Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Two Kinds of Infinity: Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno
Two Kinds of Infinity: Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno
Paul Richard Blum (Loyola
University Maryland, Baltimore)
Presented at
Giordano Bruno: Will, Power, and Being
(Festival Bruniano, 3rd Edition: Tours, 26-27 April 2018 – Wittenberg, 17-18 May 2018)
It is a commonplace that Giordano Bruno learned from
Nicholas of Cusa. He quotes extensively the De
beryllo and other texts of Cusanus in order to make his philosophy of the
infinity of the world philosophically acceptable. Already in the 19th
century, when the Bruno fad among the would-be atheists morphed into the
discovery of the ‘forgotten’ initiator of modern thought, it has been discovered,
that Cusanus even had entertained the centrality of the sun (instead of the
earth) antedating Copernicus by a century. Philosophically speaking, those are
matters of dogmatics. The serious problem in the familiarity and difference
between the early and the late Renaissance thinker is the notion of the
infinite, its constructive function in the philosophical system, its
epistemological and metaphysical status. Whereas Cusanus postulates the
infinite as the unavoidable condition for the correlation between reality,
origin, and understanding, Bruno harvested the fruits of such daring approach
to what used to be the domain of Aristotelian ontology and turns the
transcendence of the infinite into the immanence of truth in reality.[1]
To propose to speak about two kinds of infinity must appear
to be a joke. As we all know, infinity cannot be added to, or subtracted from,
infinity; and the reason is that infinity has no comparison. Hence there cannot
be two different kinds of infinity, unless both were species of an infinite
genus, in which case they were at the same time impossible for their being
limited and for there being subordinate kinds of what by definition is devoid
of subdivision. However, this calculation raises the question: why should one speculate
about infinity at all? In Cusanus and in Bruno we can observe how and why
infinity enters the philosophical discourse. We can also see what “comes out”
of infinity. And for this pursuit we may paradoxically speak about two kinds of
infinity in the sense of different ways to direct philosophical considerations
to the infinite and the argumentative result of such considerations. Do we, in
the end, have to judge and confer the palm to one of the two ways? Probably
not, provided both philosophers philosophize seriously and, as a result, leave
us equally puzzled about the quandaries of the infinite. The major thesis I
want to convey is this: both Cusanus and Bruno speculate about the infinite for
converse reasons or purposes. Cusanus aims at understanding God, Bruno aims at
understanding the world. Out of the vast body of available texts I dare to
choose just one instance, but I am confident, I could make the case with any
number of parallel evidence.
As is well known, in the fifth dialogue of De la Causa Bruno stated: “chi vuol
sapere massimi secreti di natura, riguardi e contemple circa gli minimi e
massimi de gli contrarii e opposti. Profonda magia è saper trar il contrario
dopo aver trovato il punto de l’unione.” (… There is a profound magic in
knowing how to extract the contrary …, after having discovered their point of
union.) [2]
Friedrich W. J. Schelling’s interpretation of this passage is helpful:
But concerning the shape of philosophical science, and the
challenge to cultivate the sturdy seed of this principle of indifference to its
fullest flower, the ultimate goal is to achieve a perfect harmony with the very
framework of the universe. To this end, both for ourselves and for others, we
can prescribe no maxim more excellent to constantly keep before our eyes than
that contained in these words, handed down to us by an earlier philosopher: To
penetrate into the deepest secrets of nature ...[3]
The somewhat
wordy paraphrase by Schelling contains a number of fundamental insights into
the philosophy of the infinite.
First of all we need to understand that the One, the punto de l’unione, is indeed the
infinite, as both Cusanus and Bruno are keen on arguing. This is also the
presupposition for the fact that there cannot be two kinds of infinity. Then,
Schelling suggests that indifference is the endpoint of universal harmony. Bruno’s
observation about the magic of finding diversity after unity amounts to outlining
harmony, but harmony is always of the diverse; and such harmony is not the end
but the “maxim” of proper philosophy and its guiding rule. From the idealist
point of view, Bruno discovered the principle of true philosophy by way of
setting the goal. However, the surprising fact for Schelling is that not the
One is the goal but the multitude. Plurality, diversity, and difference is the
object of philosophical research based on the understanding that every
distinction needs to be grounded in indifference, that is, union, that is
ideally the One. In other words, philosophy is not about unity but diversity,
not about the infinite but the finite. The finite, however, is grounded in the
infinite. Therefore, Teofilo explains a few lines later:
Quella unità è tutto la quale non è esplicata, non è
sotto distribuzione e distinzione di numero, e tal singularità che tu
intendereste forse; ma che è complicante e comprendente. (That unity is all, which is not unfolded, not distributed
and distinguished by way of number, and such singularity as you might intend;
rather, such that is enclosing and encompassing.)[4]
Unity is all, but it is not a thing; not a one thing
that is singular but a one that contains the diverse. Unity is not a thing but
the singularity of things. Teofilo gives the examples of decade and centenary
numbers that contain and enclose the lower numbers. The decade is that
singularity that comprehends the then digits.
