is the peculiar property of goodness to communicate to others the goods which it possesses. Thus, when Plato asked himself why God had created the world, he answered: "because he was good."77 These are the three vices: pride of life, concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eyes, which, as St. John says,78 are of the world and not of the Father who is unity, goodness, and truth indeed. 77. Timaeus 29e, 44c, d, 45c-e, 68c 69a-c, 87a-d. 78. I John II:16: 'Quoniam omne quod est in mundo concuposcentia carnis est, et concupiscentia oculorum, et superbia vitae, quia non est ex Patre, sed ex mundo est.' Let us therefore fly from the world, which is confirmed in evil79; let us soar to the Father in whom are the peace that unifies, the true light, and the greatest happiness. But what will give us wings to soar?80 The love of the things that are above.81 What will take them from us? The lust for the things below, to follow which is to lose unity, truth, and goodness. For we are not one and integrated if we do not link together with a bond of virtue our senses, which incline to earth, and our reason, which tends to heavenly things; this is rather to have two principles ruling in us in turn, so that, while today we follow God by the law of the spirit, and tomorrow Baal by the law of the flesh, our inner realm is divided and as it were laid waste. And if our unity is purchased by the enslavement of a reason submitted to the rule of the law of the members, that will be a false unity, since thus we shall not be true. For we are called and appear to be men, that is, animate beings living by reason; and yet we will be brutes, having for law only sensual appetite. We will be performing a juggling trick to those who see us, and among whom we live. The image will not conform to its exemplar. For we are made in the likeness of God, and God is spirit82 but we are not yet spirits, to use St. Paul's words,83 but animals. If, on the contrary, by grace of truth, we do not fall beneath our model, we have only to move towards Him who is our model, through goodness, in order to be united with Him in the afterworld. 79. Ibid., V:19: 'Mundus totus in maligno positus est.' 80. Psal. LIV:7: 'Quis dabit mihi pennas sicut columbae, et volabo, et requiescam? 81. Colossians III:162: 'Igitur, si consurrexistis cum Christo, quae sursum sunt quaeris . . . Quae sursum sunt sapite, non quae super terram.' 82. John IV:24: 'Spiritus est Deus: et eos, qui adorant eum, in spiritu et veritate oportet adorare.' 83. I Corinthians II:14; XV:46: 'Animalis autem homo non percipit ea quae sunt Spiritus Del; stultitia enim est illi, et non potest intelligere: quia spiritualiter examinatur.' 'Sed non prius quod spiritalis est, sed quod animale, deinde quod spiritale.' Since, finally, these three attributes: unity, truth, and goodness, are united to being by a bond which is eternal, it follows that, if we do not possess them, we no longer exist, even though we may seem to do so; and although others may believe we exist, we are in fact in a state of continuous death rather than of life. Finis

Write a book of ten chapters putting De Ente in rapport with the Platonist Conclusions and Conclusions according to Pico's own opinion. Start with chapter one.

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Before you write the next chapter, add an appendix discussing Aquinas as a Platonist with explanations of his use of ipsum esse subsistens, the real distinction between essence and existence, and active and passive potency in his angelology. How does the Aristotelian side of Neoplatonism and the work of Boethius, the Book of Causes, and Aquinas's reading of Pseudo-Dionysius play into Pico's intervention on Christian Platonism?

Now write another appendix explaining how Pico's conclusions on Aquinas fit in. conclusiones secundum tho|mam numero .xxxxv. annotated I.2.1. Si spiritus a filio non procederet: a filio non distingueretur. annotated I.2.2. Processus spiritus sancti temporalis attenditur secundum dona gra|tiae gratum facientia. annotated I.2.3. Contingens rerum quae sunt erunt aut fuerunt existentia ideo |deo ab aeterno fuit infallibiliter nota: quia fuit aeternitati eius |praesentialiter praeposita. annotated I.2.4. Contingentia ad utrumlibet futurorum cognitorum a deo si|mul stat cum infallibilitate divinae scientiae. annotated I.2.5. Quodcunque contingens deus scivit esse futurum necessario sci|vit illud esse futurum. annotated I.2.6. Ex divina bonitate potest sumi ratio praedestinationis aliquo|rum et reprobationis aliorum: et sola divina voluntas est ratio |quod istos reprobet et illos eligat in gloriam. annotated I.2.7. Licet dei voluntas consequens semper impleatur: non tamen |necessitatem rebus volitis generaliter imponit. annotated I.2.8. Nec habens gratiam potest etiam de potentia dei absoluta |deo non esse acceptus ad vitam aeternam nec non habens esse ac|ceptus. annotated I.2.9. Opus ab anima charitate formata elicitum meretur aeternam |gloriam decondigno. annotated I.2.10. Potuerunt tres personae divinae simul suppositare unam naturam. annotated I.2.11. Virtutes morales et cardinales remanebunt in patria post re|surrectionem. annotated I.2.12. Beatitudo est essentialiter in actu intellectus. Correlarium. Nec fruitio: nec aliquis actus voluntatis est essen|tialiter beatitudo. annotated I.2.13. Sacramenta nove legis sunt causa gratiae: non solum sine qua |non: Sed per quam. annotated I.2.14. Verum corpus Christi est in coelo localiter: in altari sacramen|taliter annotated I.2.15. Impassibilitas corporum post resurrectionem erit ex pleno do|minio animae super corpus. annotated I.2.16. Christus in ultimo iudicio iudicabit non solum in natura hu|mana: Sed etiam secundum naturam humanam. annotated I.2.17. Licet defendi possit quoquomodo creaturam posse creare: ratio|nabilius tamen est credere potentiam creandi creaturae commu|nicari non posse. annotated I.2.18. Aevum est subiective in angelo beatiori. annotated I.2.19. Non potest esse peccatum in voluntate: nisi sit defectus in ratione. annotated I.2.20. Non potest per dei potentiam idem corpus esse simul in diversis |locis. annotated I.2.21. Non est sub eadem specie angelorum plurificatio. annotated I.2.22. Deus per speciem non videtur: Sed ipse per suam essentiam |intellectui applicatur ut species intelligibilis. annotated I.2.23. Unum supra ens non addit nisi privationem divisionis. annotated I.2.24. Subiectum et propria passio realiter distinguuntur. annotated I.2.25. Forma generatur per accidens. annotated I.2.26. Materia signata: est principium individuationis. annotated I.2.27. Eadem est numero qualitas a principio alterationis usque ad finem. annotated I.2.28. Tota libertas est in ratione essentialiter. annotated I.2.29. In generatione substantiali fit resolutio usque ad materiam primam. annotated I.2.30. Ens dicit immediate decem conceptus ita inter se unitos ut non |unius sint sed ad unum. annotated I.2.31. Essentia et existentia in quolibet creato realiter distinguuntur. annotated I.2.32. De eadem re nullo modo actu distincta extra animam possunt |verificari contradictoria. annotated I.2.33. Materia nullum dicit actum entitativum positivum. annotated I.2.34. Nulla virtus moralis praeter iustitiam est subiective in voluntate. annotated I.2.35. Haec propositio. Homo est risibilis non est in secundo modo |dicendi per se. annotated I.2.36. Duo accidentia solo numero differentia non sunt in eodem subiecto. annotated I.2.37. Gravia et levia a nullo alio motore moventur quam vel a generan|te vel a removente prohibens. annotated I.2.38. Gravia potius seipsis: quam a seipsis moventur. annotated I.2.39. Phantasma est agens secundarium et instrumentale in produ|ctione speciei intelligibilis. annotated I.2.40. Difficultas intelligendi et ex parte ipsius intellectus et ex par|te ipsius intelligibilis provenire potest. annotated I.2.41. Potentiae animae ab anima realiter distinguuntur. annotated I.2.42. Quiditates in particulari a Methaphysico non considerantur. annotated I.2.43. Implicat contradictionem: materiam esse sine forma. annotated I.2.44. Non est ponenda in deo idea materiae primae. annotated I.2.45. Non sunt ponendae ideae generum.

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This is all some nice outlining but it's not exactly what I'm looking for. I want you to outline a version of this book written as an academic master's thesis that does a close reading of Pico's conclusions and de ente, along with the Oration. First let's start by summarizing the Oration in terms of these metaphysical and theological issues concerning Pico's intervention in Christian Platonism. I'm not interested in politics or Pico's legacy. Let's narrow the scope to Platonism. Oration on the Dignity of Man Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Most esteemed Fathers, I have read in the ancient writings of the Arabians that Abdala the Saracen on being asked what, on this stage, so to say, of the world, seemed to him most evocative of wonder, replied that there was nothing to be seen more marvelous than man. And that celebrated exclamation of Hermes Trismegistus, `What a great miracle is man, Asclepius'' confirms this opinion. And still, as I reflected upon the basis assigned for these estimations, I was not fully persuaded by the diverse reasons advanced for the pre-eminence of human nature; that man is the intermediary between creatures, that he is the familiar of the gods above him as he is the lord of the beings beneath him; that, by the acuteness of his senses, the inquiry of his reason and the light of his intelligence, he is the interpreter of nature, set midway between the timeless unchanging and the flux of time; the living union (as the Persians say), the very marriage hymn of the world, and, by David's testimony but little lower than the angels. These reasons are all, without question, of great weight; nevertheless, they do not touch the principal reasons, those, that is to say, which justify man's unique right for such unbounded admiration. Why, I asked, should we not admire the angels themselves and the beatific choirs more? At long last, however, I feel that I have come to some understanding of why man is the most fortunate of living things and, consequently, deserving of all admiration; of what may be the condition in the hierarchy of beings assigned to him, which draws upon him the envy, not of the brutes alone, but of the astral beings and of the very intelligences which dwell beyond the confines of the world. A thing surpassing belief and smiting the soul with wonder. Still, how could it be otherwise? For it is on this ground that man is, with complete justice, considered and called a great miracle and a being worthy of all admiration. Hear then, oh Fathers, precisely what this condition of man is; and in the name of your humanity, grant me your benign audition as I pursue this theme. God the Father, the Mightiest Architect, had already raised, according to the precepts of His hidden wisdom, this world we see, the cosmic dwelling of divinity, a temple most august. He had already adorned the supercelestial region with Intelligences, infused the heavenly globes with the life of immortal souls and set the fermenting dung-heap of the inferior world teeming with every form of animal life. But when this work was done, the Divine Artificer still longed for some creature which might comprehend the meaning of so vast an achievement, which might be moved with love at its beauty and smitten with awe at its grandeur. When, consequently, all else had been completed (as both Moses and Timaeus testify), in the very last place, He bethought Himself of bringing forth man. Truth was, however, that there remained no archetype according to which He might fashion a new offspring, nor in His treasure-houses the wherewithal to endow a new son with a fitting inheritance, nor any place, among the seats of the universe, where this new creature might dispose himself to contemplate the world. All space was already filled; all things had been distributed in the highest, the middle and the lowest orders. Still, it was not in the nature of the power of the Father to fail in this last creative élan; nor was it in the nature of that supreme Wisdom to hesitate through lack of counsel in so crucial a matter; nor, finally, in the nature of His beneficent love to compel the creature destined to praise the divine generosity in all other things to find it wanting in himself. At last, the Supreme Maker decreed that this creature, to whom He could give nothing wholly his own, should have a share in the particular endowment of every other creature. Taking man, therefore, this creature of indeterminate image, He set him in the middle of the world and thus spoke to him: We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures is defined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast, impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.'' Oh unsurpassed generosity of God the Father, Oh wondrous and unsurpassable felicity of man, to whom it is granted to have what he chooses, to be what he wills to be! The brutes, from the moment of their birth, bring with them, as Lucilius says, from their mother's womb'' all that they will ever possess. The highest spiritual beings were, from the very moment of creation, or soon thereafter, fixed in the mode of being which would be theirs through measureless eternities. But upon man, at the moment of his creation, God bestowed seeds pregnant with all possibilities, the germs of every form of life. Whichever of these a man shall cultivate, the same will mature and bear fruit in him. If vegetative, he will become a plant; if sensual, he will become brutish; if rational, he will reveal himself a heavenly being; if intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. And if, dissatisfied with the lot of all creatures, he should recollect himself into the center of his own unity, he will there become one spirit with God, in the solitary darkness of the Father, Who is set above all things, himself transcend all creatures. Who then will not look with awe upon this our chameleon, or who, at least, will look with greater admiration on any other being? This creature, man, whom Asclepius the Athenian, by reason of this very mutability, this nature capable of transforming itself, quite rightly said was symbolized in the mysteries by the figure of Proteus. This is the source of those metamorphoses, or transformations, so celebrated among the Hebrews and among the Pythagoreans; for even the esoteric theology of the Hebrews at times transforms the holy Enoch into that angel of divinity which is sometimes called malakh-ha-shekhinah and at other times transforms other personages into divinities of other names; while the Pythagoreans transform men guilty of crimes into brutes or even, if we are to believe Empedocles, into plants; and Mohammed, imitating them, was known frequently to say that the man who deserts the divine law becomes a brute. And he was right; for it is not the bark that makes the tree, but its insensitive and unresponsive nature; nor the hide which makes the beast of burden, but its brute and sensual soul; nor the orbicular form which makes the heavens, but their harmonious order. Finally, it is not freedom from a body, but its spiritual intelligence, which makes the angel. If you see a man dedicated to his stomach, crawling on the ground, you see a plant and not a man; or if you see a man bedazzled by the empty forms of the imagination, as by the wiles of Calypso, and through their alluring solicitations made a slave to his own senses, you see a brute and not a man. If, however, you see a philosopher, judging and distinguishing all things according to the rule of reason, him shall you hold in veneration, for he is a creature of heaven and not of earth; if, finally, a pure contemplator, unmindful of the body, wholly withdrawn into the inner chambers of the mind, here indeed is neither a creature of earth nor a heavenly creature, but some higher divinity, clothed in human flesh. Who then will not look with wonder upon man, upon man who, not without reason in the sacred Mosaic and Christian writings, is designated sometimes by the term all flesh'' and sometimes by the term every creature,'' because he molds, fashions and transforms himself into the likeness of all flesh and assumes the characteristic power of every form of life? This is why Evantes the Persian in his exposition of the Chaldean theology, writes that man has no inborn and proper semblance, but many which are extraneous and adventitious: whence the Chaldean saying: Enosh hu shinnujim vekammah tebhaoth haj'' --- man is a living creature of varied, multiform and ever-changing nature.'' But what is the purpose of all this? That we may understand --- since we have been born into this condition of being what we choose to be --- that we ought to be sure above all else that it may never be said against us that, born to a high position, we failed to appreciate it, but fell instead to the estate of brutes and uncomprehending beasts of burden; and that the saying of Aspah the Prophet, You are all Gods and sons of the Most High,'' might rather be true; and finally that we may not, through abuse of the generosity of a most indulgent Father, pervert the free option which he has given us from a saving to a damning gift. Let a certain saving ambition invade our souls so that, impatient of mediocrity, we pant after the highest things and (since, if we will, we can) bend all our efforts to their attainment. Let us disdain things of earth, hold as little worth even the astral orders and, putting behind us all the things of this world, hasten to that court beyond the world, closest to the most exalted Godhead. There, as the sacred mysteries tell us, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones occupy the first places; but, unable to yield to them, 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. How must we proceed and what must we do to realize this ambition? Let us observe what they do, what kind of life they lead. For if we lead this kind of life (and we can) we shall attain their same estate. The Seraphim burns with the fire of charity; from the Cherubim flashes forth the splendor of intelligence; the Thrones stand firm with the firmness of justice. If, consequently, in the pursuit of the active life we govern inferior things by just criteria, we shall be established in the firm position of the Thrones. If, freeing ourselves from active care, we devote our time to contemplation, meditating upon the Creator in His work, and the work in its Creator, we shall be resplendent with the light of the Cherubim. If we burn with love for the Creator only, his consuming fire will quickly transform us into the flaming likeness of the Seraphim. Above the Throne, that is, above the just judge, God sits, judge of the ages. Above the Cherub, that is, the contemplative spirit, He spreads His wings, nourishing him, as it were, with an enveloping warmth. For the spirit of the Lord moves upon the waters, those waters which are above the heavens and which, according to Job, praise the Lord in pre-aurorial hymns. Whoever is a Seraph, that is a lover, is in God and God is in him; even, it may be said, God and he are one. Great is the power of the Thrones, which we attain by right judgement, highest of all the sublimity of the Seraphim which we attain by loving. But how can anyone judge or love what he does not know? Moses loved the God whom he had seen and as judge of his people he administered what he had previously seen in contemplation on the mountain. Therefore the Cherub is the intermediary and by his light equally prepares us for the fire of the Seraphim and the judgement of the Thrones. This is the bond which unites the highest minds, the Palladian order which presides over contemplative philosophy; this is then the bond which before all else we must emulate, embrace and comprehend, whence we may be rapt to the heights of love or descend, well instructed and prepared, to the duties of the practical life. But certainly it is worth the effort, if we are to form our life on the model of the Cherubim, to have familiarly before our eyes both its nature and its quality as well as the duties and the functions proper to it. Since it is not granted to us, flesh as we are and knowledgeable only the things of earth, to attain such knowledge by our own efforts, let us have recourse to the ancient Fathers. They can give us the fullest and most reliable testimony concerning these matters because they had an almost domestic and connatural knowledge of them. Let us ask the Apostle Paul, that vessel of election, in what activity he saw the armies of the Cherubim engaged when he was rapt into the third heaven. He will answer, according to the interpretation of Dionysius, that he saw them first being purified, then illuminated, and finally made perfect. We, therefore, imitating the life of the Cherubim here on earth, by refraining the impulses of our passions through moral science, by dissipating the darkness of reason by dialectic --- thus washing away, so to speak, the filth of ignorance and vice --- may likewise purify our souls, so that the passions may never run rampant, nor reason, lacking restraint, range beyond its natural limits. Then may we suffuse our purified souls with the light of natural philosophy, bringing it to final perfection by the knowledge of divine things. Lest we be satisfied to consult only those of our own faith and tradition, let us also have recourse to the patriarch, Jacob, whose likeness, carved on the throne of glory, shines out before us. This wisest of the Fathers who though sleeping in the lower world, still has his eyes fixed on the world above, will admonish us. He will admonish, however, in a figure, for all things appeared in figures to the men of those times: a ladder rises by many rungs from earth to the height of heaven and at its summit sits the Lord, while over its rungs the contemplative angels move, alternately ascending and descending. If this is what we, who wish to imitate the angelic life, must do in our turn, who, I ask, would dare set muddied feet or soiled hands to the ladder of the Lord? It is forbidden, as the mysteries teach, for the impure to touch what is pure. But what are these hands, these feet, of which we speak? The feet, to be sure, of the soul: that is, its most despicable portion by which the soul is held fast to earth as a root to the ground; I mean to say, it alimentary and nutritive faculty where lust ferments and voluptuous softness is fostered. And why may we not call the hand'' that irascible power of the soul, which is the warrior of the appetitive faculty, fighting for it and foraging for it in the dust and the sun, seizing for it all things which, sleeping in the shade, it will devour? Let us bathe in moral philosophy as in a living stream, these hands, that is, the whole sensual part in which the lusts of the body have their seat and which, as the saying is, holds the soul by the scruff of the neck, let us be flung back from that ladder as profane and polluted intruders. Even this, however, will not be enough, if we wish to be the companions of the angels who traverse the ladder of Jacob, unless we are first instructed and rendered able to advance on that ladder duly, step by step, at no point to stray from it and to complete the alternate ascensions and descents. When we shall have been so prepared by the art of discourse or of reason, then, inspired by the spirit of the Cherubim, exercising philosophy through all the rungs of the ladder --- that is, of nature --- we shall penetrate being from its center to its surface and from its surface to its center. At one time we shall descend, dismembering with titanic force the unity'' of the many,'' like the members of Osiris; at another time, we shall ascend, recollecting those same members, by the power of Phoebus, into their original unity. Finally, in the bosom of the Father, who reigns above the ladder, we shall find perfection and peace in the felicity of theological knowledge. Let us also inquire of the just Job, who made his covenant with the God of life even before he entered into life, what, above all else, the supreme God desires of those tens of thousands of beings which surround Him. He will answer, without a doubt: peace, just as it is written in the pages of Job: He establishes peace in the high reaches of heaven. And since the middle order interprets the admonitions of the higher to the lower orders, the words of Job the theologian may well be interpreted for us by Empedocles the philosopher. Empedocles teaches us that there is in our souls a dual nature; the one bears us upwards toward the heavenly regions; by the other we are dragged downward toward regions infernal, through friendship and discord, war and peace; so witness those verses in which he laments that, torn by strife and discord, like a madman, in flight from the gods, he is driven into the depths of the sea. For it is a patent thing, O Fathers, that many forces strive within us, in grave, intestine warfare, worse than the civil wars of states. Equally clear is it that, if we are to overcome this warfare, if we are to establish that peace which must establish us finally among the exalted of God, philosophy alone can compose and allay that strife. In the first place, if our man seeks only truce with his enemies, moral philosophy will restrain the unreasoning drives of the protean brute, the passionate violence and wrath of the lion within us. If, acting on wiser counsel, we should seek to secure an unbroken peace, moral philosophy will still be at hand to fulfill our desires abundantly; and having slain either beast, like sacrificed sows, it will establish an inviolable compact of peace between the flesh and the spirit. Dialectic will compose the disorders of reason torn by anxiety and uncertainty amid the conflicting hordes of words and captious reasonings. Natural philosophy will reduce the conflict of opinions and the endless debates which from every side vex, distract and lacerate the disturbed mind. It will compose this conflict, however, in such a manner as to remind us that nature, as Heraclitus wrote, is generated by war and for this reason is called by Homer, strife.'' Natural philosophy, therefore, cannot assure us a true and unshakable peace. To bestow such peace is rather the privilege and office of the queen of the sciences, most holy theology. Natural philosophy will at best point out the way to theology and even accompany us along the path, while theology, seeing us from afar hastening to draw close to her, will call out: Come unto me you who are spent in labor and I will restore you; come to me and I will give you the peace which the world and nature cannot give.'' Summoned in such consoling tones and invited with such kindness, like earthly Mercuries, we shall fly on winged feet to embrace that most blessed mother and there enjoy the peace we have longed for: that most holy peace, that indivisible union, that seamless friendship through which all souls will not only be at one in that one mind which is above every mind, but, in a manner which passes expression, will really be one, in the most profound depths of being. This is the friendship which the Pythagoreans say is the purpose of all philosophy. This is the peace which God established in the high places of the heaven and which the angels, descending to earth, announced to men of good will, so that men, ascending through this peace to heaven, might become angels. This is the peace which we would wish for our friends, for our age, for every house into which we enter and for our own soul, that through this peace it may become the dwelling of God; sop that, too, when the soul, by means of moral philosophy and dialectic shall have purged herself of her uncleanness, adorned herself with the disciplines of philosophy as with the raiment of a prince's court and crowned the pediments of her doors with the garlands of theology, the King of Glory may descend and, coming with the Father, take up his abode with her. If she prove worthy of so great a guest, she will, through his boundless clemency, arrayed in the golden vesture of the many sciences as in a nuptial gown, receive him, not as a guest merely, but as a spouse. And rather than be parted from him, she will prefer to leave her own people and her father's house. Forgetful of her very self she will desire to die to herself in order to live in her spouse, in whose eyes the death of his saints is infinitely precious: I mean that death --- if the very plenitude of life can be called death --- whose meditation wise men have always held to be the special study of philosophy. Let us also cite Moses himself, who is but little removed from the living well-spring of the most holy and ineffable understanding by whose nectar the angels are inebriated. Let us listen to the venerable judge as he enunciates his laws to us who live in the desert solitude of the body: Let those who, still unclean, have need of moral philosophy, dwell with the peoples outside the tabernacles, under the open sky, until, like the priests of Thessaly, they shall have cleansed themselves. Those who have already brought order into their lives may be received into the tabernacle, but still may not touch the sacred vessels. Let them rather first, as zealous levites, in the service of dialectic, minister to the holy offices of philosophy. When they shall themselves be admitted to those offices, they may, as priests of philosophy, contemplate the many-colored throne of the higher God, that is the courtly palace of the star-hung heavens, the heavenly candelabrum aflame with seven lights and elements which are the furry veils of this tabernacle; so that, finally, having been permitted to enter, through the merit of sublime theology, into the innermost chambers of the temple, with no veil of images interposing itself, we may enjoy the glory of divinity.'' This is what Moses beyond a doubt commands us, admonishing, urging and exhorting us to prepare ourselves, while we may, by means of philosophy, a road to future heavenly glory. In fact, however, the dignity of the liberal arts, which I am about to discuss, and their value to us is attested not only by the Mosaic and Christian mysteries but also by the theologies of the most ancient times. What else is to be understood by the stages through which the initiates must pass in the mysteries of the Greeks? These initiates, after being purified by the arts which we might call expiatory, moral philosophy and dialectic, were granted admission to the mysteries. What could such admission mean but the interpretation of occult nature by means of philosophy? Only after they had been prepared in this way did they receive Epopteia,'' that is, the immediate vision of divine things by the light of theology. Who would not long to be admitted to such mysteries? Who would not desire, putting all human concerns behind him, holding the goods of fortune in contempt and little minding the goods of the body, thus to become, while still a denizen of earth, a guest at the table of the gods, and, drunk with the nectar of eternity, receive, while still a mortal, the gift of immortality? Who would not wish to be so inspired by those Socratic frenzies which Plato sings in the Phaedrus that, swiftly fleeing this place, that is, this world fixed in evil, by the oars, so to say, both of feet and wings, he might reach the heavenly Jerusalem by the swiftest course? Let us be driven, O Fathers, by those Socratic frenzies which lift us to such ecstasy that our intellects and our very selves are united to God. And we shall be moved by them in this way as previously we have done all that it lies in us to do. If, by moral philosophy, the power of our passions shall have been restrained by proper controls so that they achieve harmonious accord; and if, by dialectic, our reason shall have progressed by an ordered advance, then, smitten by the frenzy of the Muses, we shall hear the heavenly harmony with the inward ears of the spirit. Then the leader of the Muses, Bacchus, revealing to us in our moments of philosophy, through his mysteries, that is, the visible signs of nature, the invisible things of God, will make us drunk with the richness of the house of God; and there, if, like Moses, we shall prove entirely faithful, most sacred theology will supervene to inspire us with redoubled ecstasy. For, raised to the most eminent height of theology, whence we shall be able to measure with the rod of indivisible eternity all things that are and that have been; and, grasping the primordial beauty of things, like the seers of Phoebus, we shall become the winged lovers of theology. And at last, smitten by the ineffable love as by a sting, and, like the Seraphim, filled with the godhead, we shall be, no longer ourselves, but the very One who made us. The sacred names of Apollo, to anyone who penetrates their meanings and the mysteries they conceal, clearly show that God is a philosopher no less than a seer; but since Ammonius has amply treated this theme, there is no occasion for me to expound it anew. Nevertheless, O Fathers, we cannot fail to recall those three Delphic precepts which are so very necessary for everyone about to enter the most holy and august temple, not of the false, but of the true Apollo who illumines every soul as it enters this world. You will see that they exhort us to nothing else but to embrace with all our powers this tripartite philosophy which we are now discussing. As a matter of fact that aphorism: meden agan, this is: Nothing in excess,'' duly prescribes a measure and rule for all the virtues through the concept of the Mean'' of which moral philosophy treats. In like manner, that other aphorism gnothi seauton, that is, Know thyself,'' invites and exhorts us to the study of the whole nature of which the nature of man is the connecting link and the mixed potion''; for he who knows himself knows all things in himself, as Zoroaster first and after him Plato, in the Alcibiades, wrote. Finally, enlightened by this knowledge, through the aid of natural philosophy, being already close to God, employing the theological salutation ei, that is Thou art,'' we shall blissfully address the true Apollo on intimate terms. Let us also seek the opinion of Pythagoras, that wisest of men, known as a wise man precisely because he never thought himself worthy of that name. His first precept to us will be: Never sit on a bushel''; never, that is, through slothful inaction to lose our power of reason, that faculty by which the mind examines, judges and measures all things; but rather unremittingly by the rule and exercise of dialectic, to direct it and keep it agile. Next he will warn us of two things to be avoided at all costs: Neither to make water facing the sun, nor to cut our nails while offering sacrifice. Only when, by moral philosophy, we shall have evacuated the weakening appetites of our too-abundant pleasures and pared away, like nail clippings, the sharp points of anger and wrath in our souls, shall we finally begin to take part in the sacred rites, that is, the mysteries of Bacchus of which we have spoken and to dedicate ourselves to that contemplation of which the Sun is rightly called the father and the guide. Finally, Pythagoras will command us to Feed the cock''; that is, to nourish the divine part of our soul with the knowledge of divine things as with substantial food and heavenly ambrosia. This is the cock whose visage is the lion, that is, all earthly power, holds in fear and awe. This is the cock to whom, as we read in Job, all understanding was given. At this cock's crowing, erring man returns to his senses. This is the cock which every day, in the morning twilight, with the stars of morning, raises a Te Deum to heaven. This is the cock which Socrates, at the hour of his death, when he hoped he was about to join the divinity of his spirit to the divinity of the higher world and when he was already beyond danger of any bodily illness, said that he owed to Asclepius, that is, the healer of souls. Let us also pass in review the records of the Chaldeans; there we shall see (if they are to be believed) that the road to happiness, for mortals, lies through these same arts. The Chaldean interpreters write that it was a saying of Zoroaster that the soul is a winged creature. When her wings fall from her, she is plunged into the body; but when they grow strong again, she flies back to the supernal regions. And when his disciples asked him how they might insure that their souls might be well plumed and hence swift in flight he replied: Water them well with the waters of life.'' And when they persisted, asking whence they might obtain these waters of life, he answered (as he was wont) in a parable: The Paradise of God is bathed and watered by four rivers; from these same sources you may draw the waters which will save you. The name of the river which flows from the north is Pischon which means, the Right.' That which flows from the west is Gichon, that is, Expiation.' The river flowing from the east is named Chiddekel, that is, Light,' while that, finally, from the south is Perath, which may be understood as Compassion.' '' Consider carefully and with full attention, O Fathers, what these deliverances of Zoroaster might mean. Obviously, they can only mean that we should, by moral science, as by western waves, wash the uncleanness from our eyes; that, by dialectic, as by a reading taken by the northern star, our gaze must be aligned with the right. Then, that we should become accustomed to bear, in the contemplation of nature, the still feeble light of truth, like the first rays of the rising sun, so that finally we may, through theological piety and the most holy cult of God, become able, like the eagles of heaven, to bear the effulgent splendor of the noonday sun. These are, perhaps, those morning, midday and evening thoughts'' which David first celebrated and on which St. Augustine later expatiated. This is the noonday light which inflames the Seraphim toward their goal and equally illuminates the Cherubim. This is the promised land toward which our ancient father Abraham was ever advancing; this the region where, as the teachings of the Cabalists and the Moors tell us, there is no place for unclean spirits. And if we may be permitted, even in the form of a riddle, to say anything publicly about the deeper mysteries: since the precipitous fall of man has left his mind in a vertiginous whirl and and since according to Jeremiah, death has come in through the windows to infect our hearts and bowels with evil, let us call upon Raphael, the heavenly healer that by moral philosophy and dialectic, as with healing drugs, he may release us. When we shall have been restored to health, Gabriel, the strength of God, will abide in us. Leading us through the marvels of nature and pointing out to us everywhere the power and the goodness of God, he will deliver us finally to the care of the High Priest Michael. He, in turn, will adorn those who have successfully completed their service to philosophy with the priesthood of theology as with a crown of precious stones. These are the reasons, most reverend Fathers, which not only led, but even compelled me, to the study of philosophy. And I should not have undertaken to expound them, except to reply to those who are wont to condemn the study of philosophy, especially among men of high rank, but also among those of modest station. For the whole study of philosophy (such is the unhappy plight of our time) is occasion for contempt and contumely, rather than honor and glory. The deadly and monstrous persuasion has invaded practically all minds, that philosophy ought not to be studied at all or by very few people; as though it were a thing of little worth to have before our eyes and at our finger-tips, as matters we have searched out with greatest care, the causes of things, the ways of nature and the plan of the universe, God's counsels and the mysteries of heaven and earth, unless by such knowledge on might procure some profit or favor for oneself. Thus we have reached the point, it is painful to recognize, where the only persons accounted wise are those who can reduce the pursuit of wisdom to a profitable traffic; and chaste Pallas, who dwells among men only by the generosity of the gods, is rejected, hooted, whistled at in scorn, with no one to love or befriend her unless, by prostituting herself, she is able to pay back into the strongbox of her lover the ill-procured price of her deflowered virginity. I address all these complaints, with the greatest regret and indignation, not against the princes of our times, but against the philosophers who believe and assert that philosophy should not be pursued because no monetary value or reward is assigned it, unmindful that by this sign they disqualify themselves as philosophers. Since their whole life is concentrated on gain and ambition, they never embrace the knowledge of the truth for its own sake. This much will I say for myself --- and on this point I do not blush for praising myself --- that I have never philosophized save for the sake of philosophy, nor have I ever desired or hoped to secure from my studies and my laborious researches any profit or fruit save cultivation of mind and knowledge of the truth --- things I esteem more and more with the passage of time. I have also been so avid for this knowledge and so enamored of it that I have set aside all private and public concerns to devote myself completely to contemplation; and from it no calumny of jealous persons, nor any invective from enemies of wisdom has ever been able to detach me. Philosophy has taught me to rely on my own convictions rather than on the judgements of others and to concern myself less with whether I am well thought of than whether what I do or say is evil. I was not unaware, most revered Fathers, that this present disputation of mine would be as acceptable and as pleasing to you, who favor all the good arts and who have consented to grace it with your presence, as it would be irritating and offensive to many others. I am also aware that there is no dearth of those who have condemned my undertaking before this and continue to do so on a number of grounds. But this has always been the case: works which are well-intentioned and sincerely directed to virtue have always had no fewer --- not to say more --- detractors than those undertaken for questionable motives and for devious ends. Some persons disapprove the present type of disputation in general and this method of disputing in public about learned matters; they assert that they serve only the exhibition of talent and the display of opinion, rather than the increase of learning. Others do not disapprove this type of exercise, but resent the fact that at my age, a mere twenty-four years, I have dared to propose a disputation concerning the most subtle mysteries of Christian theology, the most debated points of philosophy and unfamiliar branches of learning; and that I have done so here, in this most renowned of cities, before a large assembly of very learned men, in the presence of the Apostolic Senate. Still others have ceded my right so to dispute, but have not conceded that I might dispute nine hundred theses, asserting that such a project is superfluous, over-ambitious and beyond my powers. I should have acceded to these objections willingly and immediately, if the philosophy which I profess had so counseled me. Nor should I now undertake to reply to them, as my philosophy urges me to do, if I believed that this disputation between us were undertaken for purposes of mere altercation and litigation. Therefore, let all intention of denigration and exasperation be purged from our minds and with it that malice which, as Plato writes, is never present in the angelic choirs. Let us amicably decide whether it be admissible for me to proceed with my disputation and whether I should venture so large a number of questions. I shall not, in the first place, have much to say against those who disapprove this type of public disputation. It is a crime, --- if it be a crime --- which I share with all you, most excellent doctors, who have engaged in such exercises on many occasions to the enhancement of your reputations, as well as with Plato and Aristotle and all the most esteemed philosophers of every age. These philosophers of the past all thought that nothing could profit them more in their search for wisdom than frequent participation in public disputation. Just as the powers of the body are made stronger through gymnastic, the powers of the mind grow in strength and vigor in this arena of learning. I am inclined to believe that the poets, when they sang of the arms of Pallas and the Hebrews, when they called the barzel, that is, the sword, the symbol of men of wisdom, could have meant nothing by these symbols but this type of contest, at once so necessary and so honorable for the acquisition of knowledge. This may also be the reason why the Chaldeans, at the birth of a man destined to be a philosopher, described a horoscope in which Mars confronted Mercury from three distinct angles. This is as much as to say that should these assemblies and these contests be abandoned, all philosophy would become sluggish and dormant. It is more difficult for me, however, to find a line of defense against those who tell me that I am unequal to the undertaking. If I say that I am equal to it, I shall appear to entertain an immodestly high opinion of myself. If I admit that I am unequal to it, while persisting in it, I shall certainly risk being called temerarious and imprudent. You see the difficulties into which I have fallen, the position in which I am placed. I cannot, without censure, promise something about myself, nor, without equal censure, fail in what I promise. Perhaps I can invoke that saying of Job: The spirit is in all men'' or take consolation in what was said to Timothy: Let no man despise your youth.'' But to speak from my own conscience, I might say with greater truth that there is nothing singular about me. I admit that I am devoted to study and eager in the pursuit of the good arts. Nevertheless, I do not assume nor arrogate to myself the title learned. If, consequently, I have taken such a great burden on my shoulders, it is not because I am ignorant of my own weaknesses. Rather, it is because I understand that in this kind of learned contest the real victory lies in being vanquished. Even the weakest, consequently, ought not to shun them, but should seek them out, as well they may. For the one who is bested receives from his conqueror, not an injury but a benefit; he returns to his house richer than he left, that is, more learned and better armed for future contests. Inspired by such hope, though myself but a weak soldier, I have not been afraid to enter so dangerous a contest even against the very strongest and vigorous opponents. Whether, in doing so, I have acted foolishly or not might better be judged from the outcome of the contest than from my age. I must, in the third place, answer those who are scandalized by the large number of propositions and the variety of topics I have proposed for disputation, as though the burden, however great it may be, rested on their shoulders and not, as it does, on mine. Surely it is unbecoming and captious to want to set limits to another's efforts and, as Cicero says, to desire mediocrity in those things in which the rule should be: the more the better. In undertaking so great a venture only one alternative confronted me: success or failure. If I should succeed, I do not see how it would be more praiseworthy to succeed in defending ten theses than in defending nine hundred. If I should fail, those who hate me will have grounds for disparagement, while those who love me will have an occasion to excuse me. In so large and important an undertaking it would seem that a young man who fails through weakness of talent or want of learning deserves indulgence rather than censure. For as the poet says, if powers fail, there shall be praise for daring; and in great undertaking, to have willed is enough. In our own day, many scholars, imitating Gorgias of Leontini, have been accustomed to dispute, not nine hundred questions merely, but the whole range of questions concerning all the arts and have been praised for it. Why should not I, then, without incurring criticism, be permitted to discuss a large number of questions indeed, but questions which are clear and determined in their scope? They reply, this is superfluous and ambitious. I protest that, in my case, no superfluity is involved, but that all is necessary. If they consider the method of my philosophy they will feel compelled, even against their inclinations, to recognize this necessity. All those who attach themselves to one or another of the philosophers, to Thomas, for instance or Scotus, who at present enjoy the widest following, can indeed test their doctrine in a discussion of a few questions. By contrast, I have so trained myself that, committed to the teachings of no one man, I have ranged through all the masters of philosophy, examined all their works, become acquainted with all schools. As a consequence, I have had to introduce all of them into the discussion lest, defending a doctrine peculiar to one, I might seem committed to it and thus to deprecate the rest. While a few of the theses proposed concern individual philosophers, it was inevitable that a great number should concern all of them together. Nor should anyone condemn me on the grounds that wherever the storm blows me, there I remain as a guest.'' For it was a rule among the ancients, in the case of all writers, never to leave unread any commentaries which might be available. Aristotle observed this rule so carefully that Plato called him: auagnooies, that is, the reader.'' It is certainly a mark of excessive narrowness of mind to enclose oneself within one Porch or Academy; nor can anyone reasonably attach himself to one school or philosopher, unless he has previously become familiar with them all. In addition, there is in each school some distinctive characteristic which it does not share with any other. To begin with the men of our own faith to whom philosophy came last, there is in Duns Scotus both vigor and distinction, in Thomas solidity and sense of balance, in Egidius, lucidity and precision, in Francis, depth and acuteness, in Albertus [Magnus] a sense of ultimate issues, all-embracing and grand, in Henry, as it has seemed to me, always an element of sublimity which inspires reverence. Among the Arabians, there is in Averroës something solid and unshaken, in Avempace, as in Al-Farabi, something serious and deeply meditated; in Avicenna, something divine and platonic. Among the Greeks philosophy was always brilliant and, among the earliest, even chaste: in Simplicus it is rich and abundant, in Themistius elegant and compendious, in Alexander, learned and self-consistent, in Theophrastus, worked out with great reflection, in Ammonius, smooth and pleasing. If you turn to the Platonists, to mention but a few, you will, in Porphyry, be delighted by the wealth of matter and by his preoccupation with many aspects of religion; in Iamblichus, you will be awed by his knowledge of occult philosophy and the mysteries of the barbarian peoples; in Plotinus, you will find it impossible to single out one thing for admiration, because he is admirable under every aspect. Platonists themselves, sweating over his pages, understand him only with the greatest difficulty when, in his oblique style, he teaches divinely about divine things and far more than humanly about things human. I shall pass over the more recent figures, Proclus, and those others who derive from him, Damacius, Olympiodorus and many more in whom that to theion, that is, that divine something which is the special mark of the Platonists, always shines out. It should be added that any school which attacks the more established truths and by clever slander ridicules the valid arguments of reason confirms, rather than weakens, the truth itself, which, like embers, is fanned to life, rather than extinguished by stirring. These considerations have motivated me in my determination to bring to men's attention the opinions of all schools rather than the doctrine of some one or other (as some might have preferred), for it seems to me that by the confrontation of many schools and the discussion of many philosophical systems that effulgence of truth'' of which Plato writes in his letters might illuminate our minds more clearly, like the sun rising from the sea. What should have been our plight had only the philosophical thought of the Latin authors, that is, Albert, Thomas, Scotus, Egidius, Francis and Henry, been discussed, while that of the Greeks and the Arabs was passed over, since all the thought of the barbarian nations was inherited by the Greeks and from the Greeks came down to us? For this reason, our thinkers have always been satisfied, in the field of philosophy, to rest on the discoveries of foreigners and simply to perfect the work of others. What profit would have dervied from discussing natural philosophy with the Peripatetics, if the Academy of the Platonists had not also participated in the exchange, for the doctrine of the latter, even when it touched on divine matters, has always (as St. Augustine bears witness) been esteemed the most elevated of all philosophies? And this in turn has been the reason why I have, for the first time after many centuries of neglect (and there is nothing invidious in my saying so) brought it forth again for public examination and discussion. And what would it have profited us if, having discussed the opinions of innumerable others, like asymboli, at the banquet of wise men, we should contribute nothing of our own, nothing conceived and elaborated in our own mind? Indeed, it is the characteristic of the impotent (as Seneca writes) to have their knowledge all written down in their note-books, as though the discoveries of those who preceded us had closed the path to our own efforts, as though the power of nature had become effete in us and could bring forth nothing which, if it could not demonstrate the truth, might at least point to it from afar. The farmer hates sterility in his field and the husband deplores it in his wife; even more then must the divine mind hate the sterile mind with which it is joined and associated, because it hopes from that source to have offspring of such a high nature. For these reasons, I have not been content to repeat well-worn doctrines, but have proposed for disputation many points of the early theology of Hermes Trismegistus, many theses drawn from the teachings of the Chaldeans and the Pythagoreans, from the occult mysteries of the Hebrews and, finally, a considerable number of propositions concerning both nature and God which we ourselves have discovered and worked out. In the first place, we have proposed a harmony between Plato and Aristotle, such as many before this time indeed believed to exist but which no one has satisfactorily established. Boethius, among Latin writers, promised to compose such a harmony, but he never carried his proposal to completion. St. Augustine also writes, in his Contra Academicos, that many others tried to prove the same thing, that is, that the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle were identical, and by the most subtle arguments. For example, John the Grammarian held that Aristotle differed from Plato only for those who did not grasp Plato's thought; but he left it to posterity to prove it. We have, in addition, adduced a great number of passages in which Scotus and Thomas, and others in which Averroës and Avicenna, have heretofore been thought to disagree, but which I assert are in harmony with one another. In the second place, along with my own reflections on and developments of both the Aristotelian and the Platonic philosophies, I have adduced seventy-two theses in physics and metaphysics. If I am not mistaken (and this will become clearer in the course of the proposed disputation) anyone subscribing to these theses will be able to resolve any question proposed to him in natural philosophy or theology on a principle quite other than that taught us in the philosophy which is at present to be learned in the schools and is taught by the masters of the present generation. Nor ought anyone to be surprised, that in my early years, at a tender age at which I should hardly be permitted to read the writings of others (as some have insinuated) I should wish to propose a new philosophy. They ought rather to praise this new philosophy, if it is well defended, or reject it, if it is refuted. Finally, since it will be their task to judge my discoveries and my scholarship, they ought to look to the merit or demerit of these and not to the age of their author. I have, in addition, introduced a new method of philosophizing on the basis of numbers. This method is, in fact, very old, for it was cultivated by the ancient theologians, by Pythagoras, in the first place, but also by Aglaophamos, Philolaus and Plato, as well as by the earliest Platonists; however, like other illustrious achievements of the past, it has through lack of interest on the part of succeeding generations, fallen into such desuetude, that hardly any vestiges of it are to be found. Plato writes in Epinomis that among all the liberal arts and contemplative sciences, the science of number is supreme and most divine. And in another place, asking why man is the wisest of animals, he replies, because he knows how to count. Similarly, Aristotle, in his Problems repeats this opinion. Abumasar writes that it was a favorite saying of Avenzoar of Babylon that the man who knows how to count, knows everything else as well. These opinions are certainly devoid of any truth if by the art of number they intend that art in which today merchants excel all other men; Plato adds his testimony to this view, admonishing us emphatically not to confuse this divine arithmetic with the arithmetic of the merchants. When, consequently, after long nights of study I seemed to myself to have thoroughly penetrated this Arithmetic, which is thus so highly extolled, I promised myself that in order to test the matter, I would try to solve by means of this method of number seventy-four questions which are considered, by common consent, among the most important in physics and divinity. I have also proposed certain theses concerning magic, in which I have indicated that magic has two forms. One consists wholly in the operations and powers of demons, and consequently this appears to me, as God is my witness, an execrable and monstrous thing. The other proves, when thoroughly investigated, to be nothing else but the highest realization of natural philosophy. The Greeks noted both these forms. However, because they considered the first form wholly undeserving the name magic they called it goeteia, reserving the term mageia, to the second, and understanding by it the highest and most perfect wisdom. The term magus'' in the Persian tongue, according to Porphyry, means the same as interpreter'' and worshipper of the divine'' in our language. Moreover, Fathers, the disparity and dissimilarity between these arts is the greatest that can be imagined. Not the Christian religion alone, but all legal codes and every well-governed commonwealth execrates and condemns the first; the second, by contrast, is approved and embraced by all wise men and by all peoples solicitous of heavenly and divine things. The first is the most deceitful of arts; the second, a higher and holier philosophy. The former is vain and disappointing; the later, firm, solid and satisfying. The practitioner of the first always tries to conceal his addiction, because it always rebounds to shame and reproach, while the cultivation of the second, both in antiquity and at almost all periods, has been the source of the highest renown and glory in the field of learning. No philosopher of any worth, eager in pursuit of the good arts, was ever a student of the former, but to learn the latter, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Plato and Democritus crossed the seas. Returning to their homes, they, in turn, taught it to others and considered it a treasure to be closely guarded. The former, since it is supported by no true arguments, is defended by no writers of reputation; the latter, honored, as it were, in its illustrious progenitors, counts two principal authors: Zamolxis, who was imitated by Abaris the Hyperborean, and Zoroaster; not, indeed, the Zoroaster who may immediately come to your minds, but that other Zoroaster, the son of Oromasius. If we should ask Plato the nature of each of these forms of magic, he will respond in the Alcibiades that the magic of Zoroaster is nothing else than that science of divine things in which the kings of the Persians had their sons educated to that they might learn to rule their commonwealth on the pattern of the commonwealth of the universe. In the Charmides he will answer that the magic of Zamolxis is the medicine of the soul, because it brings temperance to the soul as medicine brings health to the body. Later Charondas, Damigeron, Apollonius, Osthanes and Dardanus continued in their footsteps, as did Homer, of whom we shall sometime prove, in a poetic theology'' we propose to write, that he concealed this doctrine, symbolically, in the wanderings of his Ulysses, just as he did all other learned doctrines. They were also followed by Eudoxus and Hermippus, as well as by practically all those who studied the Pythagorean and Platonic mysteries. Of later philosophers, I find that three had ferreted it out: the Arabian, Al-Kindi, Roger Bacon, and William of Paris. Plotinus also gives signs that he was aware of it in the passage in which he shows that the magician is the minister of nature and not merely its artful imitator. This very wise man approves and maintains this magic, while so abhorring that other that once, when he was invited to to take part in rites of evil spirits, he said that they ought rather to come to him, than he to go to them; and he spoke well. Just as that first form of magic makes man a slave and pawn of evil powers, the latter makes him their lord and master. That first form of magic cannot justify any claim to being either an art or a science while the latter, filled as it is with mysteries, embraces the most profound contemplation of the deepest secrets of things and finally the knowledge of the whole of nature. This beneficent magic, in calling forth, as it were, from their hiding places into the light the powers which the largess of God has sown and planted in the world, does not itself work miracles, so much as sedulously serve nature as she works her wonders. Scrutinizing, with greater penetration, that harmony of the universe which the Greeks with greater aptness of terms called sympatheia and grasping the mutual affinity of things, she applies to each thing those inducements (called the iugges of the magicians), most suited to its nature. Thus it draws forth into public notice the miracles which lie hidden in the recesses of the world, in the womb of nature, in the storehouses and secret vaults of God, as though she herself were their artificer. As the farmer weds his elms to the vines, so the magus'' unites earth to heaven, that is, the lower orders to the endowments and powers of the higher. Hence it is that this latter magic appears the more divine and salutary, as the former presents a monstrous and destructive visage. But the deepest reason for the difference is the fact that that first magic, delivering man over to the enemies of God, alienates him from God, while the second, beneficent magic, excites in him an admiration for the works of God which flowers naturally into charity, faith and hope. For nothing so surely impels us to the worship of God than the assiduous contemplation of His miracles and when, by means of this natural magic, we shall have examined these wonders more deeply, we shall more ardently be moved to love and worship Him in his works, until finally we shall be compelled to burst into song: The heavens, all of the earth, is filled with the majesty of your glory.'' But enough about magic. I have been led to say even this much because I know that there are many persons who condemn and hate it, because they do not understand it, just as dogs always bay at strangers. I come now to those matters which I have drawn from the ancient mysteries of the Hebrews and here adduce in confirmation of the inviolable Catholic faith. Lest these matters be thought, by those to whom they are unfamiliar, bubbles of the imagination and tales of charlatans, I want everyone to understand what they are and what their true character is; whence they are drawn and who are the illustrious writers who testifying to them; how mysterious they are, and divine and necessary to men of our faith for the propagation of our religion in the face of the persistent calumnies of the Hebrews. Not famous Hebrew teachers alone, but, from among those of our own persuasion, Esdras, Hilary and Origen all write that Moses, in addition to the law of the five books which he handed down to posterity, when on the mount, received from God a more secret and true explanation of the law. They also say that God commanded Moses to make the law known to the people, but not to write down its interpretation or to divulge it, but to communicate it only to Jesu Nave who, in turn, was to reveal it to succeeding high priests under a strict obligation of silence. It was enough to indicate, through simple historical narrative, the power of God, his wrath against the unjust, his mercy toward the good, his justice toward all and to educate the people, by divine and salutary commands, to live well and blessedly and to worship in the true religion. Openly to reveal to the people the hidden mysteries and the secret intentions of the highest divinity, which lay concealed under the hard shell of the law and the rough vesture of language, what else could this be but to throw holy things to dogs and to strew gems among swine? The decision, consequently, to keep such things hidden from the vulgar and to communicate them only to the initiate, among whom alone, as Paul says, wisdom speaks, was not a counsel of human prudence but a divine command. And the philosophers of antiquity scrupulously observed this caution. Pythagoras wrote nothing but a few trifles which he confided to his daughter Dama, on his deathbed. The Sphinxes, which are carved on the temples of the Egyptians, warned that the mystic doctrines must be kept inviolate from the profane multitude by means of riddles. Plato, writing certain things to Dionysius concerning the highest substances, explained that he had to write in riddles lest the letter fall into other hands and others come to know the things I have intended for you.'' Aristotle used to say that the books of the Metaphysics in which he treats of divine matters were both published and unpublished. Is there any need for further instances? Origen asserts that Jesus Christ, the Teacher of Life, revealed many things to His disciples which they in turn were unwilling to commit to writing lest they become the common possession of the crowd. Dionysius the Areopagite gives powerful confirmation to this assertion when he writes that the more secret mysteries were transmitted by the founders of our religion ek nou eis vouv dia mesov logov, that is, from mind to mind, without commitment to writing, through the medium of of the spoken word alone. Because the true interpretation of the law given to Moses was, by God's command, revealed in almost precisely this way, it was called Cabala,'' which in Hebrew means the same as our word reception.'' The precise point is, of course, that the doctrine was received by one man from another not through written documents but, as a hereditary right, through a regular succession of revelations. After Cyrus had delivered the Hebrews from the Babylonian captivity, and the Temple had been restored under Zorobabel, the Hebrews bethought themselves of restoring the Law. Esdras, who was head of the church [sic!] at the time, amended the book of Moses. He readily realized, moreover, that because of the exiles, the massacres, the flights and the captivity of the people of Israel, the practice established by the ancients of handing down the doctrines by word of mouth could not be maintained. Unless they were committed to writing, the heavenly teachings divinely handed down must inevitably perish, for the memory of them would not long endure. He decided, consequently, that all of the wise men still alive should be convened and that each should communicate to the convention all that he remembered about the mysteries of the Law. Their communications were then to be collected by scribes into seventy volumes (approximately the same number as there were members of the Sanhedrin). So that you need not accept my testimony alone, O Fathers, hear Esdras himself speaking: `After forty days had passed, the All-Highest spoke and said: The first things which you wrote publish openly so that the worthy and unworthy alike may read; but the last seventy books conserve so that you may hand them on to the wise men among your people, for in these reside the spring of understanding, the fountain of wisdom and the river of knowledge. And I did these things.'' These are the very words of Esdras. These are the books of cabalistic wisdom. In these books, as Esdras unmistakably states, resides the springs of understanding, that is, the ineffable theology of the supersubstantial deity; the fountain of wisdom, that is, the precise metaphysical doctrine concerning intelligible and angelic forms; and the stream of wisdom, that is, the best established philosophy concerning nature. Pope Sixtus the Fourth, the immediate predecessor of our present pope, Innocent the Eight, under whose happy reign we are living, took all possible measures to ensure that these books would be translated into Latin for the public benefit of our faith and at the time of his death, three of them had already appeared. The Hebrews hold these same books in such reverence that no one under forty years of age is permitted even to touch them. I acquired these books at considerable expense and, reading them from beginning to end with the greatest attention and with unrelenting toil, I discovered in them (as God is my witness) not so much the Mosaic as the Christian religion. There was to be found the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Word, the divinity of the Messiah; there one might also read of original sin, of its expiation by the Christ, of the heavenly Jerusalem, of the fall of the demons, of the orders of the angels, of the pains of purgatory and of hell. There I read the same things which we read every day in the pages of Paul and of Dionysius, Jerome and Augustine. In philosophical matters, it were as though one were listening to Pythagoras and Plato, whose doctrines bear so close an affinity to the Christian faith that our Augustine offered endless thanks to God that the books of the Platonists had fallen into his hands. In a word, there is no point of controversy between the Hebrews and ourselves on which the Hebrews cannot be confuted and convinced out the cabalistic writings, so that no corner is left for them to hide in. On this point I can cite a witness of the very greatest authority, the most learned Antonius Chronicus; on the occasion of a banquet in his house, at which I was also present, with his own ears he heard the Hebrew, Dactylus, a profound scholar of this lore, come round completely to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. To return, however, to our review of the chief points of my disputation: I have also adduced my conception of the manner in which the poems of Orpheus and Zoroaster ought to be interpreted. Orpheus is read by the Greeks in a text which is practically complete; Zoroaster is known to them in a corrupt text, while in Chaldea he is read in a form more nearly complete. Both are considered as the authors and fathers of ancient wisdom. I shall say nothing about Zoroaster who is mentioned so frequently by the Platonists and always with the greatest respect. Of Pythagoras, however, Iamblicus the Chaldean writes that he took the Orphic theology as the model on which he shaped and formed his own philosophy. For this precise reason the sayings of Pythagoras are called sacred, because, and to the degree that, they derive from the Orphic teachings. For from this source that occult doctrine of numbers and everything else that was great and sublime in Greek philosophy flowed as from its primitive source. Orpheus, however (and this was the case with all the ancient theologians) so wove the mysteries of his doctrines into the fabric of myths and so wrapped them about in veils of poetry, that one reading his hymns might well believe that there was nothing in them but fables and the veriest commonplaces. I have said this so that it might be known what labor was mine, what difficulty was involved, in drawing out the secret meanings of the occult philosophy from the deliberate tangles of riddles and the recesses of fable in which they were hidden; difficulty made all the greater by the fact that in a matter so weighty, abstruse and unexplored, I could count on no help from the work and efforts of other interpreters. And still like dogs they have come barking after me, saying that I have brought together an accumulation of trifles in order to make a great display by their sheer number. As though all did not concern ambiguous questions, subjects of sharpest controversy, over which the most important schools confront each other like gladiators. As though I had not brought to light many things quite unknown and unsuspected by these very men who now carp at me while styling themselves the leaders of philosophy. As a matter of fact, I am so completely free of the fault they attribute to me that I have tried to confine the discussion to fewer points than I might have raised. Had I wished, (as others are wont) to divide these questions into their constituent parts, and to dismember them, their number might well have increased to a point past counting. To say nothing of other matters, who is unaware that one of these nine hundred theses, that, namely, concerning the reconciliation of the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle might have been developed, without arousing any suspicion that I was affecting mere number, into six hundred or more by enumerating in due order those points on which others think that these philosophies differ and I, that they agree? For a certainty I shall speak out (though in a manner which is neither modest in itself nor conformable to my character), I shall speak out because those who envy me and detract me, force me to speak out. I have wanted to make clear in disputation, not only that I know a great many things, but also that I know a great many things which others do not know. And now, reverend Fathers, in order that this claim may be vindicated by the fact, and in order that my address may no longer delay the satisfaction of your desire --- for I see, reverend doctors, with the greatest pleasure that you are girded and ready for the contest --- let us now, with the prayer that the outcome may be fortunate and favorable, as to the sound of trumpets, join battle.

