The Structure and the Implications of Giovanni Pico's Famous Oratio de dignitate hominis : Is It Really on the Dignity of Man?

This article tries to introduce a new reading and understanding of Pico della Mirandola’s famous ‘oratio’ by subdiving substantial parts of the texts and indicating the respective relations. The creational constitutio of man has its counterpart in the autopoietic constitution of the self as the basic fundament of the individual human being, the idea of unfolding the potentials and dynamics of the divine principle has its counterpart and analogon in the unfolding of the potentials and dynamics of the initially undifferentiated image of the divine principle that becomes its ‘visible’ shaping through educational operations discussed in the second part. The unfolded being of any individual is in the same moment a real image of the divine principle and its implications and a ideal autopoietic and singular realization of anthropological potentialities, particularly expressed through the energies of scientific processes and intellectual insights. Pico’s text is a manifesto of renaissance anthropology, introducing new ideas, for example the concept of an ‘indiscrete’ or ‘non differentiated’ image (indiscreta imago), which I interpret as the core-image of the absolute, every difference transcending archetype or divine principle.