Nicholas of Cusa's Metaphysics of Contraction (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 103 others, Chadwick's own interest centers mainly around the fifth tractate, "Against Eutyches and Nestorins," concerning the technical meaning of "nature" and "person" in Christ as defined by the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon 08o-2o2). In this conflict he sees Catholic orthodoxy to be the middle course between the Scylla of Nestorianism and the Charybdis of Monophysitism. This chapter is Chadwick's best contribution to the history of theology. The last and shortest chapter (~23-53) entitled "Evil, Freedom, and Providence" deals with the famous Consolationof Philosophy"as a personal and private confession of humanist faith and of confidence in divine providence" (55). Although in my opinion this is the least satisfactory and least documented chapter, Chapwick at least draws from the fuller commentary ofJoachim Gruber 0978) in presenting a very reasonable and balanced picture of Boethius' religion as he faced death. The brevity of this scene should be seen in the light of the earlier discussion of the downfall and last days of Boethius (46-68) to appreciate the man who sought consolation in philosophy. JAMES A. WEISHEIPL, O.P. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Jasper Hopkins. Nicholas of Cusa's Metaphysics of Contraction. Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, x983. Pp. x + 197. $~3.oo, cloth. Nicholas's De dato patris luminum appears in English translation as this book's final chapter, Hopkins's fifth translation from the Cusan corpus. He includes an appendix with the original Latin in the Heidelberg critical edition and an extension of his earlier discussion of De doctaignorantia ~, 4-5. All this serves to aid his critique of five extant readings of Cusan metaphysics with the aim of giving "a more accurate, and a more textually oriented, understanding of the main lines of this metaphysic" 034). The polemic against the five readings is devastating; Hopkins's own sketch of the "metaphysic of contraction" opens the way for further questions. The interpretations Hopkins discusses and dismisses all claim fidelity to Nicholas 's ideas. He shows their errors and distortions are too often elementary, even embarrassing, when juxtaposed to Nicholas's texts. As a result Henry Bett's older appreciation of Cusanus is found utterly wanting when it comes to Nicholas's key ideas. Even L. W. Beck's chapter on Nicholas in Early German Philosophy cannot be rescued, whatever the excellence of the rest of that volume. We are left hoping that Walter Schultz and Heinrich Rombach distort Cusanus because they believe him seminal for their own concerns; we may trust that the injustice they do Nicholas does not infect their own ideas. None of them prove trustworthy guides to what Nicholas says. Kiaus Jacobi's Die Methode der cuaanischen Philosophie is a more complicated case. For Hopkins, Jacobi's central mistake about Nicholas's metaphysics leads him both to mistranslate and take literally what the text shows are modi Ioquendi. But Jacobi's book contains much of value, for instance, the helpful historical overview of Cusan scholarship and interpretation. Here Hopkins's critique could have been strengthened ~o4 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 23:1 JANUARY t985 had he traced the relation between Rombach and Jacobi and acknowledged what is to be learned from Jacobi somewhere besides in various endnotes. The most valuable aspect of Hopkins's polemics can be seen where Hopkins says what Nicholas's doctrine is and why it could not be what these five interpretations claim. What of Hopkins's own reading? For him, Nicholas's ideas never changed essentially from what he laid down in De docta ignorantia. Later works serve to cast light on the early masterpiece and vice versa. Cusanus does not make God and creatures different modes of one and the same being, as Jacobi would have it. Rather, God and creatures belong to ontologically different dimensions. In Hopkins's words: "The infinite and the finite are not two sides of the same reality. Instead, they are different realities----though the one is totally dependent upon the other, in an ultimate sense. The world is a contracted reflectionof God's being; but a reflection of God's being is not God's being--whether contractedly or otherwise" (98). Hopkins takes "contraction...