Now in a first approach we may be content with recognizing
the well known pattern of unity and diversity and their functions in ordering
our comprehension of the finite world; at the same time we are happy to see
that everything is capped in some way under a canopy of higher order. But since
we do not expect Bruno (or any philosopher) to state the obvious, we need to
see why does it matter to him. Therefore we should look at where he was coming
from, namely, Nicolaus Cusanus.
Bruno adopted some of Cusanus’ geometrical examples; so the
question is, what did these examples stand for? He introduces them with the
suggestion that “all things are one in the same way as every number, even or
odd, finite or infinite, goes back to unity, which posits number if reiterated
with the finite and with the infinite negates number.”[5]
All is one – that appears to be plausible. (Of course it is not at all!
Otherwise, philosophers from Heraclitus to Hegel had not struggled with it.)
All numbers go back to unity – fine. There are four classes of numbers: pair
and odd, finite and infinite. So infinite numbers are numbers; and they equally
go back to unity? The qualification that follows immediately suspends that
understanding: it is unity that confirms or even produces number when repeated
with the finite; but it negates number if unity is associated with the
infinite. Let us assume that actually does not make sense.
The fact that both odd and even numbers can be reduced to
unity appears to be plausible, but only if we consider that either class of
numbers is a repetition of the counting of one. Whatever the arithmetic
properties of even and uneven digits, they are nothing but units. But Teofilo’s
additional remark states that such digits arise from the iteration of one “with
the finite.” The only plausible explanation appears to be that ‘finite’ is not
a property but a principle such that unity can join the finite or not join it. If
it does, then we have number. Number is unity in the realm of the finite. The
second alternative (“con l’infinito”) annihilates number. There is no infinite
number. Which is implied in the statement that number is by definition finite. Consequently,
the infinite considered as a realm, which negates the finite, negates number.
But infinity does not negate unity. Unity and infinity go well together.
Bruno illustrates this claim with geometrical examples taken
from Cusanus’ De mathematica perfectione.[6]
Straight line and curve converge on the level of the maximum and minimum.
Ecco dumque come non solamente il massimo et il minimo
convegnono in uno essere …, ma ancora nel massimo e nel minimo vegnono ad
essere uno et indifferente gli contrari. (Here, then, is how not only the maximum
and the minimum come together into one being … , but also how, in the maximum
and the minimum, contraries come to be one and indistinct.[7]
The extremes share identical being and, consequently,
opposites are one and indifferent on that level. That may be read as saying
that they are not annihilated ontologically but rather they have their
foundation in the infinite indifference. In the same way as numbers are
grounded in the infinite, insofar as they are finite in terms of numbers, so is
any finite geometrical figure as being distinct from other geometrical figures
grounded in the extreme that does not know the distinctions but founds them. Apologies
for a lame pun: the Infinite is indistinct from, but not indifferent to, the
finite.
The second geometrical simile, borrowed from Cusanus, is
that of triangles of varied sizes. The principle stated from the outset is: “Just
as in all genera, the analogous predicates draw their degree and order from the
first and loftiest of the genus.”[8]
Obviously, the author is invoking the
principle primum in aliquo genere,
which contemplates the prime instantiation of a genus to be also the foundation
of that genus and thus establishing the ontological status and the
gnoseological validity of any member of that class.[9]
His way to apply it here is to remind us that this prime is the foundation of
analogy and order. Analogy, here, does not mean a weak epistemological
approximation to something beyond truth and falsehood. (For instance: the
predicate ‘good’ can be said about God only analogically because God remains
unknown.) In this context, analogy is the relationship of belonging to the same
genus for things that on the finite level of reality are distinct and yet of
the same kind – triangles, for instance. Therefore, the ‘first and greatest’ of
the class of analogues establishes that class and all of its members. The
triangle is convenient as an example, Bruno says, because among the plane
figures with angles it is the most elementary that cannot be dissolved into
other figures. However, it can be of different sizes. But in terms of triangle
there is no distinction between them. This insight is measured against the
infinite:
Però se poni un triangulo infinito (…) , quello non arà
angolo maggiore che il triangolo minimo finito, non solo che mezzani et altro
massimo. (However, if you posit an infinite triangle (…) , it will not have an
angle greater than that of the smallest finite triangle, and likewise for that
of any intermediate triangle and of another, maximum triangle.)