Now give me a summary of Pico's views on angels in the Oration, and use the Platonist conclusions, especially the conclusions of Proclus, to explain how Pico is building on the Christian Platonist tradition of Aquinas interpreting the angelology of Pseudo-Dionysius. I want you to quote his works extensively and cite your sources.

Now summarize Pico's Kabbalistic conclusions with an eye for his interest in Kabbalistic metaphysics and angelology as a higher form of magic. conclusiones cabalisticae nume|ro.lxxi.secundum opinionem pro|priam: ex ipsis hebreorum sapien|tum fundamentis christianam re|ligionem maxime confirmantes. annotated II.11.1. Quicquid dicant caeteri Cabaliste: ego prima divisione scien|tiam Cabalae in scientiam sephiroth et semot tanquam in practicam |et speculativam distinguerem. annotated II.11.2. Quicquid dicant alii cabaliste ego partem speculativam caba|lae quadruplicem dividerem conrespondenter quadruplici par|titioni philosophiae quam ego solitus sum afferre. Prima est sci|entia quam ego voco alphabetariae revolutionis conresponden|tem parti philosophiae: quam ego philosophiam catholicam |voco. Secunda: tertia et quarta pars est triplex merchiava conre|spondentes triplici philosophiae particularis de divinis: de medi|is et sensibilibus naturis. annotated II.11.3. Scientia quae est pars practica cabalae: practicat totam metha|physicam formalem et theologiam inferiorem. annotated II.11.4. Ensoph non est aliis numerationibus connumeranda: quia est |illarum numerationum unitas abstracta et incommunicata: non |unitas coordinata. annotated II.11.5. Quilibet hebreus cabalista secundum principia et dicta scientiae Ca|balae cogitur inevitabiliter concedere de trinitate: et qualibet |persona divina: patre: filio: et spiritu sancto: illud precise sine ad|ditione: diminutione: aut variatione: quod ponit fides catholi|ca christianorum. Correlarium. Non solum qui negant trinitatem: Sed qui alio |modo eam ponunt quam ponat catholica ecclesia sicut Arriani: Sa|belliani: et similes: redargui possunt manifeste si admittantur |principia cabalae. annotated II.11.6. Tria magna dei nomina quaternaria quae sunt in secretis ca|balistarum per mirabilem appropriationem tribus personis tri|nitatis ita debere attribui: ut nomen [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] sit patris. No|men [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] sit filii. Nomen [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] sit spiritus san|cti. intelligere potest qui in scientia cabalae fuerit profundus. annotated II.11.7. Nullus hebreus cabalista potest negare quod nomen Iesu: si eum |secundum modum et principia cabalae interpretemur hoc totum preci|se: et nihil aliud significat id est deum dei filium patrisque sapientiam |per tertiam divinitatis personam quae est ardentissimus amoris |ignis naturae humanae in unitate suppositi unitum. annotated II.11.8. Ex praecedenti conclusione intelligi potest cur dixerit Paulus |datum esse Iesu nomen quod est super omne nomen et cur in no|mine Iesu dictum sit. Omne genu flecti caelestium terrestrium |et infernorum: quod etiam est maxime cabalisticum et potest ex |se intelligere qui est profundus in cabala. annotated II.11.9. Siqua est de novissimis temporibus humana coniectura: inve|stigare possumus per secretissimam viam cabalae futuram esse con|sumationem saeculi hinc ad annos quingentos et quatuordecim |et dies vigintiquinque. annotated II.11.10. Illud quod apud Cabalistas dicitur [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] illud est |sine dubio quod ab Orpheo Pallas: a Zoroastre paterna mens: |a Mercurio dei filius: a Pythagora sapientia: a Parmenide sphe|ra intelligibilis nominatur. annotated II.11.11. Modus quo rationales animae per archangelum deo sacrifican|tur qui a Cabalistis non exprimitur: non est nisi per separatio|nem animae a corpore: non corporis ab anima nisi per accidens: |ut contingit in morte osculi de quo scribitur. praeciosa in conspe|ctu domini mors sanctorum eius. annotated II.11.12. Non potest operari per puram Cabalam qui non est rationali|ter intellectualis. annotated II.11.13. Qui operatur in Cabala sine admixione extranei: si diu erit |in opere: morietur ex binsica: et si errabit in opere aut non puri|ficatus accesserit devorabitur ab Azazele per proprietatem iu|dicii. annotated II.11.14. Per litteram [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] id est scin quae mediat in nomine Iesu si|gnificatur nobis cabalistice quod tum perfecte quievit tanquam in sua |perfectione mundus cum Iod coniunctus est cum Vau: quod fa|ctum est in Christo qui fuit verus dei filius et homo. annotated II.11.15. Per nomen Iod he vahu he: quod est nomen ineffabile: quod |dicunt Cabaliste futurum esse nomen messiae: evidenter cogno|scitur futurum eum deum dei filium per spiritum sanctum homi|nem factum: et post eum ad perfectionem humani generis super |homines paraclytum descensurum. annotated II.11.16. Ex mysterio trium litterarum quae sunt in dictione sciabat id |est [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] possumus interpretari cabalistice tunc sabbatiza- |re mundum cum dei filius fit homo: et ultimo futurum sabbatum |cum homines in dei filium regenerabuntur. annotated II.11.17. Qui sciverit quid est vinum purissimum apud Cabalistas sci|et cur dixerit David. Inebriabor ab ubertate domus tuae: et quam |ebrietatem dixerit antiquus vates Museus esse foelicitatem: et quid |significent tot Bacchi apud Orpheum. annotated II.11.18. Qui coniunxerit Astrologiam Cabalae videbit quod sabbatizare |et quiescere convenientius fit post Christum die dominico quam die |sabbati. annotated II.11.19. Si dictum illud Prophetae. Vendiderunt iustum argento ca|balistice exponamus: nihil aliud nobis significat quam hoc scilicet |Deus ut redemptor venditus fuit argento. annotated II.11.20. Si interpretationem suam adverterint Cabaliste super hac di|ctione: [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] quae significat tunc: de trinitatis mysterio mul|tum illuminabuntur. annotated II.11.21. Qui coniunxerit dictum Cabalistarum dicentium quod illa nu|meratio quae dicitur iustus et redemptor: dictum etiam Ze cum |dicto Thalmutistarum dicentium quod Isaac ibat sicut ze portans |Crucem suam: videbit quod illud quod fuit in Isaac praefiguratum: |fuit adimpletum in Christo qui fuit verus Deus venditus Ar|gento. annotated II.11.22. Per dicta Cabalistarum de rubedine Esau: et dictum illud quod |est in Libro Bresit Rhaba quod Esau fuit rubeus: et Rubeus eum ulci|scetur: de quo dicitur. Quare rubeum vestimentum tuum? Ha|betur expresse quod Christus de quo nostri Doctores eundem te|xtum exponunt ille erit qui ultionem faciet de virtutibus immun|dis. annotated II.11.23. Per illud dictum Hieremiae. Laceravit verbum suum secundum |expositionem Cabalistarum habemus intelligere quod deum san|ctum et benedictum laceravit deus pro peccatoribus. annotated II.11.24. Per responsionem Cabalistarum ad quaestionem quare in li|bro numerorum coniuncta est particula mortis Mariae particu- |lae vitulae ruffae: et per expositionem eorum super eo passu ubi |Moyses in peccato vituli dixit. Dele me. Et per dicta in libro zo|ar super eo textu. Et eius livore sanati sumus: redarguuntur ine|vitabiliter Hebrei dicentes. non fuisse conveniens ut mors Chri|sti satisfaceret pro peccato humani generis. annotated II.11.25. Quilibet cabalista habet concedere: quod messias eos a captivi|tate Diabolica et non temporali erat liberaturus. annotated II.11.26. Quilibet Cabalista habet concedere ex dictis doctorum hu|ius scientiae hoc manifeste dicentium quod peccatum originale in ad|ventu messiae expiabitur. annotated II.11.27. Ex principiis cabalistarum evidenter elicitur quod per adventum |messiae tolletur circumcisionis necessitas. annotated II.11.28. Per dicitonem [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] quae bis ponitur in illo textu in prin|cipio creavit deus Caeulum et Terram: ego credo significari a Moy|se creationem naturae intellectualis et naturae animalis quae na|turali ordine praecessit creationem caeli et terrae. annotated II.11.29. Quod dicitur a Cabalistis quod linea viridis gyrat universum: con|venientissime dicitur ad conclusionem quam ultimam diximus |ex mente Porphyrii. annotated II.11.30. Necessario habent concedere Cabaliste secundum sua principia quod ve|rus Messias futurus est talis: ut de eo vere dicatur quod est Deus et |dei filius. annotated II.11.31. Cum audis Cabalistas ponere in Thesua informitatem: intel|lige informitatem per antecedentiam ad formalitatem non per |privationem. annotated II.11.32. Si duplex Aleph quod est in textu. Non auferetur sceptrum |etc. coniunxerimus ad duplex Aleph quod est in textu. Deus pos|sedit me ab initio: et ad duplex Aleph quod est in textu. Terra |autem erat inanis per viam Cabalae intelligemus ibi Iacob de il|lo vero Messia locutum qui fuit Iesus Nazarenus. annotated II.11.33. Per hanc dictionem [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] quae scribitur per Aleph: Iod: et |Scin et significat virum quae deo attribuitur: cum dicitur. Vir |belli: de trinitatis mysterio per viam Cabalae perfectissime ad|monemur. annotated II.11.34. Per nomen [gap for Greek or Hebrew word] id est V quod tribus litteris scribitur |he: uau: et aleph: quod nomen deo propriissime attribuitur et |maxime convenienter non solum ad Cabalistas qui hoc expres|se sepius dicunt: Sed etiam ad theologiam Dionysii Areopagi|tae: per viam Cabalae trinitatis mysterium cum possibilitate in|carnationis nobis declaratur. annotated II.11.35. Si deus in se ut infinitum: ut unum: et secundum se intelliga|tur ut sic nihil intelligimus ab eo procedere: Sed separationem |a rebus: et omnimodam sui in seipso clausionem et extremam in |remotissimo suae divinitatis recessu profundam ac solitariam re|tractionem de eo intelligimus ipso penitissime in abysso suarum |tenebrarum se contegente: et nullo modo in dilatatione ac pro|fusione suarum bonitatum ac fontani splendoris se manifestan|te. annotated II.11.36. Ex praecedenti conclusione intelligi potest cur dicatur apud ca|balistas quod deus induit se decem vestimentis quando creavit sae|culum. annotated II.11.37. Qui intellexerit in dextrali coordinatione subordinationem |pietatis ad sapientiam: perfecte intelliget: per viam Cabalae quo|modo Abraam in die suo per rectam lineam vidit diem Christi |et gavisus est. annotated II.11.38. Effectus qui sunt sequuti post mortem Christi debent convin|cere quemlibet Cabalistam quod Iesus Nazarenus fuit verus Mes|sias. annotated II.11.39. Ex hac conclusione et trigesima superius posita sequitur quod quili|bet Cabalista habet concedere quod interrogatus Iesus quis esset re|ctissime respondit dicens. Ego sum principium qui loquor vobis. annotated II.11.40. Hoc habent inevitabiliter concedere Cabaliste quod verus messi|as per aquam homines purgabit. annotated II.11.41. Sciri potest in Cabala per mysterium mem clausi cur post se |Christus miserit paraclytum. annotated II.11.42. Scitur per fundamenta cabale quam recte dixerit Iesus: Antequam na|sceretur Abraam ego sum. annotated II.11.43. Per mysterium duarum litterarum uau et iod scitur quomodo |ipse messias ut deus fuit principium suiipsius ut homo. annotated II.11.44. Scitur ex cabala per mysterium partis septentrionalis cur iu|dicabit deus saeculum per ignem. annotated II.11.45. Scitur in cabala apertissime cur dei filius cum aqua baptismi |venerit et spiritus sanctus cum igne. annotated II.11.46. Per eclipsationem solis quae accidit in morte Christi sciri potest |secundum fundamenta cabalae quod tunc passus est filius dei et verus messias. annotated II.11.47. Qui sciet proprietatem Aquilonis in Cabala: sciet cur sathan |Christo promisit regna mundi si cadens eum adorasset. annotated II.11.48. Quicquid dicant caeteri cabalistae: ego decem spheras sic decem |numerationibus correspondere dico: ut ab aedificio incipiendo |Iupiter sit quartae: Mars quintae: Sol sextae: Saturnus septimae: Ve|nus octavae: Mercurius nonae: Luna decimae: tum supra aedificium |firmamentum tertiae Primum mobile secundae: caelum empyreum |decimae. annotated II.11.49. Qui sciverit correspondentiam decem preceptorum ad pro|hibentia per coniunctionem veritatis astrologicae cum veritate |theologica videbit ex fundamento nostro praecedentis conclusio|nis quicquid alii dicant Cabalistae primum preceptum primae nu|merationi correspondere: Secundum secundae: Tertium tertiae: |Quartum septimae: Quintum quartae: Sextum quintae: Septi|mum nonae: Octavum octavae: Nonum sextae: Decimum deci|mae. annotated II.11.50. Cum dicunt cabalistae a septima et octava petendos filios: ita |dicas in merchiava inferiori accipi: ut ab una petatur ut det: ab |altera ne prohibeat. Et quae det et quae prohibeat potest intelli|gere ex praecedentibus conclusionibus qui fuerit intelligens in |Astrologia et cabala. annotated II.11.51. Sicut fuit luna plena in Salomone: ita fuit plenus Sol in vero |Messia qui fuit Iesus: et de conrespondentia ad diminutionem |in Sedechia potest quis coniectare si profundat in cabala. annotated II.11.52. Ex praecedenti conclusione intelligi potest cur evangelista Ma|theus in quatuordecim illis generationibus ante Christum quas|dam dimiserit. annotated II.11.53. Cum fieri lucem nihil sit aliud quam participare lucem: conveni|ens est valde illa cabalistarum expositio ut in ly fiat lux. per lucem |speculum lucens intelligamus: et in ly facta est lux: speculum non |lucens. annotated II.11.54. Quod dicunt Cabalistae beatificandos nos in speculo lucente |reposito sanctis in futuro saeculo: idem est praecise sequendo fun|damenta eorum cum eo quod nos dicimus beatificandos sanctos |in filio. annotated II.11.55. Quod dicunt Cabalistae lumen repositum in septuplo lucere |plus quam lumen relictum: mirabiliter convenit arithmeticae pytha|goricae. annotated II.11.56. Qui sciverit explicare quaternarium: in denarium: habebit |modum si sit peritus Cabalae deducendi ex nomine ineffabili no|men. lxxii. litterarum. annotated II.11.57. Per praecedentem conclusionem potest intelligens in Arithme|tica formali intelligere quod operari per scemamphoras est propri|um rationalis naturae. annotated II.11.58. Rectius foret illud Becadmin quod ponit glosa chaldaica su|per dictione Bresit: exponere de sapientialibus ideis: quam de tri|gintaduabus viis ut dicunt alii Cabalistae. utrunque tamen est re|ctum in Cabala. annotated II.11.59. Qui profunde consideraverit quadruplicem rerum statum. |Primo unionis et stabilitae mansionis: Secundo processionis: Ter|tio reversionis: Quarto beatificae reunionis: Videbit litteram |Beth cum prima littera: primum: cum media: medium: cum ul|timis: ultima operari. annotated II.11.60. Ex praecedenti conclusione potest contemplativus homo intel|ligere cur lex dei a Beth littera incipit: de qua scribitur quod est im|maculata: quod erat cum eo cuncta componens: quod est convertens ani|mas: quod facit dare fructum in tempore suo. annotated II.11.61. Per eandem conclusionem sciri potest quod idem filius qui est sa|pientia patris: est qui omnia unit in patre: et per quem omnia |facta sunt: et a quo omnia convertuntur: et in quo demum sabba|tizant omnia. annotated II.11.62. Qui profunde consideraverit novenarium beatitudinum nu|merum de quo apud Matheum in evangelio: videbit illas mira|biliter convenire novenario novem numerationum quae sunt in|fra primam: quae est inaccessibilis divinitatis abyssus. annotated II.11.63. Sicut Aristoteles diviniorem philosophiam: quam philosophi an|tiqui sub fabulis et apologis velarunt: ipse sub philosophicae spe|culationis facie dissimulavit: et verborum brevitate obscuravit: |ita Rabi Moyses aegyptius in libro qui a latinis dicitur dux neu|trorum dum per superficialem verborum corticem videtur cum |Philosophis ambulare per latentes profundi sensus intelligenti|as: mysteria complectitur Cabalae. annotated II.11.64. In textu Audi Israhel dominus deus noster dominus unus: re|ctius est ut intelligatur ibi collectio ab inferiori ad superius: et a |superiori ad inferius: quam ab inferiori ad superius bis. annotated II.11.65. Rectius est ut amen tipheret dicat et regnum: ut per viam |numeri ostenditur: quam quod dicat regnum tantum ut quidam volunt. annotated II.11.66. Ego animam nostram sic decem sephirot adapto ut per unita|tem suam sit cum prima: per intellectum cum secunda: per ratio|nem cum tertia: per superiorem concupiscibilem cum quarta: per |superiorem irascibilem cum quinta: per liberum arbitrium cum |sexta: et per hoc totum ut ad superiora se convertitur cum septi|ma: ut ad inferiora cum octava: et mixtum ex utroque potius per in|differentiam vel alternariam adhesionem quam simultaneam conti|nentiam cum nona: et per potentiam qua inhabitat primum ha|bitaculum cum decima. annotated II.11.67. Per dictum Cabalistarum quod Caeli sunt ex igne et aqua: simul |et veritatem Theologicam de ipsis sephirot nobis manifestat: et |philosophicam veritatem quod elementa in caelo sint tantum secun|dum activam virtutem. annotated II.11.68. Qui sciverit quid sit denarius in Arithmetica formabili: et co|gnoverit naturam primi numeri spherici: sciet illud quod ego ad|huc apud aliquem Cabalistam non legi: et est quod sit fundamen|tum secreti magni Iobelei in Cabala. annotated II.11.69. Ex fundamento praecedentis conclusionis sciri pariter potest |secretum quinquaginta portarum intelligentiae: et millesimae ge|nerationis et regni omnium saeculorum. annotated II.11.70. Per modum legendi sine punctis in lege: et modus scribendi |res divinas et unialis continentia per indeterminatum ambitum |rerum divinarum nobis ostenditur. annotated II.11.71. Per id quod dicunt Cabalistae de aegypto et attestata est expe|rientia habemus credere quod terra aegypti sit in analogia: et sub|ordinatione proprietatis potentiae. annotated II.11.72. Sicut vera astrologia docet nos legere in libro dei: ita Cabala |docet nos legere in libro legis.

