Nicholas Of Cusa Research Articles

The Conciliarist Idea of Islam in the Quattrocento—Prelude and Legacy

This contribution intends to examine the impact of Conciliarism (1414–1439) on the Christian vision of Islam in the Quattrocento. The analysis of the thought of bishops such as Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) and John of Segovia (d. 1458) is understandable only through the evolution of the Latin world with regard to Islam, moving from the Corpus Toletanum (12th century) and the impact of the Crusades in the Levant (1096–1291) and in Europe. This forwardness is rooted in the process of “Islamic Christianization,” an analytical operation lasting three centuries, during which Koranic Christology was to play a primary role. It will be through this “Christ-centric” process that from the Renaissance, the Ottoman empire, the great enemy of Western Christianity, will be appreciated for some of its peculiar facets. The weakening of the concept of heresy and of Catholic ecclesiastical authoritarianism in decreeing what heresy was probably one of the “indirect” outcomes of that dialogical “Moment of Vision” between Christianity and Islam. The further fragmentation of the Church of Rome, after the failure of Conciliarism and the outgrowth of the reformed Churches in the 16th century, favored a preliminary different understanding of the religiosity of others.

Engaging Islam

What was the proper approach to countering Islam in the late Middle Ages? If Islam was seen as a Christian heresy in accordance with a common medieval interpretation, the church’s battle against Muslims was seen in ad intra terms. If Islam was treated as a separate religion, an ad extra approach followed. In either case, would unity and peace be best achieved via negotiations or force, particularly around 1453 when Constantinople fell to Muslim forces? We begin with Nicholas of Cusa and Juan de Segovia, then turn to Tommaso Giustiniani and Vincenzo Querini in their Libellus and Leonem decem (1513). They pushed the Medici pope to counter Islam using language of the just war tradition because they saw Muslims as apostate Christians. Considering these three approaches side by side, we witness Christian leaders wrestling with religious, political, and military considerations in deciding how best to counter the Islamic advance during a crucial half-century.

Interreligious Concordance and Christianity in Nicholas of Cusa’s De Pace Fidei

Interreligious Concordance and Christianity in Nicholas of Cusa’s De Pace Fidei

Проблема происхождения и сущности ничто в христианской концепции творения мира Богом

In this article, the authors offer an original view on the development of the creation concepts in the Christian thought history. The article focuses on the importance of the cosmogony of Gnostic Christianity for the development of cosmogonic ideas in European philosophy. The cosmogony of the Gospel of Truth is interpreted as a serious philosophical alternative to the orthodox concept of the creation of the world from nothing and the neoplatonic concept of emanation. The authors point to the continuity between the concept of creation in the texts of Gnostic Christianity and subsequent philosophical systems expressed in the texts of Origen, Evagrius of Pontus, Areopagitics, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, and others. Particular attention is paid to the understanding of the concept of “nothing” in the context of the development of cosmogonic systems.

The Gift of Intelligence and the Sacramentality of Real Presence: Overcoming the Dataist Metaphysics of Modern Cognitivism

AbstractIn the last twenty‐five years scientific research on embodied cognition and related discussions in the philosophy of technology and science have led to two groundbreaking insights: 1. Perceptions, memories, meanings, and volitions are neither located in the brain nor reducible to intentional acts of ‘autonomous subjects’. 2. Human intelligence is always embedded in an embodied, simultaneously natural and artificial environment that is charged with meaning. These insights are compatible with holistic, relational concepts of embodied intelligence in the tradition of sapiential thinkers like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa, and related sacramental ontologies. The modern break with this tradition was inspired by the dataist metaphysics of the ‘Gutenberg revolution’ and culminated in the thesis that human cognition is a kind of pattern extraction or the upshot of the synthesis of elementary sensory data. By contrast, the fact that the business of pattern‐extraction has become replaceable by the work of ‘artificial intelligences’ calls two things to mind: First, the late‐modern confusion of human with ‘artificial intelligence’ is the upshot of a reductionist metaphysics that provoked an unhealthy assimilation of human cognition to the way machines work. Second, in order to strengthen what distinguishes human intelligence from ‘artificial intelligences’, we need to recover the premodern unity of being, truth, beauty and the good, starting from a holistic, trinitarian anthropology. As the most recent research on Human Computer Interaction (HCI) shows, this requires a revision of our modern, instrumental attitude toward technical artifacts which emerged in the Age of the Reformation. Seen from this angle, the recovery of the sacramental ontology of premodernity has become a matter of urgency not primarily in terms of theological developments but in terms of the very innovations that provoked its modern ‘disenchantment’.