Inserted in this osservation is the qualifier:
(non dico realmente et assolutamente, perché l'infinito non
ha figura: ma infinito dico per supposizione, e per quanto angolo dà luogo a
quello che vogliamo dimostrare) [(I do not mean really and absolutely, since
the infinite has no figure; I mean infinite hypothetically, insofar as its
angle is useful for our demonstration.)][10]
Bruno avers us that a real infinite triangle does not
exist, as infinite numbers don’t. A triangle by definition is finite. However
we may conceive of the infinite hypothetically in order to show on the example
of the angle the fact that angles remain angles; and that can mean that the
infinite triangle, if it were real, is the first of any angle and makes it
gnoseologically and geometrically possible. But the overarching argumentative
goal is this:
Quindi per similitudine molto espressa si vede come la una
infinita sustanza può essere in tutte le cose tutta, benché in altri finita, in
altri infinitamente; in questi con minore, in quelli con maggior misura. (Through
this very elaborate simile one sees in which way one infinite substance can be whole
in all things, although in some in a finite way in others in an infinite way
and in some to a minor and in others to a greater degree.)[11]
God, who else could be meant by this “infinite
substance”? But is pantheism or panentheism Bruno’s philosophical intention? I
don't’ think so. On a first level he is arguing that oneness is the foundation
of the many. It is not said that God is actually and essentially present in all
things. What he says is that the mode of ‘being in’ of the one is finite and
infinite in various and specific degrees. God’s presence in things is
analogical. And, as we saw, analogy is not identity but the condition of being
the same and yet individual. Therefore, if we search again for the
philosophical import of Bruno’s maxim, we see clearly that he is seeking for
the foundation of the reality that is by definition finite. There is no
multitude without oneness; there is no singularity without the singularity of
the One.
Now let us have a look at how Cusanus explained how he
employed geometrical examples. In
Amplius, non satiabilis noster intellectus cum maxima
suavitate vigilanter per praemissa incitatus inquirit, quomodo hanc participationem
unius maximi possit clarius intueri. (Furthermore, our insatiable intellect,
stimulated by the aforesaid, carefully and with very great delight inquires
into how it can behold more clearly this participation in the one Maximum.)[12]
Initially, his is an epistemological enterprise: how
can the human intellect understand that things participate in the maximum One?
Bruno will transform the notion of participation into that of analogy and
harmony. Also, he is not skeptical about the human understanding but more
concerned with the ontological status of finite beings. About the curved and
the straight line Cusanus explains:
Et sicut finita recta in hoc quod recta – in quod quidem rectum curvitas minima resolvitur –
secundum simpliciorem participationem participat infinitam, et curvum non ita
simplicem et immediatam sed potius mediatam et distantem, quoniam per medium
rectitudinis quam participat: ita aliqua sunt entia immediatius entitatem
maximam in seipso subsistentem participantia, ut sunt simplices finitae
substantiae, et sunt alia entia non per se, sed per medium substantiarum
entitatem participantia, ut accidentia. (A finite straight line, insofar
as it is
straight (minimal curvature is a reduction to that which is
straight) participates in the infinite line according to a more simple
participation, and a curve [participates in the infinite line] not [according
to] a simple and immediate participation
but rather [according
to] a mediate
and remote participation; for [it participates] through the medium of
the straightness in which it participates. Similarly, some beings—viz., simple
finite substances—participate more immediately in Maximum Being, which exists
in itself. And other beings—viz.,
accidents—participate in [Maximum]
Being not through themselves
but through the
medium of substances.)[13]
It is critical that the curved and the straight line
participate in the maximum in various degrees and that the curved, in terms of
participation, depends on the straight. The thrust of the argument goes towards
establishing such maximum on which the particulars depend. The maximum is not
‘the largest thing around’, it is the only true thing; it is the measure of
what there is and it is the reality of what appears to be there. A particular
thing is not more thing than any other; but in terms of derivative from the one
and only true reality (the maximum) it is a closer or weaker approximation to
that.
Et in hoc aperitur intellectus illius, quod dicitur
substantiam non capere magis nec minus. Nam hoc est ita verum, sicut linea
recta finita in eo, quod recta, non suscipit magis et minus; sed quia finita,
tunc per diversam participationem infinitae una respectu alterius maior aut
minor est, nec umquam duae reperiuntur aequales. Curvum vero, quoad
participationem rectitudinis, recipit magis et minus; et consequenter per ipsam
participatam rectitudinem sicut rectum recipit magis et minus. (In this is
disclosed an understanding of the statement that substance does not admit of
more or less. This statement is as true as a finite straight line, insofar as
it is straight, does not admit of more and less; but because
it is finite,
— through a
difference of participation
in the infinite line— one line is longer or shorter
in relation to another; and no two lines are ever found to be equal. But a
curve admits of more and less as it participates in straightness; and
consequently, due to this participated straightness it admits of more or less
as the straight line does.)[14]
The maximum does not entail comparison but is the
canon of comparability.
Substantiae igitur et accidentis una est adaequatissima
mensura, quae est ipsum maximum simplicissimum; quod licet neque sit substantia
neque accidens, tamen ex praemissis manifeste patet ipsum potius sortiri nomen
immediate ipsum participantium, scilicet substantiarum, quam accidentium.
(There is, then,
one most congruent
measure of substance
and of accident—viz., the most
simple Maximum. Although
the Maximum is neither substance
nor accident, nevertheless from the foregoing we see clearly that it receives the
name of those things which participate in it immediately, viz., substances,
rather than [the name] of accidents.[15]
The maximum, that is, the infinite that is God, is the
ontological measure of things while not being one of the things. In this way
the human mind may fathom epistemologically that the finite reality refers to
an ontological foundation. Therefore we may say that Cusanus, as any medieval
theologian, takes the existence of the Creator-God as a given and labors to
make this plausible to the human mind. On the other hand, Bruno accepts
Cusanus’ lead, but he now focuses on how this God can possibly help understand
the creation. In Cusanus, the epistemological challenge is to understand God
through things; in Bruno the challenge is to understand things with the
invocation of God.
