Pic de la Mirandole: Unitinéraire philosophique (review)

This French volume presents a full-scale study of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's life and works. Although not the first, it certainly is the most up-to-date monograph on the Count of Mirandola, not to mention a very reliable tool for students of Renaissance thought in general, as Valcke situates his subject within the larger frame of the thought of the early Renaissance and the revival of Greek studies between the Ferrara of the Este family and the Florence of Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici.

In the introduction, entitled "Le Mythe de Jean Pic de la Mirandole," Valcke traces a history of the myth of Giovanni Pico, dating it back to the classic and, despite all criticism, still-influential study of Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). According to Burckhardt, the Renaissance is a phenomenon born under circumstances specific to the Italian peninsula between the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, presenting all the characteristics typically attributed to the modern period, such as a conceptual divide with the Middle Ages and an exaltation of the liberty of man from a superior ontological order. In Valcke's view, later interpretations, like those of Ernst Cassirer and Eugenio Garin, have followed Burckhardt's footsteps in presenting Giovanni Pico as the prototype for the Quattrocento humanist, and his Oration on the Dignity of Man —with its Promethean vision of man as master of his own destiny —as the manifesto of Renaissance humanism. In Valcke's words, these ideas, and, in fact, a very specific section of the Oration, made possible the building of a mythical image of a Promethean Pico as the symbol of an age not only of transformation, but also one that was forward-looking to an era when man and nature could be reconciled.

Valcke remarks that the abstract from Pico's Oratio de hominis digintate, which seems to be the only source for Burckhardt's interpretation, comprises only a few lines and, more importantly, is detached from the wider context of the rest of Pico's works: "Dix lignes sur l'ensemble del l'Oratio, dix lignes sur l'ensemble de l'oe uvre de Pic, voilà qui est bien peu de chose" (15). Valcke further argues that more recently other students of the philosopher have contributed to the construction of the mythical figure of Pico as a prophet of modernity, which has, on the other hand, been scrutinized and criticized by the works of Giovanni di Napoli (Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e la Problematica Dottrinale del Suo Tempo [1965]), Henry de Lubac (Pic de la Mirandole [1974]), and William G. Craven (Pico della Mirandola: Symbol of His Age, Modern Interpretations of a Renaissance Philosopher [1981]). In other words, Valcke is convinced that most scholars so far have been able to reconstruct from Pico's works an authentic facet of his life or of his thought, but these facets have been often presented as the core intuition of Giovanni Pico, containing the truth of all of Pico's work. Lacking, therefore, is an account of a philosophy in evolution, obliterated by a static, monolithic vision.

This is precisely the task that Valcke embarks on in his thorough volume, which presents the image of a restless, tireless, and unsatisfiable Pico. After situating the philosophical frame in which the thought of Pico should be placed in the first two chapters ("Arrière-plan Philosophique" and "La Grèce Renaît en Italie" ), the study focuses on Pico's biography, treated in chapters 3, 5, and 6 ("Jean Pic: les Années de Formation," "Découverte de la Sorbonne," and "La Trilogie: Oratio, Conclusiones, Apologia" ). The remaining eight chapters contribute to the various stages of the philosophical evolution of Giovanni Pico's thought, analyzing in depth his works from his famous epistolary exchange with Ermolao Barbaro and the letters to Lorenzo de' Medici and Angelo Poliziano, to the De ente et uno. Of...