- Lived:
- 1463–1494 · Mirandola, Padua, Paris, Rome, Florence
- Tradition:
- Italian Renaissance; syncretism, Christian Kabbalah, and the philosophy of human dignity
- The Big Idea:
- Human beings have no fixed place in the order of creation — our dignity lies in the freedom to fashion ourselves, to sink toward the brute or climb toward the divine.
- In their words:
- "You may fashion yourself in whatever form you prefer."
- If you remember one thing:
- At twenty-three he challenged all of Europe to debate nine hundred theses drawn from every tradition he could read — Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew — and the speech he wrote to open that debate is now called the Manifesto of the Renaissance.