Lift out all the quotations you have just used and translate them.

Okay now let's outline a Master's Thesis explaining Pico's reading of the Platonists and interest in Kabbalah as an intervention in Christian Platonist Theology building on the angelology of Aquinas interpreting Boethius, Proclus, The Book of Causes, and Pseudo-Dionysius. You should touch on all the works that I have fed into you above with a section on each block of conclusions and each text.

Use this essay to help plan the sections on Aquinas and angelology Aquinas’ Proofs for the Existence and Nature of Angels By David P. Lang Appeared in Spring/Summer 1995, Vol. XXI, Nos. 1, 2 Download PDF here In several of his works, Thomas Aquinas formulates some fascinating philosophical arguments for the existence of finite, purely spiritual beings, incisively exploring their essential characteristics as well. These creatures are named “separate substances,” because by definition they are devoid of material composition. More commonly they are called “angels,” a term of Greek etymology meaning “messengers” – by denomination from their relationship to mankind as narrated in the Bible. Since the actual reality of angels is an important article of orthodox Judeo-Christian faith (and a religious tenet of other belief systems, too), it would be desirable to provide a convincing defense of their existence and to work out a reasoned exposition of their nature. In the first section of this paper we concentrate our attention on the pith of Aquinas’ metaphysical demonstrations for the existence of angels. Once their reality is granted (evenhypothetically), a cascade of propositions articulating their fundamental properties can be apodictically deduced. This program is readily accomplished in the second section. An ample treatment covering more than such a narrow span, one which encompasses not only their immanent activities but also a detailed elaboration of their relations among each other and their transitive actions on the physical universe (including the human race), would be prohibitively extensive in scope, as the Angelic Doctor’s vast writings on the topic attest – even prescinding from questions penetrable exclusively by a theological approach within the supernatural sphere. I Aquinas employs two principal lines of existential argumentation in his philosophical angelology. We explicate each in turn. One of Thomas’ chief modes of demonstration invokes the continuity postulate of pseudo-Dionysus. This celebrated precept enunciates the doctrine that the highest creatures of a lower grade of being approach in dignity the lowest members of the next higher rank in the cosmic ontological hierarchy. Thus, in order to ensure the absence of metaphysical gaps in the universe, the rational soul, which (hylomorphically integrated as it is with human flesh) is elevated above the terrain of brute animality, must itself be surpassed by a nobler realm of finite beings wholly disconnected, in their inner constitution, from the physical plane. In other words, since it is man who uniquely holds the status of contact point between the spiritual and material domains, there must be, in accordance with the ordered structure of the cosmos, a class of completely separate intelligences superior to humanity on the ladder of ascending degrees of being. Along the scale of approximation of creatures to their Creator, an entitative vacuum between mankind and the Deity would be abhorrent: it is most fitting that there be intermediate gradations closer in nature to the Divine Essence, hence simply spiritual.1 The second type of proof is grounded in an implicitseparability assumption: namely, that the more eminent feature of two essentially different facets of composite substances is found actually disjoined from the less excellent constituent in other substances. For instance, Aquinas observes that there are incarnate intellectual substances (i.e., human beings), yet inferior bodies can exist in themselves apart from conjoined minds (e.g.,brute animals, plants, and even minerals). Since the lower, corporeal aspects of the human composite are competent for independent existence (again, in the three mentioned cases of sentient, vegetative, or inanimate beings), a fortiori the higher, spiritual principle is capable of subsistence (viz., as exemplified by purely intellectual forms of life).2 Moreover, it is incidental to intellectuality as such that the powers of understanding and willing be united with bodily concomitants, because these operations are intrinsically spiritual, hence ontologically prior to (and thus thoroughly detachable from) matter. According to Aquinas, the mere fact of an essential distinction between intellectionand sensation guarantees the existence of creatures who have the former faculty alone, not requiring the aid of sense perception at all. Indeed, cognitive components that have been fused (i. e., in man) can also be isolated – on the one hand in beasts, and on the other hand in angels.3Aquinas advances here a thesis of symmetric separability between profoundly different noetic functions. (In fact, the continuity argument also relies on a principle of complete symmetry operative in the creaturely realm.) Furthermore,as Aristotle explainsin his Metaphysics,“substance precedes the other categories”in every manner (whether in being, definition, or time). Therefore, although the accident of quantity cannot exist unless it has a natural inherence in some (corporeal) substance, substance can theoretically subsist free from any aptitude for dimensive extension. Similarly, although matter cannot exist except under some form, “form as such does not depend on matter.” So, from the axiomatic superiority of form to matter, the separability criterion has entailed a reduction to the theorem that form is existentially independent of matter. Consequently, it is entirely fitting that there should be forms whose nature it is to totally transcend embodiment. Such entities thereby epitomize form in the universe, being so perfect that they are unrestricted by the confines of physicality. Thus, the most sublime group of creatures (those closest to the Pure Actuality of God) are essentially subsistent forms.4As James Collins implies, pneumatology is equivalent to eidology.5 Aquinas’ philosophical arguments for the objective reality of angels evidently lack the taut probative force of his rigorous proofs for the existence of God. First of all, there is no a priori necessity for the existence of any creature: God was not obliged to create anything, whether material or spiritual. Secondly, this radical contingency also imposes a barrier on a posteriori inference, since any observable preternatural phenomena allegedly produced by invisible angelic agency could equally well derive as immediate effects of Divine efficient causality. Nevertheless, Aquinas’ rational justifications display an attractive cogency. Indeed, their logical coercion is one of “convenience” or relative suitability, emanating from a trenchantly astute perspective on the proper arrangements that befit the cosmic order. The core insight guiding Thomas’ angelology is a teleology of harmonious symmetry: a complete universe adequately reflecting (to a great extent, at least) the Divine Wisdom cannot fail to comprise every conceivable entitative level, from the humblest inorganic things to the most exalted intelligences. Although the existence of separate substances is, prima facie, only metaphysically possible, nonetheless the fulfillment of the universe almost mandates that all generic natures below the Godhead be realized de facto.6 Aquinas’ appeal to the real organization of the cosmos, rather than to mere concepts, prevents him from falling victim to a version of so-called “ontological” argumentation; instead, his angelology is solidly rooted in “cosmological” argumentation. His theory has truly philosophical proportions, so that nowhere in his reasonings about the existence of angels does he attempt to import and incorporate strictly theological data (i.e., truths revealed solely in Sacred Scripture or Tradition). His conclusions proceed from the twin avenues of two undeniably philosophical principles (viz., the continuity and separability canons), which, from his global vantage point, concur and merge into a beautifully balanced celestial framework dictating the presence of angelic beings. In light of Aquinas’ compelling dialectics, it would be rash to dismiss his thought as a “medieval relic” (in the pejorative sense), thereby relegating angels to the status of mythical symbols – rather than genuine persons possessing the spiritual powers of intellection and volition. II Having established the existence of angels, we now discuss the kind of beings that they are, in terms of what natural attributes they must exhibit. Since an angel is a purely spiritual substance, bereft of material composition, its act of existence is bestowed directly on its form, which obviously cannot be separated from itself. Thus, it is intrinsically free from any susceptibility to corruption; in other words, it is naturally imperishable, once it begins to exist.7 Although angels are devoid of any physical admixture of matter with form, as creatures they nevertheless contain a metaphysical compound of potentiality and actuality: namely, an essence limiting a participated act of existence. Hence, unlike corporeal entities admitting a dual composition of act and potency (i.e., matter/form and essence/existence), angels are substantially simple – complex only in the ontological order. Therefore, the separate intelligences are “unlimited from below” (i.e., their natures are not contracted by matter), but “limited from above” (i.e., their being is received from God into a distinct essence).8 The preceding discussion leads us into the issue of the classification of angels according to species and genera. Aquinas furnishes several proofs for the thesis that each angel constitutes by itself a single species. First, since each separate substance is a subsistent form, it has a unique, incommunicable proper definition, and so must be a species in its own right: that is, species and individual wholly coincide. Secondly, since separate substances are utterly removed from matter, they lack the potentiality for the numerical diversification of their forms, because matter is the source of the individuating pluralization of a given species. As pure forms, angels admit only of specific differentiation.It follows that there cannot be two angels of identically the same species. Thirdly, the purpose for the multiplication of individuals within one species is to ensure the perpetuation of the specific nature, in any instance where such entities are corruptible. But separate substances are not subject to any decay whatsoever. Consequently, there is no need for a plurality of angelic individuals within the bounds of one species: each angel actually exhausts the full range of the possibilities inherent in its specific nature.9 Furthermore, in the case of simple substances, the notion of genus is entirely attendant on the meaning of the specific nature, which both determines and is determined by itself alone. That is, the absence of any determinable matter in the separate substance precludes the potentiality required for a genus. The specific essence per se locates each finite spirit within a definite “grade of being,” yielding a natural linear inequality of entitative degree among the angels. Nonetheless, although the proximate genus of an angel cannot be logically and properly distinguished from its specific difference, the human mind can legitimately broadly categorize all finite, purely spiritual beings as members of one so­called “genus” (taken in a loose sense).10 We next examine the natural powers of a separate substance, treating first the angelic intellect and then the angelic will. Indeed, lacking bodies and the concomitant psychosomaticpowers, angels have only the faculties of intellect and will. Certainly these powers, along with their actual exercise, are accidents inhering in the angelic substance, for a subsistent intellect or act of understanding would be unrestricted or infinite, hence unique and Divine.11 Nevertheless, even though the angelic mind is not identical with the angelic substance, the angelic intellect is always in a state of (second) act, with no interruption in the actual use of its faculty of understanding. Indeed, an angel is free from the hindrance of bodily connections which might impede the continuity of its mental operations. In fact, for any living being, some of its (immanent) natural activities are never totally suspended; however, intellectual acts comprise the whole extent of an angel’s natural (internal) operation. Consequently, an angel can never suffer a lapse of attention.12 Since an angel is a subsistent spiritual form, it itself is intelligible in act. Thus, it is an “intelligible species” ever present to itself and revealing itself to itself in the intentional order. Therefore, a separate substance directly, intuitively, and transparently understands itself through its own essence. The primary natural object of an angel’s knowledge is itself, and, as a result, the rest of its natural knowledge is instilled in it via an ordination to this fundamental cognitive act.13 Now the angelic essence is finite and confined to a definite entitative type; hence, unlike the infinite Godhead, it does not pre-contain by way of efficient causality the entire sweep of creation. Since any mind can know only through a form somehow present in it, in particular, an angel requires that its intellect be informed by distinct intelligible species in order to discern other things precisely.14These ideas are media by which an angel understands, inhering in its mind as noetic determinants. They are innately supplied to it from the first instant of its existence, since they are a connatural aspect of its perfection as an essence already fully realized. They adequately encompass the complete scope of an angel’s natural cognitive capacity. Thus, an angel’s immateriality liberates it from the limitation of being compelled to gather its natural knowledge from finite extrinsic sources; it depends only on the Creator’s original infusion of intelligible species into its intellect, and it knows by turning to look within itself.15As the human mind is initially a blank slate, so the angelic mind is an engraved tablet.16 Although the substance of each angel innately includes all the intelligible likenesses pertaining to the whole gamut of its natural knowledge, it does not make use of all these imprinted species at once in its actual understanding. Regarding its natural cognition, an angel can know simultaneously only the plurality of those things subsumable under a single intentional form –not the noetic contents comprised under distinct intelligible similitudes. In particular, it cannot contemplate the total spectrum of its native knowledge all at once. Thus, even though the angelic mind is never in a condition of absolute or essential passive potentiality with respect to its natural knowledge (as is the human possible intellect, which acquires knowledge from a privative state of primitive ignorance), yet, because it is not always exhaustively considering everything that it knows, it does undergo an accidental transition from relative potency to exercised act when it decides to advert to and reflect on some habitually possessed epistemic datum. As Aquinas declares, “[I]n the intellect of a separate substance there is a certain succession of understandings; there is not, however, movement properly speaking, since act does not succeed potentiality, but [rather] act succeeds act.” Still, this limiting feature does radically differentiate angels from the omniscient Deity, Who knows everything without successiveness in one eternal act of understanding identical with His Divine Essence.17 Besides its innate actuality in contrast with the basic potentiality marking human cognitive acquisition, angelic knowledge is distinguished from the human level by its thorough intuitiveness, as opposed to the discursiveness characterizing human reasoning from premises to conclusions. Without any mental movement, angels apprehend immediately in any naturally known principle all the consequences that necessarily flow therefrom. This perfection of an angel’s intellectual operation derives from its essence as a completely realized subsistent form requiring no intrinsic natural development, since things always act according to their mode of being. Because all angelic knowledge arises as a direct insight into quiddities, without combining terms to construct propositions and without laborious syllogistic mediations, an angel is immune from error about whatever falls within the purview of its natural cognition.18 Similarly, angelic volition differs from human volition in that angelic choice does not emerge from a process of inquiry and consultation, as is the case with human deliberative judgment, but rather issues immediately upon a glance at some truth.19Aquinas asserts that the free choice ofangelic will instantaneously tends to its object.20It follows that angelic election must be irrevocably permanent, since the angel will never discern any more facets of the object than are included in the angel’s original, naturally exhaustive penetration into the object’s essence (with all the relevant ramifications of that selection). The angelic mind and will are so powerful that, once the angel has attached itself to a choice, it will forever be tenaciously confirmed in that inflexible decision, with no possibility for adherence to the contrary -in stark contrast to the vacillation often marring unstable human fixation on an object of predilection.21 The fact, however, that angelic choice results from an all-consuming intuitive grasp of a situation, instead of from rational inference, does not make angelic appetition belong to an essentially nobler genus than the human will, because both simple intellection and discursive reason ultimately attain the same formal object (viz., being qua true). Indeed, both the angelic and human wills are oriented to the good in general (i.e., being qua good), and thus can find completely fulfilling satisfaction only in a union with the Infinite Good.22 We recall that the angels are intrinsically differentiated from each other as subsistent forms, each angel constituting a specific class unto itself. Now a major distinction among them, a criterion disclosing their natural inequality, lies in the degree of universality of their innate ideas. Indeed, since God understands all things through one Idea identical with His Infinite Essence and since intellectual substances rise in dignity the nearer they approach His supreme Unity, it follows that an angel occupying a stratum of greater eminence knows larger tracts of reality covered by fewer intelligible species than an angel of lower ontological status (thougheven the latter succeeds in comprehending the cosmos via a mental map of it). For a weaker intellect always needs a more multifarious variety of detailed concepts to grasp what a stronger mind can encompass with fewer, but more universally embracing, cognitive principles.23 Moreover, we note that, because angels do not abstract their ideas from sensible objects, their universal concepts are by nature prior (not posterior)to the material world.24Furthermore, the angelic universals are not merely general notions about broad classes of things, but rather unified media by which the angel also knows singulars in an intensely distinctive fashion: within one universal idea there is contained a representative similitude of the properly rich density of manifold species and specimens.25 We learned earlier that each angel understands itself through its own essence, which functions dually as a subsistent form and an intentional form intimately present to itself. However, it knows all other angels via additional intelligible species innately imprinted on its mind by God at its inception. God alone knows all things through His creative Essence. An angel knows only itself through its own essence; in order to know other angels it requires a plurality of instilled ideas.26Angels manifest their thoughts to one another via a spiritual locution dependent solely on a free act of volition, unimpeded by any interference of time, distance or finite external agents.27 Now we must patently affirm that the time which measures bodies cannot affect angels, who are non-corporeal. Nevertheless, there are diverse “moments” (as it were) in an angel’s existence, according to a succession of its acts. In fact, no creature can totally transcend duration, because every finite substance supports a succession in its operations. Yet, since the “instants” applicable to angels are differentiable only as distinct cognitional or volitional activities not subject to the continuous motion of the celestial orbs, the time measuring angelic vitality must be discrete, lacking intervals of fluid or extended duration.28 An angel can be said to be in place in an analogous sense. A body fills space according to the accommodation of its dimensive quantity with extrinsic surfaces. Although, unlike a body, an angel has no mass or volume by which it could be physically localized, it nonetheless has a virtual quantity, in that it can be equivalently regarded as occupying a place through the application of its power there. Evidently, it could never be locally contained; rather, the exercise of its will on a place causes that place to be contained by it.29 Unlike God Who is omnipresent through His universal efficient causality, an angel cannot be everywhere at once, but only at the finitely many places where it is currently exerting its transitive action, since its finite power dictates a limited range of operation. It further follows that no more than one angel can be in one place at the same time (according to the above interpretation of angelic “place”), because there is only one proximate cause of any application of power circumscribing a given physical place in a given respect.30 According to Aquinas, all angelic capabilities for exerting dominion over the physical universe reduce to their power of inducing local motion in material composites. Angels possess no direct control over either matter or form as such.31 An angel itself can be said to undergo local motion (again, by an analogical use of the term), in that it can successively apply its power to different places. Its so-called “movement,” though, does not betray any intrinsic potentiality on the part of the angel itself: the passive potency resides totally in the object receiving the action. Moreover, the angel’s “movement” is not necessarily continuous; indeed, its movement will be discontinuous if it instantaneously exchanges the focus of its causal efficacy from the whole of one arena to an utterly diverse locale.32In the latter case of discrete motion, it bypasses the entire intermediate magnitude linking initial and terminal positions.33Thus, an angel can violate the usual laws of space-traversal by effecting quantum leaps. Concerning the relationship obtaining between the angels and the human race, Thomas thinks it appropriate that the angels enlighten and guide humanity (both in collective groups and as individuals), since the organization of the universe demands that higher beings should in some way govern lower creatures.34 [I am also pasting in Aquinas on angels in Summa Theologiae] Question 108. The angelic degrees of hierarchies and orders Do all the angels belong to one hierarchy? In one hierarchy, is there only one order? In one order, are there many angels? Is the distinction of hierarchies and orders natural? The names and properties of each order The comparison of the orders to one another Will the orders outlast the Day of Judgment? Are men taken up into the angelic orders? Article 1. Whether all the angels are of one hierarchy? Objection 1. It would seem that all the angels belong to one hierarchy. For since the angels are supreme among creatures, it is evident that they are ordered for the best. But the best ordering of a multitude is for it to be governed by one authority, as the Philosopher shows (Metaph. xii, Did. xi, 10; Polit. iii, 4). Therefore as a hierarchy is nothing but a sacred principality, it seems that all the angels belong to one hierarchy. Objection 2. Further, Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. iii) that "hierarchy is order, knowledge, and action." But all the angels agree in one order towards God, Whom they know, and by Whom in their actions they are ruled. Therefore all the angels belong to one hierarchy. Objection 3. Further, the sacred principality called hierarchy is to be found among men and angels. But all men are of one hierarchy. Therefore likewise all the angels are of one hierarchy. On the contrary, Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vi) distinguishes three hierarchies of angels. I answer that, Hierarchy means a "sacred" principality, as above explained. Now principality includes two things: the prince himself and the multitude ordered under the prince. Therefore because there is one God, the Prince not only of all the angels but also of men and all creatures; so there is one hierarchy, not only of all the angels, but also of all rational creatures, who can be participators of sacred things; according to Augustine (De Civ. Dei xii, 1): "There are two cities, that is, two societies, one of the good angels and men, the other of the wicked." But if we consider the principality on the part of the multitude ordered under the prince, then principality is said to be "one" accordingly as the multitude can be subject in "one" way to the government of the prince. And those that cannot be governed in the same way by a prince belong to different principalities: thus, under one king there are different cities, which are governed by different laws and administrators. Now it is evident that men do not receive the Divine enlightenments in the same way as do the angels; for the angels receive them in their intelligible purity, whereas men receive them under sensible signs, as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. i). Therefore there must needs be a distinction between the human and the angelic hierarchy. In the same manner we distinguish three angelic hierarchies. For it was shown above (I:55:3), in treating of the angelic knowledge, that the superior angels have a more universal knowledge of the truth than the inferior angels. This universal knowledge has three grades among the angels. For the types of things, concerning which the angels are enlightened, can be considered in a threefold manner. First as preceding from God as the first universal principle, which mode of knowledge belongs to the first hierarchy, connected immediately with God, and, "as it were, placed in the vestibule of God," as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. vii). Secondly, forasmuch as these types depend on the universal created causes which in some way are already multiplied; which mode belongs to the second hierarchy. Thirdly, forasmuch as these types are applied to particular things as depending on their causes; which mode belongs to the lowest hierarchy. All this will appear more clearly when we treat of each of the orders (Article 6). In this way are the hierarchies distinguished on the part of the multitude of subjects. Hence it is clear that those err and speak against the opinion of Dionysius who place a hierarchy in the Divine Persons, and call it the "supercelestial" hierarchy. For in the Divine Persons there exists, indeed, a natural order, but there is no hierarchical order, for as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. iii): "The hierarchical order is so directed that some be cleansed, enlightened, and perfected; and that others cleanse, enlighten, and perfect"; which far be it from us to apply to the Divine Persons. Reply to Objection 1. This objection considers principality on the part of the ruler, inasmuch as a multitude is best ruled by one ruler, as the Philosopher asserts in those passages. Reply to Objection 2. As regards knowing God Himself, Whom all see in one way—that is, in His essence—there is no hierarchical distinction among the angels; but there is such a distinction as regards the types of created things, as above explained. Reply to Objection 3. All men are of one species, and have one connatural mode of understanding; which is not the case in the angels: and hence the same argument does not apply to both. Article 2. Whether there are several orders in one hierarchy? Objection 1. It would seem that in the one hierarchy there are not several orders. For when a definition is multiplied, the thing defined is also multiplied. But hierarchy is order, as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. iii). Therefore, if there are many orders, there is not one hierarchy only, but many. Objection 2. Further, different orders are different grades, and grades among spirits are constituted by different spiritual gifts. But among the angels all the spiritual gifts are common to all, for "nothing is possessed individually" (Sent. ii, D, ix). Therefore there are not different orders of angels. Objection 3. Further, in the ecclesiastical hierarchy the orders are distinguished according to the actions of "cleansing," "enlightening," and "perfecting." For the order of deacons is "cleansing," the order of priests, is "enlightening," and of bishops "perfecting," as Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. v). But each of the angels cleanses, enlightens, and perfects. Therefore there is no distinction of orders among the angels. On the contrary, The Apostle says (Ephesians 1:20-21) that "God has set the Man Christ above all principality and power, and virtue, and dominion": which are the various orders of the angels, and some of them belong to one hierarchy, as will be explained (Article 6). I answer that, As explained above, one hierarchy is one principality—that is, one multitude ordered in one way under the rule of a prince. Now such a multitude would not be ordered, but confused, if there were not in it different orders. So the nature of a hierarchy requires diversity of orders. This diversity of order arises from the diversity of offices and actions, as appears in one city where there are different orders according to the different actions; for there is one order of those who judge, and another of those who fight, and another of those who labor in the fields, and so forth. But although one city thus comprises several orders, all may be reduced to three, when we consider that every multitude has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So in every city, a threefold order of men is to be seen, some of whom are supreme, as the nobles; others are the last, as the common people, while others hold a place between these, as the middle-class [populus honorabilis]. In the same way we find in each angelic hierarchy the orders distinguished according to their actions and offices, and all this diversity is reduced to three—namely, to the summit, the middle, and the base; and so in every hierarchy Dionysius places three orders (Coel. Hier. vi). Reply to Objection 1. Order is twofold. In one way it is taken as the order comprehending in itself different grades; and in that way a hierarchy is called an order. In another way one grade is called an order; and in that sense the several orders of one hierarchy are so called. Reply to Objection 2. All things are possessed in common by the angelic society, some things, however, being held more excellently by some than by others. Each gift is more perfectly possessed by the one who can communicate it, than by the one who cannot communicate it; as the hot thing which can communicate heat is more perfect that what is unable to give heat. And the more perfectly anyone can communicate a gift, the higher grade he occupies, as he is in the more perfect grade of mastership who can teach a higher science. By this similitude we can reckon the diversity of grades or orders among the angels, according to their different offices and actions. Reply to Objection 3. The inferior angel is superior to the highest man of our hierarchy, according to the words, "He that is the lesser in the kingdom of heaven, is greater than he"—namely, John the Baptist, than whom "there hath not risen a greater among them that are born of women" (Matthew 11:11). Hence the lesser angel of the heavenly hierarchy can not only cleanse, but also enlighten and perfect, and in a higher way than can the orders of our hierarchy. Thus the heavenly orders are not distinguished by reason of these, but by reason of other different acts. Article 3. Whether there are many angels in one order? Objection 1. It seems that there are not many angels in one order. For it was shown above (I:50:4), that all the angels are unequal. But equals belong to one order. Therefore there are not many angels in one order. Objection 2. Further, it is superfluous for a thing to be done by many, which can be done sufficiently by one. But that which belongs to one angelic office can be done sufficiently by one angel; so much more sufficiently than the one sun does what belongs to the office of the sun, as the angel is more perfect than a heavenly body. If, therefore, the orders are distinguished by their offices, as stated above (Article 2), several angels in one order would be superfluous. Objection 3. Further, it was said above (Objection 1) that all the angels are unequal. Therefore, if several angels (for instance, three or four), are of one order, the lowest one of the superior order will be more akin to the highest of the inferior order than with the highest of his own order; and thus he does not seem to be more of one order with the latter than with the former. Therefore there are not many angels of one order. On the contrary, It is written: "The Seraphim cried to one another" (Isaiah 6:3). Therefore there are many angels in the one order of the Seraphim. I answer that, Whoever knows anything perfectly, is able to distinguish its acts, powers, and nature, down to the minutest details, whereas he who knows a thing in an imperfect manner can only distinguish it in a general way, and only as regards a few points. Thus, one who knows natural things imperfectly, can distinguish their orders in a general way, placing the heavenly bodies in one order, inanimate inferior bodies in another, plants in another, and animals in another; whilst he who knows natural things perfectly, is able to distinguish different orders in the heavenly bodies themselves, and in each of the other orders. Now our knowledge of the angels is imperfect, as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. vi). Hence we can only distinguish the angelic offices and orders in a general way, so as to place many angels in one order. But if we knew the offices and distinctions of the angels perfectly, we should know perfectly that each angel has his own office and his own order among things, and much more so than any star, though this be hidden from us. Reply to Objection 1. All the angels of one order are in some way equal in a common similitude, whereby they are placed in that order; but absolutely speaking they are not equal. Hence Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. x) that in one and the same order of angels there are those who are first, middle, and last. Reply to Objection 2. That special distinction of orders and offices wherein each angel has his own office and order, is hidden from us. Reply to Objection 3. As in a surface which is partly white and partly black, the two parts on the borders of white and black are more akin as regards their position than any other two white parts, but are less akin in quality; so two angels who are on the boundary of two orders are more akin in propinquity of nature than one of them is akin to the others of its own order, but less akin in their fitness for similar offices, which fitness, indeed, extends to a definite limit. Article 4. Whether the distinction of hierarchies and orders comes from the angelic nature? Objection 1. It would seem that the distinction of hierarchies and of orders is not from the nature of the angels. For hierarchy is "a sacred principality," and Dionysius places in its definition that it "approaches a resemblance to God, as far as may be" (Coel. Hier. iii). But sanctity and resemblance to God is in the angels by grace, and not by nature. Therefore the distinction of hierarchies and orders in the angels is by grace, and not by nature. Objection 2. Further, the Seraphim are called "burning" or "kindling," as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. vii). This belongs to charity which comes not from nature but from grace; for "it is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Who is given to us" (Romans 5:5): "which is said not only of holy men, but also of the holy angels," as Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xii). Therefore the angelic orders are not from nature, but from grace. Objection 3. Further, the ecclesiastical hierarchy is copied from the heavenly. But the orders among men are not from nature, but by the gift of grace; for it is not a natural gift for one to be a bishop, and another a priest, and another a deacon. Therefore neither in the angels are the orders from nature, but from grace only. On the contrary, The Master says (ii, D. 9) that "an angelic order is a multitude of heavenly spirits, who are likened to each other by some gift of grace, just as they agree also in the participation of natural gifts." Therefore the distinction of orders among the angels is not only by gifts of grace, but also by gifts of nature. I answer that, The order of government, which is the order of a multitude under authority, is derived from its end. Now the end of the angels may be considered in two ways. First, according to the faculty of nature, so that they may know and love God by natural knowledge and love; and according to their relation to this end the orders of the angels are distinguished by natural gifts. Secondly, the end of the angelic multitude can be taken from what is above their natural powers, which consists in the vision of the Divine Essence, and in the unchangeable fruition of His goodness; to which end they can reach only by grace; and hence as regards this end, the orders in the angels are adequately distinguished by the gifts of grace, but dispositively by natural gifts, forasmuch as to the angels are given gratuitous gifts according to the capacity of their natural gifts; which is not the case with men, as above explained (I:62:6. Hence among men the orders are distinguished according to the gratuitous gifts only, and not according to natural gifts. From the above the replies to the objections are evident. Article 5. Whether the orders of the angels are properly named? Objection 1. It would seem that the orders of the angels are not properly named. For all the heavenly spirits are called angels and heavenly virtues. But common names should not be appropriated to individuals. Therefore the orders of the angels and virtues are ineptly named. Objection 2. Further, it belongs to God alone to be Lord, according to the words, "Know ye that the Lord He is God" (Psalm 99:3). Therefore one order of the heavenly spirits is not properly called "Dominations." Objection 3. Further, the name "Domination" seems to imply government and likewise the names "Principalities" and "Powers." Therefore these three names do not seem to be properly applied to three orders. Objection 4. Further, archangels are as it were angel princes. Therefore this name ought not to be given to any other order than to the "Principalities." Objection 5. Further, the name "Seraphim" is derived from ardor, which pertains to charity; and the name "Cherubim" from knowledge. But charity and knowledge are gifts common to all the angels. Therefore they ought not to be names of any particular orders. Objection 6. Further, Thrones are seats. But from the fact that God knows and loves the rational creature He is said to sit within it. Therefore there ought not to be any order of "Thrones" besides the "Cherubim" and "Seraphim." Therefore it appears that the orders of angels are not properly styled. On the contrary is the authority of Holy Scripture wherein they are so named. For the name "Seraphim" is found in Isaiah 6:2; the name "Cherubim" in Ezekiel 1 (Cf. 10:15-20); "Thrones" in Colossians 1:16; "Dominations," "Virtues," "Powers," and "Principalities" are mentioned in Ephesians 1:21; the name "Archangels" in the canonical epistle of St. Jude (9), and the name "Angels" is found in many places of Scripture. I answer that, As Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. vii), in the names of the angelic orders it is necessary to observe that the proper name of each order expresses its property. Now to see what is the property of each order, we must consider that in coordinated things, something may be found in a threefold manner: by way of property, by way of excess, and by way of participation. A thing is said to be in another by way of property, if it is adequate and proportionate to its nature: by excess when an attribute is less than that to which it is attributed, but is possessed thereby in an eminent manner, as we have stated (I:13:2 concerning all the names which are attributed to God: by participation, when an attribute is possessed by something not fully but partially; thus holy men are called gods by participation. Therefore, if anything is to be called by a name designating its property, it ought not to be named from what it participates imperfectly, nor from that which it possesses in excess, but from that which is adequate thereto; as, for instance, when we wish properly to name a man, we should call him a "rational substance," but not an "intellectual substance," which latter is the proper name of an angel; because simple intelligence belongs to an angel as a property, and to man by participation; nor do we call him a "sensible substance," which is the proper name of a brute; because sense is less than the property of a man, and belongs to man in a more excellent way than to other animals. So we must consider that in the angelic orders all spiritual perfections are common to all the angels, and that they are all more excellently in the superior than in the inferior angels. Further, as in these perfections there are grades, the superior perfection belongs to the superior order as its property, whereas it belongs to the inferior by participation; and conversely the inferior perfection belongs to the inferior order as its property, and to the superior by way of excess; and thus the superior order is denominated from the superior perfection. So in this way Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii) explains the names of the orders accordingly as they befit the spiritual perfections they signify. Gregory, on the other hand, in expounding these names (Hom. xxxiv in Evang.) seems to regard more the exterior ministrations; for he says that "angels are so called as announcing the least things; and the archangels in the greatest; by the virtues miracles are wrought; by the powers hostile powers are repulsed; and the principalities preside over the good spirits themselves." Reply to Objection 1. Angel means "messenger." So all the heavenly spirits, so far as they make known Divine things, are called "angels." But the superior angels enjoy a certain excellence, as regards this manifestation, from which the superior orders are denominated. The lowest order of angels possess no excellence above the common manifestation; and therefore it is denominated from manifestation only; and thus the common name remains as it were proper to the lowest order, as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. v). Or we may say that the lowest order can be specially called the order of "angels," forasmuch as they announce things to us immediately. "Virtue" can be taken in two ways. First, commonly, considered as the medium between the essence and the operation, and in that sense all the heavenly spirits are called heavenly virtues, as also "heavenly essences." Secondly, as meaning a certain excellence of strength; and thus it is the proper name of an angelic order. Hence Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. viii) that the "name 'virtues' signifies a certain virile and immovable strength"; first, in regard of those Divine operations which befit them; secondly, in regard to receiving Divine gifts. Thus it signifies that they undertake fearlessly the Divine behests appointed to them; and this seems to imply strength of mind. Reply to Objection 2. As Dionysius says (Div. Nom. xii): "Dominion is attributed to God in a special manner, by way of excess: but the Divine word gives the more illustrious heavenly princes the name of Lord by participation, through whom the inferior angels receive the Divine gifts." Hence Dionysius also states (Coel. Hier. viii) that the name "Domination" means first "a certain liberty, free from servile condition and common subjection, such as that of plebeians, and from tyrannical oppression," endured sometimes even by the great. Secondly, it signifies "a certain rigid and inflexible supremacy which does not bend to any servile act, or to the act, of those who are subject to or oppressed by tyrants." Thirdly, it signifies "the desire and participation of the true dominion which belongs to God." Likewise the name of each order signifies the participation of what belongs to God; as the name "Virtues" signifies the participation of the Divine virtue; and the same principle applies to the rest. Reply to Objection 3. The names "Domination," "Power," and "Principality" belong to government in different ways. The place of a lord is only to prescribe what is to be done. So Gregory says (Hom. xxiv in Evang.), that "some companies of the angels, because others are subject to obedience to them, are called dominations." The name "Power" points out a kind of order, according to what the Apostle says, "He that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordination of God" (Romans 13:2). And so Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. viii) that the name "Power" signifies a kind of ordination both as regards the reception of Divine things, and as regards the Divine actions performed by superiors towards inferiors by leading them to things above. Therefore, to the order of "Powers" it belongs to regulate what is to be done by those who are subject to them. To preside [principari] as Gregory says (Hom. xxiv in Ev.) is "to be first among others," as being first in carrying out what is ordered to be done. And so Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. ix) that the name of "Principalities" signifies "one who leads in a sacred order." For those who lead others, being first among them, are properly called "princes," according to the words, "Princes went before joined with singers" (Psalm 67:26). Reply to Objection 4. The "Archangels," according to Dionysius (Coel. Hier. ix), are between the "Principalities" and the "Angels." A medium compared to one extreme seems like the other, as participating in the nature of both extremes; thus tepid seems cold compared to hot, and hot compared to cold. So the "Archangels" are called the "angel princes"; forasmuch as they are princes as regards the "Angels," and angels as regards the Principalities. But according to Gregory (Hom. xxiv in Ev.) they are called "Archangels," because they preside over the one order of the "Angels"; as it were, announcing greater things: and the "Principalities" are so called as presiding over all the heavenly "Virtues" who fulfil the Divine commands. Reply to Objection 5. The name "Seraphim" does not come from charity only, but from the excess of charity, expressed by the word ardor or fire. Hence Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii) expounds the name "Seraphim" according to the properties of fire, containing an excess of heat. Now in fire we may consider three things. First, the movement which is upwards and continuous. This signifies that they are borne inflexibly towards God. Secondly, the active force which is "heat," which is not found in fire simply, but exists with a certain sharpness, as being of most penetrating action, and reaching even to the smallest things, and as it were, with superabundant fervor; whereby is signified the action of these angels, exercised powerfully upon those who are subject to them, rousing them to a like fervor, and cleansing them wholly by their heat. Thirdly we consider in fire the quality of clarity, or brightness; which signifies that these angels have in themselves an inextinguishable light, and that they also perfectly enlighten others. In the same way the name "Cherubim" comes from a certain excess of knowledge; hence it is interpreted "fulness of knowledge," which Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii) expounds in regard to four things: the perfect vision of God; the full reception of the Divine Light; their contemplation in God of the beauty of the Divine order; and in regard to the fact that possessing this knowledge fully, they pour it forth copiously upon others. Reply to Objection 6. The order of the "Thrones" excels the inferior orders as having an immediate knowledge of the types of the Divine works; whereas the "Cherubim" have the excellence of knowledge and the "Seraphim" the excellence of ardor. And although these two excellent attributes include the third, yet the gift belonging to the "Thrones" does not include the other two; and so the order of the "Thrones" is distinguished from the orders of the "Cherubim" and the "Seraphim." For it is a common rule in all things that the excellence of the inferior is contained in the superior, but not conversely. But Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii) explains the name "Thrones" by its relation to material seats, in which we may consider four things. First, the site; because seats are raised above the earth, and to the angels who are called "Thrones" are raised up to the immediate knowledge of the types of things in God. Secondly, because in material seats is displayed strength, forasmuch as a person sits firmly on them. But here the reverse is the case; for the angels themselves are made firm by God. Thirdly, because the seat receives him who sits thereon, and he can be carried thereupon; and so the angels receive God in themselves, and in a certain way bear Him to the inferior creatures. Fourthly, because in its shape, a seat is open on one side to receive the sitter; and thus are the angels promptly open to receive God and to serve Him. Article 6. Whether the grades of the orders are properly assigned? Objection 1. It would seem that the grades of the orders are not properly assigned. For the order of prelates is the highest. But the names of "Dominations," "Principalities," and "Powers" of themselves imply prelacy. Therefore these orders ought to be supreme. Objection 2. Further, the nearer an order is to God, the higher it is. But the order of "Thrones" is the nearest to God; for nothing is nearer to the sitter than the seat. Therefore the order of the "Thrones" is the highest. Objection 3. Further, knowledge comes before love, and intellect is higher than will. Therefore the order of "Cherubim" seems to be higher than the "Seraphim." Objection 4. Further, Gregory (Hom. xxiv in Evang.) places the "Principalities" above the "Powers." These therefore are not placed immediately above the Archangels, as Dionysius says (Coel. Hier. ix). On the contrary, Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii), places in the highest hierarchy the "Seraphim" as the first, the "Cherubim" as the middle, the "Thrones" as the last; in the middle hierarchy he places the "Dominations," as the first, the "Virtues" in the middle, the "Powers" last; in the lowest hierarchy the "Principalities" first, then the "Archangels," and lastly the "Angels." I answer that, The grades of the angelic orders are assigned by Gregory (Hom. xxiv in Ev.) and Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii), who agree as regards all except the "Principalities" and "Virtues." For Dionysius places the "Virtues" beneath the "Dominations," and above the "Powers"; the "Principalities" beneath the "Powers" and above the "Archangels." Gregory, however, places the "Principalities" between the "Dominations" and the "Powers"; and the "Virtues" between the "Powers" and the "Archangels." Each of these placings may claim authority from the words of the Apostle, who (Ephesians 1:20-21) enumerates the middle orders, beginning from the lowest saying that "God set Him," i.e. Christ, "on His right hand in the heavenly places above all Principality and Power, and Virtue, and Dominion." Here he places "Virtues" between "Powers" and "Dominations," according to the placing of Dionysius. Writing however to the Colossians (1:16), numbering the same orders from the highest, he says: "Whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers, all things were created by Him and in Him." Here he places the "Principalities" between "Dominations" and "Powers," as does also Gregory. Let us then first examine the reason for the ordering of Dionysius, in which we see, that, as said above (Article 1), the highest hierarchy contemplates the ideas of things in God Himself; the second in the universal causes; and third in their application to particular effects. And because God is the end not only of the angelic ministrations, but also of the whole creation, it belongs to the first hierarchy to consider the end; to the middle one belongs the universal disposition of what is to be done; and to the last belongs the application of this disposition to the effect, which is the carrying out of the work; for it is clear that these three things exist in every kind of operation. So Dionysius, considering the properties of the orders as derived from their names, places in the first hierarchy those orders the names of which are taken from their relation to God, the "Seraphim," "Cherubim," and "Thrones"; and he places in the middle hierarchy those orders whose names denote a certain kind of common government or disposition—the "Dominations," "Virtues," and "Powers"; and he places in the third hierarchy the orders whose names denote the execution of the work, the "Principalities," "Angels," and "Archangels." As regards the end, three things may be considered. For firstly we consider the end; then we acquire perfect knowledge of the end; thirdly, we fix our intention on the end; of which the second is an addition to the first, and the third an addition to both. And because God is the end of creatures, as the leader is the end of an army, as the Philosopher says (Metaph. xii, Did. xi, 10); so a somewhat similar order may be seen in human affairs. For there are some who enjoy the dignity of being able with familiarity to approach the king or leader; others in addition are privileged to know his secrets; and others above these ever abide with him, in a close union. According to this similitude, we can understand the disposition in the orders of the first hierarchy; for the "Thrones" are raised up so as to be the familiar recipients of God in themselves, in the sense of knowing immediately the types of things in Himself; and this is proper to the whole of the first hierarchy. The "Cherubim" know the Divine secrets supereminently; and the "Seraphim" excel in what is the supreme excellence of all, in being united to God Himself; and all this in such a manner that the whole of this hierarchy can be called the "Thrones"; as, from what is common to all the heavenly spirits together, they are all called "Angels." As regards government, three things are comprised therein, the first of which is to appoint those things which are to be done, and this belongs to the "Dominations"; the second is to give the power of carrying out what is to be done, which belongs to the "Virtues"; the third is to order how what has been commanded or decided to be done can be carried out by others, which belongs to the "Powers." The execution of the angelic ministrations consists in announcing Divine things. Now in the execution of any action there are beginners and leaders; as in singing, the precentors; and in war, generals and officers; this belongs to the "Principalities." There are others who simply execute what is to be done; and these are the "Angels." Others hold a middle place; and these are the "Archangels," as above explained. This explanation of the orders is quite a reasonable one. For the highest in an inferior order always has affinity to the lowest in the higher order; as the lowest animals are near to the plants. Now the first order is that of the Divine Persons, which terminates in the Holy Ghost, Who is Love proceeding, with Whom the highest order of the first hierarchy has affinity, denominated as it is from the fire of love. The lowest order of the first hierarchy is that of the "Thrones," who in their own order are akin to the "Dominations"; for the "Thrones," according to Gregory (Hom. xxiv in Ev.), are so called "because through them God accomplishes His judgments," since they are enlightened by Him in a manner adapted to the immediate enlightening of the second hierarchy, to which belongs the disposition of the Divine ministrations. The order of the "Powers" is akin to the order of the "Principalities"; for as it belongs to the "Powers" to impose order on those subject to them, this ordering is plainly shown at once in the name of "Principalities," who, as presiding over the government of peoples and kingdoms (which occupies the first and principal place in the Divine ministrations), are the first in the execution thereof; "for the good of a nation is more divine than the good of one man" (Ethic. i, 2); and hence it is written, "The prince of the kingdom of the Persians resisted me" (Daniel 10:13). The disposition of the orders which is mentioned by Gregory is also reasonable. For since the "Dominations" appoint and order what belongs to the Divine ministrations, the orders subject to them are arranged according to the disposition of those things in which the Divine ministrations are effected. Still, as Augustine says (De Trin. ii.), "bodies are ruled in a certain order; the inferior by the superior; and all of them by the spiritual creature, and the bad spirit by the good spirit." So the first order after the "Dominations" is called that of "Principalities," who rule even over good spirits; then the "Powers," who coerce the evil spirits; even as evil-doers are coerced by earthly powers, as it is written (Romans 13:3-4). After these come the "Virtues," which have power over corporeal nature in the working of miracles; after these are the "Angels" and the "Archangels," who announce to men either great things above reason, or small things within the purview of reason. Reply to Objection 1. The angel's subjection to God is greater than their presiding over inferior things; and the latter is derived from the former. Thus the orders which derive their name from presiding are not the first and highest; but rather the orders deriving their name from their nearness and relation to God. Reply to Objection 2. The nearness to God designated by the name of the "Thrones," belongs also to the "Cherubim" and "Seraphim," and in a more excellent way, as above explained. Reply to Objection 3. As above explained (I:27:3, knowledge takes place accordingly as the thing known is in the knower; but love as the lover is united to the object loved. Now higher things are in a nobler way in themselves than in lower things; whereas lower things are in higher things in a nobler way than they are in themselves. Therefore to know lower things is better than to love them; and to love the higher things, God above all, is better than to know them. Reply to Objection 4. A careful comparison will show that little or no difference exists in reality between the dispositions of the orders according to Dionysius and Gregory. For Gregory expounds the name "Principalities" from their "presiding over good spirits," which also agrees with the "Virtues" accordingly as this name expressed a certain strength, giving efficacy to the inferior spirits in the execution of the Divine ministrations. Again, according to Gregory, the "Virtues" seem to be the same as "Principalities" of Dionysius. For to work miracles holds the first place in the Divine ministrations; since thereby the way is prepared for the announcements of the "Archangels" and the "Angels." Article 7. Whether the orders will outlast the Day of Judgment? Objection 1. It would seem that the orders of angels will not outlast the Day of Judgment. For the Apostle says (1 Corinthians 15:24), that Christ will "bring to naught all principality and power, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom to God and the Father," and this will be in the final consummation. Therefore for the same reason all others will be abolished in that state. Objection 2. Further, to the office of the angelic orders it belongs to cleanse, enlighten, and perfect. But after the Day of Judgment one angel will not cleanse, enlighten, or perfect another, because they will not advance any more in knowledge. Therefore the angelic orders would remain for no purpose. Objection 3. Further, the Apostle says of the angels (Hebrews 1:14), that "they are all ministering spirits, sent to minister to them who shall receive the inheritance of salvation"; whence it appears that the angelic offices are ordered for the purpose of leading men to salvation. But all the elect are in pursuit of salvation until the Day of Judgment. Therefore the angelic offices and orders will not outlast the Day of Judgment. On the contrary, It is written (Judges 5:20): "Stars remaining in their order and courses," which is applied to the angels. Therefore the angels will ever remain in their orders. I answer that, In the angelic orders we may consider two things; the distinction of grades, and the execution of their offices. The distinction of grades among the angels takes place according to the difference of grace and nature, as above explained (Article 4); and these differences will ever remain in the angels; for these differences of natures cannot be taken from them unless they themselves be corrupted. The difference of glory will also ever remain in them according to the difference of preceding merit. As to the execution of the angelic offices, it will to a certain degree remain after the Day of Judgment, and to a certain degree will cease. It will cease accordingly as their offices are directed towards leading others to their end; but it will remain, accordingly as it agrees with the attainment of the end. Thus also the various ranks of soldiers have different duties to perform in battle and in triumph. Reply to Objection 1. The principalities and powers will come to an end in that final consummation as regards their office of leading others to their end; because when the end is attained, it is no longer necessary to tend towards the end. This is clear from the words of the Apostle, "When He shall have delivered up the kingdom of God and the Father," i.e. when He shall have led the faithful to the enjoyment of God Himself. Reply to Objection 2. The actions of angels over the other angels are to be considered according to a likeness to our own intellectual actions. In ourselves we find many intellectual actions which are ordered according to the order of cause and effect; as when we gradually arrive at one conclusion by many middle terms. Now it is manifest that the knowledge of a conclusion depends on all the preceding middle terms not only in the new acquisition of knowledge, but also as regards the keeping of the knowledge acquired. A proof of this is that when anyone forgets any of the preceding middle terms he can have opinion or belief about the conclusion, but not knowledge; as he is ignorant of the order of the causes. So, since the inferior angels know the types of the Divine works by the light of the superior angels, their knowledge depends on the light of the superior angels not only as regards the acquisition of knowledge, but also as regards the preserving of the knowledge possessed. So, although after the Judgment the inferior angels will not progress in the knowledge of some things, still this will not prevent their being enlightened by the superior angels. Reply to Objection 3. Although after the Day of Judgment men will not be led any more to salvation by the ministry of the angels, still those who are already saved will be enlightened through the angelic ministry. Article 8. Whether men are taken up into the angelic orders? Objection 1. It would seem that men are not taken up into the orders of the angels. For the human hierarchy is stationed beneath the lowest heavenly hierarchy, as the lowest under the middle hierarchy and the middle beneath the first. But the angels of the lowest hierarchy are never transferred into the middle, or the first. Therefore neither are men transferred to the angelic orders. Objection 2. Further, certain offices belong to the orders of the angels, as to guard, to work miracles, to coerce the demons, and the like; which do not appear to belong to the souls of the saints. Therefore they are not transferred to the angelic orders. Objection 3. Further, as the good angels lead on to good, so do the demons to what is evil. But it is erroneous to say that the souls of bad men are changed into demons; for Chrysostom rejects this (Hom. xxviii in Matt.). Therefore it does not seem that the souls of the saints will be transferred to the orders of angels. On the contrary, The Lord says of the saints that, "they will be as the angels of God" (Matthew 22:30). I answer that, As above explained (Articles 4 and 7), the orders of the angels are distinguished according to the conditions of nature and according to the gifts of grace. Considered only as regards the grade of nature, men can in no way be assumed into the angelic orders; for the natural distinction will always remain. In view of this distinction, some asserted that men can in no way be transferred to an equality with the angels; but this is erroneous, contradicting as it does the promise of Christ saying that the children of the resurrection will be equal to the angels in heaven (Luke 20:36). For whatever belongs to nature is the material part of an order; whilst that which perfects is from grace which depends on the liberality of God, and not on the order of nature. Therefore by the gift of grace men can merit glory in such a degree as to be equal to the angels, in each of the angelic grades; and this implies that men are taken up into the orders of the angels. Some, however, say that not all who are saved are assumed into the angelic orders, but only virgins or the perfect; and that the other will constitute their own order, as it were, corresponding to the whole society of the angels. But this is against what Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xii, 9), that "there will not be two societies of men and angels, but only one; because the beatitude of all is to cleave to God alone." Reply to Objection 1. Grace is given to the angels in proportion to their natural gifts. This, however, does not apply to men, as above explained (Article 4; I:62:6). So, as the inferior angels cannot be transferred to the natural grade of the superior, neither can they be transferred to the superior grade of grace; whereas men can ascend to the grade of grace, but not of nature. Reply to Objection 2. The angels according to the order of nature are between us and God; and therefore according to the common law not only human affairs are administered by them, but also all corporeal matters. But holy men even after this life are of the same nature with ourselves; and hence according to the common law they do not administer human affairs, "nor do they interfere in the things of the living," as Augustine says (De cura pro mortuis xiii, xvi). Still, by a certain special dispensation it is sometimes granted to some of the saints to exercise these offices; by working miracles, by coercing the demons, or by doing something of that kind, as Augustine says (De cura pro mortuis xvi). Reply to Objection 3. It is not erroneous to say that men are transferred to the penalty of demons; but some erroneously stated that the demons are nothing but souls of the dead; and it is this that Chrysostom rejects.