The geometrical example of the triangle clearly deviates
from Cusanus. The author of Learned
Ignorance had argued that “patet lineam esse infinitam triangulum maximum.”
If we extend a triangle to the maximum by stretching the angles, we arrive at a
straight line, and an infinite one.
Quare si per positionem angulus valeret duos rectos,
resolveretur in lineam simplicem totus triangulus. Unde cum hac positione, quae
in quantis impossibilis est, iuvare te potes ad non-quanta ascendendo; in
quibus, quod in quantis est impossibile, vides per omnia necessarium. (Therefore,
if, by hypothesis, an angle could
be two right
angles, the whole
triangle would be
resolved into a
simple line. Hence, by
means of this
hypothesis, which is impossible
in quantitative things, you can be helped in ascending to non-quantitative
things; that which is impossible for quantitative things, you see for non-quantitative things to be
altogether necessary .)[16]
The entire exercise is intended to show that by
extending the empirical and geometrical knowledge to the infinite, we may come
to an understanding of what it is like to be infinite.
So, do we have two kinds or two versions of the infinite?
Cusanus’ infinite was
-
exemplary
-
epistemologically challenging but accessible by
way of similes
-
the notion of God that may be gained from His
creation.
Bruno’s infinite was
-
the ontological foundation of finite things
-
epistemological tool of understanding reality
- a
useful hypothesis.
Bruno accepts Cusanus’ speculation that yields an
intellectually acceptable notion of the infinite and he turns this infinite
into a scientifically inevitable hypothesis that establishes harmony in the
finite world.
[1]
This study is a result of research funded by the Czech Science Foundation as
the project GA ČR 14-37038G “Between Renaissance and Baroque: Philosophy and
Knowledge in the Czech Lands within the Wider European Context”.
[2]
Giordano Bruno, Dialoghi
italiani, ed. Giovanni Gentile and Giovanni Aquilecchia (Firenze, Sansoni,
1958), 340.
I quote this edition as the most accessible through http://bibliotecaideale.filosofia.sns.it.
Giordano Bruno, Cause,
Principle, and Unity and Essays on Magic, trans. Robert De Lucca and
Richard J. Blackwell (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 100: “There is a profound magic in
knowing how to extract the contrary from the contrary, after having discovered
their point of union.” The words “from the contrary” are not in the text and
inconsistent, for the idea is to derive opposites from the very One. The
translator of Schelling's quotation of this passage has it right: "To
discover their point of union is not the greatest task, but to do this and then
develop its opposite elements out of their point of union, this is the genuine
and deepest secret of art." Friedrich Wilhelm
Joseph von Schelling, Bruno, or On the Natural and Divine Principle of
Things [1802], trans. Michael G. Vater (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984), 222.
[3]
Schelling, Bruno,
222.
[4]
Bruno, Dialoghi
italiani, 341.
My translation.
[5]
Bruno, 335: “che le cose tutte sono uno:
come ogni numero tanto pare quanto ímpare, tanto finito quanto infinito, se
riduce all'unità, la quale iterata con il finito pone il numero, e con
l'infinito nega il numero.” My translation.
[6]
Nicholas of Cusa, Opera
(Basel: Petri, 1565), vol. 3, p. 1120; Nicolaus de Cusa, Opera omnia. Vol.
11.1: De beryllo, ed. Carolus Bormann and Iohannes Gerhard Senger
(Hamburgi: Meiner, 1988) n. 41, p. 47. Cusanus is quoted from
http://cusanus-portal.de.
[7]
Bruno, Dialoghi
italiani, 336; Bruno, Cause, 97 (modified).
[8]
Bruno, Cause,
97; Bruno, Dialoghi italiani, 337: “come in tutti geni li
predicati analogi tutti prendeno il grado et ordine dal primo e massimo di quel
geno.”
[9]
Plotinus, Opera
omnia: Cum latina Marsilii Ficini interpretatione et commentatione, ed.
Stéphane Toussaint, [Basel: Perna, 1580] (Villiers-sur-Marne: Phénix, 2005),
3.5, chapt. 5, p. 289:
“Quo vero sublimius simpliciusque corpus est, eo tardius videtur ab anima
deferendum, caeleste vero nunquam. In omni siquidem genere quod primo fit
particeps, semper est particeps.” The argument is this: the first participation
founds the lower ranking participations.
[10]
Bruno, Dialoghi
italiani, 336f.; Bruno, Cause, 98 (modified).
[11]
Bruno, Dialoghi
italiani, 337; Bruno, Cause, 98 (modified).
