secundum opinionem propriam 3. paradoxe numero lxxi
II.3.60. Nihil intelligit actu et distincte anima nisi seipsam.
Annotations
[Interpretation and Commentary, Victoria Duroff, 10/1/24]:
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(Also annotates:
II.3.62.II.3.66.
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All:
The belief in the soul’s ability to acquire knowledge of the creation and the Divine by the means of self-concentration was responsible for these controversial theses, which became the key propositions in Pico\'s theory of knowledge. As a consequence of man’s fall, Pico believed, the soul has forgotten that true knowledge is to be acquired through self-reflection and eventually transferred its attention into the material manifestations of the world, which are only the shadow (or, in Gnostic terms, mirror reflection) of the divine. Once its memory is restored, the soul enters a series of successively higher and nobler modes of contemplation, until finally, through the faculty of cognition, “through images that were co-created with it in its origin, which while in the body it either never or rarely uses” (Thesis 6, in Farmer, p. 215), it apprehends itself as part of the essence from which all things have materialized. In this state the soul is finally able to regain its former intellectual greatness, as all “separated and divine things” become “totally known” to us, because “the self identity of each and every thing is then most itself when in itself all things exist in such a way that in itself all things are itself”. (Theses 219 and 519)
As we can see, the faculty of Intellect is very closely associated here with the spiritual faculty as both become equally indispensable in attaining the desired union with the godhead. Note also that Pico’s idea of the highest mode of understanding pertains to his interpretation of the philosophical concept of formal knowledge attainable by an act “equivalent not to an intellectual act but to the object itself” – thesis 581 in Farmer
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[Latin to Spanish Translation, Ernesto Priani Saiso, 10/1/24]:
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All:
El alma nada entiende en acto y distintamente excepto a sí misma.
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