Okay let's start writing the thesis one chapter at a time. Use English translations of Pico's works in the main body of the text and include the latin text as footnotes. Use an academic style suitable for a Master's Thesis in religious studies.

I want you to start from the beginning of your outline with chapter one.

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This doesn't go very in depth on Pico's synthesis of Aquinas and other traditions. Write the next chapter about that using a close reading of Pico's theses on the Platonists and Aquinas.

Add an appendix to this chapter that reads each of Pico's conclusions on Aquinas.

Now do a reading of Pico's conclusions on Proclus

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next chapter. Let's do instead of one chapter per response, one subsection per response. I want a very close reading of the metaphysical information in Pico's Kabbalistic conclusions and discussion of Kabbalah in the Oration, especially what he thinks Kabbalah says about angels and emanation with the sefirot.

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Next chapter. Be sure to include in your discussion of Hermeticism several of his conclusions on hermes trismegistus

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I told you I didn't want to talk about Pico's influence. Write a concluding chapter summing up his intervention into Christian Platonism and speculating about what he was planning to discuss in his big debate.

Write a close reading of Pico's Cabalistic conclusions from his own opinion, three conclusions at a time.

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Explain Pico's claim (which I am paraphrasing from memory so correct me if I garble it) that "just as the farmer weds elms to vines, so the magus weds heaven to earth"

Draw on evidence from the Conclusions to support this explanation.

Give me a close reading, five at a time, of Conclusions dealing with angelology

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Give me a close reading on all the discussions of angels in Oration

Draw on evidence from the Conclusions to unpack the angels of the sefirot

Integrate a summary of this overview of Pico from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy into your account of Pico's intervention into Christian Platonism.

Translate and close read these conclusions. conclusiones secundum alexan|drum aphrodiseum numero .viii. annotated I.18.1. Anima rationalis est immortalis. annotated I.18.2. Cuilibet coelo preter animam quae movet eum efficienter: pro|pria assistit intelligentia: quae illum movet ut finis: ab anima ta|li secundum substantiam omnino distincta. annotated I.18.3. Nullam diffinitionem etiam naturalem ex Aristotelis senten|tia ingreditur materia. annotated I.18.4. Deus nec mala: nec privationes intelligit. annotated I.18.5. Numerus abstractorum de quo agit Aristoteles in duodeci|mo Methaphysicae non est numerus motorum: Sed numerus in|telligentiarum: quae sunt fines motus. annotated I.18.6. Cum dicit Aristoteles nono Methaphysicae separata et divi|na: aut totaliter sciri a nobis: aut totaliter ignorari: intelligen|dum est de ea cognitione quae his contingit qui iam ad summam |intellectus actuationem pervenerunt. annotated I.18.7. Sicut primus intellectus inter omnes intellectus primo se in|telligit: alia secundario: ita ultimus intellectus inter omnes intel|lectus primo alia a se: et seipsum secundario intelligit. annotated I.18.8. Methaphysicus et Dialecticus aeque de omnibus disputant: Sed |ille demonstrative hic probabiliter.