[12]
Nicolaus de Cusa, Opera
omnia. Vol. 1. De docta ignorantia, ed. Ernestus Hoffmann and Raymundus
Klibanksy (Lipsiae: Meiner, 1932), book 1, chapt. 18, n. 52, p. 35; Nicholas of
Cusa, On Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docta
Ignorantia, trans. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis: Benning Press, 1981), 29,
http://jasper-hopkins.info/DI-I-12-2000.pdf.
[13]
Nicolaus de Cusa, Opera
1, book 1, chapt. 18, n. 52, p. 36; Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned
Ignorance, 29.
[14]
Nicolaus de Cusa, Opera
1, book 1, chapt. 18, n. 53, p. 36; Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned
Ignorance, 29f. (modified).
[15]
Nicolaus de Cusa, Opera
1, book 1, chapt. 18, n. 54, p. 36f. Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned
Ignorance, 30.
[16]
Nicolaus de Cusa, Opera
1, book 1, chapt. 14, n. 39, p. 28f. Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned
Ignorance, 23 (modified).
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Nicholas of Cusa on Peace and Religion
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The Divisive and the Unifying Power of Faith: Nicholas of
Cusa in the Presence of Islamic Military Victory
Paul Richard Blum, Loyola University Maryland
Delivered at the KU Leuven Institute of Philosophy on December 2, 2015
as part of the Leuven Newman Society's "Faith & Reason" series.
Abstract:
In
1453, when Byzantium fell to the Turkish powers, Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64)
wrote a treatise, De pace fidei, in which he pondered the reasons why religion
can lead to war and set peoples against each others. He was convinced that
there is a “heaven of reason” (coelum rationis), in which understanding the
truth of religion spreads peace. His philosophical starting point was that the
notion of God entails bliss, love, and union, whereas everything remote from
God is transitory, discordant, and fragile. Hence he postulated that the
variety of religions cannot be the essence of faith, but rather the gateway to
unity and peace. In order to show that he scrutinized all religious groups
known to him, including the Bohemians and the Muslims and emphasized that they
all imply the same veneration of truth. As a result he concluded that religion
cannot possibly be divisive, which is contrary to the truth, but ultimately
unifying for – in Christian language – it must have been God’s will to be
sought from all sides of the world. Plurality, hence, is not a curse but a
blessing.
Now part of my book
Now part of my book
Nicholas of Cusa on Peace, Religion, and Wisdom in Renaissance Context
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494)
and Renaissance Philosophy
Paul Richard Blum
[Presented at Istituto Italiano di Cultura, New York, 11 November 2014]
and Renaissance Philosophy
Paul Richard Blum
[Presented at Istituto Italiano di Cultura, New York, 11 November 2014]
A presentation on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola should have
at least nine hundred chapters – but I will reduce it to four or five.[1]
1. Pico contributed to the
discovery of the human being as the center of the world.
Let me start with a quotation about philosophy:
“Philosophy is man's knowledge of himself. …
Man, if he acquires a true knowledge of himself, viz. of his own spirituality
and corporeality, comprises the knowledge of everything ....”[2]
If I had let you guess the author,
you certainly would have come up with Pico or some other Renaissance thinker. For
it makes philosophizing a feature of humanity that expands on everything there
is. However, it is from Isaac Israeli in the early Middle Ages. Closer to that matches our expectations of medieval
pessimism is this famous saying of Pope Innocent III:
“Indeed man is shaped like an upside down tree.
His hair forms the roots; his head and neck the trunk; the breast and stomach
the stock; the arms and legs the branches. Man is a plant tossed to and fro by
the wind and, like straw, dried out by the sun.”[3]
It was the humanist Giannozzo
Manetti who opposed this view by saying:
“…the fruits proper to man are not those
shameful and incidental kinds of filthiness … mentioned above; rather our human
fruits are to be deemed the many operations of intelligence and will.”
To the humanists, man is man in action. And Pico will elaborate
on that and drive it to near exhaustion. In order to show that, I simply quote
one of his most famous statements in his Oration
on the Dignity of Man:
“[God] … took man, … set him in the middle of
the world, and said to him: ‘We have given you, Adam, no fixed seat or form of
your own, no talent peculiar to you alone. … Once defined, the nature of all other beings is constrained within the
laws We have prescribed for them. But you, constrained by no limits, may
determine your nature for yourself, according to your own free will ... We have
set you at the centre of the world so that from there you may … easily gaze
upon whatever it contains. … you may, as the free and extraordinary shaper of
yourself, fashion yourself in whatever form you prefer. It will be in your
power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish.
Alternatively, you shall have the power … to be reborn into the higher orders,
those that are divine.’ …”[4]
Here we see the specific humanist take on humanity: after
the medieval thinkers and theologians had realized that the essence of human
beings and of being human consists in reflecting upon oneself and thus
experience life as misery, the humanists say: to be miserable does not exclude
thinking about it, and human awareness of filthiness is the mother of
invention. Now in a giant leap, Pico concludes that the status of being human
utterly depends on the spiritual powers of the individual. He clothes it in
this speech of God to Adam saying that humans have no predetermined position in
the hierarchy of things. A human being can ascend to the level angels or
degrade to the baseness of beasts, depending on how one uses one’s mind.
