Thesis 11>3
Latin
Scientia quae est pars practica cabalae practicat totam methaphysicam formalem et theologiam inferiorem.
The underscore Farmer's OCR shows between 'cabalae' and 'practicat' is an artifact and is omitted (farmer1998:26392). Farmer's 'methaphysicam' is kept; Wirszubski prints 'Cabalae,' with a comma and 'metaphysicam' (wirszubski1989:7112).
English
That science which constitutes Cabala's practical part exercises, in practice, the whole of formal metaphysics and of inferior theology. unverified draft
'practicat' is rendered as a verb of exercise, 'exercises, in practice', to keep the echo of 'practica' in the same clause; the wordplay is Pico's. 'theologia inferior' is rendered 'inferior theology' to preserve the contrast Wirszubski proposes with the ineffable theology of the supersubstantial deity (wirszubski1989:7140).
Doctrine
The thesis defines the practical half of the division made in 11>1, where the science of the sefirot is paired with practical and the science of the shemot, the divine names, with speculative Cabala (farmer1998:26318; farmer1998:26331). The sefirot are the ten emanated powers of God in theosophical Kabbalah, which the Latin translations Pico used call numerationes (wirszubski1989:6836). Farmer accordingly glosses the practical part as the science of the sefirot (farmer1998:26457). In his reading 'formal metaphysics' is the science of the intellectual nature and 'inferior theology' the science of God's manifest nature in the sefirot, the highest realm reached by the practical theology of the viator, the pilgrim in this life (farmer1998:26458; farmer1998:19283). Farmer points to 2>27, where Pico holds that the theology of the viator, insofar as he is a viator, must be called simply practical (farmer1998:26460; farmer1998:19219). Wirszubski reads the verb 'practicat' as tying practical Kabbala to metaphysics and theology in the way theurgy was tied to theology from the beginnings of Neoplatonism (wirszubski1989:7118). He proposes, as a working hypothesis, that 'theologia inferior' stands in contrast to the ineffable theology of the supersubstantial deity and that 'metaphysica formalis' is the exact metaphysics of intelligible and angelic forms which Pico, reading 4 Ezra 14:47, found in revealed Cabala (wirszubski1989:7135).
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Context
The terms of the thesis come from the schools as much as from Kabbala (dougherty2008:2850; busi2014:20093). Blum judges the thesis debatable but not outrageous to a reader trained in scholastic terminology, and notes that whether theology is a speculative or a practical discipline was a question in any standard textbook (dougherty2008:2844; dougherty2008:2849). He suggests that 'inferior theology' could be read as the part of theology concerned with the conduct of life, on the model of the second part of Aquinas's Summa theologiae, and 'formal metaphysics' as the part of philosophy that meets physics and natural philosophy (dougherty2008:2847; dougherty2008:2851). Busi places the thesis after the four speculative Cabalas of 11>2 and calls the practical one sefirotic, following the first thesis of the series (busi2014:20037). He reads the whole classification as Pico's own, built in the Parisian style of scholastic distinctions that Pico announced in the Apology, with subclasses that are not in Jewish tradition (busi2014:20089; busi2014:20118).
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Reception
The thesis was not among those the commission censured; Blum notes that the Cabalistic theses according to Pico's own opinion went unchallenged (dougherty2008:2808). Blum also observes that Francesco Giorgio, commenting on the Cabalistic theses, did not reconcile 11>2 and 11>3, which make metaphysics and theology speculative in one place and practical in the other (dougherty2008:2952). Wirszubski notes that none of the Kabbalistic theses from the fifth to the seventy-second presupposes the divisions and definitions of the first four (wirszubski1989:7719).
