Tensions and debates on an anthropological conception in the Renaissance: the categories of magnum miraculum and copula mundi in the thought of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Abstract

In the following article we will focus on describing the anthropological conceptions of two Renaissance authors: Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Thus it starts with the own readings of various works focusing mainly in Ficino's De vita libri tres and Pico's Oratio de hominis digni-tate. In them, both authors highlight the importance of an anthropological conception dictated by the human-istic ideals of the Renaissance and also how influenced they were by various pagan categories in general and specifically hermetic. Therefore, this article focus on two main objectives, on one hand it will analize the anthropological conceptions of both authors in there previously mentioned works; and on the other hand, it will try to demonstrate how, even using the same categories of analysis –copula mundi magnum miraculum–, the both of them can arrive at different conceptions of man from each other; namely, man as a microcosmos in ficinian philosophy and man as indeterminacy in piquian conception.