The progress from the image of man as an uprooted tree to
that of the individual intellect as the center of the world was life-changing.
Giordano Bruno, about 100 years later, would extend it to the theory of the
cosmos, claiming that the center of the
world is, wherever one happens to stand. And yet, when Descartes would say,
another 50 years after that, the “I think” is the only thing that is certain,
he is still banking on Pico’s discovery: Man is man in action, and the world is
the place where man is at the center.
2. Pico was probably the
first encyclopedist, that is, he believed it is impossible to know too much,
and all there is to know is worth knowing.
The quotation from the Oration
on the Dignity of Man is the most popular. But in this speech that
apparently elevated the appreciation of humanity there followed a second part,
in which Pico calls for a universal system of knowledge that includes all
disciplines and traditions. Since no place in the chain of being is assigned to
him, man is a Divine afterthought after the completion of the universe, a being
meant to oversee, and thus to appreciate, the perfection of God’s masterwork;
and that requires appropriate skills. Therefore he called upon the world of
learning to embrace all intellectual achievements of the ancients and of his
contemporaries. Truth is contained in all sciences, and it is the call for
humanity to find and unfold it. Pico’s syncretism is condensed in the formula:
“I am not sworn into the words of any one.”
I should now mention that this famous Oration was intended as the opening speech of a mammoth disputation
to be held in 1487 in Rome.[5]
Pico invited the entire world of learning and even promised to pay the expenses
for those who attended. For this disputation Pico had prepared no less than
nine hundred theses, which he promised to be able to defend.
Within parentheses, it should be stated that such
publication of theses for public discussion was academic practice and as an
event nothing out of the ordinary. We might also remember the famous 95 theses
that Martin Luther nailed at the church gate in Wittenberg, merely 30 years
later in 1517. Again, he did not intend to start a religious war, but just
posted his program inviting everyone to challenge his ideas.
Still, the number 900 sounds somewhat exaggerated. Even more,
Pico said, he could easily have expanded the number by elaborating even more on
details. Those 900 theses are grouped by schools of thought, including
scholasticism, Platonism, Cabala, and many others. The message is this: human
thought is one for all and it evolves and diversifies indefinitely. If man is
at the center of the world, the world is worth knowing as far as possible.
Pico was in agreement with the Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa who
discovered the coincidence of contraries in the power of the human mind.[6]
Nicholas died one year after Pico was born. Indeed, Pico planned to pay a visit
to the Cardinal’s legendary library in Germany. But more importantly, Pico’s
project of an all-encompassing debate triggered the projects of producing an
encyclopedia of all that can be known. Most of these projects were pursued in
the 17th and 18th centuries and came to a completion with
the Encyclopedia Britannica and present day’s Wikipedia.
3. As a syncretist (that is
one who combines virtually all schools of thinking), Pico was against dogmatism,
including that of the Renaissance Platonists.
To pay every branch of learning its due comes with a price:
Does it mean that everyone has his or her own mind and everyone is right? In a
way yes, but also no. First of all, not to be sworn into any one’s school is
the necessary condition for intellectual curiosity. On the flip side, it means
that understanding a school of knowledge does not entail endorsing it.
Therefore, Pico was able to present theses of some scholastics that he did not
endorse; and to ‘defend’ them in the great disputation would have meant
explaining their validity without endorsing them.
Most importantly, intellectual curiosity – to be a polymath or
an intellectual omnivore, as Anthony Grafton had it – is the opposite of
dogmatism. Pico wanted to know all dogmas of the world without being dogmatic. And
here was his enemy: the meanwhile popular Platonism of the Renaissance.
Frequently, Giovanni Pico was associated with Marsilio
Ficino[7]
as one of the Florentine Platonists. But the story is more complicated.
In 1438-39 a council was held in Florence, sponsored by the
Medici trust, that was to reconcile the Byzantine and the Roman Christian
Churches. For some obscure reason, a neo-pagan scholar, who called himself
Plethon, so as to sound like “Platon”, was part of the Greek delegation.[8]
And during his stay in Florence he published a book in which he attacked the
Western Christians for being Aristotelians. He advocated a return to Platonism.
Of course Platonism had dominated Christian thought from St. Paul on; but
lately, thanks to the rediscovery of Aristotle, theology was basically
Aristotelian. Plethon now blamed Aristotelianism to be heretic and – shrewdly –
suggested returning to Platonism, which in his own agenda, was paramount to
ancient wisdom. This idea was picked up by the banker and ruler of Florence,
Cosimo de’Medici, who appointed Ficino to translate works by Plato and the
Neo-Platonists from Greek into Latin. Ficino also commented on all those works,
among others on Plato’s Symposium.[9]
In doing so, Ficino denounced Aristotelian scholasticism as un-Christian and
created his own system that should reconcile dogmatics with ancient wisdom.
This Renaissance Platonism vexed the young friend Pico. He
got interested in Plato while he stayed with Ficino in Florence, but he saw in
Plato only the advocate of the reconciliation of all philosophies rather than a
dogmatic system. For Pico, the major danger, in very few words, is this:
First: every interpretation of Christian thought in terms of
pagan Greek philosophy runs the risk of making Christian revelation
superfluous.
