Sunday, December 16, 2012

recent Pico tweets

Thanks to everybody who has looked at this mess of an unfinished project. I haven't been able to work on it for a long time due to my busy teaching schedule and the pain of revisiting my failure to defend it as a thesis. But I do hope to finish it as a little book someday soon. Here are a few tweets I wrote to remind myself where I'm at with it these days...


I would like to see a reading of Pico's Kabbalah as understood through an Iamblichean/Dionysian lens. What is Christian Cabalist Theurgy?

PIco doesn't seem to be using Iamblichus as an authority on magic/theurgy specifically, but as a philosopher with wider theoretical insight.

Iamblichus shows up subtly at clutch moments in Pico's treatises/Need for outside help in Iamblichus helps understand theurgy as not magical

Aquinas' handling of Dionysius certainly plays a key role in Pico's "Being/One" treatise. Does Pico find license here to work w/Platonists?

Problem of understanding Pico's use of initiation language/metaphor in Oration. Philosophy as initation, angel as model, magic as analogy...

Does Kabbalah for Pico stand in relation to magic as higher theurgy stands to material ritual in Iamblichus/Dionysius?

How many magics are present in Pico's 900 conclusions?

Does Ps.Dionysian theurgy offer a solution to problem of understanding Pico's magic, or must we look
elsewhere for its specific domain?

How does the encounter that Aquinas had with Platonism of Dionysius/Proclus compare with the one that Pico had with D./Iamblichus/Proclus?



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