The Crisis of Logic and the (In)stability of Science

Abstract The purpose of this paper is 1) to focus on the last section of the In Parmenidem, analyzing Proclus’ reflection on the relationship between the First God and what he calls the “axioms of contradiction”, accompanied by an attempt to harmonize in a subordinate sense the Aristotelian perspective with the Platonic one; 2) to analyze the reception of this idea in Nicholas of Cusa, the first Latin author to be systematically influenced by the In Parmenidem. It will be possible to show how Cusanus develops a perspective that, on the one hand, finds its explicit antecedent in Proclus and, on the other, how he radicalizes Proclus’ perspective, developing theoretical tensions that we can find unsystematically in Proclus’ own thought. Proclus is aware that the Principle of all reality—and of science itself—must be conceived as in itself unknowable. At the same time, he seeks to save the ability of human knowledge to describe reality. Starting from an idea of the relationship between God and the laws of contradiction close to that of Proclus, Cusanus develops an epistemology that, on the one hand, recognizes the principle of contradiction as the ultimate principle of reason and, on the other hand, comes to the conclusion of a separation between thought and reality outside thought.

«Критика чистого разума» И. Канта: источники исторического влияния и особенности дискурса

The article presents the experience of methodological and cultural-historical reconstruction of one of the main works of I. Kant “Critique of Pure Reason”. The author outlines the problems associated with difficulties in understanding this work: what is the general idea of “Critique of Pure Reason”, how to understand reason, different sources of knowledge, things in themselves, and finally, a combination of rational and sacred arguments. The author shows that Kant relies on the pictures of reality of Aristotle and Nicholas of Cusa, rethinking them, and also analyzes the works of Galileo, which made it possible to make a conviction in the priority of a priori ideas. A hypothesis is formulated about how Kant understood the mind: culturally, following the Enlightenment. The main strategies of thought are outlined, with the help of which Kant creates “Critique of Pure Reason”, while his ideas are compared with the views of Aristotle and Nicholas of Cusa. These include: rethinking transcendental ideas (not similarities and mathematics like those of Nicholas of Cusa), but thinking through the conditions of conceivability, reflection of the foundations of knowledge (this is the critique of reason); the introduction of schematisms of thinking, as explaining the connection between a priori ideas and intuitions; a special interpretation of mind and reason, allowing them to include rules, categories and ideas; projection of the rethought ways of thinking of philosophers onto the mind (for example, Kant transfers to the mind the ability to build a system of scientific knowledge, which he borrowed from E.B. de Condillac); elucidation of the conditions of conceivability, they allowed Kant to find the mind as a whole and to find out the condition of contemplation and action of the mind (according to Kant, these are “self-consciousness” or the idea of the “synthetic unity of apperception”).

Becoming the Wounded Person: The Christian Vision of James Purdy’s Fiction

Abstract: This essay considers the fiction of James Purdy from the point of view of his self-proclaimed Christian vision, which embraces each individual as sacred through empathic understanding, eschewing objective judgment based on abstract absolutes. The essay argues that Purdy’s contrarian fiction can be understood revealingly in relation to the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius and Nicholas of Cusa, which envisioned a subjective, perspectival, and creatively participatory ontology that anticipated the relational and contextual paradigm of the real posited by quantum physics. Refusing reification, Purdy’s fiction vigorously negates sociopolitical idols of the self in favor of the individual’s ultimate, infinite mystery.

Knowing as Interpretation in Nicholas of Cusa

Knowing as Interpretation in Nicholas of Cusa

Learned Ignorance? On Enlightened Blindness to the Divine and the Demonic

The Kantian “limits of knowledge” powerfully regulates the Enlightenment-framed contemporary academy as secular, methodologically atheistic, and functionally materialist when it comes to public knowledge. This shapes all science and religion discourse considered palatable to an Enlightenment sensibility. This limit makes public knowledge blind to the divine and the demonic in everyday life (and in extremis). The paper argues that this blindness illustrates the abstract and artificial conception of reality that governs academic knowledge. If “religion” adapts itself to these limits in order to dialogue successfully with “science” in an Enlightenment framed academy, it also becomes abstract and artificial. Using Nicholas of Cusa and Johann Hamann, the paper attempts to reclaim “learned ignorance” as a viable alternative to the Kantian “limits of knowledge.” Returning to the “science and religion” domain, the paper concludes by noting that conflict in the basic framing of reality and knowledge is now inherent if theology is to uphold a learned ignorance perspective on reality and natural philosophy. I argue that this sort of conflict should not be feared and is necessary to save modern science from floundering in its own metaphysical vacuum or being swept aside by a post-truth totally poetic constructivism.