Integrate this account of Pico into your account of his intervention into Christian Platonism. Does your interpretation of the Oration, Conclusions, and De Ente agree with it? Giovanni Pico della Mirandola First published Tue Jun 3, 2008; substantive revision Wed Aug 21, 2024 A few paragraphs from a speech that Giovanni Pico (1463–1494) did not write about human dignity have drawn more comment than any other statement by a philosopher of his day. No philosophers of post-medieval, pre-Cartesian Europe are better known now than the prince and his contemporaries, Erasmus (b. 1466), Machiavelli (b. 1469) and Thomas More (b. 1478). Unlike them, he was fully committed to philosophia, as he understood it, and he was remarkably original—indeed, idiosyncratic. His persistently esoteric and aggressively recondite manner helps explain why the period identified with him—the Renaissance—has had so little attention in the canonical history of the discipline as presented today in Anglophonia, where aims, assumptions and attitudes of philosophers are so different. 1. Life 2. Works and Reputation 2.1 Conclusions and Oration 2.2 Other Works and Gianfrancesco’s Life 2.3 Christian Kabbalah and the Heptaplus 2.4 Oratory but not Dignity 2.5 Being and the One and Astrology Bibliography A. Primary Literature B. Bibliographies C. Secondary Literature Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries 1. Life Pico was born on 24 February 1463, to a noble Italian family, the counts of Mirandola and Concordia near Modena in the Emilia-Romagna north of Tuscany. Around the age of 14 he enrolled at Bologna to study church law, but within two years he put his lawbooks away and moved to Ferrara, then shortly afterward to Padua, where he met and studied with Elia del Medigo, a Jew and an Averroist Aristotelian. By the time he left Padua in 1482, he had felt the contrary attraction of the Platonism that Marsilio Ficino was reviving in Florence. By 1484 he was writing letters to other Florentine luminaries, Angelo Poliziano and Lorenzo de’ Medici. In 1485 the prince traveled to Paris, where aftershocks of conflict between nominalists and realists were still shaking this citadel of Aristotelian scholasticism. At the age of 22, before leaving Italy, he had already presented himself as a philosopher—by defending the technical terminology that since Petrarch’s time had incited philological critics to attack philosophical Latin as a barbaric breach of classical norms. Having refined his literary talent while adding new skills in philosophy, Pico issued this manifesto as a letter to Ermolao Barbaro, an eminent Venetian scholar. He used the occasion and the genre to show, like Plato in the Phaedrus, how rhetoric could arm philosophy against rhetorical assault. After a short stay in Paris, Pico returned to Florence and then Arezzo, where he caused a ruckus by abducting a young woman already married to Giuliano Mariotto de’ Medici. Support came from Lorenzo, a more formidable Medici cousin, but the commotion and then a plague kept the young lord on the move. By this time, while writing a Commento in Italian on a friend’s love poem, he already had plans for a more ambitious project: to bind up philosophy’s sectarian wounds. He started with harmony (concordia) that he saw beneath the surface of conflict between Platonists and Aristotelians. His peacemaking soon became global, aiming for a single symphony of ideas that would harmonize all schools of thought, past and present. To call attention to this hopeless enterprise, Pico decided to underwrite a magnificent conference in Rome early in 1487. In preparation he assembled 900 propositions from dozens of authorities—ancient and medieval, pagan and Christian, Muslim, and Jewish—and challenged all comers to debate them in public. He had these Conclusions printed in Rome at the end of 1486, and to introduce them he composed a speech that he never gave or had published. After he died in 1494, others mistakenly called this address an Oration on the Dignity of Man: Pico never gave it a title. Intervention by the Holy See derailed Pico’s plans and blocked the conference. Innocent VIII indicted 13 of the 900 theses and appointed a commission that soon declared 6 of them suspect and condemned 7 others. The defendant’s hasty response was an Apology that provoked Innocent to denounce the whole collection of 900 propositions. The prince, dishonored and in danger, left Italy for France again, but authorities there detained him at the pope’s request and jailed him briefly. By the summer of 1488 he was back in Tuscany as Lorenzo’s guest, and in 1489 he dedicated his Heptaplus to his benefactor, describing it as a Sevenfold Account of the Six Days of Genesis. Lorenzo’s protection gave his escapades better cover than his own considerable resources could provide. Since 1483 he had a third of the income from his family’s estates, which along with his Mirandola property he transferred in 1491 to his nephew Gianfrancesco. This other Pico, younger by a few years, became an influential philosopher in his own right—an early voice for reviving scepticism as an instrument of Christian faith. During this period, as memories of the disastrous Conclusions faded, people still worried about the elder Pico’s orthodoxy. The Kabbalist exegesis of the Bible in the Heptaplus—tame by the author’s earlier standards—was not understated enough to resolve all doubts. Philological conversation with Poliziano was less risky, however, and produced a fragment On Being and the One after 1490. Pico told Poliziano that he envisioned De ente et uno as the first installment of a great work that would find Platonism beneath the surface of Aristotle’s thinking: those who alienate Aristotle from Plato also alienate themselves from me, for I hold that their views are in harmony. Not everyone was pleased by the harmonizing—least of all Antonio Cittadini, a professor at Pisa who was still fighting Gianfrancesco about it two years after his uncle’s death. In 1493 Giovanni achieved reconciliation with a higher authority when Pope Alexander VI pardoned his earlier misadventures. By this time, the prince and his nephew were in the orbit of Girolamo Savonarola, the fiery Dominican who had been elected Prior at the Convent of San Marco, a Florentine landmark. Pico had already known the oracular friar before his sermons persuaded the city to try his theocratic rules. Mesmerized by Savonarola and ever more pious, he gave more properties away, some to the Church and some to his family, as his needs became less worldly. When death took him on 17 November 1494—by poison, some said, where rumors of poisoning were like complaints about runny noses—Florence fell on the same day to French armies. The turmoil of invasion ended the city’s age of glory, illuminated by Pico’s genius—though only intermittently. Ficino, his older friend, occasional rival and a steadier soul, survived him by five years. 2. Works and Reputation Pico’s major works were the 900 Conclusions in 1486, the Oration written to introduce it, the Apology that defended the Conclusions in 1487, the Heptaplus in 1489 and the Disputations against Predictive Astrology, left unfinished when he died in 1494, without ever making the Oration public. 2.1 Conclusions and Oration Pico’s modern fame rests on a speech about the dignity of man that he never gave and that got its title after he died. His public debut was the 900 Conclusions, printed without a title near the end of 1486. It was more like a pamphlet than a book, just three dozen sheets of paper and three dozen lists of unsupported statements. These 900 propositions, less than 20 words each, were the only messages sent by the 17,000 words of Pico’s booklet. He called them ‘conclusions’, but he gave them no backing, and some were outrageous theological novelties—including the claim that magic and Kabbalah proved Christ’s divinity. He wrote this proposition, like all the others, in preparation for the debate that he planned to stage in Rome, the capital of Christendom. His flimsy little handout, crudely printed, was also a script and an advertisement. The prince expected to draw a crowd. Instead he drew down the wrath of God through his Vicar on earth, Pope Innocent. Legal proceedings against the Conclusions started. Planning for a disputational spectacle stopped. Years of disgrace and danger began for Pico and his first public work. He divided the pamphlet into two parts: the first had 402 theses; the second had 498 theses. He took credit and assumed responsibility only for the second part, having listed propositions in the first part under names of other persons and groups of persons who were eminent in philosophy, theology and theosophy. This was the layout of the first part: Albert the Great Aquinas François de Meyronnes Scotus Henry of Ghent Egidio Romano Ibn Rushd Ibn Sina Al-Farabi Isaac Albalag Ibn Marwan Maimonides Tolletinus Ibn Bajja Theophrastus Ammonius Simplicius Alexander Themistius Plotinus Adeland Porphyry Iamblichus Proclus Pythagoreans Chaldeans Egyptians Kabbalist Jews And this was the second part, where Pico highlighted his own ambitions more than older authorities: Concord Dissent Novelty Deviance Platonism Causes Numbers Chaldeans Magic Orphica Christian Kabbalah All this was in print before the pope stopped the rash project. To make matters worse, the prince defended his blunder in a recalcitrant Apology whose preface was part of the still unpublished Oration—though not the part that later became famous. Pico’s words in the Conclusions were deeds, and they were reckless. His propositions were performative speech-acts, eristic and illocutionary, not just declarative and endoxic or apodictic. Theatrical combat continued throughout the booklet, despite eye-catching claims about concordia that introduced the second part: There is no inquiry, natural or theological, where Aristotle and Plato don’t agree in meaning and content (sensu et re) even though they seem to disagree in words (verbis). [Pico, Conclusiones, 1486, 28] Pico detected philosophical harmony not only in Aristotle versus Plato but also in Ibn Sina versus Ibn Rushd, Aquinas versus Scotus, and other notorious quarrels. He meant his proclamation of concord to be startling. He called it ‘contrarian’ (paradoxus), but it wasn’t original: ancient commentators on Plato and Aristotle had the same view. Simplicius of Cilicia, a Platonist of the sixth century known to Pico, had written that a worthwhile interpreter of Aristotle’s writings … should examine not just the language (λέξιν) of what he says against Plato … but look also at the meaning (νοῦν) and search out the harmony (συμφωνίαν) between them on most matters. [Simpl. In Cat. 7.23–32, translation by the author of this entry] Pico chose propositions because he could defend or attack them convincingly, and he stated them in forms that would optimize his advantages—logical and philosophical but also rhetorical. In this disputatious framework, a thesis secundum Thomam, secundum Averroem or secundum Proclum might or might not have been a fair statement of anyone’s position—including Pico’s. Fidelity in presentation was not the prince’s aim; his aim was victory in debate. The first part of his book attached its conclusions to names of authorities: Aquinas, Ibn Rushd, Proclus, and two dozen others. Readers who saw works by these sages as sources of Pico’s theses were sometimes correct: thinkers named by him had indeed stated some of his conclusions verbatim or nearly so. But words printed under their names seldom presented their teachings clearly, often altered them and sometimes could not have been theirs because of anachronisms or incompatibilities: Pico’s many presentations of authority in the first part of the Conclusions did not simply follow the views of these authors—or his own. The excessive brevity of his propositions, constricted by reflexive secrecy, made it hard to diagnose his intentions or follow his trains of thought. Most propositions in the Conclusions were scholastic theology; many others were Kabbalah; together this was two-thirds of the book. Kabbalah was unintelligible to Christian theologians, just as their theology horrified the few learned Jews who had studied Kabbalah. The Platonism of late antiquity, from Plotinus through Proclus and his followers, dominated the other third of the book. Ficino had set a high standard for Pico’s Platonic propositions, not just the philosophy but also the philology. It’s safe to say, all in all, that there wasn’t much competent readership in Italy for the prince’s book at the time it was published. Some individuals might have understood it, but not many. The few Christians whose education had prepared them for Greek texts on Neoplatonic metaphysics—unusual people like Barbaro, Ficino and Poliziano—were developing a new way to read, write, talk and teach, grounded in a philology of ancient languages, that came to be called ‘humanism’—though not until the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, four centuries earlier, there was nothing ‘humanist’ about Pico’s Conclusions, whose content, milieu and presentation were thoroughly medieval. On the Latin Christian side, his authorities had flourished in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. On the Arabic, Aramaic, Hebrew, Jewish, and Muslim side, his texts were earlier, in place before the thirteenth century ended. For Greek thought his mainstay was Proclus from the fifth century. Only three traditions were prominent in the Conclusions: Kabbalist, Peripatetic, and Platonic. Pico’s Platonism, centered on Proclus and his followers, was post-Hellenistic and medieval, not Hellenic. ‘Peripatetic’ was his label for the scholastic Aristotelianism—Jewish and Muslim as well as Christian—that peaked in the thirteenth century. He explained in the Oration that ‘Kabbalah’ was “the Hebrew word for our ‘reception’”. A related word, ‘tradition’, would have done just as well. As for a tradition called ‘Hermetic’, the Conclusions had nothing good to say. Imitating Proclus, Pico preferred Chaldean prophets and Orphic bards to the Egyptian Hermes. The prince was so well informed about celebrated Peripatetics—Aquinas, Farabi, Giles of Rome, Henry of Ghent, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Scotus, and others—that he spotted flaws in their theology and tried to fix them with Platonic metaphysics. His main informant about mistakes made by Christians was Jean Cabrol (Capreolus, d. 1443), a Dominican explicator of Aquinas. Pico owned Cabrol’s huge commentary in an incunable edition of 1483. By that time Cabrol’s Dominican followers had given his work a militant new title, Defensiones, treating it as a manual for Thomism on the attack. Cabrol’s defense of Thomas instructed Pico about the opposition to Thomism, showing him how to express Averroist and nominalist objections to the communis via—his term for the rigidified Thomist consensus. Statements in the Conclusions showed contempt for teachings endorsed by Aquinas. Propositions that insulted the saint by name were among those condemned. Elia del Medigo surveyed Pico’s path through quarrels about and among Muslims. This learned Jew from Crete introduced him to a Jewish commentary tradition on Ibn Rushd, both in Hebrew and in Arabic. Just as Pico learned how to oppose Thomism from Cabrol, a doctrinaire Thomist, he also learned how to refute criticisms of Averroism from Elia, a zealous Averroist. Philosophers attacked by Ibn Rushd—Farabi, Ibn Bajja, Ibn Sina, and others—were vulnerable voices in Pico’s theses, along with Aquinas, Albertus, and Scotus, also Plato, Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, and the Greek commentators. The Conclusions were, among other things, Pico’s egregious advertisement of his own learning—a polyglot catalog of propositions that challenged orthodoxy and defied common opinion. When he called some of these conclusions paradoxae, he wasn’t thinking of semantic puzzles like the Liar or of Zeno’s arresting tales. His model for contrarian propositions was Cicero’s account of Stoic paradoxes. These provocations, labeled as such, were only a few dozen out of 900 statements, all of them presented as quodlibetal theses like those debated in medieval universities. Nonetheless, the 900 theses in Pico’s little book were more inflammatory than the 7,000 words of his Oration: the oblique oratory in the speech was conventional as rhetoric and entertaining in its eloquence. Besides, the scandal of papal condemnation in 1487 was old news by 1496, when Gianfrancesco first had the Oration printed in a posthumous collection of his uncle’s works (Commentationes). Pico’s nephew, also a philosopher, was and still is the primary source for stories about his uncle. Giovanni’s silenced oratory embarrassed Gianfrancesco. He recalled that his uncle regretted the speech as a juvenile mistake. For the next several centuries, few of Pico’s admirers challenged this verdict, despite the orator’s continuing fame. Until the Oration charmed post-Kantian historians, it had few readers. But dignitas got plenty of attention before Pico was born Shortly after 1450, Giannozzo Manetti completed his De dignitate et excellentia hominis. Unlike the Oration, Manetti’s book was actually about dignitas, but as ancient Romans and medieval Christians used the word for ‘rank’, ‘status’, ‘value’, or ‘worth’—not good fits for what Kant would say about Würde as distinct from Wert. Manetti’s dignitas was essentially Christian but slightly secularized by late medieval interest in ancient pagans like Cicero and by changed conditions of life in fifteenth-century Italy. Manetti attacked a twelfth-century treatise On Human Misery by Cardinal Lotario dei Segni, who later became Pope Innocent III. Two contemporaries of Manetti—Antonio da Barga and Bartolomeo Facio—had written less impressively on his topic. These treatments of dignitas were well known, but Pico’s undelivered speech paid no attention to them because dignitas was not his subject. His larger project—advertised by the Conclusions but not well presented—was to convince people that they could save their souls by using magic and Kabbalah to change themselves into angels. Awareness of the speech—unpublished in Pico’s lifetime—was erratic after he died. Bad publicity lingered from the pope’s denunciation of the Conclusions, which the speech was meant to introduce. Except in the author’s collected works, the Latin text was printed only once before the 1940s, when the first English translation also appeared, just after the first Italian version in 1936. What readers had seen on the title page of the Commentationes in 1496 was just A Very Elegant Oration. By 1530—in the only separately published Latin text of the pre-modern period—these words expanded into On Man by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Explaining the Loftier Mysteries of Sacred and Human Philosophy. Meanwhile, the front matter of the 5 collected editions or reprints between 1498 and 1521 stayed with the 1496 formulation, Oratio quaedam elegantissima, which in 1557 finally became On the Dignity of Man in a Basel collection and, in a Venice edition of the same year, A Very Elegant Oration on the High Nobility and Dignity of Man. The words de dignitate hominis had first described the speech, less conspicuously, inside the 1504 edition. Later in 1572 and 1601, two other collections used a new format that no longer displayed contents by title at the front of the book. 2.2 Other Works and Gianfrancesco’s Life The British Library Catalog, listing about 1300 books by Erasmus printed before 1701, has about 100 contemporary entries for Pico. During the same period, when Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres went through more than 30 editions, Pico’s Oratio—far better known today than Ficino’s Three Books on Life—attracted few publishers. Of the five dozen or so titles by the prince that were printed in this period, about half were collections of letters: the first two, called Golden Letters, were incunables. Letters also appeared in early collections with Pico’s other works: title pages named Ficino and Poliziano as his correspondents, and all of them were durable celebrities. Pico’s letters succeeded commercially because of the writer’s fame and the needs of readers. Latin was still a medium of learned communication in the late seventeenth century, when Isaac Newton published his Principia in that undead language, and educated people still learned to write by imitating stylists like Pico. His epistolary Latin was elegant, and his fame had lasted. He was renowned as a critic of astrology, as an expert on Kabbalah and as the talented Count Pico—a Phoenix who blazed through a brief life in the triple glare of an old aristocratic society, a new mandarin culture of classical scholarship and, in his last years, the apocalyptic carnival that raged in Savonarola’s Florence. Noble origins, fashionable friends, physical beauty, prodigious learning, capacious memory, scholarly journeys, youthful sins, trouble with the Church, eventual repentance, and a pious death: these were motifs of the family hagiography by his nephew Gianfrancesco that kept Giovanni Pico famous for being famous as the centuries passed. Because he died so young, the prince finished very little and published less: he neither completed nor published the vernacular Commento; the Conclusions were just bare statements of theses; the preface in the rushed Apology was a piece of the unpublished Oration; On Being and the One, also unpublished, was left over from a plan to harmonize Plato and Aristotle; and Gianfrancesco found the unfinished Disputations bundled with his dead uncle’s papers. The only works that Giovanni sent to a printer while he lived were the Conclusions, the Apology, and the Heptaplus. The Apology, defending the Conclusions against heresy charges, was Pico’s longest piece of philosophical writing. Mostly it was conventional scholasticism in the manner of Aquinas, Ockham and Scotus. This imprudent book—extensively informed by Cabrol’s Defenses of Aquinas—also relied on Durand de Saint-Pourçain, Henry of Ghent, Jean Quidort, Robert Holcot, and a dozen lesser medieval masters. The Conclusions, in most of its content and all of its presentation, was also thoroughly scholastic. The fashionable classicism of Barbaro and Poliziano made no impression on Pico’s first two printed works, which framed his living reputation—except at home in the Emilia-Romagna and in Tuscany, where people knew him personally. He wrote his two long letters on poetry and philosophical language in the new classical Latin, but few saw them while the writer lived: in later university settings, these brilliant apprentice pieces would have been prize essays. 2.3 Christian Kabbalah and the Heptaplus Besides the Conclusions and the Apology, the only project that Pico completed for publication in print was the Heptaplus (1489), his Kabbalist commentary on the first 26 verses of Genesis. These lines presented the Account of the Beginning (Ma‘aseh Bereshit), a favorite of Menahem Recanati, Abraham Abulafia, and other Kabbalists known to Pico through learned Italian Jews, especially Flavius Mithridates, Elia del Medigo, and Yohanan Alemanno. They gave him ingredients for a Christianized Kabbalah, a Jewish complement to Ficino’s ancient theology, and he put it on display in the 900 Conclusions: 119 of them, including the final 72, were explicitly Kabbalist and outlandishly so from a Christian point of view. While Pico tried half-heartedly to harmonize all of Europe’s philosophies, Christianizing Kabbalah was his main project. He found Christology and trinitarian theology in an oral Torah confided to Moses and passed on secretly through Esdras and other sages. Because its origin was Mosaic, Kabbalah was more hallowed than the pagan wisdom that Ficino had traced to Zoroaster and Hermes Trismegistus in ancient Chaldea and Egypt, where Platonic philosophy supposedly had its roots. Pico was the first Christian who had the expertise—including a little Hebrew, Aramaic and possibly Arabic—to make the astonishing claims that he published about Kabbalah as the core of a holier ancient theology. Books of Kabbalah were being read by the twelfth century, but Christians knew almost nothing about them before Pico. The Kabbalah that he revealed to Latin Europe was a theory as well as a practice—biblical hermeneutics with devotional intent. For some Kabbalists, then as now, textual studies underwrote a spiritual practice whose aim was mystical ascent and prophetic ecstasy achieved by ritual techniques, including magic and theurgy. Kabbalists believed that the Hidden God, the No-End, revealed himself not only in the Bible but also through ten aspects, attributes or emanations, the sefirot or ‘numberings’ of God’s myriad faces. Personalized in myths, visualized in images and symbolized by letters and numbers, the sefirot acted in theosophical dramas that framed devotional practices. Names of God that resonated in scripture were the other main focus of Kabbalah. link to extended description below Figure 1: Sefirot in the Standard Array. [An extended description of figure 1 is in the supplement.] The Bible’s Hebrew text was God’s speech, infinite in meaning. Kabbalists took their bearings even from its smallest particles—not only the sacred words but also their letters (which were also numbers) and even the shapes of letters. God’s names were the most potent words; the holiest of them, the Tetragrammaton, could not be spoken. Written as יהוה (yhwh), the unutterable Name was read aloud as Adonai, a speakable name like Elohim, Ehyeh, El Shaddai, and others used of God in the Hebrew Bible. Names of the sefirot, unknown as such to scripture, were also words of power. They were names not of God, however, but of God’s manifestations, some more remote than others. The Creator stayed hidden in his highest essence. Creatures below cognized the No-End only in descent from his secret heights. His lowest downward moments filled the world of human awareness with perceptible creatures. The first moments, far beyond the reach of ordinary cognition, were the ten sefirot. Much of the literature of Kabbalah described these numberings as shown in Figure 1: there were ten of them, S1 through S10, and fruit on the branches of this tree had many names. Common designations of S4, for example, were Gedullah and Hesed, meaning Greatness and Love or Piety, Latinized as Amor or Pietas by Pico’s instructors in Kabbalah. A divine name associated with S4 was El, but Kabbalists used many other words and names (Abraham, Michael, the South, Water) to describe S4 and other sefirot: Pico’s term was numerationes, which he learned from his main informant, the learned Jew and clever forger who called himself Flavius Mithridates. Pico was the first Christian who described Kabbalah in detail or treated it as worthwhile, hoping to persuade other Christians that this Jewish mysticism could help save their souls. Flavius, his prolific helper and deceiver, translated and mistranslated thousands of pages of Kabbalah from Aramaic and Hebrew into Latin. To make his work pleasing to Pico, Flavius added words and phrases—not found in the originals—that carried Christian messages. This convert to Christianity was a talented linguist who had worked at the Vatican. His translations were almost entirely sound; otherwise, the faking would have been obvious. Portions of the Oration, drawing on this tainted material, were informed by Kabbalah in ways that no contemporary Christian could have noticed—especially if they lacked clues provided by more than a hundred theses in the Conclusions. Pico’s esoteric intentions, proclaimed emphatically in the unpublished Oration and publicized by impenetrable propositions in the Conclusions, distanced his project not only from post-Cartesian philosophies in Anglophonia and elsewhere but also from earlier European systems outside the Platonic tradition. Wishing not just to mystify but also to provoke, Pico succeeded and paid the price of his Church’s anger. Theology, spirituality and philosophy—all in the broadest sense—were the main content of Pico’s Kabbalah, which showed (or hinted) how God revealed himself in the sefirot, in divine names and in words of scripture. In 72 Kabbalist theses at the finale of the Conclusions, this revelation became Christology and trinitarian theology. From a Kabbalist point of view, the sefirot and the divine names were characters in stories about theology, cosmology, anthropology and angelology; major themes were exile, death, atonement and redemption, tales told by Jews that Pico applied to the Trinity, with Jesus as the messianic hero of a new theosophy and the focus of a liturgy strange to Christians. Devotions advocated by the Conclusions were prayer and ritual as preparations for ecstasy and ascent to mystical union with God. This practical theosophy was also the main message of the Oration, where Pico’s ladder up to divinity had rungs of magic and theurgy. Propositions in the Conclusions confirmed this endorsement of magic and showed in more detail than the speech why Pico linked magic with Kabbalah. He saw the combination as a pious practice which—like the higher theurgy of Iamblichus and other Platonic philosophers—explored routes to God that were usually hidden. The practice of Kabbalah started with theory because these channels, concealed in scripture, had to be disclosed and interpreted before anyone could reconnoiter them: spiritual progress relied on hermeneutics. Kabbalist exegesis was the most obscure material in the Conclusions, especially Pico’s accounts of Hebrew words and letters. Language was his gateway to wisdom, and elements of language were letters and numbers that proliferated in secret codes. Pico’s genius and ambition, which the Church deplored as impudence, attracted him to this challenge, a cryptic theology of the hidden word, whose enigmas and ambiguities fed his hunger for the esoteric. The Kabbalist theology in the Conclusions, hence the Kabbalah promoted by the Oration, was deliberately mystifying but finally Christological and trinitarian. Prior exhibitions of Kabbalah in support of Pico’s grand theory focused on particular biblical texts, whose messages he also excavated from the gentile wisdom of ancient theologians—Orpheus, Pythagoras, Zoroaster and Chaldean prophets, though not the Egyptian Hermes. In the Heptaplus of 1489 readers now recognize the Kabbalist voice of the Conclusions: Pico’s earlier works since the Commento of 1485 have prepared them to hear it. These impetuous texts advertised Kabbalah brazenly, unlike the cautious Heptaplus, and they damaged Pico with enemies in Rome more than they helped him with friends in Florence—Ficino, Poliziano and others. Roberto Salviati, a learned Florentine friend of the prince, called the Heptaplus “the first fruits of his studies” when he arranged to have it printed [Pico, De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus (10), 168]. Was Salviati embarrassed by earlier works—the Commento, Conclusions, and Apology? It’s likelier that he thought them forgettable than that he knew nothing about them. But simple ignorance explains silence about the unpublished Oration: Pico’s nephew testified that even his uncle kept quiet about it. Readers disturbed by the Kabbalah in the Conclusions reacted predictably, but the Heptaplus was less threatening because the author had sanitized it. After nearly 20 years, Crofton Black’s book (2006) is still the best account of the Heptaplus. Although the creation narrative was the topic of Patristic commentaries by Ambrose and Basil of Caesarea, the first verses of Genesis, examined in the Heptaplus, interested fewer Christian interpreters than passages of Job or the Psalms. Like all scripture, the opening of Genesis was thought to have three layers of meaning—allegorical, tropological, and anagogical—beyond a literal or ‘historical’ sense: “history talks about events”, according to the commentators, allegory about how one thing is understood from another, tropology discusses morals, … and anagogy is the spiritual meaning … that leads to higher things. [Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria (1480), Gen. prol. 1:6] But the Heptaplus presented a new kind of allegory, a method derived from the structure of creation itself and directed toward a new type of anagogy, which was mystical ascent to the Godhead through Kabbalah. Pico provided a key to this practical exegesis only in the last part of the Heptaplus, which looked like an appendix tacked on at the end—just another showing of virtuoso skill in biblical languages. But to learned Jews of the day—Kabbalists or not—Pico’s analysis of the Hebrew letters of the first word of Genesis (Bereshit, “In the beginning”) would have seemed crude. There was nothing exotic in it except for Christians, and for them the effect would have been superficial—dazzling them with art. The arcane ending of the Heptaplus that looked extraneous was actually a grand finale. Pico hinted at a secret that no Christian of his day could have known: that Moses himself, whose words recorded the creation story, had passed through 49 Gates of Understanding—7 × 7 sefirotic stations—on his way to a 50th Gate, the supreme and final portal to union with God. The 49 prior passages traversed vestibules of creation, demonstrating Pico’s allegorical method by exemplifying it: the universe of existence was also a universe of understanding that showed a path to mystical union, and the map was indeed the terrain. Without explaining the Gates, the Conclusions said enough about them so that later scholars—Johann Reuchlin especially—could find paths through Kabbalah and try to follow them. Short and schematic directions, unlike Kabbalah in both ways, would go like this: Wisdom, the second sefirah (S2 in Figure 1), built a palace in eternity for Intelligence at S3 and carved 50 Gates there, 7 to be opened at each of the 7 lower sefirot, S4 through S10, leaving another Gate beyond and still shut. The 50 Gates, also called the Jubilee, corresponded to the 50-year festival ordained in Leviticus and also to a Great Jubilee of 50,000 years, when 7 sabbatical cycles or weeks of 7,000 years came to an end. After a final age when the lower sefirot collapsed into S3, the millenarian cycle restarted, having been completed in the previous thousand years—in the Sabbath of the Shekinah, God’s Dwelling at S10. This Sabbath, a 7th day of rest after 6 days of creating, was Pico’s ultimate allegory of mystical union, a secret encoded not only in the letters of Bereshit but also in the 7-fold structure of the Heptaplus itself. But who knew or could have known? In 1489, when Pico published the Heptaplus, its only competent readers in Italy were a few learned Jews who knew Latin—the very voices of Aramaic and Hebrew who had told the prince enough about Kabbalah to load his Conclusions with it. In most of the Heptaplus, however, even where the book’s structure and content plainly depended on Kabbalah, Pico kept the mysteries hidden until the final exposition of Bereshit that could only have baffled Christian readers and scandalized them. As in earlier works, Pico intended to mystify. He believed, and he said, that plain language would defile the holiest wisdom. He uncovered God’s secrets only for an elite clever enough to unravel his allegories and break the ciphers that concealed them. A salient fact and also a surprise—given European and Anglophone conceptions of philosophy—is that Pico thought of this mystification as philosophical and claimed passionately to be a philosopher. 2.4 Oratory but not Dignity In the first few pages of the Oration—which eventually confused more people in more languages than any other Latin text of its time—the Creator tells Adam that he, alone of all creatures, can make himself what he wants to be. This overture misled Wilhelm Tennemann (1761–1819), a Kantian historian of philosophy: like others after him, he treated Pico’s stirring prelude as evidence of a morality grounded, like Kant’s, in human freedom and dignity. This miscarried reading of the speech gathered strength from the Enlightenment, acquired a romantic aura and in 1860 became thematic for a new partition of cultural history, the Renaissance, established by Jacob Burckhardt. Half a century later, Ernst Cassirer—an eminent Neo-Kantian—authenticated the Oration as a modern secular gospel. Nazis drove Cassirer and Paul Kristeller, also a Kantian Jew, to North America, where they brought Burckhardt’s Renaissance and Pico’s oratory to thrive after World War II in college textbooks on ‘Western Civilization’. Meanwhile, in Fascist Italy, just before Mussolini’s racial laws were enforced, Eugenio Garin had published his foundational study of Pico (Garin 1937). The opening of the Oration is the most conspicuous part of the speech, praised by Garin and others as a declaration of dignity, freedom and ‘humanism’. Assured by initial statements that we can be what we want to be, we are then told—contrary to Garin’s view and the usual reading—that what we ought to be isn’t human at all. Our task is to become angels: bodiless, sexless and ultimately—that most unromantic of all conditions—selfless in the strictest sense. Living like Cherubs, not quite the highest angels, was the first post-human peak to be scaled. To go there, we must shed not only the gendered bodies that imprison us but also identities and personalities that distinguish every one of us from God and from everyone else. Personal extinction by mystical union with God was Pico’s goal: for people to be divinized, selves had to be discarded. “Let a holy ambition possess our spirit”, he wrote, let us climb for the heights, panting; and let us strive with all our might to reach them, since we can do it if we will it. Let us scorn the things of earth, let us despise those of heaven, and then, leaving behind whatever belongs to the world, let us fly up to the hypercosmic court nearest the most exalted divinity…. As we emulate the Cherubic life on earth, checking the impulses of the emotions through moral knowledge, dispelling the darkness of reason through dialectic, let us cleanse the soul by washing away the dirt of ignorance and vice so that emotions will not rage in fury nor reason go mad and foolish. Then let us flood the soul, purified and well tempered, with the light of natural philosophy so that finally we may perfect it with knowledge of divinity…. [Then] we will fully enjoy the peace that we have longed for—the holiest peace, the unbreakable bond, the friendship of the single-souled wherein all our spirits do not so much converge in the one mind above every mind as in some unsayable way emerge as absolutely one. This is that friendship which the Pythagoreans say is the end of all philosophy. This is that peace which God gives on high and angels descending to earth have announced to men of good will so that through this peace these same men, ascending to heaven, might be made into angels…. Ever forgetful of herself, [the soul] will wish to die in herself that she might live in her spouse, in whose sight the death of his saints is most precious—death, I say, if one should use the word ‘death’ for that fullness of life whose contemplation the sages have said is the aim of philosophy…. Lifted now to the topmost height of her watchtower, for all eternity looking out without interruption over what is, what will be and what has been, we shall sing prophecies like Phoebus, and, gazing up at primeval beauty, we shall be its winged lovers, until at last, with a love that cannot be described, driven wild by desire and transported beyond ourselves like burning Seraphs, full of divine power, we shall be ourselves no longer, but shall be Him, the very one who made us. [Pico, Oration, (39), 88–102] At the lowest level of this self-annihilating paideia, the initiate began as a student of philosophy, learning ethics, logic, natural philosophy and theology and then ascending, through arcana of magic and Kabbalah, to drown the self in God’s bottomless lake. This was not a Kantian project, and the Oration on the Dignity of Man that located the human condition in freedom and dignity was written—and still is being written—by us post-Kantians, not by Giovanni Pico. The outline of the Oration below was also not Pico’s. Its 7 parts may or may not have been his plan. But the deep structure of the Conclusions was numerological, and the Heptaplus, by its title and organization, showed that 7 was a special number for the prince—as for so many stewards of secrets. The book’s subtitle was a Sevenfold Account of the Six Days of Genesis, plainly an invitation to calculate arithmetic mysteries. In 1489 the Heptaplus invoked a theme—ascending to supreme happiness—that had occupied Pico for years, at least since he started the Commento. So it wouldn’t be surprising if hebdomads in the Heptaplus reflected earlier statements, including the Oration, which can be analyzed as follows: Humans are amazing because they can choose to change what they are. To choose well, however, they must change into angels. And to emulate angels, they must live like Cherubs. Humans can learn this lesson from ancient saints: Paul and Dionysius, Jacob, Job, Moses, Orpheus, Plato, Plotinus, Socrates and other gentiles, Pythagoras, Abraham, Chaldeans, Jeremiah and Zoroaster. Because philosophy leads to the Cherubic life, Pico proclaims himself a philosopher. Philosophy has informed him about new practices, including magic and Kabbalah. Assured of philosophy’s benefits, Pico will ignore his critics and debate a philosophy of his own. A curriculum reviewed 7 times in the middle of the Oration, at step 4 of 7, taught lessons leading to mystical union with God. Ancient Platonists discussed this regimen, and Church Fathers absorbed it into Christian piety. Books of Kabbalah gave similar instructions. Students started with moral philosophy and then moved up through dialectic and natural philosophy toward theology until discursive thought dissolved in ecstasy, pure contemplation and finally unification. Stages of Pico’s paideia were moral philosophy dialectic natural philosophy theology magic Kabbalah mystical union Magic and Kabbalah were preliminary but necessary. Magic, propelling the soul through the heavens toward supercelestial divinity, fueled a transition from natural philosophy to natural theology and beyond. And then Kabbalah, rising above discursive theology, climbing higher than magic, changed embodied humans into pure spirits: entirely purged of matter, these souls were then fit for henôsis—absolute unification with God. The philosophy behind this self-abnegating spirituality went back to pagan commentators on Aristotle. Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and other Muslim and Jewish sages made it more explicit. Pico’s advice—in philosophical terms that were controversial yet more familiar to Christians than Kabbalah—was for human persons to conjoin with the Agent Intellect. 2.5 Being and the One and Astrology The last major item in Pico’s bibliography, the Disputations Against Astrology, is textually problematic—like the prince’s letters—because Gianfrancesco may have meddled with both. Otherwise, the best account of the Disputations is Anthony Grafton’s article, listed in Quaquarelli and Zanardi’s bibliography. Pico’s big book was unwelcoming—unfinished, ragged presentation, sources technical and obscure. Much of it repeated ancient and medieval objections to astrology. Ptolemy’s doubts about particular types of prediction, for example, turned into a general restriction on celestial influence, which was too diffuse or too slight to produce reliable foreknowledge. Astrologers were exposed for contradicting themselves and for violating canons of reason and experience that natural philosophy relied on. Complaints restated by Pico—epistemic, logical, methodological and observational—had been made even before ancient sceptics recorded their characteristic objections. The prince’s innovation, without entirely rejecting astrology, was to weaponize philology against it. Astrology’s credibility rested on its pedigree—descent through the ages from ancient Chaldea and Egypt. The Oration and Conclusions verified this genealogy and sanctified it with Kabbalah, a tradition that was sacred, not just venerable. Like Kabbalah and because of its age, astrology could be confirmed (or disconfirmed) by the new classicism that linked authority with antiquity. Astrology’s record of watching planets and stars was an experience of deep time that certified its findings, compiled over the millennia. But the Disputations that Pico died too soon to finish reformed this static mytho-history by bringing it down to earth and back to life with new evidence. Informed by breakthroughs in biblical and secular chronology, he relocated primordial icons like Zoroaster in living landscapes of human time, subjecting them to criticism that later experts would call ‘historical’. And yet Pico’s critical sense was far from modern. When he attacked the stargazers as superstitious, he mistook strengths for weaknesses and dismissed their mathematical skills as credulity. The arithmetic in his own Conclusions was numerology, and his treatment of mathematics was generally unprogressive—more like Aristotle’s attitude than Plato’s. But Kepler noticed the Disputations, and philologists, weighing Pico’s doubts about exotic sages, took the shine off the bronze of prisca theologia. Ficino’s ancient theology was a Platonic historiography. But the prince’s least eccentric work of philosophy took an Aristotelian position against a Platonic distinction between being and the One that made the One higher than being in the order of the All. Since Ficino supported just such a distinction, Pico’s fragment On Being and the One challenged the senior philosopher, who saw it that way and objected politely. A larger purpose, harmonizing Aristotle with Plato, would have been germane. But the Conclusions had subverted its own assertion of concordia just after stating it. Even if Pico hadn’t defaced his irenic coinage, he wasn’t Platonic enough to suit Ficino, just as he wasn’t Aristotelian enough for doctrinaire Aristotelians. The future marched to his music, however, if not under a banner of concordia. Friends of the prince—Barbaro, Ficino, Poliziano and others—promoted the philology that informed later Aristotelians about all the ancient schools: not just Platonists but also Epicureans, Pre-Socratics, Sceptics, Stoics and others. Later, during the Enlightenment, philosophers scrutinized old texts recently recovered to enforce the comparative ‘eclectic’ criticism promulgated by Jacob Brucker and popularized by the Encyclopédie. Brucker and the philosophes despised Pico’s concordia, mocking it as the ‘syncretism’ that muddled eclectic reasoning. Ficino’s geniality had encouraged Pico’s urge to harmonize, and his half-baked concordia was more than just compatible with the ancient theology that was Ficino’s way of Christianizing pagan wisdom. The warm personal language of correspondence between the two philosophers shows Ficino welcoming Pico as a junior ally. But Ficino’s letters, which he published in 1495, testify better to his friendship with Pico than Pico’s letters. Gianfrancesco published them a year later, after preparing the Disputations for the press at the same time. Comparing the two epistolaries suggests that the younger Pico, at least as close to Savonarola as his uncle, intervened to select letters by the elder Pico—those that made it into the collected works of 1496 overseen by the nephew—and arranged them to match the pious Life that introduced the whole collection. The all too human protagonist of the Life was a Savonarolan saint who renounced the world, the flesh and the devil just in time. This was not the eager Pico who had hunted for fame in Rome a few years before and dared the world in a failed philosophical extravaganza; nor the cocksure prince who bungled an attempt to carry off a woman whose husband was named Medici—no less; nor the unsettled journeyman thinker calmed by Ficino’s bantering in letters decorated with astro-mythology. The disasters of 1487 may be enough to explain Pico’s jarring reversal on astrology in the Disputations, also his muffling of Kabbalah in the Heptaplus. But since Gianfrancesco, who edited the Disputations, also edited and chose letters to support a tendentious Life of his uncle, and since the nephew was not just a devout fideist but also a prodigiously productive scholar and original thinker, the Disputations may have been another pendant to Gianfrancesco’s Life of Pico—dubious in that setting as proof of penitence when his uncle’s meteor flamed out.

Draw on evidence from the Conclusions to unpack Pico's synthesis of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic thought.

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conclusiones secundum alber|tum numero .xvi. annotated I.1.1. Species intelligibiles non sunt necessariae: et eas ponere non |est bonis peripateticis consentaneum. annotated I.1.2. Corruptis omnibus individuis speciei humanae est vera. |homo est animal. annotated I.1.3. Haec est in quarto modo dicendi per se. homo est homo. annotated I.1.4. In quolibet puncto materiae sunt per habitum inchoationis |potestativum essentiae omnium formarum naturalium materiae |coeternae secundum philosophos concreate secundum fidem. annotated I.1.5. Forma in intensione et remissione non variatur secundum essentiam |sed secundum esse. annotated I.1.6. Anima separata intelligit per species sibi a principio sui esse con|creatas: quibus dum est in corpore aut nunquam aut raro utitur. annotated I.1.7. Sonus fertur secundum esse reale usque ad principium nervi auditivi. annotated I.1.8. Lumen non habet in medio nisi esse intentionale. annotated I.1.9. Organum auditus est nervus expansus ad concavum auris. annotated I.1.10. Obiectum per se et proprie sensus communis est magnitudo |ut bene dixit Avicenna. annotated I.1.11. Stat speciem cuius dicimur reminisci esse totaliter deperditam |et abolitam. annotated I.1.12. Non introducitur vegetalis anima ante sensualem: nec sensu|alis ante rationalem sed tota simul. annotated I.1.13. Licet ad receptionem speciei concurrat sensus passive ad iudi|candum tamen de sensibili active concurrit. annotated I.1.14. Corpus mobile est subiectum scientiae naturalis. annotated I.1.15. Corporis in eo quod corpus consideratio ad Methaphysicum spectat. annotated I.1.16. Potentia respectiva materiae non addit supra materiam rem |sed rationem.

conclusiones secundum fran|ciscum numeru .viii. annotated I.3.1. Ideo haec est falsa. Essentia generat: quia essentia est ultimate |abstracta et generat formaliter praedicatur. annotated I.3.2. Potest videri essentia sine personis: et una persona sine alia. annotated I.3.3. Voluntas potest non frui ostenso obiecto fruibili. annotated I.3.4. Ens denominative dicitur de deo. annotated I.3.5. Quiditates habent ab aeterno suum esse formale a se non ab |extrinseco. annotated I.3.6. Nulla diffinitio adaequat diffinitum. annotated I.3.7. Pluralitas formalitatum stat cum idemptitate reali. annotated I.3.8. Esse non est de quiditate dei: Sed dicitur de eo in secundo modo.

conclusiones secundum ioha|nem scotum numero .xxii. annotated I.4.1. Charitas non est distinctus habitus ab habitu gratiae quo me|diante spiritus sanctus animam inhabitat. annotated I.4.2. Idea lapidis non est aliud quam lapis productus a divino intellectu |in esse intelligibili quod est esse secundum quid existens in mente divi|na sicut cognitum in cognoscente. annotated I.4.3. Qui dixerit personas in divinis absolutis proprietatibus di|stingui: catholicae veritati non repugnabit. annotated I.4.4. In Christo fuerunt duo esse. annotated I.4.5. Praxis est operatio alterius potentiae ab intellectu apta nata |conformiter elici rationi rectae ad hoc ut sit recta. annotated I.4.6. Unumquodque individuum est individuum per propriam diffe|rentiam individualem quae dicitur hecheitas. annotated I.4.7. Ens dicitur de deo et creatura univoce in quid. annotated I.4.8. Ens de suis passionibus et ultimis differentiis quiditative non |praedicatur. annotated I.4.9. In Christo non fuit scientia acquisita. annotated I.4.10. In appetitu superiore ponende sunt virtutes. annotated I.4.11. Gratia est subiective in voluntate non in essentia animae. annotated I.4.12. Corpus Christi ex se fuit inpassibile. annotated I.4.13. De potentia dei absoluta possibile est culpam originalem de|leri sine infusione gratiae. annotated I.4.14. Post passionem Christi potuerunt cerimonialia veteris legis |sine peccato observari. annotated I.4.15. Per haec verba precise (Hoc est corpus meum) non expressis |verbis precedentibus. scilicet pridie quam pateretur: non potest conse|crari. annotated I.4.16. Relatio creaturae ad deum est idem realiter fundamento: di|stincta formaliter et ex natura rei. annotated I.4.17. Quaelibet alia relatio a fundamento realiter distinguitur. annotated I.4.18. Aliquid potest movere seipsum de actu virtuali ad actum for|malem. annotated I.4.19. Actus intelligendi ab obiecto et intellectu tanquam duobus agen|tibus partialibus: ut quod causatur. annotated I.4.20. Actus intelligendi nobiliori modo causatur ab intellectu quam ab |obiecto quodcunque sit obiectum: modo non sit beatificum. annotated I.4.21. Substantia non cognoscitur per speciem propriam. annotated I.4.22. Habitus actum producit ut causa partialis effectiva.

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conclusiones secundum henri|cum gandavensem numero .xiii. annotated I.5.1. Datur lumen superius lumine fidei: in quo Theologi vident |veritates theologicae scientiae. annotated I.5.2. Paternitas est principium generandi in patre. annotated I.5.3. Processiones distinguuntur in divinis penes intellectum et vo|luntatem. annotated I.5.4. Ista propositio non est concedenda: essentia est pater filii. annotated I.5.5. Demones et animae peccatrices patiuntur ab igne in quantum |calidus est afflictione eiusdem rationis cum ea qua affliguntur |corpora. annotated I.5.6. Operationes angelorum mensurantur tempore discreto. annotated I.5.7. Angeli intelligunt per habitum scientialem sibi connaturalem. annotated I.5.8. Irascibilis et concupiscibilis ita distinguuntur in appetitu supe|riori sicut in inferiori. annotated I.5.9. Habere aliquiditativam et diffinibilem realitatem commune |est figmentis et non figmentis. annotated I.5.10. Amicitia est virtus. annotated I.5.11. Ratitudo formaliter cuiuslibet creati est respectus. annotated I.5.12. Ad hoc ut sit mutuitas realis relationis requiritur quod fundamen|tum ex sua natura ordinetur ad aliud tanquam ad suam perfe|ctionem. annotated I.5.13. Relatio non distinguitur a fundamento realiter.

