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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
Speaker 1 0:00
You can't understand modern philosophy. You can't appreciate modernity without understanding the two previous traditions, which anticipate and actually create modernity, and the two are the humanist side and the scholastic side.
PJ 0:21
Hello, and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Amos Adelaide, lecturer and assistant professor at Maynooth University. And we're here today to talk about his book, A Philosopher at the Crossroads, Giovanni Pico de la Marlandola, his encounter with Scholastic philosophy, Dr. Edelite. Wonderful to have you on today.
Speaker 1 0:46
Thank you, PJ, for inviting me.
PJ 0:49
So, Dr. Edelite, why this book?
Speaker 1 0:54
Wow, why? Why this book? This book. well, Pico is an attractive figure in the history of philosophy, but I came to write this book in order to correct what, after years of study, seemed to me as a distortion, as something which went very wrong in the understanding of Pico by scholars, and the one, the things that really attract the attention, Pico was a really the young, he was forever young, because he died when he was 31 years old, so he never managed to, you know, to get old, although 31 in terms of 15th century is not like we understand it today. Okay, so people died younger then, so but still he was young, even then he was young, but he is representing this fresh spirit of the Renaissance, curious about everything, trying to learn everything, dedicating all his energy, all his money, and lucky for him, he was a rich guy, was aristocrat, he came from a very rich family, so he, you can imagine how many books he had. He had a huge library. Scholars today still trying to figure out which books belong to the original Pico Library. So, it was huge. We have several catalogs and inventors of the book, but it's huge. So, he really dedicated, dedicated everything to the study. So, this is a fascinating character, fascinating spirit, a very free spirit, young, talented, obviously was extremely talented, extremely good memory. He could, he could really, he did fascinating things. Now, but to answer more specifically to your question, the distortion, the misunderstanding. Pico, among the many things that Pico was attracted to, Pico was fascinated by Jewish mysticism, that is called Kabbalah, the Jewish Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. Nowadays, people usually know about it. You can imagine that in the 15th century, in the Christian circles, they knew nothing about it, so it was completely new, something really, really amazing from the point of view of, you know, a Christian perspective. And Pico was interested in everything. Now Pico was really interested and fascinated by this, but this was only one aspect of his huge interest. Now, what happened in modern scholarship is that since Pico had this interest in Kabbalah, and he really was fascinated by it and contributed to the the circulation of Kabbalah, certainly the end of the 15th century, for sure. A scholarship of Pico totally focused on this aspect, and the neglecting other important aspect of Pico, among which is what I considered as fundamental, and this is his scholastic background, and this, of course, has a broader context, the context of neglecting the importance of scholastic philosophy and the scholastic way of doing philosophy as a whole, in the Renaissance, in the early modern period, so the Scholastics became the, you know, the black sheep, the horrible image everybody is criticizing them, but no one. I'm now referring more to modern scholars. Is many modern scholars don't even bother to go into the depths of, and I'm not saying in scholastic philosophy again, it's a, we have to understand it comes from the Middle Ages, from the formation of the universities, is the philosophy of the schoolmen, it comes from schools, hola, free time, leisure, those who could study in antiquity, and then, of course, the schools, but scholasticism is changing, and there is a Renaissance scholasticism. So, scholasticism is not something stagnate, and you know, frozen and completely against new things, completely the opposite. So, there is a very interesting, fascinating relation between the Renaissance humanists and the Renaissance scholastics, and this is at the back of my interest, also in Pico. So, Pico is a, is a showcase for this fascinating combination, and this combination, again, I think it's very, very important, because my thesis, my view is that you can't understand modern philosophy, you can't appreciate modernity without understanding the two previous traditions, which anticipate and actually create modernity, and the two are the humanist side and the scholastic side,
PJ 6:18
and of course that's the philosopher at the crossroads, that's Pico, who is thoroughly entrenched in both, and if I'm understanding you correctly, the focus on Kabbalah is comes from that that was unique to him, and so it becomes more interesting to study, but what was dominant or more fundamental to him was this synthesis of humanism, or maybe not synthesis, maybe he was allowing them to fight inside, but between humanism and scholasticism,
Speaker 1 6:51
look, his interest in Kabbalah was very, very specific. He had the idea that in this Jewish mystical tradition we can find, we, he can find, or humanity, because he was representing, you know, human mind, human spirit, philosophy, we can find the origins of Christian mysteries, and actually he wanted to merge, because this is what was part of his thinking, trying to look for a agreement concord between different traditions, showing that actually the truth has different sides. This kind of synchronistic mentality, let's say, I'm cautious, I'm not, you know, it's not a synchrony, but the works, but, but there is this tendency of finding the concord, finding the agreement between traditions, and in this case finding basically the origins of the Christian mysteries in this ancient mystical tradition, and we know again the traditional story about the formation of the Kabbalah, is the Kabbalah is the oral law that was given to Moses in Mount Sinai, together with the written law, so you can imagine what a, what an authority this, this might have. Again, this is, of course, the traditional story about the origin of Kabbalah. Kabbalah, of course, from a historical point of view, is the product of Spain, 12th, 13th century, so we know there is a context there. Pico knew nothing about it, or he wasn't interested in this, because the traditional story served him better, obviously.