Second: Ficino aligned Plato’s theory of Forms or Ideas with
the notion of God; and this interpretation disturbs the balance between
rational philosophy and revelation. One important example is the notion of God
as the one that transcends every being. Ficino elevated God to a level that
detached God from His Creation. Against this theory Pico protested fiercely in
his De ente et uno.[10]
He did the same in a comment on a love poem written by a friend in the
footsteps of Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s
Symposion.[11] On
the same occasion he criticized the Byzantine scholar Plethon for his misinterpretation
of Greek mythology.
4. On his search for unity of
knowledge, Pico explored new methods of interpreting the Bible.
One anecdote from his life needs to be told. Pico as a man
of action worked simultaneously on his 900
Theses and the introduction, the Oration
on the Dignity of Man, and on this commentary on the love poem. On his way
to Rome in early May 1486, he found time and energy to kidnap Margherita, the
wife of Giuliano Mariotto dei Medici. However, after a fight and his
humiliating arrest that ensued, he seems to have had a conversion and
concentrated all his vigor on studies of Hebrew, the Qur’an, and other reading.
While preparing his great event in Rome, he met for further briefings with his
teacher of Averroist Aristotelianism, Elia del Medigo. From their exchange of
letters we learn that Pico paid Elia with a horse, but also infected him with
scabies. More importantly, Elia was one of the sources for Pico to learn about
Cabala.[12]
Here is, how Elia del Medigo explained this system of Jewish
mysticism:
“[The cabalists] believe that in this world
there are beings of a lower degree than the degree of the glorious God, who is
called the Infinite, and these flow – that is: they are not made nor produced –
from Him, who is named the Infinite. … The order in which the produced beings
are produced and maintained within the order is this, namely by the [ten]
Sephiroth, i.e. numberings. Thus they call these 'flowed from the Infinite'. … According to [the cabalists], the order
we find in the world is that of the Sephiroth.”[13]
We should notice that Elia does not endorse this theory,
being an Aristotelian. But Pico kept learning and had texts of Jewish mysticism
translated for him.
Now, following his idea that as a human being one is
invited, if not urged and obliged, to get to know as much of the world as
possible, and in doing so to elevate oneself above the realm of the beasts,
Pico understood, as Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida in the 20th
century did, that being human means interpreting the world, reading the world
like a book. We all know that famous adage of Galileo Galilei that the book of
the world is written in the language of mathematics. On hearing that we see
Einstein writing formulas on the blackboard. This notion, that the world can be
read in the language of numbers, was actually an old idea. In Greece it was
formulated by Pythagoras. And among the Jews of the Middle Ages it was
expressed in their reading of the Holy Writ. As in other languages, in Hebrew
every letter represents also a numerical value. Therefore it offered itself to
wise people that God’s creation is achieved through that flow, mentioned by
Elia del Medigo, that proceeds in 10 Sephirot and from there structures the
world according to occult numbers. Now, as for the Christians, so even more for
the Jews, the Bible is the primary text that helps reading the book of the
world. Consequently, Jewish sages started discovering numerical hidden messages
in the word of God.
This was what interested the young scholar. For Pico, Cabala
gives access to the secret of divine creation through the alphabet. The letters
of the Bible are nothing but a numerical reconfiguration of God's word and
work. This he elaborated in his commentary on Genesis, by the title Heptaplus
- Sevenfold.[14]
His method of interpretation of the Creation story in the
Bible is as follows. First Pico establishes these two assumptions:
(1) Moses must have spoken adequately and in a learned
manner, even though he addressed an uneducated audience;
(2) Moses cannot have
said anything "alien to the nature of things" since the Holy Spirit
speaks through him.
Therefore, the nature of things as created by God
must necessarily be the very message of the story of Genesis. For all those whom
we now term literalists: it is not so that the Bible is a source of a
scientific interpretation of the world; rather, the other way round: for Pico, the
world is the expression of God’s power and plans; therefore the structure of
the world is necessary for an understanding of the Word of God. Both have the
language and their hidden meaning in common.
As an example we may see Pico’s cabalistic interpretation of
the first word of the Bible, “In the beginning” (in Hebrew bresit or bereshit): After describing a series of dissections and
re-compositions of its letters, Pico discloses the meaning that was implied in
this single word:
“The Father, in the Son and through the Son,
the beginning and end or rest, created the head, the fire, and the foundation
of the great man with a good pact.”
If that sounds mysterious – it is. The point is that by way of numerical
relations, the name of Jesus is implied in the very beginning of the world.
5. Pico reconciled the
humanist, theological, and philosophical trends of Renaissance philosophy.
In searching for new methods of interpreting texts, and
specifically the Bible, Pico continued the efforts of humanists like Giovanni
Boccaccio and Giannozzo Manetti; and he bestowed on the history of ideas what
can be called Christian Cabala; a reconciliation of Jewish and Christian piety.
