Pico's Proclan conclusions

Pico's conclusions based on Proclus represent an impressive effort of translating and digesting unfamiliar and difficult material. He made a significant contribution to the philosophy of his time simply by making this material available, and we learn a great deal about his philosophical motivations from the selections he makes in presenting 55 conclusions from the much larger texts of Proclus' Platonic Theology and Timaeus commentary (these texts of Proclus are also the source of many of the conclusions from Iamblichus, Syrianus, and other platonists). We see Pico exploring significant metaphysical themes of the Dionysian Celestial Hierarchy--the triadic arrangement of intellectual and intelligible orders, the Platonic terminology of Participation, which is currently a "key" topic in Thomas Aquinas studies, the multiple levels of being. While Pico has been accused of breaking the hierarchy with his "becoming angelic" in the Oration, here he makes an argument qualifying the Proclan principle that "all is in all" by pointing out that the hierarchy is nevertheless maintained. The final conclusion gives an impression of Proclus' system as a mystical theology involving ascent through angelic choirs.

notes today

In his Oration Pico is careful to define magic as dealing with the natural world only.
In contrast to "demonic" forms of magic which involve conjuring, and he claims the church rightly hates,
Pico suggests a magic that is the operative part of natural philosophy, and serves a purpose of generating religious wonder.

However, although Pico attempts to distinguish between the bad and good kinds of magic, when he waxes eloquent about the value of magic to philosophy and theology, he is nevertheless getting into dangerous territory. Blum suggests that Pico got himself into trouble over magic because he was crossing a boundary that the Renaissance chuch wanted to maintain between natural philosophy and theology. Pico was not suspected of the kind of sorcery that theurgic interpreters have tried to read into him, but for a dangerous concept of natural philosophy, according to this view.

many scholars have put the becoming angelic part together with the theological value of magic.
Yates and French, even COpenhaver ________
Bono and Mebane

Pico's relationship to Aquinas is a controversial issue that has been unnecessarily confused.

Craven's historiography - impatient with historians who should have known better, read Pico more carefully, didn't understand theological issues before making accusations of gnosticism/heresy/magic.

Angel inspires Pico to mystical action, but not because his ultimate goal is to become infused at his human level with angelic being for magical purposes, but in order to escape his human state.

on De Ente, from Life of Pico

Saturated as mediaeval theology was with ideas derived from Plato and Aristotle, and but imperfectly understood, it was inevitable that when men attempted to philosophize about God, they should conceive Him—or -at any rate tend to conceive Him—rather as a universal principle, or archetypal source of ideas, than as a concrete personality. Hence nominalism, with its frank denial of the existence of universals, conceptualism with its reduction of them to figments of abstraction, seemed equally to involve atheism; even realism of the more moderate type, which, while asserting the objective existence of the universal, denied its existence ante rem—i.e., apart from the particular—was viewed with suspicion as tending to merge God in the cosmos; while realism of the high Platonic order, by its assertion of the existence of a world of pure universals—archetypes of the particulars revealed to sense—found favour in the eyes of men in whom the philosophic interest was always strictly subordinated to the theological.