PJ 8:28
Yeah, and so he would be a century after its formation, but he would accept it because he's in the 1300s correct? The 14th century. I'm just trying to establish time frame, 15th century,
Speaker 1 8:42
mainly the second half of the 15th century.
PJ 8:49
Yes, I actually have it written down, and I just.. that's, you know, what, that's okay. And so, so he would have been about two or 300 years after the formation of Kabbalah, but he would accept it as this older, more venerable tradition. So, if you don't mind, for our listeners, can you break down a little bit more what is Renaissance humanism and what is Renaissance scholasticism? I'm really interested. You talked about the difference, the the growth and evolution from medieval scholasticism to Renaissance scholasticism. Can you speak specifically to that?
Speaker 1 9:28
Yeah, yeah, of course. So we're talking about two traditions that are, we find that both of them under one roof, so to speak. The roof, the historical roof, is the Renaissance, but, and again, this is a distortion, most scholars of Renaissance, and also the public image of the Renaissance is the Renaissance of, you know, of secularization science, or at the eve of the scientific revolution, Leonardo da Vinci, all the great artists, etc. but this is an important. The aspect of the Renaissance, if you are interested in the intellectual history, in the history of philosophy, philosophy in the Renaissance, if you are not qualified this term, it's a scholastic philosophy. This is the formal philosophy, and far beyond the Renaissance as well. So the professors of philosophy in the universities, in the faculties and the standard philosophy is the scholastic one, so there is this aspect of the Renaissance. Okay, so we are talking about two traditions under one roof, one a tradition which is a well established, establishing the formation of the universities, 12th century and a 13th century, and it is growing, it is developing, it is changing. 13th century, 14th century, we have scholastic masters. This is a philosophy of the schools of the professors of philosophy, and they are again, scholasticism is a very rich, it's a method, but it has very rich tradition, very many sources. Aristotelian, first of all, Aristotle, the philosopher, but we have, of course, Aveo S Ibn Ruch, the Arab interpreter, and we have many other thinkers, ancient and medieval, who are discussed, and this is a very well-established tradition. On the other hand, we have a recent tradition, more recent tradition, which is what we call Renaissance humanism. The Renaissance humanism is different from humanism, which is the post-enlightenment, post-Kantian term. Okay, so we are talking about the humanist, Renaissance humanists, who were the humanists, we can define them following the Poloska crystal, one of the great historians of, for instance, intellectual history in the 20th century, as professional men of letters, a group of, and again, it's not a homogeneous group, right, it's we are talking about different individuals, but mainly, and it started well. Where, when, and where Renaissance humanism started. It started in Italy, and it started when, according to Ronald Witz, a famous book on the footsteps of the ancients, it started already in the mid 13th century, and it was a group of lawyers in Padova, Padua, and Venice, fascinated by ancient Roman poetry, reading this poetry, imitating this poetry, and they start a whole cultural movement of reviving the ancient civilizations, Greek and Roman civilizations, every aspect of it, literature, philosophy, science, esthetics, everything, and as a byproduct, we can say rejecting contemporary medieval culture. Okay, and actually forming their identity as against this image of the mid medieval. By the way, the term Middle Ages is the invention of the humanist, and what is Middle Ages is a pejorative. It's the period where nothing happened, just, you know, between us, Renaissance people, and the antiquity. The ancients were, of course, the manifestation of the well, the greatness of humanity. So, in between nothing happened, so we are talking about two traditions here that are coming together in the Renaissance in a fascinating manner that's what we're talking here now. We wanted to, wanted me to elaborate or to say something about the differences between Renaissance scholasticism as against medieval scholasticism, so there are many different ways we can, we can tackle it, but to give you one example, an important one, I think philosophy in the medieval context, in the medieval scholasticism was constrained to the classroom. It was the philosophy of the academics. One of the names of scholastic philosophy is academic philosophy. Some scholars prefer academic philosophy. It's okay. So it was focused on pedagogy. It was teaching students theoretical discussions in the