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Historiography
Wirszubski takes it as certain that the practical part of Kabbala is the science of names, the reverse of the pairing Farmer defends (wirszubski1989:7115; farmer1998:26326). Starting from that premise he meets a problem: in Kabbalistic terms the intelligible and angelic forms are the sefirot, so the sefirot would be practised by a science of names (wirszubski1989:7145). He resolves it through 10>21, reading the formal continuous and discrete quantity practised by Cabala as middah, measure, used as a synonym of sefirah, and so infers that the ten sefirot are somehow involved in practical Kabbala (wirszubski1989:7208; wirszubski1989:7294). He grants that this conclusion is at variance with the neat division of 11>1 (wirszubski1989:7298). The editor infers that the variance arises from Wirszubski's inverted reading of 11>1: on the order Farmer and Busi defend, the sefirotic content Wirszubski recovers for 11>3 is what the thesis leads one to expect (farmer1998:26457; busi2014:20037; wirszubski1989:7296). Copenhaver, who keeps Pico's order and makes the practical part the one concerned with the sefirot, suggests that lower theology may be knowledge of God that language can express, set against the ineffable and supersubstantial theology the Oration finds in Ezra's books (copenhaver2019:18075; copenhaver2019:18078). He adds that a Kabbalist theurgy might make a formal metaphysics of angelic forms practical, and concedes that Pico's clues are hard to follow (copenhaver2019:18083). Farmer's gloss and Wirszubski's reconstruction thus meet in the sefirot from opposite premises, which makes 11>3 a test case for the dispute over 11>1 (farmer1998:26458; wirszubski1989:7289).
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Pico's sources
- Pico's own reading of 4 Ezra 14:47 in the Oration and Apology: revealed Cabala comprises an ineffable theology of the supersubstantial deity, an exact metaphysics of intelligible and angelic forms, and a firm philosophy of natural things: Wirszubski's working hypothesis for the meaning of 'metaphysica formalis' and 'theologia inferior' (wirszubski1989:7136)
- Pico, Orphic thesis 10>21: the work of Cabala is to 'practicare omnem quantitatem formalem continuam et discretam': parallel definition of the specific work of Cabala, read by Wirszubski together with this thesis (wirszubski1989:7196)
Quotations cited
- “this is a debatable but not outrageous statement” — M. V. Dougherty (ed.), Pico della Mirandola: New Essays (dougherty2008:2845)
- “it makes sense to assume, even if it cannot be proved” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:7268)
- “Il Mirandolano se ne va per la via propria” — Giulio Busi and Raphael Ebgi, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Mito, magia, Qabbalah (busi2014:20089)
- “Pico's terse clues are hard to follow” — Brian P. Copenhaver, Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico della Mirandola and His Oration in Modern Memory (copenhaver2019:18085)
Not established
- How Pico would have defended the thesis at the disputation; no defence of it is in the sources consulted.
- Which parts of Farmer's 'Cf. 358-9' in his note refer to 3>58-59; the OCR reading is uncertain.
- Whether Pico meant 'theologia inferior' in contrast to the ineffable theology of the Oration's reading of 4 Ezra; Wirszubski offers this only as a working hypothesis.
Discussed in
- Giulio Busi and Raphael Ebgi, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Mito, magia, Qabbalah (2014)
- M. V. Dougherty (ed.), Pico della Mirandola: New Essays (2008)
- Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (1989)
Farmer's cross-references
- 10>15 Idem est nox apud Orpheum_et ensoph in Cabala.
- 11>1 Quicquid dicant caeteri Cabaliste, ego prima diuisione scientiam Cabalae in scientiam sephiroth et semot, tanquam in practicam / et speculat
- 11>35 Si deus in se ut infinitum, ut unum, et secundum se intelligatur, ut sic nihil intelligimus ab eo procedere, sed separationem a rebus, et om
- 11>36 Ex praecedenti conclusione intelligi potest cur dicatur apud cabalistas quod deus induit se decem uestimentis quando creauit saeculum.
- 2>27 Theologia uiatoris, ut uiatoris est, simpliciter practica dicenda est.
- 3.1 Ideo haec est falsa: Essentia generat, quia essentia est ultimate abstracta, et generat formaliter praedicatur. u
- 3.2 Potest uideri essentia sine personis, et una persona sine alia.
- 5>1 Per numeros triplares, qui a Platone in Timeo ponuntur in triangulo animam significante, admonemur quousque in formis numerandis sit progred
- 6.1 Potentia generandi in diuinis nec est essentia diuina precise et absolute sumpta, nec relatio uel proprietas, nec constitutum ex ambobus, ne