Lecture
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) is widely known to have been a partner in philosophy with Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) the leading figure of the Renaissance revival of Platonism. Pico is also popular as the author of a speech On the Dignity of Man, which has become a signature text of humanist and Renaissance appreciation of the peculiar role of humanity in the world. Less known is Pico’s commentary on the beginning of Genesis, his critique of astrology, and, indeed, his critique of Ficino’s Platonism. This presentation will tie the various endeavors of this prolific thinker into the context of the humanist movement and the fruitfulness of his work for present day thought.
SPEAKERS
Paul Richard Blum (Loyola University, Maryland)
Sheila Rabin (Saint Peter’s University, Jersey City)
Paul Richard Blum is T.J. Higgins, S.J., Professor in Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore. Before moving to the US, in 2002, he was professor of Philosophy at Catholic Péter Pázmány University in Budapest (Hungary). Recently he was guest professor at Palacký University in Olomouc (Czech Republic). In Munich (Germany) he obtained his PhD with a book on Giordano Bruno’s interpretation of Aristotle; he then researched and taught at Free University Berlin, where he obtained his professorial degree with a book on Late Scholasticism and the modern concept of philosophy (Philosophenphilosophie und Schulphilosophie, 1998). This research on the Aristotelian tradition in modernity was continued and collected in a volume Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism (2012). The purpose of such studies is to calibrate the meaning of philosophy over history and to integrate Renaissance philosophy into the concept of ‘early modernity’. This was also one key idea in Blum’s Philosophy of Religion in the Renaissance (2010), in which Giovanni Pico, Marsilio Ficino, but also early humanists and late Renaissance provocateurs (Bruno, Campanella) played an important role. Blum has edited a number of Renaissance texts, from Bruno via Ficino and Pico to early Jesuits. In 201o he edited a text book Philosophers of the Renaissance. He is currently working on the translation and edition of a treatise on the immortality of the soul by Gasparo Contarini, a prominent figure of Catholic Reform and a student of Pietro Pomponazzi.