Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola on Being and Unity: A Thomistic Solution to an Ancient Quarrel

351 The Thomist 78 (2014): 351-77 GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA ON BEING AND UNITY: A THOMISTIC SOLUTION TO AN ANCIENT QUARREL VICTOR M. SALAS Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, Michigan HE RELIANCE OF Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s (1463-94) metaphysical outlook on the Scholastic tradition in general and on Thomas Aquinas in particular is a well-documented fact.1 Yet, as Michael J. B. Allen has pointed out, aspects of Pico’s argumentation concerning the identity between being and unity as found in De ente et uno “await study and documentation.”2 Further study is especially needed with respect to Pico’s appropriation of Thomas’s so-called real distinction between esse and essentia in the course of the Renaissance thinker’s efforts to reconcile Neoplatonic and Aristotelian metaphysics by means of the notion of participation. In De ente et uno—meant to be the prelude to a larger work, the Concord of Plato and Aristotle3 —Pico, true to his sobriquet 1 See, e.g., Avery Dulles, Princeps Concordiae: Pico della Mirandola and the Scholastic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1941). 2 Michael J. B. Allen, “The Second Ficino-Pico Controversy: Parmenidean Poetry, Eristic, and the One,” in Gian Carlo Garfagnini, ed., Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone, Studi e documenti (Florence: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1986), 2:417-55, at 425. 3 See Pico della Mirandola, De ente et uno, proem. In what follows I make use of the Georg Olms 1969 reprint of the 1557 Basel edition of the Opera omnia, vol. 1, with reference to page numbers in parentheses. For convenience’s sake I shall, with my own emendations when needed, make use of the English translation of De ente et uno provided by Paul Miller, Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, On Being and Unity, Heptaplus (Indianapolis, New York, and Kansas City: The Library of Liberal Arts, 1965). For Antonio Cittadini’s objections and Pico’s response I use Stéphane Toussaint, L’esprit du quattrocento: Pic de la Mirandole “De l’être et de l’un” et réponse T 352 VICTOR M. SALAS (viz., the Princeps Concordiae), offers a two-pronged argument meant to establish a metaphysical accord between Plato and Aristotle. First, as a way to sidestep the clear Platonic indications that are counter to such an accord (viz., the indications that unity surpasses being), Pico approaches key Platonic dialogues with hermeneutic sensitivity to their literary elements and argues that they do not intend to make any metaphysical claims but are only a series of dialectical exercises.4 Second, in order to synthesize the apparently contradictory elements that constitute Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics, Pico adverts to a participation scheme in which being (ens) is said to participate in existence (esse) in such a way that the Aristotelian identity of being and unity can be preserved, all the while making sense of and even validating the Neoplatonic claim that something can be said to be ‘superior’ to being.5 The first stage of Pico’s argument has already received significant scholarly attention,6 and so here I focus only on the second metaphysical aspect of Pico’s project. I argue that Pico’s reconciliation of unity and being7 ultimately has its roots in Thomas’s metaphysics of participation8 that is cast in terms of à Antonio Cittadini (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1995) for the first three objections and responses and Franco Baccehelli and Raphael Ebgi, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: “Dell’ ente e dell’ uno” con le obiezioni di Antonio Cittadini e le risposte di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Milan: Bompiani, 2010) for Cittadini’s fourth objection. 4 De ente et uno, c. 1. 5 Ibid., cc. 3 and 4. For Plato see Republic 6.509B. 6 See Allen, “Second Ficino-Pico Controversy.” 7 Anton C. Pegis points out how the opposition between ‘unity’ and ‘being’ is perhaps the most fundamental and irresolvable aporia of Greek thought, an opposition that would remain even throughout medieval philosophy. See his “The Dilemma of Being and Unity,” in Robert Brennan, ed., Essays in Thomism (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1942), 149-83. Also in this regard, see the worthwhile discussion by Hervé Pasqua...