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conclusiones secundum egidi|um romanum numero .xi. annotated I.6.1. Potentia generandi in divinis: nec est essentia divina precise |et absolute sumpta: nec relatio vel proprietas: nec constitutum |ex ambobus: nec alterum istorum cum inclusione alterius: Sed |est essentia cum modo relativo. annotated I.6.2. Theologia nec est practica nec speculativa: Sed affectiva. annotated I.6.3. Deus sub ratione glorificatoris est subiectum in Theologia. annotated I.6.4. Pater et filius non solum duo spirantes: Sed etiam duo spira|tores dici possunt. annotated I.6.5. Angeli non fuerunt creati in gratia. annotated I.6.6. Ideo angelus est obstinatus et inpenitens: quia subtracti sunt |ei divini impetus speciales. annotated I.6.7. Superior angelus illuminat inferiorem non quia ei vel obie|ctum presentet luminosum: vel quod in se est unitum illi particu|lariset et dividat: Sed quia inferioris intellectum confortat et for|tificat. annotated I.6.8. Sensus gustus ut gustus est: non solum saporabile: Sed humi|dum percipit annotated I.6.9. Calor si sit etiam separatus ignem generare poterit. annotated I.6.10. Ad hoc quod aliqua scientia alteri non subalternetur sufficit quod fa|ciat reductionem ad per se nota in suo genere abstractionis. annotated I.6.11. Dato vacuo si aliquid in eo moveatur: in instanti movebitur.

Do a close reading of these conclusions ten at a time, and don't give a concluding paragraph. conclusiones secundum aven|roem numero .xli. annotated I.7.1. Possibilis est prophetia in somnis per illustrationem intelle|ctus agentis super animam nostram. annotated I.7.2. Una est anima intellectiva in omnibus hominibus. annotated I.7.3. Foelicitas ultima hominis est cum continuatur intellectus agens |possibili: ut forma: quam continuationem et latini alii quos le|gi et maxime Iohanes de Gandago perverse et erronee intelle|xit: qui non solum in hoc: Sed ferme in omnibus quaesitis Phi|losophiae: doctrinam Avenrois corrupit omnino et depravavit. annotated I.7.4. Possibile est tenendo unitatem intellectus: animam meam ita |particulariter meam ut non sit mihi communis cum omnibus re|manere post mortem. annotated I.7.5. Quodlibet abstractum dependet a primo abstracto in tripli|ci genere causae: formalis: finalis: et efficientis. annotated I.7.6. Impossibile est eandem speciem ex propagatione et ex putrefa|ctione generari. annotated I.7.7. Deus primum mobile non solum ut finis: sed ut verum effici|ens et proprius motor movet. annotated I.7.8. Quilibet motor coeli est anima sui orbis faciens cum eo ma|gis unum substantialiter: quam fiat ex anima bovis et sua materia. Correlarium. Anima coeli prius dat suo orbi esse nobile et per|fectum quam ei det motum. annotated I.7.9. Coelum est corpus simplex: non compositum ex materia et forma. annotated I.7.10. Tres modi per se sunt ad demonstrationem utiles. Primus. Se|cundus et Quartus. annotated I.7.11. In omni demonstratione praeterquam in demonstratione simplici|ter fieri potest circulatio. annotated I.7.12. Gravia et levia movent se per accidens movendo medium per se. annotated I.7.13. Coeli non sunt idem in genere: diversi in specie ut credidit Avi|cenna. annotated I.7.14. Nulla scientia probat suum subiectum esse: nec partem princi|palem sui subiecti. annotated I.7.15. Universalia sunt ex parte rei in potentia tantum actu autem |per operationem animae. annotated I.7.16. Dimensiones interminate sunt coeternae materiae praecedentes |in ea quamlibet formam substantialem. annotated I.7.17. Quaelibet intelligentia praeter primam non intelligit nisi primam. annotated I.7.18. Nulla est via ad probandum simpliciter abstractum esse prae|ter viam aeternitatis motus. annotated I.7.19. Quicquid est in genere: est corruptibile. annotated I.7.20. Subiectum Methaphysicae est ens in eo quod ens. annotated I.7.21. Diffinitiones substantiarum naturalium: materiam non dicunt |nisi consequtive. annotated I.7.22. Demonstratio septimi Physicorum: quod omne quod movetur: |movetur ab alio: est demonstratio signi et nullo modo causae. annotated I.7.23. Nulla potentia activa quae sit mere neutra et indifferens ad age|re vel non agere potest ex se determinari ad alterum agendum. annotated I.7.24. Unum relativorum convenientissime per reliquum definitur. annotated I.7.25. Exemplum Aristotelis in secundo Methaphysicae de nicticora|ce respectu solis: non denotat impossibilitatem: sed difficultatem |alioquin natura aliquid ociose egisset. annotated I.7.26. Propositio necessaria quae ab Aristotele in libro priorum con|tra possibilem et inventam distinguitur: est illa quae est ex termi|nis necessariis. annotated I.7.27. Ad dispositionem termini necessarii: requiritur ut sit termi|nus per se unus. annotated I.7.28. Cum Aristoteles dixit ex maiori necessaria et minore inventa |concludi conclusionem necessariam: intelligendum est de mino|re quae est inventa per se: necessaria per accidens. annotated I.7.29. Sub aequinoctiali non potest esse habitatio naturalis viventibus. annotated I.7.30. In coelo est naturaliter dextrum: et illud non mutatur quamvis |partes orbis mutentur. annotated I.7.31. Qui ponit animam formam complexionalem: negat causam agentem. annotated I.7.32. Unum methaphysicum: dicit privationem divisibilitatis: non |actu: sed aptitudine. annotated I.7.33. Unum methaphysicum est fundamentum unius Arithmetici. annotated I.7.34. Numerus precise ita reperitur in abstractis sicut in materialibus. annotated I.7.35. Essentia uniuscuiusque rei et suum existere: idem sunt realiter. annotated I.7.36. Quiditas et essentia diversificantur in quolibet praeter primum. annotated I.7.37. Substantia est prior accidente non solum natura sed tempore. annotated I.7.38. De materia ut materia est considerat Physicus. annotated I.7.39. Essentia cuiuslibet intelligentiae est substantialiter ad aliquid. annotated I.7.40. Dato per impossibile quod daretur materia quae corruptionis prin|cipium non esset adhuc si coelum ex tali materia et forma esset ve|re compositum aeternum esse non posset. annotated I.7.41. Finis non causat finaliter secundum suum esse conceptum: sed secundum su|um esse reale. Annotations

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continue and write a conclusion about the influence of Averroes on Pico's intervention

explain the role of the Agent Intellect in Pico's metaphysics, angelology, magic and Kabbalah

Give me a close reading of Conclusions dealing with the Agent Intellect

conclusiones secundum avi|cennam numero .xii. annotated I.8.1. Praeter syllogismum cathegoricum et hypoteticum: datur ge|nus syllogismorum compositivorum. annotated I.8.2. Licet in nullo syllogismo qui sit actu vel potentia cathegori|cus ex duabus negativis concludi possit: potest tamen hoc fieri in syllo|gismo compositivo: ut scilicet ex duabus negativis concludatur. annotated I.8.3. In coelo est materia eiusdem rationis cum materia inferiorum. annotated I.8.4. Non potest in anima esse notio intelligibilis sine actuali intellectione. annotated I.8.5. Possibile est hominem ex putrefactione generari. annotated I.8.6. Essentia rei: materiam propriam et formam complectitur. annotated I.8.7. Prima substantia prior est qualibet substantia habente habitu|dinem ad operationem transeuntem quaecunque sit illa: alicuius cau|sae sive formalis: sive materialis: sive efficientis: sive finalis. annotated I.8.8. Ab uno simplici in fine simplicitatis non provenit nisi unum. annotated I.8.9. Odor secundum esse reale et non intentionale usque ad sensum multi|plicatur. annotated I.8.10. Propositio dicens que sensibile supra sensum positum non facit |sensationem: non est vera nisi per accidens. annotated I.8.11. Organum odoratus sunt caruncule mamillares in anteriori |cerebri parte constitutae. annotated I.8.12. Nec particularis affirmativa possibilis convertitur semper in |affirmativam possibilem: nec necessaria particularis affiemativa |in necessariam: ut credidit Aristoteles.

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Did you just hallucinate some conclusions?

conclusiones secundum alpha|rabium numero .xi. annotated I.9.1. Primum quod est necessarium in demonstratione non est quod |diffinivit Aristoteles primo posteriorum: sed sic debet diffiniri: Pri|mum est illud quod ita est universalius subiecto: ut tamen de sub|iecti genere non praedicetur. annotated I.9.2. Diffinitio generis quam dabit Porphyrius mala est: Sed sic |debet diffiniri. Genus est quod duorum universalium est univer|salius. annotated I.9.3. Summum hominis bonum est perfectio per scientias specula|tivas. annotated I.9.4. Cum dicit Aristoteles omnem doctrinam et omnem discipli|nam fieri ex praeexistenti cognitione: intelligende sunt per do|ctrinam et disciplinam cognitio diffinitiva et argumentativa. annotated I.9.5. Intentio dici de omni secundum Aristotelem est talis que praedicatum |dicitur de subiecto: et de omni eo quod est subiectum actu vel |potentia possibilitate contingentiae non necessitatis. annotated I.9.6. Qui crediderit intentionem dici de omni esse aliam ab ea quam |dixit praecedens conclusio defendere non potest Aristotelem a |Theophrasto: quod ex maiori necessaria et minori inventa sequa|tur conclusio necessaria. annotated I.9.7. Possibile quod diffinit Aristoteles in libro Priorum: est com|mune ad possibile et ad inventum: ut contra distinctum necessario. annotated I.9.8. Non potest intelligi accidens etiam in abstracto non intelli|gendo subiectum. annotated I.9.9. Species sunt in medio: medio modo inter esse spirituale et ma teriale. annotated I.9.10. Quelibet species secundum esse spirituale: est formaliter cognitio. annotated I.9.11. Actualis cognitio sensus communis apprehendentis phantas ma ut sensibile: est somnium.

yes but stop at 12 please then give a conclusion

conclusiones secundum isaac |narbonensem numero .iiii. annotated I.10.1. Ponere intellectum agentem non est necessarium. annotated I.10.2. Intentio prima est quiditas rei obiective relucens in intellectu. annotated I.10.3. Motus est sensibile commune a sensu exteriori absque actione |alterius virtutis cognoscibile. annotated I.10.4. Corpora coelestia non largiuntur formaliter inferioribus nisi |caliditatem.

conclusiones secundum abuma|ron babylonium numero .iiii. annotated I.11.1. De nulla re quae in mundo sit actu corruptibilis habet deus so|licitudinem. annotated I.11.2. Intellectus agens nihil aliud est quam deus. annotated I.11.3. Coelum calefacit inferiora per lumen suum super ea cadens. annotated I.11.4. Actus ipsi intellectus intrinsece: res autem intellecte extrinse|ce dicuntur verae vel falsae.

conclusiones secundum moy|sem aegyptium numero .iii. annotated I.12.1. Demonstratio octavi physicorum ab Aristotele ad probandum |primum motorem adducta: aliquid probat speciale primo. annotated I.12.2. Scientia Methaphysicae non est una scientia. annotated I.12.3. Simplicitas primi et omnimoda immaterialitas probari non po|test per causalitatem efficientem motus: sed per finalem tantum.

conclusiones secundum mau|meth tolletinum numero .v. annotated I.13.1. Relatio nullam rem dicit extra animam. annotated I.13.2. Species rerum representative sunt reductive in praedicamen|to in quo sunt res representate. annotated I.13.3. Sensibilia communia proprias species ad sensus multipicant |distinctas a speciebus sensibilium propriorum. annotated I.13.4. Sensus tactus non est unus sensus. annotated I.13.5. de nulla re an existat potest quaerere aliquis artifex specialis.

Close read these and then give a conclusion summarizing all of Pico's conclusions from the Arab philosophers. conclusiones secundum avempa|cem arabem numero .ii. annotated I.14.1. In coelo est materia alterius rationis a materia inferiorum. annotated I.14.2. Lux et color essentialiter non differunt.

conclusiones secundum theo|phrastum numero .iiii. annotated I.15.1. Si coelum inanimatum esset: esset quocunque animato corpore |ignobilius: quod dicere impium est in Philosohia. annotated I.15.2. Quiditas est sola forma. annotated I.15.3. Ita se habet intellectus agens ad producenda intelligibilia in |possibilem intellectum: sicut se habet forma artis ad producen|das formas in materiam artis. annotated I.15.4. Deus movet coelum ut finis.

conclusiones secundum simpli|cium numero .viiii. annotated I.17.1. Cognoscere actum suum non est commune cuilibet sensui ex|teriori: sed humanis sensibus est speciale. annotated I.17.2. Aristoteles in libro de anima non tractat nisi de parte rationali. annotated I.17.3. Cum anima in se perfecte redit: tunc intellectus agens ab intelle |ctu possibili liberatur. annotated I.17.4. Eadem pars rationalis: ut seipsam exiens: dicitur intellectus pos|sibilis: ut vero est talis ut seipsam ut possibilis est possit perficere |dicitur intellectus agens. annotated I.17.5. Eadem pars rationalis ut extra se vadens et procedens perfici|tur speciebus quae in ipsa sunt ut manens est dicitur intellectus |in habitu. annotated I.17.6. Sciri potest ex praecedentibus conclusionibus quare intellectus |agens quandoque arti: quandoque habitui: quandoque lumini assimi|latur. annotated I.17.7. Passio a sensibili facta: in organo solo: sensatio: in anima sola: |recipitur. annotated I.17.8. Sicut lumen colores non facit colores: sed praeexistentes colo|res potentia visibiles: facit actu visibiles: ita intellectus agens non |facit species cum non essent prius: Sed actu praeexistentes speci|es potentia cognoscibiles: facit actu cognoscibiles. annotated I.17.9. Cum dicit Aristoteles non recordari nos post mortem quia |passivus intellectus corrumpitur: per passivum intellectum: pos|sibilem intellectum intelligit.

Do a close reading and translation and then give a conclusion on the Conclusions that Pico took from the Greeks. conclusiones secundum the|mistium numero .v. annotated I.19.1. Intellectus possibiles qui illuminantur tantum plures sunt agen|tes participati illuminantes et illuminati. Plures quoque sunt. agens |illuminans tantum unus. annotated I.19.2. Intellectus agens illuminans tantum credo sit illud apud The|mistium quod est matatron in cabala. annotated I.19.3. Scientia de anima est media inter scientias naturales et divinas. annotated I.19.4. Praeter duas species demonstrationes quia quas ponit Aristo|teles tertia alia ponenda est et est cum una proprietas per coevam |proprietatem demonstratur. annotated I.19.5. Propositio est per se cum vel subiectum diffinit praedicatum |vel praedicatum subiectum vel ambo diffiniuntur per idem tertium.

conclusiones paradoxe numero |xvii. secundum propriam opinio|nem: dicta primum aristotelis et |platonis: deinde aliorum docto|rum conciliantes qui maxime di|scordare videntur. annotated II.1.1. Nullum est quaesitum naturale aut divinum: in quo Aristote |les et Plato sensu et re non conveniant: quamvis verbis dissenti|re videantur. annotated II.1.2. Qui dicunt innascibilitatem esse positivam proprietatem con|stituentem patrem in esse hypostatico incommunicabili: ab opi|nione sancti doctoris a qua multum secundum verba videntur discor|dare nihil discordant. annotated II.1.3. De ponenda sexta notione quae est inspirabilitas non debent di|scordare Thomistae et Scotistae si recte suorum doctorum funda |menta introspiciunt. annotated II.1.4. De subiecto Theologiae fundamentaliter et radicaliter con|cordant Thommas Scotus et Egidius. Quamvis in ramis et ver|borum superficie quilibet eorum a quolibet dissentire plurimum |videatur. annotated II.1.5. De quaestione illa Utrum sit unum esse in Christo: aut plura |esse. Dico Scotum et Thommam non discordare. annotated II.1.6. De distinctione ex natura rei non debent discordare Thomi|stae et Scotistae: si suos doctores fundamentaliter intelligant. annotated II.1.7. De attributorum distinctione non discordant Thommas et |Scotus. annotated II.1.8. In hoc articulo preciso a suis apendiciis. Utrum angelus potu|erit divinam aequalitatem simpliciter appetere non discordat Tho|mas et Scotus. annotated II.1.9. In materia quid prius cognoscatur magis an minus universale |concordant Thommas et Scotus: Qui maxime in ea discorda|re existimantur: de qua pono infrascriptas tres conclusiones ex |utriusque mente. annotated II.1.10. De re nominaliter concepta primus conceptus qui habetur: |est conceptus universalissimus. annotated II.1.11. De re definitive concepta primus conceptus qui habetur est |conceptus universalissimus. annotated II.1.12. In distinctissima cognitione ultimo nota nobis sunt praedica|ta maxime universalia. annotated II.1.13. Opinio Commentatoris de dimensionibus interminatis: prin|cipiis et fundamentis doctrinae Sancti Thomae nihil repugnat. annotated II.1.14. In materia de obiecto intellectus non discordat ut creditur: |Sed concordat Thommas et Scotus. annotated II.1.15. In quaestione de contingentia ad utrumlibet in materia de ca|su et fortuna: re et fundamentaliter non discordant Avenrois et |Avicenna licet superficie tenus et in verbis eorum oppositum ap|pareat. annotated II.1.16. An corpus compositum accipiat Physicus a Methaphysico: di|scordare fundamentaliter non possunt Avenrois et Avicenna |et si verbis discrepent. annotated II.1.17. De modo quo angeli sint in loco non differunt Thommas |et Scotus.

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give me just a conclusion of the conclusiones paradoxe

give me just a translation of the conclusiones paradoxe

translate and close read conclusiones philosophice secun|dum propriam opinionem numero |lxxx. que licet a communi philo|sophia dissentiant: a communi ta|men philosophandi modo non mul|tum abhorrent. annotated II.2.1. Potest a specie in sensu exteriori existente immediate abstra|hi species universalis. annotated II.2.2. Intentio secunda est ens rationis habens se per modum formae |qualitative ab operatione intellectus proveniens consequutive |non effective. annotated II.2.3. Nec prima intentio: nec secunda intentio alicubi sunt subie|ctive. annotated II.2.4. Est devenire in corporibus ad aliquid quod ita corporaliter lo|cat quod corporaliter non locatur: et illud est ultima sphera sicut in |intelligibilibus est devenire ad aliquid quod ita intelligibiliter |locat: quod nullo modo locatur: et illud est deus. Correlarium. Non est quaerendum quomodo ultima sphera |locatur: Sed absolute concedendum quod non locatur. annotated II.2.5. Singulare non intelligitur ab intellectu: nec secundum veritatem: nec |secundum etiam opinionem Aristotelis Commentatoris et Thommae. annotated II.2.6. Licet intellectus non intelligat singulariter: ab ipso tamen est |quod perfecte cognoscatur singulare. annotated II.2.7. Quaelibet res quaecunque sit illa in puritate sui esse constituta est |intelligens: intellectus: et intellectum. annotated II.2.8. Ex praedicta conclusione habetur quare materia sit principium |incognoscibilitatis et intellectus agens cognoscibilitatis: annotated II.2.9. Illa dicitur actio immanens quae non est subiective in illo quod |passive per eam denominatur: et per hoc distinguitur a transe|unte. annotated II.2.10. Omnis alius modus praeter eum quem dixit praecedens conclusio est |insufficiens ad distinguendum actionem immanentem a transe- |unte. annotated II.2.11. Cum dicit Avenrois non esse aliud medium ad probandum |abstractum praeter aeternitatem motus: non intelligit de quocunque |abstracto: Sed de eo quod ultimato gradu abstractionis est ab|stractum a corpore. annotated II.2.12. Esse corporeum non habet res ab aliqua forma substantiali |vel gradu formae substantialis. annotated II.2.13. Sex transcendentia quae ponit communis doctrina: a iuniori|bus latinis sunt efficta: ea et graeci peripatetici: et princeps eorum |Aristoteles nescit. annotated II.2.14. Necessarium est apud Aristotelem primam causam movere de |necessitate. annotated II.2.15. Impossibile est: et omnino irrationale apud Aristotelem om|nia evenire de necessitate respectu cuiuscunque causae illa necessi|tas accipiatur. annotated II.2.16. Tractatus suppositionum ad logicum non pertinet. annotated II.2.17. Non potuit mundus esse a deo ab aeterno efficienter efficien|tia vera quae est reductio de potentia ad actum. annotated II.2.18. Potuit produci et fuit de facto secundum Aristotelem et Commenta|torem productus ab aeterno mundus a deo efficientia quae est na|turalis fluxus et effectualis consequtio. annotated II.2.19. Qui negat coelum esse animatum: ita ut motor eius non sit |forma eius non solum Aristoteli repugnat: Sed totius Philoso|phiae fundamenta destruit. annotated II.2.20. In actibus nostri intellectus non est successio ratione potentia|rum sensitivarum et deservientium ut credunt moderni: Sed eo |quia rationalis est. annotated II.2.21. Notitia de novo acquisita fit ex praecedenti cognitione tanquam |ex termino a quo: et tanquam ex causa effectiva partiali: formali: di|rectiva: et tanquam ex causa praedisponente materiali. annotated II.2.22. Ille habitus est practicus qui est formaliter regulativus alicu|ius operationis habituati. annotated II.2.23. Habitus habet esse practicum et speculativum ab obiecto rela|to ad subiectum in quo est: Intellectus autem dicitur practicus vel |speculativus a fine quem sibi proponit habituatus. annotated II.2.¶24. Habitus practicus a speculativo finibus distinguitur. annotated II.2.25. Praxis est operatio quae non est formaliter cognitio: et potest |esse recta: et non recta: rectificabilis per habitum ut per partiale |rectificationis effectivum quo practicans habituatur. annotated II.2.26. Practicum et speculativum sunt differentie accidentalis habitus. annotated II.2.27. Theologia viatoris ut viatoris est: simpliciter practica dicen|da est. annotated II.2.28. Totam medicinam practicam esse: et ut verum asserimus: et ut |consonum dictis ac sententiae Avenrois. annotated II.2.29. Logica est practica. annotated II.2.30. Sensus communis non est distinctus a sensu visus: auditus: odo|ratus: gustus: et tactus. annotated II.2.31. Non dari species intelligibiles a phantasmatibus abstractas et |ut veram: et commentatoris et Alberti sententiam asserimus. annotated II.2.32. In omni quaestione per demonstrationem scibili oportet prae|cognoscere quid subiecti et passionis: non intelligendo per quid |quid nominis ut intelligunt expositores: Sed quid rei. annotated II.2.33. Possibilis est regressus a causa ad effectum absque negatione quam |somniat Burleus. annotated II.2.34. Tenentes minima naturalia in qualitatibus: non propterea ha|bent negare motum alterationis fieri in tempore successive. annotated II.2.35. Necessarium est tenere secundum Avenroem quod forma generis sit rea|liter alia a forma speciei nec oppositum stat cum principiis do|ctrinae suae. annotated II.2.36. Demonstratio Aristotelis in .vii. Physicorum quod omne quod |movetur: movetur ab alio nihil probat eorum quae vel Thom|mas: vel Scotus: vel Egidius quem sequitur Iohanes de Ganda|vo: vel Gratiadeus: vel Burleus: vel alii quos ego legerim inten|dunt: Sed tantum: quod optime dixit Commentator a latinis |omnibus expositoribus male intellectus: et est quod in quolibet mo|to motor est alius a mobili vel secundum naturam vel secundum subiectum. annotated II.2.37. Demonstratio .vii. Physicorum probat evidenter quod coelum non |movetur a se: datis principiis Avenrois veris utique et firmissimis. annotated II.2.38. Ordo librorum naturalis philosophiae ab Aristotele est iste. Li|ber Physicorum: coeli et mundi: de generatione: metheororum: |mineralium: de plantis: de generatione animalium: de partibus |animalium: de progressu animalium: de anima: tum libri qui di|cuntur parvi naturales. Correlarium. Qui librum de anima sextum naturalium vo|cant: ab Aristotelis mente omnino discordant. annotated II.2.39. Omnis via salvans dictum Aristotelis quod venti orientalis sint |calidiores occidentalibus: praeter viam animationis coeli est fri|vola et nulla. annotated II.2.40. Nec ab Aristotele nec ab expositoribus adducte rationes de |salsedine maris sunt sufficientes: nec potest ulla maxime stante |mosaica veritate sufficientior assignari quam causalitas eiusdem uni|versalis providentiae quae et in terra discooperitionem operata est. annotated II.2.41. Nulla pars coeli differt ab alia secundum lucidum et non lucidum: sed |secundum magis et minus lucidum. annotated II.2.42. Modus ab Aristotele datus quomodo calefiant inferiora a su|perioribus nullo modo rectus apparet. annotated II.2.43. Haec duo stant simul et ambo credo simul esse vera: et quod ratio |Avenrois in commento ultimo primi Physicorum contra Avi|cennam concludat et quod cum hoc rationes Avicennae ad proban|dum primum principium sunt bonae et efficaces. annotated II.2.44. Si intelligentias esse in genere secundum Aristotelem dixerit Thom|mas: non minus sibi quam Aristoteli repugnabit. annotated II.2.45. Si unitas generis non est solum ex parte concipientis: Sed eti|am ex parte concepti: necesse est quaecunque sunt in eodem gene|re logico: esse in eodem genere Physico. annotated II.2.46. Scientia est realiter relativa: et scibile ad eam per accidens re|fertur. annotated II.2.47. Tenendo communem modum doctorum: quod scilicet de deo ali|quid formaliter praedicetur: dico duas conclusiones proximas: |quarum haec est prima quod solus deus ita est substantia quod nullo mo|do est non substantia. annotated II.2.48. Secunda: Deus ideo non est in genere quia est substantialiter |substantia. annotated II.2.49. Ponere differentiam inter simitatem et albedinem aut consi|milia accidentia per hoc quod illud separabile sit: illud inseparabile |a certo subiecto fictitium est. annotated II.2.50. Differentia quae inter suprascripta accidentia apparet ex sola |voluntate nominum impositione originatur. annotated II.2.51. Necessarium est dicere secundum Avenroem quod substantia est de in|trinseca quiditate accidentis: et est opinio et Aristoteli et philo|sophiae maxime consona. annotated II.2.52. In definitione substantiarum naturalium non esse ponendam |materiam et Avenroi et Alberto consentanea sententia est. annotated II.2.53. Si Thommas dixerit in intelligentiis secundum Aristotelem esse acci|dentia: non Aristoteli modo: Sed sibiipsi contradicet. annotated II.2.54. Iste propositiones sunt concedende ut omnino vere. Materia |prima fit asinus: bos: et similia. annotated II.2.55. In composito materiali non sunt duae precisae entitates et distin|ctae: Sed una entitas. annotated II.2.56. Sonum non ex motu aeris intercepti inter duo corpora se per|cutientia: ut tenet Aristoteles: et expositores eius: Sed ex contactu |tali talium vel talium corporum: talem vel talem sonum causari dico. annotated II.2.57. Rationes quas adducunt peripatetici ad probandum quod in cau|sis essentialiter ordinatis non eatur in infinitum: non convincunt |de necessitate falsitatem positi. annotated II.2.58. Virtutem sensitivam sensus communis sicuti non a virtutibus |sensitivis sensuum exteriorum ut dixit conclusio .xxx. ita nec a |virtutibus sensitivis sensuum interiorum: phantastica: sive ima|ginativa: cogitativa et memorativa: subiecto id est re differre: et ut |veram: et ut Aristotelis Platonisque sententiam asserimus. annotated II.2.59. Dico omnes qualitates elementorum symbolas: esse diversa|rum specierum. annotated II.2.60. Si qua est ponenda figura quarta syllogismorum: illa est ponenda |quam Galienus ponit: non quam et Franciscus Maironis et Petrus |Mantuanus pueriliter confinxerunt: rectius est tamen nullam ponere. annotated II.2.61. De materia ut ex ea per se fiunt res tractare methaphysicum: |physicum autem ut ex ea res fiunt per accidens habemus dicere |secundum doctrinam Aristotelis. annotated II.2.62. Dictio exclusiva addita uni relativo: correlativum non excludit. annotated II.2.63. Non debet concedi partem in toto quantitativo a suo toto esse |aliquo modo actu distinctam. annotated II.2.64. Opinio quae Avicennae ascribitur quod illud unum: quod cum en|te convertitur sit unum quod est principium numeri: et ita conse|quenter quod unaquaeque res sit una per intentionem additam essen|tiae suae si non est necessario vera: est tamen probabilis et defen|detur a me. annotated II.2.65. Licet potentia intellectiva in nobis sit accidens: in angelis ta|men est substantia. annotated II.2.66. Formalitas est actualitas apta per se perficere possibilem intel|lectum. annotated II.2.67. Si ex concursu elementorum fiat mixtum: quocunque modo po|nantur elementa manere immixto fiet mixtum ex elementis: ut |ex materia digesta a calido spirituali: vaporoso elevato ab eis. annotated II.2.68. In omnibus infra deum eadem est materia secundum essentiam: diver|sa secundum esse. annotated II.2.69. Quiditates physicarum naturarum adequato concepto et pro|prio concipi possunt sine accidentibus: sive a methaphysico sive |a physico considerentur. annotated II.2.70. Corpus organicum quod est materia animae: et ponitur in dif|finitione eius ab Aristotele est corpus et organicum per formam |essentialiter distinctam ab anima eum perficiente. annotated II.2.71. Secundum omnes philosophos dicendum est deum necessario |agere quicquid agit. annotated II.2.72. Qui dubitat ex intelligibili et intellectu magis vere et substan|tialiter fieri unum quam ex materia et forma materiali non est philo|sophus. annotated II.2.73. Tenendo opinionem de anima intellectiva quam tenet Com|mentator: videtur mihi rationabiliter tenendum illam animam nul|lius accidentis esse subiectum: et positionem hanc tanquam veram de|fendam: quanquam utrum hoc ille tenuerit: ego non definio. annotated II.2.74. Dico secundum Thommam dicendum esse in actu reflexo intellectus |consistere beatitudinem nostram. annotated II.2.75. Diffinitio naturae coelestia comprehendit et ly et copulative |tenetur et non disiunctive. annotated II.2.76. Sicut quilibet philosophus habet dicere quod virtutes sensitive |sunt in corde: ita quilibet medicus habet dicere: quod sint in cerebro. annotated II.2.77. Quod dicitur a communi scola philosophantium omnium la|tinorum de prima operatione intellectus: error est: quia non est |alia operatio partis rationalis quam ille duae quas ipsi secundam et |tertiam ponunt Compositio scilicet et Discursus. annotated II.2.78. Accidentia nullo modo debent dici entia: Sed entis. annotated II.2.79. Sex principia sunt formae absolutae. annotated II.2.80. Siqua est lingua prima et non casualis: illam esse Hebraicam |multis patet coniecturis.

give a close reading of the 80 conclusions you just translated

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Write me an essay on Pico's encounter with Averroes as it impacts his intervention on the Christian Platonist tradition.

