Of Being and Unity (Pico della Mirandola)

Of Being and Unity is a short philosophical treatise written in 1491 by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and dedicated to his friend the humanist Angelo Poliziano. It arose from a debate in Florence about whether, for Plato, the One stands above Being, as Plotinus and the Neoplatonists held, or whether being and unity are convertible, as Aristotle taught. Pico argues that Plato and Aristotle agree, and that the Neoplatonic reading of Plato's Parmenides is mistaken; he then develops his own account of God as at once being, unity, truth and goodness in a transcendent sense, beyond the categories by which we know created things, and closes with exhortations on moral life. The work is a key document of Pico's lifelong project of concord between philosophical and religious traditions, the same aim that animated his 900 Theses and his Oration, and it shows him engaging critically with Ficino's Platonism. It also prompted objections from the Ferrarese scholar Antonio Cittadini, to which Pico replied. Although it is a work of metaphysics rather than magic, it matters for esoteric history because it reveals the philosophical foundations of Pico's syncretism and of Renaissance Christian Kabbalah. The archive presents Victor Michael Hamm's English translation of 1943. Brian Copenhaver's recent work on Pico has reassessed how far modern readers projected their own ideas on him.

What it contains

• Dedication to Angelo Poliziano
• Whether the One is above Being in Plato
• Concord of Plato and Aristotle
• Critique of Neoplatonic readings of the Parmenides
• God as being, unity, truth and goodness
• Moral exhortation