Cover: Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico della Mirandola and His <i>Oration</i> in Modern Memory, from Harvard University PressCover: Magic and the Dignity of Man in HARDCOVER

Magic and the Dignity of Man

Pico della Mirandola and His Oration in Modern Memory

Product Details

HARDCOVER

$61.00 • £53.95 • €55.95

ISBN 9780674238268

Publication Date: 11/19/2019

Text

704 pages

6-1/8 x 9-1/4 inches

22 illus.

Belknap Press

World

Add to Cart

Educators: Request an Exam Copy (Learn more)

Media Requests:

Related Subjects

“This book is nothing less than the definitive study of a text long considered central to understanding the Renaissance and its place in Western culture.”—James Hankins, Harvard University

Pico della Mirandola died in 1494 at the age of thirty-one. During his brief and extraordinary life, he invented Christian Kabbalah in a book that was banned by the Catholic Church after he offered to debate his ideas on religion and philosophy with anyone who challenged him. Today he is best known for a short speech, the Oration on the Dignity of Man, written in 1486 but never delivered. Sometimes called a “Manifesto of the Renaissance,” this text has been regarded as the foundation of humanism and a triumph of secular rationality over medieval mysticism.

Brian Copenhaver upends our understanding of Pico’s masterwork by re-examining this key document of modernity. An eminent historian of philosophy, Copenhaver shows that the Oration is not about human dignity. In fact, Pico never wrote an Oration on the Dignity of Man and never heard of that title. Instead he promoted ascetic mysticism, insisting that Christians need help from Jews to find the path to heaven—a journey whose final stages are magic and Kabbalah. Through a rigorous philological reading of this much-studied text, Copenhaver transforms the history of the idea of dignity and reveals how Pico came to be misunderstood over the course of five centuries. Magic and the Dignity of Man is a seismic shift in the study of one of the most remarkable thinkers of the Renaissance.

Recent News

Black lives matter. Black voices matter. A statement from HUP »

From Our Blog

Jacket: Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, by Peter Wilson, from Harvard University Press

A Lesson in German Military History with Peter Wilson

In his landmark book Iron and Blood: A Military History of the German-Speaking Peoples since 1500, acclaimed historian Peter H. Wilson offers a masterful reappraisal of German militarism and warfighting over the last five centuries, leading to the rise of Prussia and the world wars. Below, Wilson answers our questions about this complex history,