In the treatise " De Ente et Uno" the question as between the transcendence and the immanence of God comes to the surface with remarkable abruptness. Is " the One," i.e. God, to be regarded as " Being " or as " above Being?" Aristotle is supposed to maintain the former position, Plato undoubtedly holds the latter. To the Platonic doctrine Pico gives in his unqualified adhesion, and attempts to constrain Aristotle to do so likewise. His Platonism I is of the most uncompromising type, the idealism of the Parmenides with the Parmenidean doubts and difficulties left out. Abstract terms such as " whiteness" or " humanity" signify, he asserts dogmatically, and apparently without a shadow of doubt as to the truth of the doctrine, real existences which are what they are in their own right and not by derivation from or participation in anything else, while their corresponding concretes denote existences of an inferior order which are what they are by virtue of their participation in the abstract or archetypal ideas. Upon this theory he proceeds deliberately to base his theology. As whiteness in itself is not white, but the archetypal cause of that particular appearance in objects, and in the same way heat in itself is not hot, but the cause of the particular sensation which we call heat; so God is not" Being" though, or rather because, He is the "fulness," i.e. the archetypal cause, of "Being." As thus the one primal fountain of "Being" He is properly described as "the One." "God is all things and most eminently and most perfectly all things; which cannot be, unless He so comprehends the perfections of all things in Himself as to exclude whatever imperfection is in them. Now, things are imperfect either (i) in virtue of some defect in themselves, whereby they fall short of the normal standard proper to them, or (2) in virtue of the very limitations which constitute them particular objects. It follows that God being perfect has in Him neither any defect nor any particularity, but is the abstract universal unity of all things in their perfection. It is, therefore, not correct to say that He comprehends all things in Himself; for in that case neither would He be perfectly simple in nature, nor would they be infinite which are in Him, but He would be an infinite unity composed of many things infinite, indeed, in number, but finite in respect of perfection; which to speak or think of God is profanity." In other words, in order to get a true idea of God we must abstract from all plurality, all particularity whatever, and then we have as the residue the notion of a most perfect, infinite, perfectly simple being. God may, then, be called Being itself, the One itself, the Good itself, the True itself; but it is better to describe Him as that which is "above Being, above truth, above unity, above goodness, since His Being is truth itself, unity itself, goodness itself," better still to say of Him that He is "intelligibly and ineffably above all that we can most perfectly say or conceive of Him," and with Dionysius the Areopagite to define him by negatives. And so he quotes with approval part of the closing sentence of the treatise " De Mystica Theologia" in which agnosticism seems to exhaust itself in the exuberant detail of its negations. "It" (i.e. the First Cause) "is neither truth, nor dominion, nor wisdom, nor the One, nor unity, nor Deity, nor goodness, nor spirit, as far as we can know; nor sonship nor fatherhood, nor aught else of things known to us or any other creature; neither is it aught of things that are not nor of things that are; nor is it known to any as it is itself nor knows them itself as they are; whose is neither speech, nor name, nor knowledge, nor darkness, nor light, nor error, nor truth, nor any affirmation or negation." And then, to give a colour of orthodoxy to his doctrine he quotes the authority of St. Augustine to the effect that "the wisdom of God is no more wisdom than justice, His justice no more justice than wisdom, His life no more life than cognition, His cognition no more cognition than life; for all these qualities are united in God not in the way of confusion or combination or by the interpenetration as it were of things in themselves distinct, but by way of a perfectly simple ineffable fontal unity ": a summary statement of some passages in the sixth book of the treatise "De Trinitate," which is of course misleading apart from theeontext in which they occur. [Such is Pico's theory of the Godhead—a theory which in fact reduces it to the mere abstraction of perfect simplicity and universality, a theory wholly irreconcilable with the Christian faithflwholly unfit to form the basis of religion J Nor was its author insensible, rather he would seem to have been only too painfully conscious of the barrenness of the results to which so much toil and trouble had brought him; for he has no sooner enunciated it than he turns, as if with a sigh, to Politian, and addresses him thus :—" But see, my Angelo, what madness possesses us. Love God while we are in the body we rather may than either define or know Him. By loving Him we more profit ourselves, have less trouble, please Him better. Yet had we rather ever seeking Him by the way of speculation never find Him than by loving Him possess that which without loving were in vain found "—words that since Pico's day must have found an echo in the heart of many a thinker weary with the vain effort to gain by philosophical methods a clear insight into the divine nature.

