A Reflection on Pico della Mirandola's "The Dignity of Man"

In his "Oration on the Dignity of Man", Pico della Mirandola explains that the dignity of man is that man is the microcosm of the world. The fact of man being microcosm means that it's only man that is able to ascend the hierarchy of being to being as high as the angels with a Seraphic mind in union with God, or that man is able to descend even below reason and to be in the state of animals if the passions and vices reign in the soul instead of virtue. Pico's view of dignity then isn't some Enlightenment view of man as having "inalienable rights", but instead it's the ability to steer the chariot of the soul in the direction of the cœlestial minds or downwards to the beasts of the field.

* Edit from the Rambling Traditionalist, 12/7/22: To supplement this post, I would like to mention that the conservative reactionary, Giacomo Leopardi agreed with the views of Pico Della Mirandola on the dignity of man. "Dignity" in the thought of Pico and Leopardi refers to man's place in the hierarchy of creation and not the doctrine of “inherent worthiness” that the Enlightenment thinkers propagated:

"Leopardi agreed with the way the word “dignity” was primarily used in the famous late fifteenth-century treatise written by Pico della Mirandola, De dignitate hominis, where dignity refers much more to man’s place in the hierarchy of creation than to his inherent worthiness." - Giacomo Leopardi’s Search For a Common Life Through Poetry: A Different Nobility, A Different Love, by Frank Rosengarten