classroom, that's that's what it is now. This is why it created a technical terminology, because there was a community of scholars, of teachers, and students familiar with the terms, and it makes sense. You create this technical language, right? So, but my emphasis here is the restriction to the classroom. Now, what happened when we move away from ages to the Renaissance, 13 mainly 14 and 15th century? As I mentioned earlier, the Renaissance started probably in the around 13th century, but it is developing in the 14th century, in the 15th century, by the way, a the father, the so-called father of Rennes of Humanist Renaissance Humanism, is a Francesco Petra, Petra, a name, a very famous name, a poet, a historian, a scholar. It is funny because the father of Renaissance Eunice, Renaissance, unis is part of the third generation, so he's not a father for me, you know, but he's important, so this is why he's the father, but the difference between, let's say, a medieval scholasticism and Renaissance scholasticism, we see that during the Renaissance philosophy is getting out of the classroom. This is very, very important. So we are having more and more public debates, debates that are taking place outside the classroom, in the palaces, in the open air, and the philosophers, theologians are debating different philosophical, theological questions, and apparently there was audience people were interested in it, and we have more and more this now, obviously, again, the culture, the philosophical culture of the debate, that's not nothing new. This is essentially part of the scholastic tradition, debating for and against, so that's that's fantastic. And Pico admires this aspect of the scholastic tradition, but we are now talking about the openness, it's out there, it's not only the students and the masters, it's out there, and different intellectuals, men of letters, and simple men, simple people who are interested in these things, can you know, join, listen, sometimes participate, so that's that's let's say one important aspect of the difference between a medieval scholastic and Renaissance. If
PJ 17:30
you don't mind me asking a question, here is that is there a tie between the difference views of what it means to be human and this view of openness, this view of is medieval scholasticism, have a different view of the structure of society, and is that openness part of humanism, that openness of the debate.
Speaker 1 17:56
Yeah, it's interesting what you are saying. I would stay with the differences, the social differences are, so I would say yes, a the in, let's say, medieval scholasticism again, it's it's part of, you know, the curriculum, part of the practices in the classroom. This is how you do philosophy. This is the professional way you do philosophy. That's it. It has, of course, a.. you can, you can think about it in matters of the society around it. Again, the society, you know, a who are the people who can attend university, various.. you know, particular individuals from particular social background, etc. etc. those who are preparing themselves for academic career, whatever, in geology, law, in medicine, studying philosophy. Okay, in the Renaissance, we notice, obviously, there is, there is a change in the societies, right? We have a, and we are talking about Italy, Italy in the 14th, 15th century cities, growing economic activity, independent cities, so obviously, and we are seeing the creation of the bourgeois, the creation of middle class people, people who are making enough money to have some leisure, some free time, and they are interested in different things. This is why, by the way, in the Renaissance, we start this fascinating, another important aspect: writing in the Zanacula.
PJ 19:36
Yes,
Speaker 1 19:37
the realization that there are there out there people who their Latin is not great, they cannot really read the sophisticated Latin a text, either original text or in translation, so they need a. In Italian, they need this text, they need this information. There is this need, so the realization of an audience, of a readership. This is the first time that these intellectuals, these philosophers are responding to this need and producing translations and original works in the vernacular. This case, Italian,
PJ 20:20
as a follow-up question, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, as we see this, this openness, this is giving me more context to understand the purpose of Pico's oration on the dignity of man, so that every, every man is presumably women, though I understand that that would change, you know, that would have different views at the time, has dignity, and then, of course, the 900 theses, the his, the provocation of anyone can debate me in public, in the open, and even saying, I think, does he say anyone can debate him, or does he specifically single out the Scholastic professors?
