Dell'Essere e dell'Unità.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola:
Of Being and Unity

1. For the Neo-Platonists Unity precedes Being.
2. Plato nowhere says that the one is superior to being, but rather that the two
are equal.
3. From the testimony of Parmenides, of Dionysius, and of Simplicius, we
conclude the convertibility of unity and being.
4. In what sense one can say that something is superior to being.
5. In which is shown why the Peripatetics attribute to God many qualities
which the Platonists deny Him, and how one may ascend through four
degrees even to the cloud which God inhabits.
6. In which is solved the second difficulty of the Platonists, namely that with
respect to prime matter.
7. In which is solved the third difficulty of the Platonists, on the subject of
multiplicity, and in which it is demonstrated that it is not possible to say that
unity is more common than being, without coming to a conclusion which
Plato rejects.
8. In which is shown in what manner these four attributes: being, unity, truth,
and goodness, are present in all that exists beneath God.
9. In which it is indicated how these four attributes pertain to God.
10. In which the whole discussion is related to the conduct of life and the reform
of morals.

To Angelo Poliziano

You were telling me lately of the dispute which you and Lorenzo de' Medici had concerning being and unity, and how, taking his stand with the Platonists, that man of a genius so powerful and versatile that he seems made for all things, who finds (wonderful to relate!) even in the incessant occupations of the State leisure for some literary study or conversation, argued against Aristotle, whose Ethics you expounded publicly this year. And since those who estrange Aristotle from Plato estrange themselves also from my point of view -- for I hold to the concord of both systems --, you ask me how we might defend the Stagirite on this point and bring him into agreement with his master, Plato. I have told you what came into my mind at that time, and it was rather a confirmation of your own objections against Lorenzo than a contribution of anything new. But you are not content with that. Without waiting for the developments which will come to the subject in my future Concord of Plato and Aristotle1, you beg me to run over for you now, in the shape of a brief commentary, those things which I told you in the presence of our friend Domenico Benevieni, so dear to us for his knowledge and his integrity. How can I refuse you? Especially in a literary matter like this, and in the case of a friend who is almost my self? Pardon me, nevertheless, if I risk at times to employ words which perhaps have not yet received the stamp of true Latinity. The novelty of the subject, and I might almost say necessity, have demanded this license. Do not then expect a style too elegant and chaste. As our Malius2 says, the subject itself needs no ornament; simple exposition is enough. The following, therefore, if I remember well, were the things about which we had a discussion.