on Pico's Scriptural interpretation, from Life of Pico

The plural method of interpreting Scripture, it must be observed, was by no means peculiar to Pico, indeed was in common use in his day. As a rule, however, commentators were content with three senses, which they distinguished as mystical, anagogical, and allegorical. To Pico's philosophic mind this, no doubt, seemed a pitiful empiricism. For what was the ground of the triple method? Why these three senses and no more? He scorned such grovelling economy and rule of thumb, and determined to place the interpretation of the Mosaic cosmogony once for all on a firm and philosophic basis. Digging, accordingly, deep into the nature of things for the root, as he calls it, of his exegesis, he comes upon the Ptolemaic system with its central earth surrounded by its nine concentric revolving spheres, the nearest that of the moon, the most remote that of the fixed stars, in the interspace the solar and other planetary spheres, and beyond all the stable empyrean. To this he joins the Platonic theory of an intelligible world behind the phenomenal, and the Christian idea of heaven, borrows from the pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite his nine orders of angels to correspond with the nine celestial spheres, discerns in the stable empyrean the type of the immutability of God, in matter as the promise and potency of all things, the evidence of His infinite power and fulness, throws in the Neo-Platonic doctrine of the microcosm and macrocosm, and lo! the work is done, and a cosmology constructed, which to elicit from Genesis may f' well demand a sevenfold method of interpretation. The minor details of this curious mosaic, to wit, the correspondence between the nine spheres of corruptible forms and the nine planets, between seraphic "intelligence and the sun, between cherubic intelligence and the moon, seem, for what they are worth, to be all Pico's own.

Pico's Apology, from Life of Pico

Thirteen were selected for examination by a special commission and were pronounced heretical. Pico, however, so far from bowing to its decision, wrote in hot haste an elaborate "Apologia" or defence of his orthodoxy, which, had it not been more ingenious than conclusive, might perhaps have been accepted ; as it was, it only brought him into further trouble.

This Apology "elucubrated," as he tells, " properante stilo" in twenty nights, Pico dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici, modestly describing it as "exiguum sane munus, sed fidei meae, sed observantiae profecto in omne tempus erga te maxime non leve testimonium," "a trifling gift indeed, but as far as possible from being a slight token of. my loyalty, nay, of my devotion to you." Hasty though its composition was, it certainly displays no lack of either ingenuity, subtlety, acuteness, learning, or style. Evidently written out of a full mind, it represents Pico's mature judgment upon the abstruse topics which it handles, and is a veritable masterpiece of scholastic argumentation. After a brief prologue detailing the circumstances which gave occasion to the work Pico proceeds to discuss seriatim the thirteen "damnatae conclusiones," and the several objections which had been made to them. The tone throughout is severe and dry and singularly free from heat or asperity. Some of the theses are treated at considerable length, others dismissed in a page or two, or even less. Altogether, when the rapidity of its composition is borne in mind, the treatise appears little less a prodigy.

The obnoxious theses were as follows:—(i) That Christ did not truly and in real presence, but only quoad effectum, descend into hell; (2) that a mortal sin of finite duration is not deserving of eternal but only of temporal punishment; (3) that neither the cross of Christ, nor any image, ought to be adored in the way of worship; (4) that God cannot assume a nature of any kind whatsoever, but only a rational nature; (5) that no science affords a better assurance of the divinity of Christ than magical and cabalistic science; (6) that assuming the truth of the ordinary doctrine that God can take upon himself the nature of any creature whatsoever, it is possible for the body of Christ to be present on the altar without the conversion of the substance of the bread or the annihilation of " paneity;" (7) that it is more rational to believe that Origen is saved than that he is damned; (8) that as no one's opinions are just such as he wills them to be, so no one's beliefs are just such as he wills them to be; (9) that the inseparability of subject and accident may be maintained consistently with the doctrine of transubstantiation; (10) that the words "hoc est corpus" pronounced during the consecration of the bread are to be taken "materialiter" (i.e., as a mere recital) and not "significative" (i.e., as denoting an actual fact); (11) that the miracles of Christ are a most certain proof of his divinity, by reason not of the works themselves, but of his manner of doing them; (12) that it is more improper to say of God that he is intelligent, or intellect, than of an angel that it is a rational soul; (13) that the soul knows nothing in act and distinctly but itself.