Use this Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article to improve your essay on Pico and Averroes. Discuss the disagreement with Ficino, and the influence of Dionysius on Aquinas's angelology as it impacts Pico's metaphysical speculations. Ibn Rushd [Averroes] First published Wed Jun 23, 2021 The Andalusian philosopher, physician and judge Ibn Rushd (1126–1198) is one of the great figures of philosophy within the Muslim contexts, and a foundational source for post-classical European thought. The hallmarks of Ibn Rushd’s work are his convictions that philosophy is capable of demonstrative certainty in many domains, that it is Aristotle who should be our preeminent guide in philosophy, and that philosophy should play a central role within religious inquiry, rather than being an alternative to religion. But part of what gives his ideas their enduring interest is the subtle way in which he promotes other methods of reasoning and persuasion in contexts where the rigors of Aristotelian demonstration are not a practical option. To grasp Ibn Rushd’s thought in full requires attending not only to the Aristotelian commentaries where he attempts to develop philosophy as a demonstrative science, but also to areas like religion, medicine, and law, where constraints of both subject-matter and audience require other argumentative and rhetorical techniques. Often improperly referred to as Averroes—the corrupted form his name took in Latin—Ibn Rushd quickly achieved such prominence in later European thought as to rival the influence of Aristotle himself, whose works Ibn Rushd tirelessly championed. Most modern scholarship orients itself around his reception in Christian Europe, where he was known simply as “the Commentator,” and so fails to appreciate Ibn Rushd’s own distinctive philosophical achievements. 1. Life and Works 1.1 Life 1.2 Works 2. Logic and Methodology 3. Metaphysics 4. Natural Philosophy 5. Psychology 6. Religion 6.1 God 6.2 Law 7. Medicine 8. Ethics and Politics 9. Reception 9.1 Arabic 9.2 Hebrew 9.3 Latin Bibliography A. Works of Ibn Rushd B. Other Works Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries 1. Life and Works 1.1 Life Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd was born in Cordova in 1126. He belonged to an influential Andalusian family, famous for its judicial power and for its scholarship in the religious sciences. His father was a prominent judge, but the most important figure in the family was his grandfather, who also bears his name, Ibn Rushd, and so the philosopher is called “the grandson” (al-ḥafīd) to distinguish him from his grandfather (al-jadd). The latter was both a well-known judge and a famed jurist, being the author of many books in jurisprudence following the Mālikī school. Unlike Ibn Sīnā and al-Ghazālī, Ibn Rushd did not write an autobiography, and as a result many aspects of his life are obscure and will remain so unless new documents are discovered. The limited information we have from his biographers unanimously agrees on his good conduct, his diligence in science, and his fairness as a judge, while noting his interests in philosophy and his adoption of certain “audacious” views. The surviving historical sources tell us much about his teachers in the religious sciences, but, with the exception of medicine, we know little about those who taught him in other fields. He was certainly not a disciple of either of his famous Andalusian contemporaries, Ibn Bājja or Ibn Tufayl, although he read their philosophical works. (Puig 1992 and Ben Sharīfa 1999 discuss the intellectual circles around Ibn Rushd.) Ibn Rushd was 22 when the Almohads came to power in the western Maghreb and Andalusia. Given that the Ibn Rushds had been prominent in circles close to the previous Almoravid dynasty, it was imperative for the grandson to express in his writings, and perhaps even in person, his commitment to the new rulers and the Almohad creed (daʿwa) conceptualized by Muḥammad Ibn Tūmart (d. 1130). Some surviving testimonies suggest that Ibn Rushd did in fact adopt Ibn Tūmart’s creed at some point in his life (see Ben Sharīfa 1999). Given the social position of his family, Ibn Rushd soon found himself in the ruling circles of Marrakesh and close to the princes, or at least some of them, in Andalusia. He engaged in debates on philosophical and theological issues with this inner circle, and there is a record of a meeting with Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf (r. 1163–84), the second Almohad ruler, who officially asked Ibn Rushd to comment on Aristotle’s works and render them accessible. Later he became chief physician to the caliph in Marrakesh. Nevertheless, Ibn Rushd’s relationship with the Almohad creed was complex and seems to have evolved (Geoffroy 1999; Ben Ahmed 2020c). Recently discovered revisions to his al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla contain paragraphs where Ibn Rushd shows a sort of critical distance towards Ibn Tumart’s creed. These paragraphs, when added to his harsh criticism of the Almohads in his commentary on Plato’s Republic, may help us understand the evolution he underwent during his intellectual life. They may shed light in particular on the disgrace he suffered at the end of his career, when, for reasons that remain unclear, he fell out of favor with the Almohads and was exiled in Lucena, 60 km southeast of Cordova. According to one account, his death took place while he was confined to a residence in Marrakesh in 1198. (The definitive biography, in Arabic, is Ben Sharīfa 1999. For more on the historical context see Urvoy 1998 and Ben Ahmed 2020c.) 1.2 Works Ibn Rushd remained productive for at least four decades. He was the author of a large corpus that extends over medicine, logic and philosophy in all its branches, including natural philosophy, astronomy, metaphysics, psychology, politics, and ethics. His work also includes the sciences of Islamic religion: jurisprudence (fiqh), the foundations of Islamic law (usūl al-fiqh), the foundations of religion (usūl al-dīn), and the science of the Arabic language, including grammar. With important exceptions, most of his works are available in the original Arabic. For those works that have been lost, while readers await the day of their rediscovery, they must generally make do with medieval translations in Hebrew or Latin. Ibn Rushd’s work deploys various methods and styles. Many treatises are in the form of a commentary, most famously and extensively on Aristotle—covering nearly the whole Aristotelian corpus—but also on Galen’s medical treatises, as well as on other philosophers such as Plato, Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Bājja. Many other treatises, devoted to specific issues, are not in commentary form. (For a detailed inventory of texts and translations see §10.1.) The focus of his commentaries was Aristotle because no one has yet surpassed his achievement: “no one who has come after him to this our time—and this is close to 1500 years later—has been able to add a word worthy of attention to what he said” (LongPhys proem; Harvey 1985, 83). Scholarship going back to the nineteenth-century has divided the commentaries into three kinds: the epitome or short commentary (jawāmiʿ), which he favored at the start of his career; the paraphrase or middle commentary (talkhīṣ), seemingly composed throughout his career; the literal or long commentary (sharḥ or tafsīr), dating to his later years. Inasmuch as Ibn Rushd routinely wrote different kinds of commentaries on the same Aristotelian treatise, some such distinction seems necessary. But recent scholarship has doubted whether this neat threefold distinction adequately captures Ibn Rushd’s complexly varied approach (Al-ʿAlawī 1986a; Druart 1994; Gutas 1993). At a minimum, it omits important categories of work, such as compendia (mukhtaṣarat), treatises (maqālāt), and answers to questions (masāʾil), to say nothing of the important treatises that focus on religious questions. The most prominent of those independent religious treatises are The Decisive Treatise (Faṣl al-Maqāl), an argument for the value of philosophy to Islam; The Incoherence of the Incoherence (Tahāfut al-Tahāfut), a direct response to al-Ghazālī, whose work had achieved considerable influence at the time in Andalusia (Di Giovanni 2019); The Exposition of the Methods of Proof concerning Religious Doctrines (al-Kashf ʿan manāhij al-adilla fī ʿaqāʾid al-milla), a philosophically nuanced alternative to the teachings of Ashʿarite theology. These works, which seem to have had little influence on medieval Christian thought, have traditionally been seen as “theological” and contrasted with his supposedly “philosophical” works: the commentaries on Aristotle that circulated throughout medieval and Renaissance Europe in Latin and Hebrew translation. The latter were thought to be demonstrative, and aimed at the elites, whereas the former were said to be merely dialectical, and so aimed at a popular audience. Accordingly Ibn Rushd’s true position supposedly had to be sought in these Aristotelian commentaries. This distinction has affected the direction of scholarship, causing great attention to be given to the “philosophical” works, which were thought to represent most truly his thought, and leaving the “theological” treatises to be comparatively neglected. Even where the latter are widely taught, they are set apart from his supposedly more philosophical commentaries. The result, ever since the initial research of Renan (1852), has been a segmented and fragmentary view of the Rushdian corpus that marginalizes important aspects of his thought. An important correction to this tendency appears in Jamal Al-Dīn Al-ʿAlawī (1986a), who defends the unity and coherence of the Rushdian corpus. He proposes that Ibn Rushd’s works form a unity where there is no room to distinguish between what is a commentary on another text and what is an ostensibly original work. With this, Al-ʿAlawī attempted to close a gap in a body of work that should rightly be seen as continuous, and to reconnect texts that have been disassociated from their contexts. 2. Logic and Methodology The general character of Ibn Rushd’s philosophy is illuminated by his overarching picture of logic. Most broadly, he understands it as the study of the conditions and rules that rightly guide the mind toward the conception (taṣawwur) of essences and the assent (taṣdīq) to propositions (CompLogic 1.1). Glossing Aristotle’s famous remark that “it is the mark of the educated person” to seek the appropriate level of precision in any inquiry, Ibn Rushd clarifies that the educated person is “one who has been instructed in the art of logic” (ParaEthics I.3, 3C). In keeping with the weight he accords the subject, Ibn Rushd commented several times on each work in Aristotle’s logical Organon. Near the start of his career, he wrote a Compendium of Logic that includes Porphyry’s Isagoge and follows the usual Arabic practice of including the Rhetoric and Poetics as part of an expanded Organon (Black 1990). Later, he wrote a series of longer paraphrases of this same corpus (but treated the Isagoge separately, on the grounds that it is neither an introduction to nor even a part of logic). Toward the end of his life, he devoted one of his five long commentaries to the Posterior Analytics. In line with the approach of his predecessors, Ibn Rushd divided logical processes into five types of argument: demonstrative, dialectical, rhetorical, poetical, and fallacious. These inferences are not distinguished by their forms, which are the same, but by their matter, that is, by their premises. The premises of demonstrative arguments are necessary (Thom 2019), the premises of dialectical arguments are generally accepted, the premises of rhetoric are generally received, the premises of poetic arguments are imaginative, and the premises of sophistical arguments are deceiving. For Ibn Rushd, the center of logic and its very purpose is demonstration, for it is the only procedure that leads to certainty in philosophy: it is “the most perfect kind of reflection (naẓar), using the most perfect kind of inference (qiyās)” (Decisive Treatise 3). Accordingly, even in the context of Plato’s Republic, he begins his commentary by announcing that his goal is “to abstract such scientific arguments attributable to Plato as are contained in the Republic by removing from it its dialectical arguments.” However, this does not mean that non-demonstrative arguments are useless. Generally, where one kind of argument is not effective, other kinds of arguments should be used. Dialectic offers a path toward demonstration and to science, which, although it does not obtain certainty, is close to it. Rhetoric contributes, through its paradigms and enthymemes, to reinforcing and promoting demonstrative evidence. The study of sophistical reasoning is useful in assessing the faulty argumentative methods of the theologians (the mutakallimūn, that is, practitioners of kalām). In light of the high status of demonstration, Ibn Rushd considered it with great care in his commentaries. He devoted a compendium, a paraphrase and a long commentary to the Posterior Analytics—which he calls the Book of Demonstration (Kitāb al-Burhān)—and wrote separate treatises on various special issues. The long commentary is probably the most appropriate text for his positions on the components of demonstration, its types, and its role in producing scientific knowledge. That commentary is also the occasion for a critical and severe interaction with the two Islamic authorities in logic before him, al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā. The purpose of examining demonstrative arguments is to understand the absolute demonstration that gives complete certainty and constitutes a science (LongPostAn I.7 {180}). There are, however, other kinds of demonstration, less certain than the absolute one, but still demonstrative. In all, Ibn Rushd distinguishes three types (LongPostAn I.95 {348}): an absolute demonstration (burhān muṭlaq), which establishes the existence of a thing on the basis of a cause that is known prior to its effect; a demonstration of existence (burhān al-wujūd), which he calls a sign (dalīl), which establishes a thing’s existence without any grasp of its cause (see Elamrani-Jamal 2000); a demonstration of the cause (burhān al-ʿilla or burhān al-sabab), which establishes the cause once the effect’s existence is known. (Al-ʿAlawī 1986b) In mathematics, it is generally possible to frame absolute demonstrations, because the premises both supply the cause and are better known than their conclusions. In the natural sciences, however, and even in metaphysics, this ideal situation is generally not achievable. Here we begin with the accidental sensible features of things, and so extensive use must be made of the demonstration of existence (EpiPhys 1.105 {9}; Sylla 1979; Cerami 2014). Ibn Sīnā, whose views are often the target of Ibn Rushd’s logic, had denied that these count as a demonstration at all, on the grounds that they establish no substantial connection between the posterior cause and the prior effect. Ibn Rushd rejects this view (LongPostAn I.95 {349}), but admits that the demonstration of existence is less reliable than the other demonstrations. Certainty comes in degrees, and the differentiation in certainty between these demonstrations is one of the reasons why some sciences are superior to others (ParaPostAn §88–9). Ibn Rushd’s enthusiasm for demonstration does not prevent him from valuing other logical arts, and he was particularly concerned with the place of dialectic. Broadly speaking, according to Aristotle, dialectic has three main uses: as intellectual training, as a path into the demonstrative sciences of philosophy, and as a means of conversing with ordinary people (Topics I.2). But Ibn Rushd devotes less space and shows less interest in this third feature of dialectic, and one wonders whether this is due to his critical reaction to the discursive practices of the mutakallimūn. Despite the many considerations that make dialectic more suitable when dealing with ordinary people, Ibn Rushd suggests that rhetorical and poetic statements are preferable (ParaTop I.5C {31}; Ben Ahmed 2010-2011, 299–302, 307–17). Hence their inclusion in the expanded Organon. The significance of rhetoric and poetics is a result he establishes in political science, but maintains even when it comes to teaching and anchoring theological truths. The bad example set by the dialectical syllogisms of the mutakallimūn shows how dialectical methods, in discussion with ordinary people, are actually disadvantageous. Under the influence of al-Fārābī, Ibn Rushd puts emphasis on the need to introduce dialectic as a method (ṭarīq), a set of rules, techniques, and warnings (Ben Ahmed 2020a, 262–7). This conception of dialectic makes it distinct from both demonstration and sophistical reasoning, as well as from ordinary conversations. When used well, dialectic is a communal enterprise and so again different from other arts, such as demonstration, where there is no need for more than one party. A successful “partnership” in dialectic is one where each party does their best to commit themselves to the rules. From this perspective, it becomes evident that the questioner is not simply an adversary seeking to defeat his opponent, but rather a partner and a collaborator with the respondent in the search for knowledge. Any debate that is motivated by the pursuit of victory or by deriving pleasure from defeating one’s opponent is a debate that cannot fall under the method of dialectic. He writes, “the communal enterprise (al-ʿamal al-mushtarak) can be achieved in its utmost perfection only by both partners. They can have something in common when their aim is the assessment and the deduction of the truth, or the realization of their training. Thus, the respondent should perfect his response if he intends that aim, because the basest of the partners is the one who aims at the obstruction of the communal enterprise. But if their aim is to struggle against and defeat the other, then they will have nothing in common…. This is not the method of dialectic” (ParaTop 8.132D {233}; Ben Ahmed 2020a, 267) At the far reaches of the logical arts, the connection to the genuine syllogism becomes remote. So, even while Ibn Rushd recognizes that poetics is a syllogistic art, he says that it lacks the power of a real syllogism and is thus unproductive (CompLogic 12.3). In his paraphrase of the Poetics, he avoids using the term “poetic syllogism” altogether. In the realm of jurisprudence, Ibn Rushd is famous for his position on the logical and epistemological value of juridical inferences, which in his view produce nothing more than opinion (ẓann). Even when confronted with the surprising insertion of the word for jurisprudence (fiqh) into the Arabic translation of the Prior Analytics 68b10, Ibn Rushd chooses totally to ignore it. In his juridical writings, he openly denies the accuracy of the term ‘syllogism’ (qiyās) for what jurists had become accustomed to calling their juridical inferences (al-maqāyīs al-fiqhiyya or qiyās sharʿī). When jurists speak of qiyās, it is important to recognize that the term bears quite a different meaning (Abridgement 299 {130–1}; Bou Akl 2019). In particular, contrary to what happens in the syllogism, the qiyās of the jurists does not have the power to deduce the unknown from the known. And even in those cases where Ibn Rushd seems to accept juridical inference, he does not make use of logical vocabulary, but instead deploys the terms used by most of the jurists before him. Rather than engage in a “syllogistification” of the juridical inference, he focuses on the semantic and linguistic origins of juridical rules. For Ibn Rushd, every science has its own characteristics; therefore, anyone who tried to study logic while studying jurisprudence would fail at studying both (Abridgement 123 {37–38}). 3. Metaphysics The divisions between metaphysics, natural philosophy, psychology, and theology are permeable for Ibn Rushd, and the systematic character of his thought makes it difficult to treat any part in isolation. (See the start of EpiMeta for his division of the sciences.) Here our method of proceeding is to begin with the most general principles of being, and then to turn, in the next section, to their causal relationships. Of the various kinds of being, substances are what exist in the most proper sense (EpiMeta 4.138 {125}). Among substances, the most familiar are concrete individuals like dogs and stones (EpiMeta 2.58 {43}). But these are composite entities, and since the principles of a substance are themselves even more properly considered to be substances (EpiMeta 1.31 {15–16}; LongAnima II.8), the most fundamental substances in the sensible realm are the metaphysical ingredients of composite substances, matter and form (LongMeta VII.44 {960}). Underlying all change, and enduring through it, is homogeneous matter, defined simply by its potentiality—that is, its potential to serve as subject for any earthly form (SubstOrb 1.50). Conceived of without form, it is perpetually enduring and numerically one everywhere: “all transient bodies share this body that is numerically one” (SubstOrb 2.87), because it is “deprived of the divisions of individual forms” (LongMeta XII.14 {1473}). Ibn Rushd worries in predictable ways about the reality of this so-called prime matter (mādda ʾūlā). On the one hand, he consistently counts it as a substance (e.g., ParaAnima 2.115). On the other hand, matter so-conceived is a “pure privation” and “does not exist outside of the soul” (LongMeta XII.14 {1473–4}). He offers the less-than-perspicuous compromise formula that prime matter lies “halfway, as it were, between absolute non-being and actual being” (quasi medium inter non-esse simpliciter et esse in actu) (LongPhys I.70; ParaPhys I.3.3.276). Matter exists only when actualized by form, but the first form it receives is not the nature of the composite substance (dog, stone, etc.) but instead the “indeterminate dimensions” (al-abʿād ghayr al-maḥdūdat) that give matter its corporeal character: “the three dimensions that constitute the nature of body are the first state in matter, and matter cannot be devoid of them in any instance of generation: not that they exist in matter in actuality, but rather in some kind of potentiality different from the potentiality in which matter is constituted” (ParaGC I.4.26 {32}; SubstOrb 1.55). In postulating a persisting extended substratum beneath all physical change, Ibn Rushd has been said to take a step toward the res extensa of seventeenth-century mechanical philosophy (Hyman 1965). But his conception of matter, far from making further forms unnecessary, explains how multiple forms can be instantiated in the same material stuff: “the presence of dimension in prime matter is a prerequisite for the existence of contraries” (EpiMeta 3.126 {112}). Since forms, by their nature, are always individuals—universals, Ibn Rushd insists, do not exist outside the soul (EpiMeta 2.73–5 {57–9})—the theory does not require a “principle of individuation” for form. Extended matter does, however, serve as what might be called a principle of multiplication. If the material realm were not extended, “there would exist in it only one form at a given time” (SubstOrb 1.60; Di Giovanni 2007). Alongside matter, the other internal principle of composite substances is form, and so form too counts as a substance (LongAnima II.2), and indeed is substance in the most proper sense of the term (Amerini 2008; Di Giovanni 2012). Substantial forms can be distinguished from accidents in that a subject (a dog, a stone) endures through the gain and loss of its accidents, whereas when the substantial form of the subject departs, the subject ceases to exist or exists only homonymously (ParaAnima 2.120)—as one might speak of cremating one’s grandfather. Interpreters have disagreed on whether Ibn Rushd allows a single substance to have multiple substantial forms. But at least sometimes he seems to suppose that one substance has just one form, as when he holds that “if prime matter were to have its own form, it would receive no other form, while enduring, but would immediately be corrupted as soon as that other form were generated” (LongPhys I.69; see SubstOrb 1.50). If elsewhere he seems to suggest that any necessary feature of a thing will count as a substantial form of it, this may mean merely that a substantial form is a composite of multiple discrete, incomplete constituents (Di Giovanni 2011; Cerami 2015, 521–4). Ibn Rushd is clear, at any rate, that the essence (dhāt) or quiddity (māhiyya) of a thing is accounted for entirely by its form, rather than by its form and matter (LongMeta VII.34 {896}). Thus, “form is the primary substance only because it is the cause of the determinate substance and the determinate substances come to be substance only by it” (LongMeta VII.5 {761k}). Accidents, which can come and go from a substance, are inseparable from that substance, and are caused by it (EpiMeta 2.56 {42}; LongMeta XII.25 {1532–3}), but are not themselves a part of the substance (LongAnima II.4; Tahāfut I.6.216 {359}). They do not have existence in an absolute sense, but only relationally (LongMeta XII.3 {1415}; EpiMeta 1.28 {12}), and indeed Ibn Rushd generally does not refer to them as a form (ṣūra), preferring to reserve that term for the substantial form. The earthly realm we have been describing is just one small and relatively insignificant part of what there is. Much more exalted, and a much worthier subject of intellectual contemplation, is the eternal heavenly domain. Here Ibn Rushd broadly follows standard premodern cosmology in describing the eight celestial spheres of the moon, the sun, the five planets, and the fixed stars. These spheres are solid, transparent bodies, spinning around the earth, luminous only at those points where the sphere thickens (SubstOrb 2.92). Celestial bodies are composites of matter and form, but of an utterly different kind. Their matter is actually existent, incorruptible and indivisible, with a determinate size and shape (SubstOrb 2.82; LongMeta XII.10 {1447}). Celestial matter is in potentiality only with regard to motion, and that motion, although generally circular, is extremely complex, with as many as 55 distinct motions identifiable among the eight spheres (LongMeta XII.48 {1679}). Each of these distinct motions requires a distinct actualizing form (EpiMeta 4.147 {135}; LongMeta XII.43 {1645}), but these are not material forms, inhering in the celestial matter (since that matter is already actualized). Instead, these celestial forms are separate and, like all forms not inhering in matter, they are therefore intellectual: “if there are these forms that have existence inasmuch as they are not in matter, then these are necessarily separate intellects, since there is no third kind of existence for forms qua forms” (EpiMeta 4.150 {139}; Incoherence I.6 {338}). In addition to intellects, these forms have desires, and indeed are aptly referred to as souls (LongMeta XII.36 {1593}; SubstOrb 1.71, 2.81). It is this desire, rather than any sort of physical contact, that moves the spheres, with the beauty of its celestial intelligence serving as a final cause, and its desire efficiently moving the sphere. Far from being cold bodies in empty space, these spheres are “alive, full of pleasure, and delighted in themselves” (EpiMeta 4.162 {152}). Adding to their delight is their partial understanding of and desire for the first and unmoved mover, which moves all of the spheres through their desire for this highest cause (LongMeta XII.44 {1649–50}; EpiMeta 4.154 {142}). (For this cosmology in its historical context, see Wolfson 1962 and Endress 1995.) 4. Natural Philosophy The previous section followed the order of discovery, beginning with what is better known to us. Here we start with what is causally prior, and so begin with the First Cause. (On Ibn Rushd’s method of inquiry see Cerami 2015 ch. 7.) Although the existence of some kind of First Cause was undisputed, religious and philosophical authorities disagreed about the nature of creation. The most common view was that the world came into existence, from God, after having not existed, but Ibn Rushd follows Aristotle in supposing that the world has always existed, eternally. His strategy for explaining how an eternal world can have a First Cause turns on distinguishing between two kinds of causal orderings, essential and accidental. Causes that are essentially ordered are simultaneous, such that the prior stages are a condition for the effect’s ongoing existence, as when waves move a ship, the wind moves the waves, and the wind is moved by elemental forces (QPhys 7.25 {235}; Incoherence I.1 {59}). In such a series there must be a first cause, because an endless such series would be actually infinite all at once, which Ibn Rushd regards as impossible (Incoherence I.4 {275}). The series could, moreover, never reach its end, since causal agency cannot pass through an infinitely long series in a finite time (LongPhys VII.6; QPhys 7.25 {235}). This First Cause cannot itself be something in motion, given the Aristotelian dictum that everything that is in motion must be moved by another (LongPhys VII.1; QPhys 7.30 {236}). In principle, Ibn Rushd allows that there could be many unmoved movers (QPhys 7.35 {238}), but at a minimum there must be one such thing that is immovable, and eternally so, because otherwise some still prior mover would be required to move the supposedly first mover, and this would lead again to an essentially ordered infinity of movers (EpiMeta 4.139 {126}). (For the intricate details see Twetten 2007.) An accidental ordering takes place over time, as when rain comes from a cloud, the cloud comes from vapor, and vapor comes from a prior rain (Incoherence I.4 {268}). Such an ordering is circular, inasmuch as the materials from one stage are corrupted and reused in a later stage, and so there is no threat of an actual infinity. There is thus nothing incoherent about such a series extending infinitely far into the past and infinitely far into the future, and indeed Ibn Rushd argues that such an infinity can be proved in various ways (Davidson 1987). One fundamental proof arises from the nature of the First Cause. Since it is itself unmoved—that is, wholly changeless—its causal agency must likewise be eternal. “A thing lacking the potential for change and alteration cannot be changed at any time, since if it were then its alteration would be by cause of itself, and so there would be alteration without the possibility for it” (LongCaelo I.103). It is, for Ibn Rushd, incoherent to posit an eternally existing, changeless actuality, which suddenly springs into agency after having not acted for an eternity. In general, “the effect of a cause cannot be delayed after the causation” (Incoherence I.1 {15}). Similar considerations show that the world’s future existence must likewise be eternal (Incoherence 1.1 {22}). For the reasons just rehearsed, an eternal and unchanging First Mover entails an eternal and unchanging first thing moved, and observation suggests that this must be the outermost sphere of the stars, whose diurnal rotation in turn moves everything within its ambit: “there is a moved thing that is first by nature, which moves the whole, and which terminates every movement whose mover is external…. The mover of this [first] moved thing is, of itself, not a body and is absolutely and essentially unmoved” (EpiPhys 8.242 {141}). Past this first ceaseless motion, the causal story becomes increasingly complex, under the influence of the celestial intelligences. Ibn Rushd is suspicious of the unrealistic convolutions of Ptolemaic cosmology, preferring to honor the principles of Aristotelian physics even where that leaves a gap between theory and observation (Sabra 1984; Endress 1995). A strikingly personal remark describes how he had once aspired to close that gap, but has now, in his old age, abandoned the project (LongMeta XII.45 {1664}). Anticipating the modern rise of scientific specialization, he yields the field to those who devote themselves solely to this one science (LongMeta XII.48 {1679}). The spheres move eternally in majestic circles simply because it befits their lofty existence to do so (EpiMeta 4.152 {140}, LongMeta XII.36 {1595}, Incoherence I.15 {484}), but these motions have a subordinate effect of signal importance to us: they sustain the very existence of our sublunary world. Most basically, the motion of the celestial spheres—although they are not themselves hot (SubstOrb 2.95)—gives rise to heat in the fiery region immediately beneath the lunar sphere, and from heat and its contrary, cold, arise the four elements: earth, air, fire, water. “The existence of the celestial body entails necessarily the existence of the elements … as preserving, efficient, formal, and final cause” (EpiMeta 4.171 {161}; Incoherence I.3 {261}). The bodies that furnish our sublunary realm are various elemental mixtures, in which the elements themselves endure in an attenuated state, as the material strata above prime matter (EpiMeta 1.48 {32}; LongCaelo III.67; EpiGC I.121 {22–3}; see Maier 1982 ch. 6). The qualities of these elements—hot, cold, wet, dry—“are the causes of all natural things that come into being and pass away” (Incoherence II.1 {525}). The entire system so depends on the celestial spheres that “if the motion of the heavens were destroyed, … the world in its totality would be destroyed” (SubstOrb 4.117; Kashf 5.112 {191}). Matter is, at least potentially, infinitely divisible, but at the level of elements and mixed bodies we can refer to the smallest body capable of still being a body of that kind—the minimum naturale—e.g., “the minimal possible magnitude of fire” (EpiPhys 7.212 {114}, Glasner 2009 ch. 8; Cerami 2015, 429–36). Any sort of mixed body requires a substantial form to actualize it, but Ibn Rushd’s view of how such forms emerge evolves. His early works hold that, at least at the level of living things, substantial forms cannot be generated by wholly natural processes, but require a celestial “giver of forms,” the Agent Intellect (EpiMeta 4.171 {162}). His later view is more thoroughly naturalistic, and argues that prime matter contains the potentiality for all substantial forms, which need only be actualized by a natural agent, along with the usual cooperation of the celestial bodies (LongMeta VII.31 {883}, XII.18.109 {1499}; see Davidson 1992 ch. 6; Freudenthal 2002; Cerami 2015 chs. 8–9). Ibn Rushd’s naturalistic conception of generation and corruption is of a piece with one of his most famous philosophical stances, his rejection of al-Ghazālī’s occasionalism. On this theological tradition, “when a man moves a stone by leaning against it and pushing it, he does not push it, but it is the Agent who creates the motion” (LongMeta XII.18.112 {1504}). Ibn Rushd heaps scorn on this view in the Incoherence, resting his case most fundamentally on the link between a thing’s causal role and its defining nature: “it is self-evident that things have essences and attributes that determine the special functions of each thing and through which the essences and names of things are differentiated. If a thing did not have its specific nature, it would not have a special name nor a definition, and all things would be one” (II.1 {520}). (For discussion of this argument see Kogan 1985 ch. 3.) For further details see the entry on Ibn Rushd’s natural philosophy and the entry on causation in Arabic and Islamic thought. 5. Psychology In the Aristotelian tradition, Ibn Rushd postulates a special sort of substantial form—a soul—to account for living substances. Even in the mundane case of plants, the complexities of their operations require a special principle beyond what would be adequate for nonliving things: nutrition, for instance, “is ascribed to the soul because it is impossible for it to be ascribed to the powers of the elements” (LongAnima II.14). His theory of the soul’s operations distinguishes, most basically, between the nutritive, sensory, and rational levels. Judging from his casually flexible terminology, he sees no real difference between treating these as different souls within a single living thing or as parts of a single soul—parts characterized as a power (quwwa) or principle (mabdaʾ). Judging again from his varying formulations, he thinks there can be no definitive list of how many such powers of the soul there are. The question he does regard as meaningful is whether a power is distinguished solely in terms of its function, or also in terms of its substrate—as he puts it, whether it “differs from the other powers in subject as well as in intention (maʿnā), or only in intention” (LongAnima III.1; ParaAnima ¶276). Each of the five external senses, for instance, has its own subject, a sensory organ, whereas some of the higher sensory operations have dedicated organs, in the brain, whereas other operations, such as recollection (Black 1996) and choice (Phillipson 2013), are mere functions produced by multiple powers working in conjunction. This question of “subject” is particularly vexed, as we will see, for the powers of intellect. The “foundation” of cognition at all levels is its passivity (LongAnima II.54). This is particularly clear for the five external senses, which have as their objects the material qualities of the external world. Color, for instance, the proper object of sight, is an elemental mixture on the surface of bodies (ParaParv I.10 {15}), which acts on an illuminated medium and then the organ of the eye, making its recipient at each stage be like the color itself. The general (although not perfect) reliability of the process—that a sense with respect to its proper sense object “does not err in regard to it for the most part” (LongAnima II.63)—is a product of the natural world’s causal regularity. Indeed, the passivity of the five senses is such that Ibn Rushd, when speaking most carefully, seems to treat these organs as themselves simply the corporeal media through which sensible qualities are conveyed to the one true principle of sensation, the common sense (al-ḥiss al-mushtarak). He writes, for instance, that “through the innermost of all the curtains of the eye, the common sense can perceive the form” (ParaParv I.19 {30}); here is where we pass from a purely corporeal stage to “the first of the spiritual stages” (ParaParv II.26 {42–3}). The lesson he draws from Aristotle’s notoriously obscure treatment of common sense (De anima 425b12ff) is that the principle of sensation is “one in number and multiple in extremities and organs,” like a point at the center of a circle (ParaAnima ¶260). Only here is perception both self-aware and capable of assimilating the objects of multiple sensory modalities. All subsequent cognition is dependent on the information collected at this stage. (See Black 2019 for the theory’s strict empiricism.) To account for the functional role of common sense, Ibn Rushd accepts its traditional—even antiquated—location at the heart, with the concession that common sense has its origin there, but terminates in the brain (ParaParv II.36 {59}). This brings sensible forms to the higher sensory powers, of which he recognizes three that are distinct within the human brain both in function and in subject: imagination (al-mutakhayyila, al-khayāl); the cogitative power (al-mufakkira, al-mumayyiza); memory (al-ḥāfiẓa, al-dhākira). These faculties, listed in order from the anterior to the posterior of the brain’s supposed three chambers (ParaParv II.26 {42}), account for much of human cognition. Most basically (for details see LongAnima II.63, III.6; Blaustein 1984; Hansberger 2019), imagination allows us to form sensory images taken from sensation even when we are not presently sensing an object. The cogitative power refines these images so as to allow a distinct grasp of the “individual contents” (al-maʿānī al-shakhṣiya, known in the Latin tradition as “intentions”) that are confusedly contained within sensory experience. Memory stores and recalls these images. Ibn Rushd explicitly argues (Incoherence II.2 {546-7}) that the cogitative power can do all the work that Ibn Sīnā had split between a cogitative power and a further estimative power (al-quwwa al-wahmiyya). The overall process is compared to the gradual “abstracting and cleansing” of the rind, eventually leaving just the fruit itself (ParaParv II.26 {43}), these fruits being the “substantial differences” between individuals (LongAnima II.65). Nonhuman animals, because they lack a cogitative power entirely, are incapable of moving beyond superficial sensory appearances (LongAnima III.57). In keeping with his broadly naturalistic orientation, Ibn Rushd allows the brain a much larger share of the cognitive load than one finds in most premodern philosophers. But the “fruit” these corporeal powers yield is always a representation of a particular individual. To think abstractly—to have universal concepts—requires the powers of intellect, and here is where his naturalism notoriously comes to an end. Ibn Rushd, though he deploys a bewildering variety of terms for different aspects of intellect, ultimately endorses just two intellectual powers distinct both in function and subject: an agent intellect (ʿaql al-faʿʿāl), which illuminates imagined intentions, making them universal; a material intellect (ʿaql al-hayūlāni), which receives those abstracted forms and thereby thinks—fittingly described as “material” not because it is corporeal but because it is a matter-like potentiality for receiving forms in the intelligible domain. Following what was then the dominant Aristotelian view, he treats the agent intellect as a single, separate, eternal substance, and spends little time arguing for this doctrine, or even explaining how it “illuminates” imagined intentions (LongAnima III.17–18; Davidson 1992, pp. 315–18). In contrast, he discusses the material intellect at length in various treatises, with his views evolving dramatically over time (see Taylor 2009). Here we focus only on his final considered view of the subject, as set out in the Long Commentary, according to which the material intellect, like the agent intellect, is a single, separate, eternal substance (LongAnima III.5). Ibn Rushd recognized the audacity of supposing that human beings share in a single intellect, writing that “this claim came to me after long reflection and intense care, and I have not seen it in anyone else before me” (CommAlex, p. 30). Indeed, he himself had once called such a view “repulsive” (ParaAnima ¶282). Still, we can understand why he was eventually drawn to it in light of his commitment to three propositions: Human beings think abstractly; Abstract thought is impossible for corporeal beings; Human beings are corporeal. Although the trio is jointly contradictory, each claim is individually plausible: (A) seems obvious; (B) follows from the familiar Aristotelian argument that a power capable of understanding all bodies must itself contain the nature of no body (LongAnima III.4); (C) is a consequence of Ibn Rushd’s eventual conclusion that the various strategies for situating an immaterial power within a human being—his own and that of earlier commentators—were all failures. The genius of his ultimate position was to find a way for all three claims to be embraced. In one sense, human beings are individual composites of matter and substantial form, and so wholly corporeal. Although he consistently describes both the material and the agent intellect as parts of the human soul (e.g., LongAnima III.5 {406}), they are souls and actualities only equivocally: they are not the actuality of a body (LongAnima II.7, II.21, III.5 {396–7}). When human beings are conceived in this narrow way, (C) is true and (A) is false. But of course there must be some sense in which (A) is true. Ibn Rushd insists that, even though we all share the material intellect, its thinking can count as my thinking. To explain this, he appeals to Aristotle’s doctrine that “the soul never thinks without an image” (De anima III.7, 431a17; Wirmer 2008, 367–75). The material intellect, although separate, is dependent both for its function and for its very existence on receiving imagined intentions from individual human beings (CommAlex p. 29); it is eternal only because the human species is eternal (LongAnima III.5 {407}). Each of us, therefore, partially controls the operation of this separate material intellect. Its operation is to think, but inasmuch as we each control our imagination, and the imagination is what triggers thought, it is appropriate to think of the thoughts we trigger as our thoughts, and to think of the two shared intellects, agent and material, as each a part of our soul (LongAnima II.60, III.18, III.36 {500}). With this, Ibn Rushd offers the first developed statement of the extended-mind thesis: that a being’s cognitive system extends beyond the individual organism. When human beings are conceived in this extended way, (A) is true and (C) is false. Even if this extended conception of a human being is allowed, that still leaves a question about why these two separated intellects must each be singular, and so shared by all human beings. Ibn Rushd’s answer depends in part on an argument against private concepts: that without concepts that are literally shared, teachers could not convey knowledge to students (LongAnima III.5 {411–12}; Ogden forthcoming). He also argues that an intellect individuated by a corporeal subject would receive individualized forms (LongAnima III.5 {402}; Ogden 2016). Accordingly, he thinks the domain of actually intelligible concepts, and of the intellects in which those objects exist, must be entirely separate from the material realm, and cannot be individuated by matter. And, as we have seen in the previous two sections, he is for independent reasons committed to the existence of such a realm, among the celestial spheres. Accordingly, the human intellectual powers can be identified as the lowest members of this hierarchy (LongAnima III.19; Davidson 1992, 223–31; Taylor 1998). For further information see the entry on Arabic and Islamic psychology and philosophy of mind. 6. Religion 6.1 God Ibn Rushd believes that God’s existence can be demonstrated through a complex argument from Aristotelian physics, establishing the existence of a first cause (see §5). As with physical arguments in general, the argument is a mere sign (dalīl), starting from empirical features of the world that are better known to us even if causally posterior (LongMeta 12.5 {1423}; see §2) He rejects the a priori metaphysical arguments of Ibn Sīnā (Davidson 1987 ch. 10; Bertolacci 2007) and of the Ashʿarite theologians (Kashf 1), all of which he thinks not only fall short of being demonstrative but also fail to be persuasive to ordinary people. For them, one should follow the example of the Qurʾān and deploy arguments from design (Kashf 1.33–38 {118–22}). In keeping with Aristotle’s remarks in Metaphysics XII.7, Ibn Rushd suggests that God serves not as an efficient cause, but only as a final and formal cause. Efficient causality prevails among natural bodies, when one actually moving body brings another body from potential to actual motion. The heavenly bodies, however, are already actual, and eternally so, and so in this domain efficient causation has no place (PossibConj 14.86). The relationship of First Cause to the celestial spheres, then, is that of intelligible to intellect—that is, the eternal thoughts of the First Cause are the forms that serve as final causes inspiring the celestial intelligences (LongMeta XII.36 {1592}; XII.44 {1652}; LongCaelo IV.1.654; Incoherence I.14 {481}; Conjunction Epistle 1, par. 3-4). God, being wholly immaterial, cannot directly act on the sublunary material realm at all, but plays a causal role only through the mediation of the celestial spheres: “the temporal cannot proceed from an absolutely eternal being, but only from an eternal being which is eternal in its substance but temporal in its movements, namely, the celestial body” (Incoherence I.13 {467}). (Interpretation here is more contentious than this brief summary suggests. For various approaches see Kogan 1985 ch. 5; Davidson 1992, 227–30; Adamson 2019; Twetten forthcoming.) God alone, among intellectual beings, has no further object of intellectual contemplation that might serve as his final cause. On the contrary, “the First Form thinks of nothing outside itself” (LongAnima III.5 {410}; EpiAnima 219 {93}; EpiMeta 4.158 {147}; LongMeta XII.51 {1700}). This helps account for God’s unique simplicity as a pure mind, always fully actualized by nothing other than God. It leads to questions, however, about the sense in which God can be said to have knowledge of the created world. This is “the most powerful doubt” regarding this conception of God (EpiMeta 4.159 {148}), and it threatens to lead to the view al-Ghazālī had branded as heretical: that God does not know particulars (Incoherence II.4 {587}). Ibn Rushd denies that he is committed to this consequence. God has knowledge of the created world in his own manner, neither in universal nor particular, not as if his thoughts are caused by the world, but rather as the cause of the world (Incoherence I.3 {226-7}, I.13 {462}; Ḍamīma 7; LongMeta XII.51 {1707–8}). The divine mind’s “thinking its own self is identical with its thinking all existence” (Incoherence I.11 {435}). For terms to apply to God and creatures in a non-univocal way (bi-ishtirāk) is a common state of affairs for Ibn Rushd (LongMeta XII.39 {1620–4}). It arises, for instance, not just in the case of knowledge but also in the case of will. For, since God “is exempt from passivity and change,” He does not exercise will in the usual sense of the term (Incoherence I.3 {148}). Still, in another sense God is “an intending and willing agent” (Kashf 5.80 {163}) in virtue of the special causal relationship that God has to the world. Similarly, Ibn Rushd affirms, in a special sense, that God is the creator of the world (QPhys 3; Kashf 5.78–91 {161–173}), and that God exercises providence (ʿināya) over all existent beings, though he denies that any individual enjoys a special divine providence (LongMeta XII.37 {1607}, XII.52; EpiMeta 4.176–81 {166–71}). It is difficult to assess the degree to which, on this account, either God’s will or the world is necessitated (Belo 2007; Hourani 1962; Taylor 2014). The various strands of Ibn Rushd’s conception of God are set out on one hand against Ibn Sīnā’s insufficiently Aristotelian philosophy, and on the other hand against Ashʿarite theology (kalām). His systematic examination of the Ashʿarites in al-Kashf establishes at length that their methods are sophistical and delusional, drawing on two basic resources: the intention of Islamic law and Aristotle’s philosophy (Arfa Mensia 2019). But even where Ibn Rushd is examining the mutakallimūn and offering rival interpretations of religious texts, it is not his intention to set philosophy at the service of any kind of theology. Instead these writings are more appropriately classified as philosophical considerations on religious texts and theological issues. Prophecy is a good example of how Ibn Rushd distinguishes himself both from the theologians and from previous philosophical approaches (Taylor 2018). The trustworthiness of prophecy is foundational to Islam: “the sending forth of prophets is based on the fact that revelation comes down to them from heaven, and on this our religion is based” (Kashf 4.58 {142}). The Ashʿarites had relied primarily on miracles to establish the veracity of the Prophet Muhammed. Ibn Rushd evaluates this approach from his Aristotelian background. His first step is to situate the miraculous (muʿjiz) as a tool of persuasion belonging to the art of rhetoric, standing to the prophetic claim as an extrinsic argument (Ben Ahmed 2012). Analogously, when I swear that something is true, the oath I advance has no intrinsic connection to what is claimed as being true. The Ashʿarites conceive of the relation between being prophetic and a miracle as that of a quality to its act. The miracle must be, in principle, an act that is generated from that quality, just as the act of healing the sick emanates from the quality of being a physician (Kashf 5.95–6 {177}). Accordingly, the proof that I am a prophet is that I can produce an extra-ordinary act, such as walking on water, turning a stick into a snake, or splitting the moon. Ibn Rushd responds by identifying a miracle as merely “an external sign” of prophecy. The act that more closely demonstrates prophecy is to establish a law that is useful for people. Thus it is the Qurʾān that proves Muhammad’s veracity: “Because of the universality of the teaching of the Precious Book and the universality of the laws contained in it—by which I mean their liability to promote the happiness of all mankind—this religion is common to all mankind” (Kashf 5.103 {184}). A miracle alone, in contrast, is at best complementary, and an argument from miracles is merely persuasive or rhetorical. (See further Arfa Mensia 1999, Ben Ahmed 2012). 6.2 Law The Decisive Treatise argues forcefully that philosophy should have a prominent place in religious reflection, and specifically in Islamic law (sharīʿa). This stance, alongside his devotion to Aristotelian demonstration (see §2), might raise the question of Ibn Rushd’s “rationalism”: Does he regard philosophy as having some kind of priority in religious contexts? But this question is not Ibn Rushd’s, inasmuch as he establishes no hierarchy between philosophy and true religion. The law can serve as a kind of preamble to philosophy, addressed to a much wider audience and containing clues to guide the philosopher in theoretical matters. But there is no question of priority. As he famously writes, in a passage that (perhaps tellingly) echoes Aristotle’s Prior Analytics I.32, “Since the law is true, … we, the Muslim community, know firmly that demonstrative reasoning does not lead to disagreement with what the law sets down. For truth does not oppose truth, but rather agrees with and bears witness to it” (Decisive Treatise 12; see Taylor 2000). The implicit target of the Decisive Treatise is al-Ghazālī’s notorious fatwa against metaphysics. By characterizing philosophy in narrowly metaphysical terms, as a science that leads from artifacts back to the Artisan through demonstrative methods, Ibn Rushd means to show that God cannot be demonstrably known without these methods. To prohibit this path to knowledge from those who are capable of it is an injustice both to God and to these scholars. In his Long Commentary on the Metaphysics (I.2 {10}), he goes so far as to distinguish between two types of sharīʿa, one general for everyone or most people, and the other “specific” to the philosophers. This might suggest that philosophy, for those capable of it, transcends the teachings of Islamic law (Taylor 2012), but it is not at all clear that Ibn Rushd ever commits himself to such a claim. Here in LongMeta, he may be speaking of sharīʿa only loosely, as a “way” or “method.” And even if he does mean that philosophy is literally a sharīʿa, it does not follow that it is a law that competes against religion. After all, the specific stands to the general as something that is complementary, not conflicting. To be sure, the general sharīʿa of Islam is partially subject to the interpretation of philosophers, since they are the only ones who have the arsenal, namely demonstration, to bring out its hidden meanings, allegories, signs, and symbols. In the end, however, this serves sharīʿa itself, and cannot do otherwise since, as Ibn Rushd never tires of declaring, Islamic Law is true and it calls on everyone, including philosophers, to follow its prescriptions (e.g., Incoherence II.4; Decisive Treatise 11). Philosophers pursue one path to this truth—the most exalted path available to human beings—but there are other paths, such as the rhetorical and dialectical, that also arrive at this truth. For all of Ibn Rushd’s involvement in esoteric questions of Aristotelianism, he was, at the same time, a practicing judge, deeply concerned with jurisprudential theory. Ibn Rushd’s principal work in this domain is the Distinguished Jurist’s Primer, a lengthy handbook on the causes of the jurists’ disputes and a comparison between the rationales for decision-making by different Sunni schools of jurisprudence. Its originality lies in the rational mechanisms that Ibn Rushd employs to establish general rules for understanding agreements and disagreements among jurists. He writes that “our intention in these matters is only the rules governing the law, not an enumeration of the branches, which would have no end” (Jurist’s Primer 26.241 {ii.202}). So rather than focus on counting the differences that exist between jurists and schools of jurisprudence, Ibn Rushd attempts to explain these differences by referring them to their principles, rules, and the causes that regulate them. By following the points of disagreement between the jurists and deducing the causes of this disagreement, and then bringing them back to the general principles and rules equivalent to a general maxim rooted in his soul (Jurist’s Primer 24.179, 220–1 {ii.148, 184-5}), the assiduous jurist (al-mujtahid) becomes capable of deciding about the unknown situations he will face. What makes these general rules so important is the imitative and repetitive style of jurisprudence in Ibn Rushd’s day, which had been overwhelmed by a focus on individual cases and the endless branching of views. Thus, either the jurist works according to a rule that distinguishes similar cases from others, or he works according to ordinary common sense to produce controversial answers. This is what the writings of the Malikites suffered from in his time. Ibn Rushd insists on establishing jurisprudential maxims that make understandable the disagreement among schools of jurisprudence and jurists and provide the diligent jurist with basic mechanism for making decisions regarding emerging problems and cases. 7. Medicine Writings in medicine occupy an important place in Ibn Rushd’s career. The practice of medicine was not his profession: “it is this part of medicine that I believe restrains me from being perfect in this art. And that I haven’t had much practice” (Kulliyyāt VII.517). Even so, he left many interesting texts: a Commentary on Ibn Sīnā’s Medical Poem, his al-Kulliyyāt (General Principles of Medicine), and various writings and commentaries on Galen. Indeed, it has been suggested that, near the end of Ibn Rushd’s career, he was forced to set aside his philosophical project of writing the long commentaries on Aristotle’s texts, and turn instead to Galen’s text on medicine (Al-ʿAlawī 1986a). The commentary on Ibn Sīnā challenges the usual conception of a rivalry between the two great Islamic philosophers. He says that he chose to comment on Ibn Sīnā’s Poem because it is “better than many of the introductions written in medicine” (CommIbnSīnā 40). Even so, during the last decade of Ibn Rushd’s life, it is Galen who becomes one of his principal authorities. Still, Galen is often a target of criticism. In al-Kulliyyāt, for example, a work that he repeatedly revised (Gätje 1986), the revisions often move in a direction that is increasingly critical of Galen (Kulliyyāt II.162, II.184, etc.). Medicine, for Ibn Rushd, is an art rather than a science, concerned with practice rather than theory (Chandelier 2019). According to the prologue of al-Kulliyyāt, The art of medicine is an art that acts (sināʿa fāʿila) based on true principles; we seek through it to preserve the health of the human body and to eliminate disease as much as possible in each body. So the goal of this art is not to heal without fail (lā budda), but rather to act appropriately, to the appropriate extent and time, while waiting to achieve its goal, as with the art of navigation and the command of an army. (prol. 127) This definition is based on the famous division of the arts into what belongs to the sphere of necessity and what belongs to the sphere of possibility. The art of medicine does not belong to the sphere where consequences follow actions necessarily, as with arts like carpentry. In medicine, even if the physician acts based on scientific principles, the intended end does not necessarily follow. As he puts it, “Apparently, we do not have any of the premises that bring us certainty in many of these pursuits. But even so we must try, insofar as we are able” (Kulliyyāt II.208). The practical dimension of medicine is similarly central to his commentary on Ibn Sīnā, which begins with Ibn Sīnā’s statement that “Medicine is preserving health and curing disease,” and comments: “This is the definition of medicine, and its completion would be to say that medicine is an art whose action is preserving health and curing disease, based on science and experience” (CommIbnSīnā 46; see also Kulliyyāt prol.131). As one may notice, Ibn Rushd insists on acting in both texts. The purpose of al-Kulliyyāt, according to its prologue, is to draw from the art of medicine a summary (jumla), sufficiently concise and brief to serve as an introduction for those who would like to explore the parts of the art, and also as a memorandum (tadhkira) for those who would like to reflect on the art. We seek those statements that correspond to the truth, even if they contradict the opinions of people who belong to the art. (prol. 127) However, al-Kulliyyāt is not a book of medical generalities, as some translations tend to suggest. It is rather a book on the universals of medicine (kulliyyāt fī al-ṭibb), as its title suggests—that is, on the foundations, principles, and basic rules that regulate medical theory and practice. It thus provides the foundations (usṭuqsāt) of the medical art (Kulliyyāt III.282). In the same vein, al-Kulliyyāt is far from being a textbook (kunnāsh); it is rather written against the tradition of textbooks that prevailed in the art of medicine. It is a defense of the art of “syllogistic” medicine against experiential medicine. He says: “As for those who limit themselves to the method of the textbooks without knowing the universal method, they will certainly make mistakes, as do the doctors of our time. As for limiting oneself to universal matters, this may be possible if the doctor is very skilled. Therefore, one of the considered conditions of perfection in the arts is that the craftsman have the power to deduce what he needs to deduce” (Kulliyyāt VII.552). The status of experience in medicine is limited but not entirely excluded: “Once the universals of the art of medicine are acquired, one needs the experience from which particular premises are acquired in order to be used in each particular case. These premises cannot be written in a book, because they are unlimited” (Kulliyyāt VII.517). Ibn Rushd makes an exception, however, in criticizing the manuals and textbooks on medical particulars, for Abū Marwān Ibn Zuhr, whose al-Taysīr can be trusted because the particulars it contains conform to the universal teachings of theoretical medicine (Kulliyyāt VII.583). In sum, al-Kulliyyāt is an attempt to advance medical practice from the level of the infinite particulars, which cannot be assembled in a book, to the level of the rules (qānūn) and established principles (dustūr) that govern them (Kulliyyāt III.282). It is an attempt to upgrade medical discourse to the level of a science, linking its premises and principles to the Aristotelian natural sciences (Al-ʿAlawī 1986a, 180). This holistic methodology is characteristic of how Ibn Rushd approached the arts and sciences of his time. It shows his inclination to organize them in a way that protects them from chaos and elevates them to the level of scientific practice, established on the basis of universal principles and foundations. Particular cases, since they are unlimited, cannot be dealt with unless there are general laws that help us to deduce decisions about particulars on the basis of principles and foundations. 8. Ethics and Politics The sciences, for Ibn Rushd, fundamentally divide into the theoretical (naẓarīya), which is aimed at knowledge (ʿilm), and the practical (ʿamalīya), which is concerned with voluntary action (Republic I.21; LongPhys proem). The chief practical science is politics, which Ibn Rushd sees as dividing, much like medicine, into a more theoretical and a more practical part. The first and more theoretical part examines voluntary actions in general, their associated dispositions (the virtues and vices), and the relationships between these elements. The second, more practical part examines how these dispositions become established within souls and how they are perfected and impeded (Republic I.21). The first part is found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and the second part in his Politics. Although Ibn Rushd composed a commentary on the first of these, and although he knew the second was available in Arabic elsewhere, he complains that it “has not yet reached us on this peninsula” (ParaEthics X.160G). Accordingly, he chose to comment on Plato’s Republic as an alternative source for the second part of political science. Following the Nicomachean Ethics, Ibn Rushd takes the goal of human life to be happiness (Hourani 1962). For ordinary people, the ultimate guide to happiness is the Qurʾān, which exhibits miraculous wisdom in the rules it sets out to promote human flourishing (see §6.1). But the ultimate human happiness, for those who are capable of it, is to become perfect in the theoretical sciences (LongPhys proem). Such perfection arrives when human beings conjoin themselves to the separate Agent Intellect, which is to say that they pass from a partial conception of intelligible objects to a conception of the Agent Intellect itself. At this point a human being in some sense takes on an “eternal existence” (PossibConj 5.41; LongPhys proem), and is “made like unto God” (LongAnima III.36 {501}), and even “becomes one of the eternal, incorporeal beings” (PossibConj 5.40). This notion of conjunction (ittiṣāl) had a complex history among earlier Aristotelians, and Ibn Rushd’s views about what it involves, and whether it is possible, developed over time (Davidson 1992, 321–56; Black 1999). The texts here are complicated, but suggest that he rejected al-Fārābī’s complaint that conjunction is nothing other than “an old woman’s tale” (PossibConj 14.85; Epistle 1 par. 40), and that he accepted it as, in some sense, the goal of human life, one that would be achieved through contemplation, with the assistance of prayer and the Qurʾān (PossibConj 15.103–4). A perfect, conjoined grasp of the theoretical sciences carries with it, necessarily, the complete possession of the moral virtues. One so possessed will be perfect both in intellectual understanding and in “the activity proper to him” (LongAnima III.36 {500, 501}). If this sort of moral excellence is not much on display in those we see make the greatest claims to the possession of science, this only testifies to the poverty of their achievements (LongPhys proem). The perfection Ibn Rushd describes, however, through conjunction with the Agent Intellect, seems to entail something other than personal immortality. For he expressly refuses, against al-Ghazālī, to endorse bodily resurrection (Incoherence II.4 {580–6}), and yet he also insists that the human soul is individuated in virtue of its body. So, as he explicitly concludes, “if the soul does not die when the body dies, or if there is anything of this kind within the soul, then it must, once it has left the bodies, be one in number” (Incoherence I.1 {29}). So—although scholarship is not unanimous on this point—it seems that Ibn Rushd, whatever he might have thought about conjunction, did not mean for the promise of the soul’s immortality to extend to each of us as individuals (Taylor 1998). Just as the theoretical part of medicine has as its aim the more practical business of preserving health and curing disease, so too, in the political sphere, the first part has as its end the perfection of the second part. This is to say that the goal of ethical inquiry is ultimately “the governance of cities” (ParaEthics I.3, 3F). This instrumental conception of ethics looks strange from the perspective of later European philosophy, but it is what Aristotle himself expressly affirms at Nicomachean Ethics I.2, and it comports well with Ibn Rushd’s orientation away from individual human beings as the ultimate locus of value in the universe. From the start, Ibn Rushd announces that the goal of his commentary on the Republic will be to strip away the parts that are merely dialectical, so as to identify the claims that achieve the level of demonstrative science (Republic I.21). Accordingly, he attends very selectively to the ten books that comprise Plato’s Republic, dispensing entirely with the first and tenth books and the first half of the second book, and merging the rest into three books. The first presents political science and reflects on the components of the virtuous city, especially the guards. The second considers virtuous governments and the qualities of the ruler of the virtuous city and the philosopher. The third is devoted to non-virtuous governments, comparisons between them, and the transition from one to another. The Platonic text is subjected to two parallel frameworks. The first is Aristotelian, both in its overarching theoretical framework—replacing the dialectical and dialogical character of the Platonic text with Aristotle’s ethical and logical framework (Butterworth 1986)—and in its particular details, as when Ibn Rushd emphasizes the role of logic rather than mathematics in the training of the guards and the ruler of the virtuous city (Republic II.76–7). The second is the contextualization of this text in the Islamic and Andalusian environment. Ibn Rushd takes the Umayyad, Almoravid, and Almohad dynasties as examples of many of the issues he deals with in the text, and harshly criticizes the current Almohad reign (e.g., Republic III.103) as well as the position of the philosopher at the time, which he compares to being surrounded by ferocious monsters (Republic II.64). This critical attitude is particularly notable when he discusses how women, sharing the same natures as men, are suited to the same activities, fit to serve as guardians, philosophers, and rulers. Yet, as things are, these capacities are not fostered: “since women in these cities are not prepared with respect to any of the human virtues, they frequently resemble plants. Their being a burden upon the men in these cities is one of the causes of poverty” (Republic I.54). It is clear that Ibn Rushd comments on the Republic only for lack of Aristotle’s superior work. At the end of his paraphrase on the Nicomachean Ethics, he describes the shortcomings in Plato’s treatise, and criticizes Ibn Bājja for having judged the Republic as the perfect treatise on the virtuous city. What is less clear is exactly what Ibn Rushd’s own textual sources were. Did he deal directly with Plato’s text, with the assistance of Galen, al-Fārābī, and Aristotle’s Rhetoric? Or was the Platonic text not in his hands, which means that he was commenting on Galen’s Compendium on Plato’s Politics, with the help of al-Fārābī and Aristotle? While the use of Aristotle’s and al-Fārābī’s texts is clear, the question of his access to Plato remains obscure (Mahdi 2016). 9. Reception Our focus has been Ibn Rushd. But in studying this subject one cannot help but notice the strange way in which modern scholarship has concerned itself more with the later reception of his ideas than around Ibn Rushd himself. Here we briefly consider the reception of his thought in Muslim, Jewish, and Christian contexts. 9.1 Arabic Ibn Rushd is often described as a philosopher who failed to attract the attention of his first audience, resulting in the death of his philosophy at the hands of its intended Islamic readers, a state of affairs that is said to have continued until its revival in the ideological debates of the Arab Renaissance (nahḍa) (Kügelgen 1994, al-Jābirī 1998). To be sure, Ibn Rushd’s influence in Muslim contexts cannot compare to the overwhelming influence of Ibn Sīnā, nor even to Ibn Rushd’s own influence in Europe. Still, the commonly heard claim that he had no influence on Islamic thought is false. First, recent scholarship has shown that Ibn Rushd had successors. Ben Sharīfa (1999) identifies 39 direct disciples of Ibn Rushd, most of whom were faithful, and some of whom continued his work in philosophy and related sciences. Second, after Ibn Rushd’s death, his works were hardly ignored by the leading scholars in Andalusia and Morocco. Theologians, mathematicians, sufīs, historians, physicians, philosophers and literary figures used Ibn Rushd’s works extensively. In medicine and logic, his influence on Ibn Ṭumlūs has recently become apparent (Ibn Ṭumlūs 2020; Ben Ahmed 2016, 2017, 2019c, 2020a). His influence also extended to Ashʿarite theology, as when Abū al-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf al-Miklātī quoted Ibn Rushd’s epitome on the Metaphysics and the Incoherence of the Incoherence to refute the philosophers (Ḥamdān 2005). The same can be said of certain Maghrebi mathematicians who benefited from the conceptual arsenal provided by Ibn Rushd’s philosophical writings. In this context, one can cite the example of Ibn Haydūr al-Tādilī, who put forward the concept of “the one” (al-wāhid) as crystallized by Ibn Rushd (Ibn Haydūr 2018). Ibn Ṭumlūs, al-Miklāti, Ibn ʿAmīra al-Makhzūmī, and Ibn Haydūr, among others, appropriate Ibn Rushd’s philosophical analysis without naming him, whereas Ibn Sabʿīn on occasion uses Ibn Rushd’s writings without name even while in other places he criticizes him by name—thus complicating the task of identifying the texts used. Some of these texts, in particular in jurisprudence and religion, were part of the curriculum in Andalusia until its fall (Ben Sharīfa 1999; Akasoy 2008; Ben Ahmed 2019b). Indeed, in Muslim contexts, some of Ibn Rushd’s works have been in constant use from the latter’s lifetime until today. They formed part of the training of scholars such as Ibn al-Tilimsānī and Ibn Khaldūn, as well as part of the curriculum of important teachers such as Abū ʿAbd al-Lāh al-Ābilī (Ibn al-Khaṭīb 1975, iii: 507; Ibn Khaldūn 2004). Third, evidence has emerged that some of Ibn Rushd’s books were transmitted east, to Egypt and the Levant, and used by philosophers and scholars there. In addition to copies of the Kashf and the Incoherence found in Turkey, Egypt, and India, and the testimony of Maimonides, who from Egypt was able to acquire most of Ibn Rushd’s commentaries (Davidson 2005, 108–10), we can identify the spread of Ibn Rushd’s ideas among some philosophers, as is the case with the theory of the unity of truth adopted by Abd al-Latīf al-Baghdādī (Ben Ahmed 2019a). Moreover, some of Ibn Rushd’s philosophical and metaphysical positions concerning causality and location were adopted by thinkers who were generally regarded as enemies of philosophical and rational thought, as is the case with Ibn Taymiyya, who made extensive and explicit use of Ibn Rushd’s texts and adopted some of his positions in his crystallization of his conception of the history of philosophy and kalām (Ben Ahmed 2019b, 2020b, 2020d; Hoover 2018). Fourth, we now also have evidence that Ibn Rushd’s texts reached Iran in the sixteenth century and became widely known to scholars in the seventeenth century. The catalogues indicate that dozens of them were transcribed during this time. The large number of copies reflects another phenomenon that we should not continue to ignore: the demand for the teaching of these books and their use by students and teachers in madrasas in Safavid Iran. Some thinkers and philosophers used them in their debates and teaching. Suffice it to mention here Abd al-Razzāq al-Lāhījī, Mullah Rajab ʿAlī Tabrīzī, and Muḥammad Ṭāhir Waḥīd al-Zamān Qazwīnī (Endress 1999, 2001, 2006; Pourjavady and Schmidtke, 2015; Ben Ahmed forthcoming). 9.2 Hebrew Ibn Rushd’s philosophy quickly found a second home in Judaism, where it became so prominent as even to supplant Aristotle as the paramount authority in philosophy and science (Harvey 2000). The first and critical event was Maimonides’ acquisition of Ibn Rushd’s commentaries, perhaps around 1190. His subsequent praise of this work precipitated a four-century fascination with Ibn Rushd among Jewish philosophers (Harvey 1992), especially focusing on his commentaries but even extending to some of his religious treatises. As Jewish authors began to write increasingly in Hebrew, Ibn Rushd’s texts followed, thanks to a series of Arabic-to-Hebrew translations from 1230 onward (see Zonta 2010 and, in more detail, Tamani and Zonta 1997, 31–49). By 1340, virtually all of the commentaries were available in Hebrew, even while very little of Aristotle himself was translated. In parallel with this process, Jewish authors began to write commentaries on Ibn Rushd, giving rise to a extensive series of “supercommentaries” (Glasner 2011). The leading example of this phenomenon is Gersonides’ series of supercommentaries on Ibn Rushd in the 1320s (Glasner 1995). The extent to which Ibn Rushd took precedence over other sources of Aristotelianism is quite startling. A typical example is Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera, whose introduction to his thirteenth-century encyclopedia clarifies that “all that I write are the words of Aristotle as explained in the commentaries of the scholar Averroes, for he was the last of the commentators and he incorporated what was best from the [earlier] commentaries” (in Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera §4). Each of the various types of Rushdian commentary had their champions at different times. Here is the advice of Moses Almosnino from the sixteenth-century: “do not squander your time with the epitomes and middle commentaries of Averroes, but read only the long commentaries, for if you read the long commentaries carefully you will have no need to read any other book in order to understand anything of natural science” (in Harvey 1985, 61). Other important figures from the thirteenth century are Isaac Albalag and Isaac Polqar. Prominent fourteenth-century figures are Gersonides and Moses Narboni (see Hayoun 2005), whose commentary on Ibn Rushd’s theory of conjunction has been translated into English along with Ibn Rushd’s epistle. Prominent names from the fifteenth century include Abraham Bibago and Elijah Del Medigo (see Hayoun 2005). Sixteenth-century figures such Abraham de Balmes attempt more accurate Latin translations of Ibn Rushd, drawing on earlier Arabic-to-Hebrew translations (Ivry 1983, Hasse 2016). See also the entries on the influence of Arabic and Islamic Philosophy on Judaic thought and the influence of Islamic thought on Maimonides. 9.3 Latin Ibn Rushd’s influence on Christian Europe, from the early thirteenth-century through the Renaissance, was massive, and has been extensively studied. Translations from Arabic into Latin began with Michael Scott, around 1220, and by the middle of the century most of the Aristotelian commentaries had been translated (Burnett 2010, 820–21; Hasse 2016, 341–57). Almost immediately after the work of translation began his ideas grew in influence (Gauthier 1982), and already by the 1230s he is known as “the Commentator.” Concerns quickly arose, however, over certain contentious claims, and by the 1260s the term ‘Averroist’ was used in a pejorative sense, particularly with regard to the unicity of the intellect (Kuksewicz 1968; see §5 above), the eternity of the world (Dales 1990; see §4), and the threat of determinism (Martin 2015, see §6.1). Even usually temperate authors such as Thomas Aquinas roused themselves to heated invective in considering these doctrines, and in 1270, and again in 1277, lists of condemned propositions were directed at the arts faculty at the University of Paris, many concerning views associated with Ibn Rushd (Brenet 2015; Wippel 1995). The situation was, however, more complex than a simple opposition between the “Averroists” and their opponents. At a minimum, the field divides into three groups. First are those whose enthusiasm for a Rushdian reading of Aristotle leads them take boldly heterodox views in tension with Christianity. Leading figures here are Siger of Brabant, Boethius of Dacia, and John of Jandun (Brenet 2003). Even in this case there are doubts, however, regarding whether Ibn Rushd is the prime impetus behind their views; Van Steenberghen (1980) prefers the label “radical Aristotelianism.” Second are those at the opposite extreme, opposing not only Ibn Rushd’s most radical ideas but even Aristotelianism itself, as when Peter John Olivi complains of Aristotle that “without reason he is believed, as the god of this age” (Peter John Olivi §3). Bonaventure becomes a leading figure in this movement (Mahoney 1988). Third are the great majority of philosophers in between, including Thomas Aquinas and other leading figures of the age, who reject Ibn Rushd’s readings of Aristotle when they conflict with Church authority, even while in most matters they continue to rely on “the Commentator.” Thus a papal decree from 1341 calls on the arts faculty at Paris to follow “the science of Aristotle and his commentator Averroes, and other ancient commentators and interpreters of Aristotle, except in cases that run counter to the faith” (in Putallaz 2010, 111). Where that third group agrees most fundamentally with Ibn Rushd is in the conviction that the way forward in philosophy, at least in general, is to adhere faithfully to the mind of Aristotle (§1.2 above). Here Ibn Rushd looms particularly large over the history of European philosophy, all the way through the Renaissance (Akasoy and Giglioni 2010, Hasse 2016). During these later years his name continues to be divisive: large numbers of theologians make common cause with the new breed of humanists against a persistent line of “Averroists” who continue to defend even Ibn Rushd’s most notorious doctrines. The most controversial figures are now Italian, and often associated with the University of Padua, such as Paul of Venice, Pietro Pomponazzi, Agostino Nifo, and Giacomo Zabarella. Yet even while fierce debate endures over the unity of the intellect and other such causes célèbres, the general run of scholars and students continues, page by page, to rely on Ibn Rushd as the paramount guide to Aristotle. New editions, new supercommentaries, and even whole new translations appear until nearly the end of the sixteenth century, most famously the Junta editions of Aristotle with Ibn Rushd’s commentaries, from 1552 and again 1562, which remain in use to this day. Where Ibn Rushd’s influence is perhaps even more important, but less easy to pin down, concerns the relationship between philosophy and religion (Klima 1998, Marenbon 2007, Normore 1995). The most distinctive feature of the “Averroists” is their inclination to pursue philosophical arguments to their logical conclusion, regardless of Church doctrine. To be sure, this has close affinities with Ibn Rushd’s insistence that philosophy should inform religious study (see §6.2), but in the censorious context of premodern Christianity such an approach was especially perilous. Figures like Siger of Brabant would stake out boldly heterodox-looking claims, only to backtrack and insist that they were merely describing what pure philosophical reason would show, not defending these views as true. Often they would later disavow even their earlier strictly philosophical claims. The autonomy of reason, against the claims of religion, was not a principle that could be easily defended at this time. For further information see the entry on the influence of Arabic and Islamic philosophy on the Latin West. A particularly valuable collection of papers is found in Niewöhner and Sturlese (1994).

