Pico della Mirandola, Conclusiones (1486) SectionsThe thirteen condemnedScholarshipMethod

Paradoxical, new doctrines · thesis 3>49 · condemned, Q12

Thesis 3>49

Latin

Magis improprie dicitur de deo quod sit intellectus uel intelligens, quam de anima rationali quod sit angelus.

Copy-text: Farmer 1998, line 20990

Copy-text Farmer 1998 (farmer1998:20990-20991); u/v as Farmer prints them; Farmer's apparatus on this page records no 1486 variant for the thesis (farmer1998:20996-20998). The title of the conclusion in Garcia's Determinationes (Rome, 1489), as printed by Edelheit, reads 'intelligens vel intellectus' and reverses the terms of the second comparison, 'de angelo quod sit anima rationalis' (edelheit2022:20783-20784). Collation with the Rome print of 7 December 1486 (farmer1998:28040-28042) is outstanding.

English

It is less proper to say of God that he is intellect, or one who understands, than to say of the rational soul that it is an angel.

'improprie' is rendered 'less proper': the thesis grades two improper predications against each other. 'intelligens' is the participle, 'one who understands'; 'intellectus' the intellect itself. Farmer's note groups the pair, with 'intelligibile', as labels Latin scholastics sometimes gave to God (farmer1998:23893-23894). Pico's reply glosses 'intelligere' as the name, in Dionysius's manner of speaking, for knowledge appropriated to the angel, as 'ratio' names knowledge appropriated to man (edelheit2008:17661, 17704-17705).

Translation: machine-drafted 2026-09-26 (agent WRITER-A3b) from the Latin at farmer1998:20990; sense checked against Farmer's English at farmer1998:21047, not reproduced; awaiting human check

Attribution: Pico's own opinion: the forty-ninth of the paradoxical conclusions 'numero lxxi secundum opinionem propriam noua in philosophia dogmata inducentes' (farmer1998:20258-20261, 20990). · Pico's stance: endorses

Condemnation

Q12 in the order of the Apology: Whether God understands. Printed 7 December 1486; censured by the papal commission in February-March 1487; the work as a whole condemned by the bull of 4 August 1487.

"false and can be taken to a heretical sense", in Farmer's translation of the record in Dorez and Thuasne 1897, page 137 (farmer1998:21058-21059); Blum's translation of the same record, "Wrong and can be twisted to a heretical meaning" (dougherty2008:2183, 2246).

Doctrine

The thesis grades two improper ways of speaking: to call God intellect, or one who understands, is further from proper speech than to call the rational soul an angel (farmer1998:20990-20991). Behind it lies the question how a name taken from creatures can be said of God (editor's framing; cf. farmer1998:23893-23896). Farmer reports that Thomas held the being of God and creatures to be analogical, while Scotus argued that it was univocal, identical in both (farmer1998:12279-12280). Copenhaver describes Thomas's way of talking about God in analogous terms as a conjunction of metaphysics with semantics, and adds that between creatures and their Creator no analogy was perfect (copenhaver2022:4526-4533). Analogical predication, in this sense, says a term such as 'intellect' of God and of a creature neither in one identical sense nor in unrelated senses, but by a real and imperfect likeness (editor's gloss on farmer1998:12279-12280 and copenhaver2022:4527-4533). Farmer notes that Latin scholastics sometimes called God intellectus, intelligens and intelligibile, as in the Latin Maimonides, whereas Pico normally reserved these terms for the intellectual nature and held that God wholly transcends the realm of understanding (farmer1998:23893-23896). In the Apology Pico explained that he denied of God the 'intelligere' that in Dionysius's manner of speaking names the knowledge appropriated to the angel, as 'ratio' names the knowledge appropriated to man and in that sense is said improperly of God (edelheit2008:17661, 17704-17705). His point was a comparison of distances: angelic knowledge, which claims the name of intellectual knowledge, is further from God's infinite knowledge, which knows all things through the divine essence, than it is from the rational knowledge proper to the human soul (edelheit2008:17706-17709). The same principle governs 4>6, where God, beholding himself and nothing but himself, knows all things in a unitive and eminent way (farmer1998:21559-21562, 23896-23897). The thesis therefore does not deny that God knows; it denies that 'intellect', a name fitted to the first created mind, fits God as well as the angel's name fits the soul (editor's inference from edelheit2008:17706-17709 and farmer1998:23894-23896).