It is undeniable that some of these propositions smack somewhat rankly of heresy, and Pico's ingenuity is taxed to the uttermost to give them even a semblance of congruity with the doctrines of the Church. The following, however, is the gist of his defence. Christ, he argues, did actually descend into hell, but only in spirit, not in bodily presence; eternal punishment is inflicted on the finally impenitent sinner not for his sins done in the flesh, which are finite, but for his impenitence, which is necessarily infinite; the cross is to be adored, but only as a symbol, not in and for itself, for which he cites Scotus, admitting that St. Thomas is against him. The thesis that God cannot take upon himself a nature of any kind whatsoever, but only a rational nature, must be understood without prejudice to the omnipotence of God, which is not in question; God cannot assume the nature of any irrational creature, because by the very act of so doing he necessarily raises it to himself, endows it with a rational nature. The thesis that no science gives us better assurance of the divinity of Christ than magical and cabalistic science referred to such sciences only as do not rest on revelation, and among them to the science of natural magic, which treats of the virtues and activities of natural agents and their relations inter se, and that branch only of cabalistic science which is concerned with the virtues of celestial bodies; which of all natural sciences furnish the most convincing proof of the divinity of Christ, because they show that his miracles could not have been performed by natural agencies. The sixth thesis must not be understood as if Pico maintained that the bread was not converted into the body of Christ, but only that it is possible that the bread and the body may be mysteriously linked together without the one being converted into the other, which would be quite consistent with the words of St. Paul, i Cor. x. 16: "The bread which we break is it not the communion of the body of Christ ?" if interpreted figuratively. With regard to the salvation of Origen, Pico plunges with evident zest into the old controversy as to the authenticity of the heretical passages in that writer's works, and urges that his damnation can at most be no more than a pious opinion. In justification of the position that belief is not a mere matter of will he cites the authority of Aristotle and St. Augustine, adding a brief summary of the evidences of the Christian faith, to wit, prophecy, the harmony of the Scriptures, the authority of their authors, the reasonableness of their contents, the unreasonableness of their contents, the unreasonableness of particular heresies, the stability of the Church, themiracles. As to transubstantiation, Pico professes himself to hold the doctrine of the Church, merely adding thereto the pious opinion that the Thomist distinction between real existence and essence is consistent with the theory that the bread itself remains in spite of the transmutation of its substance, and thus with the doctrine of the inseparability of subject and accident; as for the words "hoc est corpus," it appears from their context and their place in the office that they are not to be taken literally, for the priest, when in consecrating the bread he says, "Take, eat," does not suit the action to the word by offering the bread to the communicants, but takes it himself, and so when in consecrating the wine he says, "qui pro vobis et pro multis effundetur," it is not to be supposed, as if the words were to be taken literally it must be supposed, that he means that the blood of Christ actually will be shed, or that he does not mean to claim the benefit of it for himself as well as the congregation, and the "many." That the value of Christ's miracles as evidences of his '/ divinity lies rather in the way in which they were wrought than in the works themselves, is supported by Christ's own words in St. John xiv. 12: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to my Father ;" which are quite inconsistent with the idea that the works are themselves evidence of his divinity. In support of the proposition 'that intellect or intelligence cannot properly be ascribed to God, Pico invokes the authority of Dionysius the Areopagite, who holds the same doctrine, but does not on that account deny to God an altogether superior faculty of cognition, even farther removed from angelic intelligence than that is from human reason. The last proposition, viz., that the soul knows nothing in act and distinctly but itself, being extremely subtle and profound, Pico forbears to enlarge upon it, pointing out, however, that it has the authority of St. Augustine in its favour. The reference is to the De Trinitate, x. 14.1 The doctrine itself is of peculiar interest, for in it lay the germ of the Cartesian philosophy.

Pico concludes the "Apologia" with an eloquent appeal to his critics to judge him fairly, which was so little heeded that some of them saw fit to impugn its good faith, and raised such a clamour about it that Pico, who in the meantime had gone to France, was peremptorily recalled to Rome by the Pope. He complied, but through the influence of Lorenzo was permitted to reside in the Benedictine monastery at Fiesole, while the new charge was under investigation. Meanwhile Garsias, Bishop of Ussel, published (1489) an elaborate examination of the "Apologia," nor did Pico hear the last of the affair until shortly before his death, when Alexander VI., by a Bull dated 18th June, 1493, acquitted him of heresy and assured him of immunity from further annoyance.

