Transumption and the Decentered Cosmology of Nicolaus Cusanus

Abstract

In his work On Learned Ignorance, Cusanus defends the view that though the infinite must as such always elude human cognitive pursuits, proper reflection on the reasons behind that cognitive failure inaugurate another—different but not unrelated—domain of epistemic competence. Seeking to equip the intellect with a methodological access into this new epistemic domain, Cusanus transforms the classical notion of transumption from a merely rhetorical device into an epistemological speculative aid that transits between the different ontological levels that constitute reality. This article examines Cusanus’s use of one such transumptive aid—the rubric of the infamous sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere—in order to elucidate how it enacts the basic postulates of “learned ignorance.” Insofar as what necessitates the use of such transumptive images, and hence of the epistemic operations which they represent, is the very ontological structure ciphered by the particular way in which the universe stands in relationship to God, the author claims that these transumptive functions constitute a thorough interpenetration of epistemology and metaphysics in Cusanus’s thinking.