Context

The thesis belongs to the seventy-one paradoxical conclusions that Pico offered in his own name as new doctrines in philosophy (farmer1998:20258-20261). In the printed Conclusions it was the first of the thirteen a reader would meet, before 3>60 and the theological theses 4>1, 4>2 and 4>8 (copenhaver2022:1252-1253). Farmer links it with two questions Pico undertook to answer by the 'way of numbers', whether God understands and how God understands (farmer1998:21054, 23828-23831). He also links it with 2>7, which makes every thing, in the purity of its being, understanding, intellect and understood, and he glosses that purity as existence in the intellectual or angelic nature (farmer1998:18977-18978, 19016-19017). The negative way on which Pico relied, the apophatic theology of Dionysius the Areopagite, proceeds by understanding what God is not (howlett2021:5279-5288). In the Commento Pico reports that for the Platonists God is not intellect but the source and principle of all intellect (howlett2021:6682-6685). He also recalls a Platonist astonished by Plotinus's statement that God understands nothing, and explains that the perfection of understanding is in God in the mode of causal, not formal, being (howlett2021:6696-6702).

Reception

In his formal reply to the commission Pico argued that the thesis conformed to the mode of speaking of Dionysius, who held that God should not be called intellect or intelligible or the like (farmer1998:21055-21058). The commission responded that the thesis was false and could be taken in a heretical sense (farmer1998:21058-21060). Blum's translation of the record gives 'Wrong and can be twisted to a heretical meaning' (dougherty2008:2183, 2244-2246). Edelheit counts it among the seven theses declared suspect, as against six condemned (edelheit2008:14877-14883). The Apology's twelfth Question, 'An Deus intelligat', fills a single page in Fornaciari's edition (fornaciari2010:1044; edelheit2008:14875), in keeping with Copenhaver's remark that the last six Questions were made shorter because time ran out (copenhaver2022:12149-12150). Pedro Garcia (Garsia) answered it in his Determinationes magistrales of 1489, at ff. g8r-h2v (dougherty2008:2377-2378; edelheit2022:20783-20784). He argued that the noblest mode of causing is through intellect and will, since only agents that act so have mastery of their act, and he concluded that intellect and will, understanding and willing, are in God most properly (edelheit2022:20785-20790, 20817-20818).

Historiography

Farmer places the thesis within Pico's negative theology, in which names like intellect belong to the intellectual nature and God transcends understanding (farmer1998:23893-23896). Edelheit's earlier study reads the Apology's defence as a clear separation of divine, angelic and human cognition, with reason attributed to man alone (edelheit2008:17622-17625, 17705-17709). His later study turns to Garcia's reply and commends its account of intellect and will for avoiding the endless Thomist-Scotist dispute over which faculty ranks higher (edelheit2022:20759-20796). Howlett reads Pico's God as so far above us that only apophatic theology applies to him, while the emanated order below can be described positively (howlett2021:6703-6708). The German study Erkenntnistheorie und christliche Kabbalah, whose author the registry has not yet identified, cites the thesis for a transcendent intellect, the first mind or created Word, that stands next to God (kabbalah_paradigma:1353-1355, 1395-1396). Copenhaver's trial study names the Question only by topic and by its position in the Conclusions (copenhaver2022:849, 1252-1253, 13624). The thesis shows Pico turning the negative way into a measured scale, in which the step from soul to angel is the unit against which the step from angel to God is judged the longer (editor's inference from edelheit2008:17706-17709 and farmer1998:20990-20991).

Pico's sources

Quotations cited

Not established

Discussed in

Mention records in the corpus: 7 (deterministic harvest; see Method).

Farmer's cross-references

Related theses

7a>5, 7a>6, 2>7, 7a>42, 4>6, 3>60, 3>63