Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464)

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NICHOLAS OF CUSA
(1401–1464)

The theologian, philosopher, and mathematician Nicholas of Cusa, also known as Nicholas Kryfts or Krebs, was born at Kues on the Moselle River between Trier and Koblenz. After attending the school of the Brothers of the Common Life in Deventer, Holland, he studied philosophy at Heidelberg (1416), canon law at Padua (1417–1423), and theology at Cologne (1425). Nicholas received a doctorate in canon law in 1423. About 1426 he gave legal assistance to Cardinal Orsini, papal legate to Germany. At about the same time began his lifelong interest in collecting classical and medieval manuscripts. Among his notable discoveries were twelve lost comedies of Plautus. He took an active part in the Council of Basel, first as a lawyer of Count von Manderscheid and later as a member of the deputation De Fide. Nicholas's De Concordantia Catholica, a vast program for reform of the church and the empire, supported the conciliar theory of the supremacy of the council over the pope. Later, disillusioned by the council's failure to reform the church, he abandoned the conciliar theory and supported the papal cause.

Nicholas carried out several missions for the pope in an effort to unify and reform the church. He was a member of the commission sent to Constantinople to negotiate with the Eastern church for reunion with Rome, which was temporarily effected at the Council of Florence (1439). In 1450 Nicholas was sent to Germany as a legate to carry out church reforms. He was created a cardinal in 1448 and appointed bishop of Brixen (Bressanone) in 1450. He died in Todi, Umbria.

Knowledge

According to Nicholas, a man is wise only if he is aware of the limits of the mind in knowing the truth. Knowledge is learned ignorance (docta ignorantia ). Endowed with a natural desire for truth, humans seek it through rational inquiry, which is a movement of the reason from something presupposed as certain to a conclusion that is still in doubt. Reasoning involves a relating or comparing of conclusion with premises. The greater the distance between them, the more difficult and uncertain is the conclusion. If the distance is infinite, the mind never reaches its goal, for there is no relation or proportion between the finite and infinite. Hence, the mind cannot know the infinite. The infinite is an absolute, and the absolute cannot be known by means of relations or comparisons.

Accordingly, the mind cannot comprehend the infinite God. By rational investigation we can draw ever nearer to him but cannot reach him. The case is the same with any truth, for every truth is an absolute, not admitting of degrees. Since reason proceeds by steps, relating conclusion to premises, it is relational and hence never arrives at absolute truth. According to Nicholas, "our intellect, which is not the truth, never grasps the truth with such precision that it could not be comprehended with infinitely greater precision" (De Docta Ignorantia I, 3). As a polygon inscribed in a circle increases in number of sides but never becomes a circle, so the mind approximates to truth but never coincides with it.

Thus, knowledge at best is conjecture (coniectura ). This is no mere guess or supposition that may or may not be true; it is an assertion that is true as far as it goes, although it does not completely measure up to its object. Reason is like an eye that looks at a face from different and even from opposite positions. Each view of the face is true, but it is partial and relative. No one view, nor all taken together, coincides with the face. Similarly, human reason knows a simple and indivisible truth piecemeal and through opposing views, with the result that it never adequately measures up to it.

The weakness of human reason was evident to Nicholas because its primary rule is the principle of noncontradiction, which states that contradictories cannot be simultaneously true of the same object. He insisted that there is a "coincidence of opposites" (coincidentia oppositorum ) in reality, especially in the infinite God. He criticized the Aristotelians for insisting on the principle of noncontradiction and stubbornly refusing to admit the compatibility of contradictories in reality. It takes almost a miracle, he complained, to get them to admit this; and yet without this admission the ascent of mystical theology is impossible.

Nicholas preferred the Neoplatonists to the Aristotelian philosophers because they recognized in humans a power of knowing superior to reason which they called intellect (intellectus ). This was a faculty of intuition or intelligence by which we rise above the principle of noncontradiction and see the unity and coincidence of opposites in reality. He found this faculty best described and most fruitfully cultivated by the Christian Neoplatonists, especially St. Augustine, Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Anselm, the School of Chartres, St. Bonaventure, and Meister Eckhart. Following their tradition, he constantly strove to see unity and simplicity where the Aristotelians could see only plurality and contradiction. He frequently expressed his views in symbols and analogies, often mathematical in character, because the rational language of demonstration is appropriate to the processes of reason but not to the simple views of the intellect.

