This is the second of two articles describing the influence of al-Ghazālī (d. 1111 C.E.) on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (d. 1494) and his associate Johanan Alemanno (d. after 1504). This article ...concentrates on the influence of Ghazālī’s The Book of Love (Kitāb al-Maḥabbah).
This is the first of two articles describing the influence of al-Ghazālī (d. 1111 C.E.) on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (d. 1494) and his associate Johanan Alemanno (d. after 1504). The first ...article concentrates on the influence of Ghazali’s The Niche of Lights (Mishkāt al-Anwār), including discussion of its unpublished Hebrew translations.
It is well known that, in both the Monas hieroglyphica and the Mathematicall praeface, Dee drew a part of his inspiration from Pico della Mirandola’s works. However, the nature and extent of Dee’s ...borrowings has not yet been studied. In fact, the only work of Pico really read and used by Dee was the 900 conclusions, where he found the conception of ‘formal numbers’: that is, mystical numbers carrying magical and divinatory powers. This is very important, since Dee sees these numbers as the very instruments of ‘the law of Creation.’ Pico also played a major part in the foundation of Christian cabala: in this field, his influence on Dee was mainly indirect, given that Dee—in the wake of Geofroy Tory—extended to Greek and Latin the magical and mystical properties which Pico considered as an exclusive property of the Hebrew language. Thus, Dee transforms what he calls ‘vulgar cabala’—the part of cabala that deals with language—from a christianised Jewish cabala into a truly catholic cabala. But for Dee, this is only the lower sort of cabala: above it lies ‘real cabala’, that is, the art of transmuting any physical or spiritual body into another. ‘Vulgar’ magicians and alchemists fail to achieve their aim because they do not possess the mastery of this discipline. Dee took from Pico the notion that cabala is superior to magic, and that the latter cannot be successful unless supported by ‘the work of cabala.’ Finally, Dee’s conception of the ‘metamorphosis’ of the soul taking place between the ‘horizons’ of time and eternity is derived not only from Pico, but also from Thomas Aquinas’s Summa contra Gentiles.
In two of his major works,
On the New Star
(1606) and
Harmonics of the Universe
(1619), Johannes Kepler engaged in an extensive debate against Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's
Disputations against ...Judicial Astrology.
But despite his disagreements with Pico's
Disputations
, Kepler wrote about it in these works with deep respect and even expressed many points of agreement with it. Ernst Cassirer suggested that despite Kepler's continuing practice and support of astrology, Kepler essentially adopted Pico's idea of the human being making himself and thus gradually liberated himself from a belief in astrological determinism: “The problem of freedom is closely allied to the problem of knowledge; the conception of freedom determines that of knowledge, just as, conversely, the latter determines the former. The spontaneity and productivity of knowledge finally become the seal of the conviction of human freedom and human creativity.”
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Trinkaus reviews "Nec rhetor neque philosophus: Fonti, lingua e stile nelle prime opere latine di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1484-87)" by Francesco Bausi.
