This is a new translation of and commentary on Pico della Mirandola's most famous work, the Oration on the Dignity of Man. It is the first English edition to provide readers with substantial notes on the text, essays that address the work's historical, philosophical, and theological context, and a survey of its reception. Often called the Manifesto of the Renaissance, this brief but complex text was originally composed in 1486 as the inaugural speech for an assembly of intellectuals, which could have produced one of the most exhaustive metaphysical, theological, and psychological debates in...