That attempt at reconciliation did not remain uncontested: Giordano Bruno
ridiculed it,[15]
others mixed it up with magic and astrology; eventually, a version of it
appeared in Baruch Spinoza in the 17th century, who then was accused
of atheism.
But reconciliation was Pico’s long term project. By his
family estate, he had the title Prince of Concordia, and he planned to write a
book on the concord of Plato and Aristotle from a higher point of view. His aim
was syncretism, as we heard, that is, the freedom to apply various methods
depending on the matter at hand. Therefore he defended the scholastic style of
argumentation after having studied not only with Ficino but also in Paris, the
most important scholastic university.[16]
This came handy in his most ambitious project, that great
disputation in Rome. The great event was cancelled, because censors had found
13 out of the 900 propositions to be suspicious of heresy. Pico defended
himself with a long Apology, in which
he argued like a scholastic theologian. However he points out that there are
various schools, and he refers to the history of theology, which is a typical
humanist move. Another humanist argument Pico applied was to say that all
dogmas are expressed in language, and language is always open for
interpretation – even the words of God, as we saw.
In conclusion we may observe that Pico absorbed all trends
of humanism and philosophy. Some people think that humanism has nothing to do
with philosophy and that in the Renaissance philosophy took shape only with
Ficino’s new Platonism. Pico, who was 30 years younger than Ficino but died 5
years earlier, Pico proves to the contrary: Renaissance philosophy was as much
indebted to Aristotle as to Plato and all their medieval Christian
interpretations; and the new turn was made possible through the humanist
emphasis on the central perspective of man on the world and the role of
language in it. Pico achieved much less, personally, than his ambition pursued,
but he handed over to the following generations the insight that knowledge is
hard to come by but worth having.
[1]
Only references to primary sources are given. For Pico’s biography and
philosophy see, among others, Dougherty,
M. V., ed. Pico Della Mirandola: New Essays. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2008., 2008. Stéphane
Toussaint, “Giovanni Pico” in Paul Richard Blum,
ed., Philosophers of the Renaissance, Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010,
69-81.
[2]
Isaac Israeli (ca. 832-ca. 932), Book of definitions, in: Alexander Altmann and
S. M. Stern, Isaac Israeli a Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth
Century: His Works Translated with Comments and an Outline of His Philosophy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 27.
[3]
Bernard Murchland (ed.). Two Views of Man: Pope Innocent III [1161-1216] On
the Misery of Man. Giannozzo Manetti [1396-1459] On the Dignity of Man. New
York: F. Ungar Pub. Co, 1966.
[4]
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Oration
on the Dignity of Man: A New Translation and Commentary. Ed. Francesco
Borghesi, Michael Papio, and Massimo Riva. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2012.
[5]
Farmer, S. A. Syncretism in the West: Pico’s
900 Theses (1486); Conclusiones Nongentae; English & Latin., Tempe,
Ariz. : Medieval & Renaissance Texts &
Studies, 1998.
[6]
Nicholas of Cusa [1401-1464]. On Learned
Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia,
trans. Jasper Hopkins, Minneapolis: A.J. Benning Press, 1981,
http://jasper-hopkins.info/DI-I-12-2000.pdf.
[7]
Marsilio Ficino
[1433-1499]. Platonic Theology, ed. James Hankins, trans. Michael J.B.
Allen et al., I Tatti Renaissance Library 2, 4, 7, 13, 17, 23, Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001-2006.
[8]
C. M. Woodhouse. George
Gemistos Plethon [c. 1355 –
1452/1454]: The Last of the Hellenes Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1986.
[9]
Ficino, Marsilio. Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love. Translated by
Sears R. Jayne. Dallas, Tex.: Spring Publications, 1985.
[10]
Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola. Of Being and Unity; (De Ente et Uno), trans. Victor M.
Hamm. Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 1943.
[11]
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Commentary on a Canzone of Benivieni.
Translated by Sears R. Jayne. New York: P. Lang, 1984.
[12]
On Cabala [Kabbalah] see Busi, Giulio, and Ebgi, Raphael. Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola: mito, magia, qabbalah. Torino: Einaudi, 2014.
[13]
Elia's [1458-ca. 1493] letter to Pico in: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. De
hominis dignitate; De ente et uno; e scritti vari. Edited by Eugenio Garin.
Edizione nazionale dei classici del pensiero italiano. Firenze: Vallecchi,
1942, pp. 68-71.
[14]
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. Heptaplus: Or, Discourse on the Seven Days
of Creation. Translated by Jessie Brewer McGaw. New York: Philosophical
Library, 1977.
[15]
Bruno,
Giordano. The Cabala of Pegasus. Translated by Sidney L. Sondergard and
Madison U. Sowell. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002.
[16]
Breen,
Quirinus. “Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola on the Conflict of Philosophy and
Rhetoric.” Journal of the History of Ideas 13, no. 3 (June 1, 1952):
384–412. doi:10.2307/2707604. Barbaro, Ermolao, and Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola. Filosofia o eloquenza? Edited by Francesco Bausi. Sileni 2.
Napoli: Liguori, 1998.
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