 At the lowest level of a self-annihilating paideia, the mystic starts as a philosopher—with ethics, logic, natural philosophy and theology—before ascending through the arcana of magic and Kabbalah to drown the self in the abyss of divinity. This is not a Kantian project, and the Oration on the Dignity of Man that locates the human condition in human freedom and dignity is a text created by us post-Kantians, not by Giovanni Pico.