Dionysius EH

Dionysius "theurgical understanding"
"Seeing that our hierarchy, most sacred of sacred sons, [consists] of the inspired and divine and theurgical understanding and energy and perfection..."
EH 1.1

EH 3.3.12 How might the imitation of God become ours differently if not by the memory of the most holy theurgies being renewed always by both the hierarchical sacred words and hierurgies? This we do, as the oracles say, in remembrance of [the theurgy]. This is why the divine hierarch standing at the divine altar hymns the aforementioned sacred theurgies of Jesus, most divinely provided for us, which are provided for salvation of our kind by the goodwill of the most all-holy Father in the Holy Spirit in order to to fulfil the oracle. Having praised also the awful majest [of the theurgies] and perceived a theoria with noetic eyes, he proceeds to the divinely-ordained symbolic hierergy of them; then after the sacred praises of the theurgies, the hierergy so far above him, both reverently and hierarchically crying out, he apologises as he sacredly approaches it.

EH 5.2 theoria is given as the commen element linking the activity of our hierarchy with that of heaven

Eh 3.3.15 In theses things the whole of the sacred order has gathered hierarchically and communicated with the most divine [gifts]; it ends with a sacred thanksgiving, having acknowledged and praised propotionately the grace of the theurgies.

EH 4.3.12 The theurgy is super-celestial and super-essential, of all our theurgical sanctification it is source and being and perfecting power... For it is a sacrament of God also, since for our sake in human form he is sanctified and theurgically perfects and sanctifies everything being perfected.

Dionysius "theurgical understanding"
"Seeing that our hierarchy, most sacred of sacred sons, [consists] of the inspired and divine and theurgical understanding and energy and perfection..."
EH 1.1


Dionysius Ecclesiastical Hierarchy stuff (old translation)

50 chapter one "ours is a Hierarchy of the inspired and Divine and Deifying science, and energy and perfection. This we will do, from the celestial and most sacred oracles--for those who have been initiated within the initiation of the sacred revelation derived from the hierarchical mysteries and traditions
51
What, then, is the Hierarchy of the Angels and Archangels, and supermundane Principalities and Authorities, Powers and Lordships, Divine Thrones, or Beings of the same ranks as the Thrones--which the Word of God describes as being near, and always about God, and with God, naming them in the Hebrew tongue Cherubim and Seraphim--what pertains to the sacred Orders and divisions of their ranks and Hierarchies you will find in the books we have written--not as befits their dignity, but to the best of our ability--in which we have followed the Word of God as it describes their Hierarchy in the Holy Scriptures. Nevertheless, it is necessary to say this, that both and every Hierarchy which we are now celebrating has one and the same power throughout the whole of its hierarchical functions, and that the Hierarch himself, according to his nature, and aptitude, and rank, is initiated in Divine things, and deified and imparts to his subordinates according to the meetness of each, the sacred deification which comes to himself from God. Likewise, that the subordinates follow the superior, but elevate the inferior towards things in advance; and that some go before, and, as far as possible, give the lead to others; and that each, as far as may be, participates in Him who is the truly Beautiful, and Wise, and Good, through this Divine and sacerdotal harmony.

But the Beings and ranks above us, of whom we have already made a reverent mention, are both incorporeal and their Hierarchy is intellectual and supermundane. But we observe that our hierarchy, conformably to our nature, abounds in a manifold variety of material symbols, from which, in proportion to our capacit, we are conducted by sacerdotal functions to the onelike deification--God and Divine Virtue. They indeed, as being minds, perceive, according to laws laid down for themselves. But we are led by sensible figures to Divine contemplations as is possible to us. And to speak truly, there is One to whom all the Godlike aspire. But they do not partake of this One and the Same in one manner, but as the Divine ordinance distributes to each a meet inheritance.... I will attempt to describe our Hierarchy, and its head and substance as best I can; invoking Jesus the Head and Perfection of all Hierarchies. Every Hierarchy, then, is, according to our august tradition, the whole descrpion of the sacred things falling under it--a most complete summary of the sacred rites of this or that Hierarchy, as the case may be. Our Hierarchy, then, is called and is the systematic account of the whole sacred rites included within it; according to which the divine Hierarch, being initiated, will have within himself the participation of the most sacred things, as chief of Hierarchy. For as he who speaks of Hierarchy speaks of the order of the whole sacred rites collectively, so he who mentions Hierarch denotes the inspired and godly man--one who understands accurately all sacred knowledge, in whom is completed and recognized, in its purity, the whole Hierarchy.