Miller, Clyde Lee. The Art of Conjecture: Nicholas of Cusa on Knowledge

Miller, Clyde Lee. The Art of Conjecture: Nicholas of Cusa on Knowledge

Nicholas of Cusa and the mens ipsa. Notes on a long-standing debate

Nicholas of Cusa and the mens ipsa. Notes on a long-standing debate

Cosmopsychology around 1900: Paul Scheerbart in the context of Plato, Cusanus, Kant, Fechner, and Lovelock

ABSTRACT Paul Scheerbart (1863–1915) is rarely referred to as a philosopher. He is known as the author of Glasarchitektur (1914), and of numerous books, essays, and stories of “fantasy” and anti-militarism. As a follower of Berkeley’s skepticism, he proposed an aesthetic of the fantastic, an art program in contrast to current realism and impressionism. Studying technical and scientific progress, he developed alternative ideas, in a unique blend of fiction and science. His “astro-” or “cosmopsychology” is a variant of ancient panpsychism or, as Jan Assmann calls it, cosmotheism, which was suppressed by the “Mosaic distinction,” the introduction of true and false in things religious. Exponents of this dualism are the supporters of the “Great chain of being” (Lovejoy): Plato, Nicholas of Cusa, and Kant in his refutation of hylozoism. The late Kant, however, comes close to Scheerbart in calling planet Earth an “organic,” though not “living” body. Fechner and, after him, Scheerbart overcome such hesitation. In Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, scrutinized by Bruno Latour, the old intuition of a non-dualistic eco-holism takes on its actual form.

Pavel Florensky and the Future of Thought

The article examines the legacy of priest Pavel Florensky in the context of European culture from antiquity to the present day. The dialogue in which Florensky is a perceiving and continuing comrade-in-arms is conducted with Plato, Aristotle, with the Fathers of the Church and Neoplatonists of different eras, with Nicholas of Cusa, Leibniz, with mathematicians — from the Pythagoreans to Kantor; Florensky’s thought echoes Kant’s constructions and builds on them. Belonging to the culture of the “Silver Age”, Father Pavel meets Nietzsche at a philosophical crossroads, becomes friends with Andrei Bely, becomes the object of criticism from Fr. Georgy Florov sky. In the space of Florensky’s creative dialogue and polemics with philosophers and theologians, the essence of his trinitology and sophiology is revealed. The most important property of the heritage of Fr. Pavel Florensky is a combination of traditionalism, consisting in strict adherence to the teachings of the church fathers and the Orthodox tradition as a whole, and freshness of ideas (up to the coincidence with the understanding of contemporary political trends), which is urgently needed in the modern Christian world both in the East and in the West.

Kant's Turn: Between Actual and Potential Infinity

Introduction. The purpose of the article is to show that Kant's turn is the answer to the problem of actual infinity, in the light of which it becomes clear how Immanuel Kant contributed to the turn of Western epistemology to non-classics. The relevance of the research is due to the need to make modern epistemology more “sighted” in relation to its own prospects and opportunities.Methodology and sources. The author of the article reconstructs and critically analyzes Kant's approach to neutralizing the problem of actual infinity on the basis of the involvement of both primary sources and historical-philosophical and historical-scientific works, modern research in the field of the theory of cognition. Results and discussion. Kant's separation of “in itself” and “for us” separates the finite and dependent world from the infinite and independent. The latter is emptied of its theological content (inherited from Nicholas of Cusa) and, instead of a central meaning, receives a peripheral one, is declared an unknowable thing in itself. And the former is endowed with some properties of the latter and is declared a self-sufficient education. So the transcendent becomes transcendental, and the problem of the connection between the finite and the infinite, discussed by Kant's predecessors (Galileo, Descartes, etc.), is neutralized and passes into the category of antinomies. But the discovery of the inconsistency of Kant's separation “in itself” and “for us” makes the problem of the ratio of the finite and the infinite relevant again. However, now the former becomes completely blind to the latter, so that everything that is beyond “for us” can be attributed to “in itself”. Thus, in place of the actual infinity as transcendent, a potential infinity arises that does not know the limits of its immanence. The author of the article shows that such substitution, while remaining unidentified, can disorient the modern theory of cognition even more.Conclusion. Revealing how Kant's reinterpretation of the relation of the finite and the infinite contributed to the substitution of the actual infinity by the potential infinity makes it clear that such a substitution does not neutralize the original problem of the actual infinity, but that such a substitution is itself a real problem, the sharpening of which promises great changes in the theory of knowledge.