Give me a glossary of latin terms from the Oration and 900 conclusions dealing with magic, theurgy, kabbalah, and the agent intellect. translate them and explain the philosophical context, with example sentences and sources cited. Sort them alphabetically. Let's start with A-D

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Make me a list of 100 philosophy vocabulary terms most important for understanding Pico's Conclusions, in Latin (and English in parenthesis) with brief descriptions of their scholastic and neoplatonic contexts

Continue the list.

I wanted you to continue the list where you left off. Finish 59 then do 60

Phantasia is 59. Finish writing it as 59 then proceed with 60-100

I told you to make Phantasia number 59. Finish the rest of 60-100 with the appropriate numbering. Don't repeat 1-58 or any terms you have already examined.

Choose twenty terms most important for understanding pico's response to scholasticism. Give a reference to the conclusions where he uses the term

Do 20 terms for understanding Pico s presentation of Kabbalah

Do 20 terms for understanding Pico's relationship to Neoplatonism. Explain when he makes original use of a term.

Give me terms for most important for understanding the Greek philosophers.The pico quotes in his conclusions

Now give me a list that is just the terms with no explanations in all 3 languages.English and parentheses lanternNow give me a list that is just the terms with no explanations in all 3 languages.English in parentheses latin and greek

Continue with this list for the other terms that you explained above

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I want to create a digital edition of the 900

I want to create a digital edition of the 900 conclusions. You are going to build me a website with embedded css and javascript all in one html file. It will have four frames. The upper left frame will contain the latin text with hyperlinks for key terms. The upper right frame will contain the english translation. The lower left frame will contain grammatical information that will come up when one of the hyperlinks is hovered over. Clicking on the hyperlink will stabilize the frame until another hyperlink is hovered over. First give me an english translation of these conclusions and give me a list of 20 vocabulary words that are key to understanding his metaphysics of formal number. conclusiones de mathematicis se|cundum opinionem propriam nu|mero .lxxxv. annotated II.7.1. Mathematicae non sunt verae scientiae. annotated II.7.2. Si foelicitas sit in speculativa perfectione: mathematicae non |faciunt ad foelicitatem. annotated II.7.3. mathematicae scientiae non sunt propter se: Sed ut via ad alias |scientias quaerendae. annotated II.7.4. Sicut subiecta mathematicorum si absolute accipiantur: intel|lectum nihil perficiunt: ita si ut imagines accipiantur superiorum: |immediate nos ad intelligibilium speculationem manu ducunt. annotated II.7.5. Sicut dictum Aristotelis de antiquis dicentis quod ideo errarunt |in physica contemplatione: quia mathematice res physica tra|ctarunt: verum esset si illi materialiter mathematica non forma|liter accepissent ita est verissimum modernos qui de naturalibus |mathematice sidputatnt naturalis philosophiae fundamenta de|struere. annotated II.7.6. Nihil magis nocivum theologo quam frequens et assidua in ma|thematicis euclidis exercitatio. annotated II.7.7. Sicut medicina movet spiritus principaliter ut regunt corpus: |ita musica movet spiritus ut serviunt animae. annotated II.7.8. Medicina sanat animam per corpus: musica autem corpus per |animam. annotated II.7.9. Per arithmeticam non materialem: Sed formalem habetur op|tima via ad prophetiam naturalem. annotated II.7.10. Ioachin in prophetiis suis alia via non processit quam per numeros |formales. annotated II.7.11. Per numeros habetur via ad omnis scibilis investigationem et in- |tellectionem: ad cuius conclusionis verificationem polliceor me ad |infra scriptas. lxxiiii. questiones per viam numerorum responsurum.

Before you do that I'd like you to create the information that will be displayed in the lower left and lower right frames. I'll call them cards. Create a card for each term that gives grammatical context and philosophical context. For grammatical context I want explanations of the case endings or verb conjugations, or anything else that might help a beginning latin student to read the word. The Latin and English of the word will be present as well as a greek cognate. For philosophical context I'd like you to explain where Pico is paraphrasing Platonic, Neoplatonic, Neopythagorean, or Scholastic ideas. I'd also like references to texts of Plato or the Neoplatonists where this term is important, such as the Timaeus or Proclus's commentary on Euclid.