On the Dignity of Man, On Being and the One, Heptaplus (review)

346 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the most significant aspects of Renaissance philosophy. Di Napoli has drawn from a wide range of primary sources and has utilized most of the relevant secondary materials, although the book does show signs of haste, a certain lack of attention to detail (e.g., the same Latin text is used to support the same point on p. 223 and again on p. 341), and numerous generalizations and value judgments with which not all would agree. Di Napoli does establish a foundation for further research on the subiect and the book is important for showing the great abundance of material yet to be studied further. It is only after one has dipped into the writings of the Renaissance or has at least looked through a book like this one that he begins to realize the extent of the philosophical materials which have come down to us from the period. The philosophical writings themselves--as is often the case--give a wholly different story than do the textbook accounts of them. It is only through a more careful study of the individual sources that we will be able to correct some of the many mistaken details of this book. Msgr. Di Napoli has, however, given us a more detailed outline of the subject than have any of his predecessors. CHARLES B. SCH~Ir162 Fordham University On the Dignity o] Man, On Being and the One, Heptaplus. By Pico della Mirandola. Edited by Paul J. W. Miller. (The Library of Liberal Arts, No. 227; Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. Pp. xxiv + 174. $1.45.) This volume should serve to make the thought of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) more accessible to the English reader. Professor Miller provides a brief but sympathetic, accurate , and balanced introduction to Pico's life and thought (pp. vii-xxx). It gives us neither new information nor a new interpretation, but avoids the extravagances to which writers on Pico have often been prey. The translation of the Oration (this, incidentally, is Pico's title for the work, and the commonly used qualifying phrase, which in this edition curiously enough becomes the title itself, "On the Dignity of Man" is a later addition) is reprinted in the version of Charles Glenn Wallis (1940). On Being and the One is newly translated by Miller, although there is an earlier English version by Victor I-Iamm (1943). The Heptaplus is here translated for the first time by Prof. Douglas Carmichael. The availability of the latter work in English is of significance, for in it we have perhaps the best example of the characteristic blend of philosophy, religion, occultism, and humanism which makes up Pico's thought. The basis for the translations have been Garin's critical texts (1942), and many of Garin's identifications and references are printed in the notes. The translations, on the whole, read well, and a partial check has shown them to be accurate. As a book meant for the general reader rather than the specialist it is on the whole well done. There are only a very few minor points where one might find fault. One would have hoped for at least a mention in the Introduction of the controversy arising from the writing of Pico's On Being and the One. John Philoponus lived in the sixth century and not the seventh (p. 25), and the De plantis is pseudo-Aristotelian, as Garin indicates in his note, and should not be attributed to Aristotle himself (p. 92). Although Pico and Poliziano are both buried in the Florentine church of S. Marco, one wonders why it-any more than S. Spirito or S. Croce--should be called "the church of the Florentine humanists" (p. xxx). There is a useful brief bibliography, but since it is limited to books, key articles, even in English, are excluded: e.g., Klibansky's study of the Parmenide~ in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1943), which sheds much light on the On Being and the One; Cassirer's important articles (1942) on Pico which modify and extend his interpretation as contained in the listed Individual and Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (1927) ; and Breen's translation and study...