Speaker 1 21:06
Moreover, no, no, everybody, and he, being rich, offers to pay for anyone who wants to come. By the way, it's not - it's in Rome. He is completely mad. If you think about it, the guy is out of his mind if he thinks that he's going to work. He's really so naive, but he's a young guy. You have to understand, he's really naive. He thinks that he can organize this international conference in Rome, in the presence of the Pope and the cardinals, invite anyone, debate anything, so obviously very nice, but again, this shows the spirit of Pico. It's fantastic. It's really fantastic.
PJ 21:54
And, of course, when we talk about the Renaissance humanism, from what I understand, John Calvin, Martin Luther, all trained as humanists, and that translation, that emphasis on translation, and the emphasis on the original languages, is what leads into.. I mean, I think, forgive me for looking at Wikipedia, but you know, they said that Pico could be considered proto-Protestant, if you could put it that way, but that idea of open debate, that idea of writing for a general audience, and that emphasis on translation is really setting the stage for what will come later with the Reformation.
Speaker 1 22:30
Exactly, exactly. Again, the SS historians, you know, we need to be cautious here, because reading history backwards, when we know what happened, well, then we can explain everything in a necessary fashion.
PJ 22:45
Yes,
Speaker 1 22:46
Pico knew nothing about it, but obviously they, let's say, the spirits are there. There is increasing tensions in the church, and the Pico is one of the victims of this, you know, a clashes between this free spirit, his effort to debate everything. Lucky for Pico, he was before the Reformation. He died in 1494 so he, he could actually survive this tension, he was, he was given a forgiveness, and he went back to Florence, and okay, if it would happen 20 years, 30 years later, I think the outcome would be very bad for Pico, because you know, the counter, there was the Reformation, and the Counter formation, so what is going on in the 16th century, the religious walls, it's horrendous in this respect. So people still enjoy, and actually, well, took the full advantage of this relatively freedom that there was there still by the end of the 15th century. This, you know, but all the humanists, obviously, they are in some, in some cases, are seen, as you know, as the precautions of reformations, precautions of the new science. Well, we are not very far away from Galileo Galilei, Padova. It's the same Padova, so obviously there is, but I think we have to be cautious with making all these connections, because yeah, we cannot read history backwards.
PJ 24:29
Absolutely, so we've talked a little bit about that, humanist, the openness, the emphasis on original languages. What do people miss by diminishing the scholastic influence on Pico? What is what does understanding Pico's scholastic background help us understand about Pico?
Speaker 1 24:53
Well, it's the whole world, I would say. A people don't understand that. Anyone in the 15th century who is interested in philosophy must go through scholastic philosophy, because scholastic philosophy is their philosophy, is the form of philosophy, it's the language, it's the basic terminology. Now, Pico was obviously interested in philosophy, among other things, so and but differently from other humanists, and this is a big difference. The Pico represent Pico went and studied for two years in Padua scholastic philosophy, and according, and we have letters of him, he dedicated at least six years of his life, short life, so six years is quite a lot to study thoroughly scholastic philosophy, scholastic philosophers, so he was really competent, a very differently from all the other humanists who were critical but not competent, they really were discussed by the scholastic style, by the scholastic language, by this useless discussions of useless things, these are some of the rhetoric used against it. By the way, this rhetoric is used by Petar in the 14th century, and you'll find it in Descartes in the 17th century. The same, it's amazing. Descartes in the meditation says, well, if I would start by trying to define what a human being is, a human being, a rational creature, the Aristotelian, you know, the scholastic. And then I would like to define what is a rational and what is.. I would never end. I, and the court is saying, I don't have time for this. No, this is a serious philosophical argumentation. I don't have time for this. You don't have time for a detailed discussion of anything. You know, it's amazing, but modern scholars bought it. That's the thing. This rhetoric was accepted, and you know, and scholasticism went, as you know, it's a horrible monster. monster, which should we should get rid of it in order to have modernity, and my whole point is scholasticism is part of modernity.
PJ 27:11
Yes, yes, it's interesting as you talk about the 900 theses, it would not be possible for Pico to debate anyone without the use of scholastic terminology, I'm reading Peter Lombard's The Sentences right now, and it's like you couldn't talk about anything in theology without essence and substance and hypostasis, all these like it's just there, and you could move past that, but only at after working through that, and he would have had to do that, not that he got the chance, right? He had to move towards forgiveness, doing that in Rome. I still think that is, it's such a young man mistake. He's like, everyone wants to hear the truth. It's like, well, no, but now, how does when you talk about scholasticism, is a, is an essential part of modernity, you know, modern scholars buying into Descartes' rhetoric, but not seeing the undercurrents or the threads that we can pull through here. What are some of the applications that we can understand from from Pico's life, what are some things that by seeing this this synthesis of humanism and scholasticism, what are some of the ways that shows up today?
