What is the purpose of human life?
immediate experience of God in Pico's works
pp. 123-141
in: Enik Sepsi, Aniko Daróczi (eds), The immediacy of mystical experience in the European tradition, Berlin, Springer, 2017Abstract
After a short presentation of our author I focus in my paper on the question raised in our title, how does the immediate experience of God in Pico's works appear? In other words, what is the purpose of human life?I examine this issue in Giovanni Pico's four different writings: his Commentary on Canzona d'Amore [Song of Love] by Girolamo Benivieni (1486), his Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486), his Heptaplus – On the Sevenfold Narration of the Six Days of Genesis (1489), and finally his treatise On Being and the One (1490).I found that in Pico's thinking, immediate experience of God is the ultimate purpose of every human life. We can all reach this if we follow the wisdom of thousands of years of tradition, finding our inner peace with the help of religion and with love. This can make us one with the whole of creation and one with God.