Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Intellectuals

• Authors: Herůfek Jan
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The article deals with the religious and philosophical concept of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and focuses primarily on the Jewish-Arabian sources of Mirandola's thinking. Since Pico did not have a very good knowledge of Hebrew or even Arabic, it was often almost impossible for him to deal on his own with the language of extremely challenging original medieval texts, whether on themes of Jewish and Arabian philosophy or on themes of Jewish mysticism, known as Kabbalah. Pico therefore made use of his colleagues, and to some extent was reliant on them. In this connection attention has to be drawn fi rst to Elia del Medigo, adherent of Averroist Aristotelianism, and to Jochanan Alemanno, representative of the Jewish concept of ancient theology (prisca theologia) connected with elements of Neo-Platonism. In the fi nal place the article discusses Pico's principal translator Flavius Mithridates. Through his vision of the Christian Kabbalah Flavius Mithridates inspired not only the "prince of concord" himself, but also many followers in the 16th and 17th centuries (Johannes Reuchlin, Francesco Zorzi, Gilliaume Postel, Caspar Knittel, and others).

Keywords

EN

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola; Kabbalah; Jewish philosophy; Arabian philosophy

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY
• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Acta Comeniana (International review of Comenius studies and early modern intellectual history)
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 25
• Pages: 7-24

Contributors

author

Herůfek Jan

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