Speaker 1 28:34
Yeah, that's an interesting question, which you know, a let me, let me repeat a slogan that I mentioned in the book. I work well. It's a slogan that Pico is using, so for me it's important. It comes from the Roman poet Horace, from his first epistle, and it is Nullius Addictu Suare in Velma Magistri. This is the Latin verse, which means I never took any vow, I never, I'm not committed to the words of any master, so now this is a again shows the free spirit of Pico, but also the fact that he knows that there are masters, so the Magistra, the Magistrae are there, and there are schools of thought, and in order to debate, we need to be familiar with them, we need to know them, and then we can debate, but never, you know, never be committed to a school. So you see here, you can see the appreciation. Pico is appreciating the tradition, but he's stepping away from it now. He's stepping away from it to where he doesn't have, there is no. Alternative, my this is a, you know, a philosopher at the crossroads, at the crossroad to what you know, there is nothing, the modernity is not there yet, it's just about people, is one of the, you know, is going to, well, it is one of the precautions, whatever, but it's not there yet, so he's between the traditions, appreciate both of them, but actually stepping away from them, realizing that there are limitations, they are not perfect. So now a just to a again thinking about your question about what is the contribution, so look, a as you mentioned, a determinology are one of the things that I'm interested in is how we, how philosophers like Pico on in the, in the 15th century, or if you like Spinoza in the 17th century, how a new philosophy, if you like modern philosophy, is introduced since its aims at departing from the standard terminology. There is a standard philosophical terminology in the 15th century, just like in the 17th century, in the scholastic one. Okay, there is a now, what if you are dissatisfied by this kind of philosophy? You want to go away from it, but you don't have a language. You, you cannot invent the whole language, because no one will understand you. If you are using the same terminology, how can you go away from it? How can so this is a challenge, I think. This is an interesting challenge. Now, to answer your question, the philosophical terminology and language is still scholastic in the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th century. Jung is committing the scholastic books to the fire in the 18th century? What does it mean? It means that it's still a challenge. It's still there.
PJ 32:10
Yeah, I mean, that's even with what I've read in Heidegger and his critique of onto theology. He's what he's remarking about is that the continuance of substance and essence through into the 20th century.
Speaker 1 32:27
Yeah, we have again, it's in a sense it's a never-ending story. A, in the 19th century, we have the neo-Thomas movement, which is ideological, theological, Cardinal Mercier, etc. but still it revived this scholastic tradition, in a sense, in terms of 19th century, early 20th century. By the way, these traditions were remained very, very central and popular in the new world, in the Americas. It's interesting, because I know from colleagues the archives there are full of commentaries well into the 19th and 20th century, so it's interesting.
PJ 33:11
Yeah, sorry, commentaries on what I think I missed.
Speaker 1 33:15
Commentaries on Aristotle, you know, the traditional discussions of.
PJ 33:19
I have a couple that's now when we talk about the oration on the dignity of man, that's often seen as a seminal text for the for history in general, right? At least, excuse me, Western history in general. What was the impact of that text?
