Parmenides e In Parmenidem. La recepción del diálogo platónico y la de sus intérpretes tardoantiguos en la doctrina cusana de la negación

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to locate Nicholas of Cusa as part of the exegetical tradition of Plato’s Parmenides dialogue. His first access to the topic of negation in Platonic dialogue was indirect, through the corpus Areopagiticum and Proclus’ Commentary in the Latin version done by William of Moerbeke. After reading the Commentary, he asked the famous Aristotelian George of Trebisonda to make a Latin version of the whole dialogue. He read this translation before writing De non aliud and it proved decisive for the writing of that work because it reformulates the vocabulary related to otherness as a mode of negation. The originality of this Cusan text consists in the presentation of a double negative formula, inspired by the dialogue Parmenides and its Dionysian and Proclean interpretations. Thus “non aliud” is not understood as opposed to “aliud” but rather as the opposition of the opposites without opposition.