REFRACTION OF THE IDEA OF IMAGINARY SPACES AND SUPRA-INDIVIDUAL MYTHS OF P.A. FLORENSKY IN THE WORKS OF THE WRITERS AT THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY

Despite the fact that the main ideas of P.A. Florensky were formulated more than a hundred years ago, they remain relevant to this day. Their great influence on his contemporary writers is therefore obvious. Among those, we are primarily interested in writers such as D.S. Merezhkovsky, whose work is largely congruent with the religious tenets of the philosopher, and M.A. Bulgakov, who dedicated his “cherished novel” to Yeshua Ha-Notsri, but was not considered a religious writer either in the 30s of the 20th century, or today. It is known that the two pillars of Pavel Florensky’s work were religion and mathematics, but he wasn’t the pioneer of the idea of a scientific approach to the study of the foundations of Christianity; even Nicholas of Cusa, a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, a theologian and mathematician of the 15th century, was sure that it was possible to learn to understand the grand design with the help of the exact sciences. The report attempts to reveal the manifestation (consonance) of the ideas formulated by P.A. Florensky in his books “Imaginaries in Geometry” and “Iconostasis” in the works of D. Merezhkovsky and M. Bulgakov.

Лосев Алексей Фёдорович

Alexei Losev (10[22].09.1893, Novocherkassk – 24.05.1988, Moscow), Russian philosopher, philologist and writer, is the creator of a unique religious-philosophical system, which combines the reinterpreted tradition of ancient and medieval thought (Plato and Neoplatonism, Christian apophatic theology of Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory Palamas, Nicholas of Cusa), the methodology of New European philosophy (German classical idealism, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology of E.Husserl) and the problems of New European philosophy (German classical ideal-ism, neo-Kantianism, phenomenology of E.Husserl) and the problems of Russian religious philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, from V.S. Solovyov (the idea of universalism) to P.A. Florensky. In the constructive design of Losev’s system the central place is occupied by dialectics, in the multidimensional construction of which each category and all of them together are worked out in the light of each other. Losev’s personalistic ontology is the basis of his philosophy of language (naming as an interpretative - communicative self-discovery of personality), philosophy of myth as a distinctive form of personal worldview (myth as directly experienced and created reality, symboli-cally expressed), and aesthetics (artistic form is “personality as symbol and symbol aspersonality”). Losev was the founder of the philosophy of music in Russia. His multi-volume history of ancient aesthetics represents the history of the entire ancient culture revealed in its symbolic-expressive aspects. The works of Losev, are presentative of the last generation of the Silver Age of Russian culture, became a kind of completion of Ortho-dox religious philosophy in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Deus Ludus: The Christocentric Games of Nicholas of Cusa and Blaise Pascal

Nicholas of Cusa and his daringly speculative theology seem odd matches for Blaise Pascal, the constant critic of the philosophies en vogue during his life. A commonality they share is their mutual concern for the apparent disproportion between the infinite God and the finite human. In this paper, I compare and analyse the shape this question takes in Cusanus's De ludo globi and Pascal's Pensées. Both men observe a sort of ‘ludic’ character inherent to the pursuit of bridging finite and infinite. Cusanus's ‘ball game’ realises the universe and the human being's pursuit of salvation as a circular field in which the player seeks to reach the vanishing point of its centre. Pascal likewise portrays human life as a cosmic game that everyone must ‘play’ with their ethical decisions. Ultimately, they both come to register Christ as the agent and object of their games, the divine player who fashions finitude into infinity. I conclude by sketching a way to reconcile Pascal with natural theology based on his universal game.

The Logic of Pregnancy

This article takes its point of departure in Bracha Ettinger's discussion on the "matrixial borderspace": the structure of the experience of "the womb," both from a "mother-pole" and a "fetus-pole". Ettinger describes this borderspace as a place of differentiation-in-co-emergence, separation-in-jointness, and distance-in-proximity. The question this article poses is what kind of logic this experience is an expression of, as there seems to be a discrepancy in relation to the classical Aristotelian logic of identity. As an alternative to classical Aristotelian logic, Nicholas of Cusa's logic of the non-aliud is explored as a paradigm more in line with Ettinger's description of pregnancy specifically and more generally, to an understanding of life as a co-poietic emergence of structures of pactivity and permeability.

The sacrifice of the Holy Christ in an unholy world

AbstractIn much modern christology, the notion of the incommensurate governs the relation of divine to human in Jesus Christ. In christologies influenced by Austin Farrer, and more distantly, by Nicholas of Cusa, the incommensurability of the infinite to the finite makes the idiom of paradox congenial, even necessary. Such demanding and unrelenting emphasis upon diastasis echoes a more ancient preoccupation with holiness in a fallen and unholy world. In Israel's scriptures, and in their lasting influence in the patristic era, the transcendent holiness of God threatens to prohibit the presence of the Holy One in the midst of unholy people. A record of this threat can be seen in the alien, fragmentary and unrecognisable Gospel portraits of the holy Christ to a sinful world. Yet the doctrine of the incarnation demands a divine presence to sinners and a sinful cosmos, a ‘making flesh’ as well as an ‘assuming flesh’. The concept and practice of sacrifice is proposed as a form of relation between deity and humanity such that the holy Christ can dwell and abide in an unholy world.