Early Medieval Phil 480-1150
By John Marenbon
19
A complex, metaphysical angelology was not the pseudo-Dionysius' only bequest to the Middle Ages. In two of his works, DN and the brief MT, he confronts a problem which was to trouble many a Christian thinker. How can one speak at all of a God who is beyond human understanding and description? The problem was particularly acute for the PD because, as a much more faithful NPist than Augustine, he held that God could not even be described as "being." The PD turned to the pagan NPists for helf, but the solution which he found was to a problem rather different from his. In commentaries on Plato's Parmenides, it had become the practice to apply the series of negations found in Plato's dialogue to the One (whose absolute transcendence had been stressed ever since Plotinus), and the series of positive statements to the hypostases which emanated from the One. Despite his adoption of the Neoplatonic scheme of hierarchies, the PD was a Christian, who had to accept both that God was immutable and transcendent, and yet that it was he, directly, who created and who administers the universe. He could not therefore equate God with the positively indescribable One; nor could he directly transfer every description of God to some lower emanation. Consequently, he applied both series of statements, positive and negative, to God himself. God is at once describable by every name, but only metaphorically, by reference to his manifestation of himself in his creation; and he can be described by no name--every attribute may be more truly negated of him than applied to him positively.

Species Intelligibilis By Leen Spruit

29 Pico della Mirandola regarded the issue of the intelligible species of such importance that he devoted to it his first conclusion "secundum Albertum":"Species intelligibiles non sunt necessariae, [and] eas ponere, non est bonis Peripateticis consentaneus." Referring to Albert, Pico wanted to discuss the problem in a pre-Thomistic context. In Albert's work... the notion of intelligible species was still a relatively innocent device, lacking the heavy connotation it was charged with later. Until Thomas formulated his doctrine of species, and ensuing controversies developed, most authors who endorsed the notion of intelligible species used it as a philosophically neutral term.
Pico returned to the species in conclusions based on other authors. His own position is foreshadowed in a discussion of the notion of species attributed by him to Simplicius:
30
Sicut lumen colores non facit colores, sed praeexistentes colores potentia visibiles, facit actu visibiles, ita intellectus agens non facit species cum non essent prius, sed actu praeexistentes species potentia cognoscibiles, facit actu cognoscibiles. (pseven2)
A similar innatist doctrine Pico attributed to Adelardus. His own position with regard to the role of species in intellectual knowledge, Pico set forth only in his "Conclusiones... secundum opiniones proprias."
Having established a philosophical concordance between Aristotle and Plato, and between Thomas and Scotus, Pico formulated as his first thesis, "Potest a specie in sensu exteriori existente immediate abstrahi species universalis." Although he took a generally Platonic outlook on knowledge acquisition, Pico did not want his position to be totally at odds with Peripatetic cognitive psychology. He apparently envisaged, in a somewhat peculiar way, a kind of immediate abstraction, as opposed to a series of hierarchically ordered steps. At least, this strikes me as the only feasible interpretation of his attempt to reject the phantasms as the basis for the abstraction of the intelligible species. These prima facie incompatible tenets suggest that Pico rejected the traditional theory of abstraction, but that he did not want to exclude the impact of sensible reality in the production of human knowledge. That Pico did not unconditionally support a radically intra-mental theory of cognition, is also testified by the fact that he mentioned it as one of the "conclusiones paradoxicae."30
31 Pico's views on knowledge acquisition drew on a general theory of the participation of being and knowledge, as is clear from a central passage in Heptaplus where the intellect's light is discussed. "Intellectus oculi sunt, intelligibilis veritas lumen est, et intellectus ipse intelligibilis cum sit intimae aliquid lucis habet, qua se ipsum potest videre, sed non potest et relique. Verum indiget formis ideisque rerum quibus, uti radiis quibusdam invisibilis lucis, intelligibilis veritatis indubie cernitur.
The human intellect in endowed with a kind of light by virtue of which it is able to see itself, but not the things in the world. The mind's self-knowledge is thus not a sufficient basis for actual knowledge of the world. In spite of Pico's emphasis on the Platonic features of this doctrine, it is obviously similar to Thomas' vie of the a priori in human knowledge. (n.61) According to Pico, the inner lighe is not sufficient for arriving at actual knowledge of things. The intellect must open itself to the formal structures of sensible reality, which are conceived of as beams springing from an invisible light. Elsewhere in Heptaplus, the light is identified with "species intelligibiles." Pico suggested that this angelic light illuminates and pervades material reality. (63) The intellect is able to immediately grasp the light's effects; hence, a step-wise abstraction via the phantasms is not required.
Pico's theory of the intelligible species was essentially syncretistic. He had strong reservations about the traditional doctrine of species, as is clear from his denial of the need for species in the
32 Albertist propositions. At the same time, however, Pico suggested that the intelligible species is not necessarily a representation abstracted from sensory images. It can also be understood as an intrinsically formal item. More to the point, the species' extra-mental origin can be reconsidered in the framework of Neoplatonic participation theory. In that context it can be understood as the specific feature of sensible reality that, by virtue of its transcendent origin, is able to touch and to inform the human mind.

