On Pico Mirandola’s Philosophy Of Religion

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was a great philosopher during the Renaissance in Italy, his On the Dignity of Man was honored as the declaration of the Renaissance.He had a short life but a long career of creativity in the philosophy of religion.Whoever disputed the view of religion by any means, Pico held still his which based on the philosophy of Christianity, even his philosophy of religion contained the sources from the Hebrew culture and magic, we should not deny his trying of proving that the Christianity was reasonable. If we use this as a principle, we can outline Pico’s philosophy of religion, and testify that he was a real defender of faith. Pico was well-educated with Scholasticism, he inherited the tradition of Scholasticism and brought up a new way of explaining his own religion, that is the syncretism which combined the sources of all the religions he knew into the Christian religion.Furthermore, almost every book of Pico’s has the splendid light of human, we can say that one characteristic of Pico’s philosophy of religion is he affirmed the freedom of human.This paper is to analyze Pico’s philosophy of religion. The first chapter is to narrate the life of Pico and the sources of his philosophy of religion, the second chapter is to state the characteristics of his philosophy of religion, the third chapter is to summarize the influence of his philosophy of religion. By acquainting the transitions of Pico’s life, works and comments, we surely can find the track of his philosophy of religion. If we make a effort on this, we may discover that his philosophy of religion had a profound influence to humanism, and affected the view to the Christianity philosophy afterward. Besides, studying Pico’s philosophy of religion can help us to understand humanism a little bit more.