How to Live at the End of the World by Travis Holloway

Author:Travis Holloway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Wynter cites from Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man in the opening of her essay on colonialism and humanism, and discusses Pico’s philosophy throughout the essay. Pico’s Oration on the Dignity of Man was composed in 1486 in Italy—six years before the initial voyage of Columbus—and is seen as one of the more celebrated writings on the Renaissance philosophy of man. In this work, Pico exemplifies a certain Renaissance vision of human exceptionalism, rank, and individualism as he declares that nothing is “more wonderful than man” and investigates man’s “rank” in the “universal chain of Being”—a rank that he says is “envied not only by brutes but even by the stars.”46 Commentators describe Pico’s Oration as a tribute to human beings and an attempt to answer “what really constitutes the superiority of man over other beings.”47 The passage from Pico’s Oration that Wynter focuses on narrates how God assigned “man” “a place in the middle of the world,” “at the world’s center”; Pico adds that “[t]he nature of all other beings is limited and constrained within the bounds of laws prescribed by Us.”48

The locus of racism and colonialism here is not so much that Pico looks down upon other cultures and traditions in the Oration.49 It is rather that, systematically and narratively, Pico’s ontological hierarchy and its cartography offer an underlying system of veridiction for levels or tiers of existence among human beings, nonhumans, and the earth. Specifically, Pico introduces a hierarchy of beings, a concept of (a certain) man as superior, a notion of this man being at the “center,” and, more specifically, a center that is written about from the point of view of Europe and theorized from out of one’s own interior self.50 Even more importantly for Wynter, this “man” must engage in a “spiritual war” that divides the world between friends and enemies, good and evil, spirit and flesh, gods and beasts, an interior and a periphery.51

For Wynter, Pico’s text exemplifies the theoretical foundation for colonialism, racism, and a certain anthropocentrism. Wynter argues that narratives like Pico’s permitted Europeans to determine who was human and who was inhuman; to arm themselves with the force of law behind them; to ground themselves in Europe and their own subjectivity; and, ultimately, to enslave others and reduce nature to themselves. Pico, for example, explains that brutes, animals, plants, and matter are beneath humans in order and dignity. Furthermore, the figure of man in the Oration is endowed with a special ability to make laws that limit and constrain “all other beings,” which forms the narrative basis for the modern state. This hierarchy of beings situates European “man” and his way of life at the center of the world, and as having mastery over all other beings and the earth.

Still, where did Pico’s humanism begin? Pico says explicitly that he has “arranged the fruit of [his] thinking on . . . Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy.”52 This includes a certain hierarchy of beings (see Aristotle, History of Animals)

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.