32 The importance of the Thomistic tradition for Ficino was highlighted in his polemics against Averroes in the fifteenth book of the Theologia Platonica.

46 Pico and Ficino, though strongly fascinated by the idea of a philosophical "concordia", were exponents of a quite different attitude.
[Spruit contrasts Pico's take on the intelligible species with Ficino's]
90 "New" Platonics, for example, such as Ficino and Pico, tried to accomodate the notion of intelligible species within the framework of Neoplatonic metaphysics. In Ficino, this meant that the role of the intelligible species collapses onto that of idea or innate "formula". Pico, by contrast, hesitated in his Conclusiones between a straightforward rejection of the intelligible species and an innatistic appropriation. His attempt in the Heptaplus to somehow save the extramental origin of the intelligible species by integrating it in the circular movement of reality (grounded in a metaphysics of light) was to reappear in Giordano Bruno.
255 After the rediscovery and translation of Neoplatonic works bearing on the species debate, the first signs of their influence on the issue can be traced to the work of Pico della Mirandola and Ficino, main exponents of the Florentine Academy. They attempted a reconciliation between the Platonic view of mind and the Scholastic conception of mental representation. This led them to reconsider a central tenet of Aristotelian cognitive psychology, namely, the sense-dependency of intellectual knowledge. Pico and Ficino regarded the human soul as "nexus mundi" rather than as "forma corporis". They believed that cognitive activity is not principally dependent on the stream of information from the senses. Knowledge acquisition is grounded in the affinity between the soul and the ideal structure of reality and its source. Pico fostered fundamental doubts about the need for species, arguing that the soul has direct access to the objects of cognition, while Ficino presumed the latter to be latently present in the soul. Sensory representations no longer serve as a basis for mental content; rather, they are only the imperfect traces of ideal patterns. In this context, the intelligible species are assimilated to the contents of cognition, and intellectual abstraction is substituted by a reception of the products of a cosmic metabolism.
259 Pico suggested that the intelligible species stands for the eternal structure of reality to which the mind has direct access, while Ficino assimilated the species to innate formulae
262 The Renaissance debate on intelligible species witnessed important changes in the overall view of the cognitive process. Various tendencies that had already been present in the psychology of some medieval authors, now came to the fore in a more pronounced manner. In the first place, the distinction between mental act, representation, and content tended to be blurred. Secondly, the knowledge of individuals, insofar as it is based on species, tended to be seen as prior to the knowledge of universals.
As we have seen, Renaissance authors only rarely regarded the intelligible species as an unconscious representation, distinct from cognitive act and mental content; rather, they tended to stress the essential coherence of the various aspects of the act of knowledge. In general, the illumination of phantasms was supposed to take over the role of intellectual abstraction. The agent intellect processes sensory images in such a way that the possible intellect may directly acquire mental contents.
263 A number of medieval authors of Audustinian inspiration had objected against the species doctrine that empirical knowledge requires the conscious attention of the mind for all information delivered by the senses.
264 Also, many authors, such as Pico... identified the possible and the agent intellect.