In your plan: Week 21, Fri, 12 Mar 2027.
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Overview
The Oration on the Dignity of Man is a short speech written in 1486 by the Italian scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, then about 23. Its central image is that God gave humans no fixed place or nature in creation, so each person must decide what to become. It is often called the manifesto of Renaissance humanism because it moves the focus from what humans are by birth to what they can make of themselves.
Context
Pico wrote in Florence and Rome in the late fifteenth century, when scholars were recovering Greek and Latin texts and reading Plato, Aristotle, Hebrew and Arabic sources side by side. He prepared the speech as an opening for a public debate on 900 theses. The debate never took place, and a papal commission judged several theses suspect. The speech was printed after his early death in 1494.
Read the full guide: chapter summaries, competing interpretations, key terms
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Curator's notes
- Why it matters
- Humans uniquely shape their own nature. The manifesto of humanism.
- Use in training and coaching
- People are not fixed; identity is chosen
- Connects to
- Plato; Renaissance art; growth mindset
- What to read
- Opening pages
- Text (date)
- Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)
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