Speaker 1 33:46
That's interesting, because, as you know, this was the this oration Pico wrote it as a his speech for this occasion, the nine other thesis. This occasion that never happened, so he planned to, you know, this was the opening speech, by the way, we don't have the title, Pico just wrote it's an oration, the title was given by 16th century printers, this is always the case, are always the case, it's always that the story, the real facts are a bit different, so a so what we have is, is an oration, which is a, it's a kind of the manifest of the Renaissance. We have to remember this is one of the fundamental texts. It's amazing. A, the first section is about really the short section, it's not a, it's not half up, by the way. This short first section, which is about the dignity, human dignity, because there is telling the story. Well, he's inventing the story. Fantastica, that God, after creating everything, reached the sixth day, the creation of men, but he already gave all the gifts to all the. Creature, so nothing was left to human being, so human being received a very unique present from God, the ability to actually be responsible to his own destiny, freedom, the freedom to choose, to freedom to the freedom to choose a destiny, he get, so human being can go up to the angels and above the angels, by the way, above the angels, because the angels are restricted to angelic nature. Interesting. Now, the angelic nature is a superior nature, yet it is a nature human being can go above it, because it doesn't - it's not restricted to a nature, which is an interesting idea, but human being can go down and be like beast or worse than beast, so that's the ability. So this is a fascinating day. Now, most of this oration is dedicated to philosophy. This is interesting. So the status of philosophy, the importance of philosophy. This is again coming back to one of the early questions. What? Why Pico? What is important in Pico? The status of philosophy. Pico is one of the early thinkers in the West who realizes that philosophy should be an independent discipline. It has a value for its own sake, because you know, friends of Pico were constantly bothering him. Come on, you study so much now. You know, make some practical use of it. You know, you can go join a Ducassie, you know, join some, you know, do something with it. Pico didn't need to, they didn't need money, or etc. But Pico actually struggle against this view, and trying to promote the independent status of philosophy, philosophy as a discipline, philosophy as a way of life, and again, this is one of the novelties, again coming back to another question, you know, the novelties in the Renaissance, so a new status of philosophy, and the realization. Actually, there are different ways to practice philosophy. You can practice philosophy as academic practice discipline in the classroom, but the humanists were interested in philosophy. Some of them, they were not academics, so they wanted to write about philosophy. They were interested in philosophy, but not in the scholastic manner, but in which manner? Again, it doesn't - it's not there yet. So they had to, you know,
PJ 37:34
when we talk about the whole history of, you know, Western civilization or Western philosophy, you can't narrow it down to one text, but one of the bigger impacts I've seen is the idea of international law courts and just the spread of the idea of the dignity of man, this idea of freedom, this idea of dignity, and the way that it pervades our legal systems, and I won't say that it's only Pico, but it does seem this seems to be a major turning point for that. Would that be another way that this shows up?
Speaker 1 38:13
Yes, again, yes, but we need to be cautious here, the fact that I use, and we use Renaissance humanism as against humanism. Again, you're using, and this it's a more general use of the term humanism, which again you cannot, you cannot, you know, disconnected entirely from the Renaissance, from this achieved achievement of Pico and many others, all the Renaissance humanists, and again we are talking about 15, 16/17, century, so and then we have, of course, a the revolution, the legal revolution in the 17th century, so everything is come to it, but we have to be cautious because we are here a phase, a step before enlightenment, and let's say Kant and Kantian, you know, so which were very, very influenced on this movement, but this is the beginning. I would say this is for sure the beginning, the beginning of the realization that well, what asking the question, what is humanity, what is the essence of humanity? Be cautious, but there are the questions about equality, you know. A, do all people are equal again, very cautiously. They, of course, women asking the questions about a, by the way, they, one of the things, the status of the Native Americans in the city. No way, this is a typical question. Are the human beings, do they have equal rights? What is their right, the right for possessions, for property? All these questions are asked exactly in this period. So I think they are provoking, provoking thinking, which is important.
PJ 40:00
So one, I want to say, thank you for coming on today. I think that more people should understand these kind of routes, not, you know, not necessary routes, but clear ways that you can trace these things. So, as a final question, besides buying and reading your excellent book, Philosopher at the Crossroads, you don't want to make sure that I plug that, but besides buying and reading your excellent book, what is something that you would encourage someone who has listened to us for the last 40 minutes? What would you encourage them to do or meditate on over the next week? In response,
Speaker 1 40:38
it's a to meditate, well, first of all, a he or she can read a Pico's oration. I think Pico's oration is a fantastic text. It's a, it's a great introduction, very lively, and you have several English translations, so no problem here. So, reading this and reflecting about, about some of the issues we discussed, because everything is there, I would say reads the oration, the oration on the dignity of men,
PJ 41:11
and it's short, which I will say I appreciate, because I often I've had a lot of guests on who are like just read the 700 page book, and I'm like, well, I think it's going to take a little longer than a week, but this is something you could probably knock out in an afternoon,
Speaker 1 41:26
exactly, exactly. This is the advantage, it's only a speech, but you know, it says a lot, and it's very dense. So, yeah,
PJ 41:35
Dr. Aloha, wonderful to have you on today. Absolute joy. Thank you,
Speaker 1 41:40
thank you so much again.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai