"If you see a philosopher determining all things by means of right reason, him you shall reverence: he is a heavenly being and not of this earth"
About this Quote
Pico della Mirandola elevates the life of reason to something nearly angelic. To determine all things by right reason is not simply to be clever; it is to align the intellect and will with a universal order that is both rational and divine. The phrasing echoes the classical and scholastic notion of recta ratio, the kind of reason that discerns what is good by nature rather than by custom or appetite. A person governed by such reason merits reverence because they exemplify the highest possibility of human nature.
This vision sits at the heart of Renaissance humanism and Pico’s own project in the Oration on the Dignity of Man. He famously argued that human beings possess a unique indeterminacy: we are free to descend to brutishness or ascend toward the angelic. The philosopher who lives by right reason enacts that ascent. For Pico, reason is not opposed to faith; it is a God-given instrument for discovering truth across traditions. His syncretism, spanning Plato and Aristotle, Kabbalah and Christianity, sought a prisca theologia, a primordial wisdom refracted in many schools yet ultimately one. The philosopher becomes heavenly by participating in that universal wisdom and by ordering life according to it.
Calling such a person “not of this earth” is both hyperbole and moral directive. It sharpens a contrast between the life governed by passions and opinion, and the life disciplined by intellectual and ethical rigor. It also reflects Pico’s confidence in human perfectibility: the mind, purified and trained, can mirror the cosmos’s rational harmony. Yet the standard is demanding. Right reason implies rectitude, humility, and virtue; mere dialectical skill or pedantry does not qualify. The reverence he asks for is not cultish but civic and spiritual acknowledgment that the rational life is a model for collective flourishing. In honoring those who live by right reason, Pico honors an ideal of humanity capable of transcendence without abandoning the world.
This vision sits at the heart of Renaissance humanism and Pico’s own project in the Oration on the Dignity of Man. He famously argued that human beings possess a unique indeterminacy: we are free to descend to brutishness or ascend toward the angelic. The philosopher who lives by right reason enacts that ascent. For Pico, reason is not opposed to faith; it is a God-given instrument for discovering truth across traditions. His syncretism, spanning Plato and Aristotle, Kabbalah and Christianity, sought a prisca theologia, a primordial wisdom refracted in many schools yet ultimately one. The philosopher becomes heavenly by participating in that universal wisdom and by ordering life according to it.
Calling such a person “not of this earth” is both hyperbole and moral directive. It sharpens a contrast between the life governed by passions and opinion, and the life disciplined by intellectual and ethical rigor. It also reflects Pico’s confidence in human perfectibility: the mind, purified and trained, can mirror the cosmos’s rational harmony. Yet the standard is demanding. Right reason implies rectitude, humility, and virtue; mere dialectical skill or pedantry does not qualify. The reverence he asks for is not cultish but civic and spiritual acknowledgment that the rational life is a model for collective flourishing. In honoring those who live by right reason, Pico honors an ideal of humanity capable of transcendence without abandoning the world.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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