God

Nicholas was most concerned with showing the coincidence of opposites in God. God is the absolute maximum or infinite being, in the sense that he has the fullness of perfection. There is nothing outside him to oppose him or to limit him. He is the all. He is also the maximum, but not in the sense of the supreme degree in a series. As infinite being he does not enter into relation or proportion with finite beings. As the absolute, he excludes all degrees. If we say he is the maximum, we can also say he is the minimum. He is at once all extremes, the absolute maximum as well as the absolute minimum. In short, in God, the infinite being, all opposition is reconciled in perfect unity.

The coincidence of the maximum and minimum in infinity is illustrated by mathematical figures. For example, imagine a circle with a finite diameter. As the size of the circle is increased, the curvature of the circumference decreases. When the diameter is infinite, the circumference is an absolutely straight line. Thus, in infinity the maximum of straightness is identical with the minimum of curvature. Or, to put it another way, an infinite circle is identical with a straight line.

Nicholas offered several a priori proofs for the existence of the absolute maximum, or God. The first argued that the finite is inconceivable without the infinite. What is finite and limited has a beginning and an end, so that there must be a being to which it owes its existence and in which it will have its end. This being is either finite or infinite. If it is finite, then it has its beginning and end in another being. This leads either to an infinite series of actually existing finite beings, which is impossible, or to an infinite being which is the beginning and end of all finite beings. Consequently, it is absolutely necessary that there be an infinite being, or absolute maximum.

The second proof argued that the absolute truth about the absolute maximum can be stated in three propositions: It either is or is not. It is and it is not. It neither is nor is not. These exhaust all the possibilities, so that one of them must be the absolute truth. Hence there is an absolute truth, and this is what is meant by the absolute maximum.

As the absolute maximum, God contains all things; he is their "enfolding" (complicatio ). He is also their "unfolding" (explicatio ) because they come forth from him. Creatures add nothing to the divine reality; they are simply limited and partial appearances of it. As a face reproduces itself more or less perfectly in a number of mirrors, so God reflects himself in various ways in his creatures. In this case, however, there are no mirrors.

God transcends the universe but is also immanent in it, as a face is present in its mirrored images. Each creature is also present in every other, as each image exists in every other. Thus, as Anaxagoras said, everything is in everything else. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz recalled this doctrine of Nicholas's in his Monadology when showing that each monad mirrors every other.

Like all medieval Platonists, Nicholas upheld the reality of universal forms. According to him, the most universal of all created forms is the form of the universe, called the Soul of the World. This form embraces in its unity all lower forms, such as those of genera and species. These lower forms are "contractions" of the form of the universe; they are the universe existing in a limited way. They exist in the universe, and it in turn exists in a limited way in them. Individuals are further contractions of universal forms—for example, Socrates is a contraction of the form of humanity. The universe as a whole is a contraction of the infinite God. Thus, all things exist in a unified manner in the universe, and the universe in turn exists in the unity of God. Oppositions and contradictions that appear on the level of individuals and lower universal forms are reconciled in the unity of the universe and ultimately in the unity of God.

Cosmology

Since the universe mirrors God, it too must be a maximum—not the absolute maximum, to be sure, but the relative maximum, for it contains everything that exists except God. Nicholas denied that the universe is positively infinite; only God, in his view, could be described in these terms. But he asserted that the universe has no circumference and consequently that it is boundless or undetermined—a revolutionary notion in cosmology. (See Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe, Baltimore, 1957.) Just as the universe has no circumference, said Nicholas, so it has no fixed center. The earth is not at the center of the universe, nor is it absolutely at rest. Like everything else it moves in space with a motion that is not absolute but is relative to the observer.

Nicholas of Cusa's cosmology in some respects broke with the Ptolemaic and Aristotelian cosmological views of the Middle Ages and anticipated those of modern times. He was above all concerned with denying the absolute oppositions in the world of Ptolemy and Aristotle. In Nicholas's world there was no center opposed to its circumference, no maximum movement of the spheres opposed to the fixity of Earth, no movement of bodies in absolutely opposed directions, such as up and down. Nicholas also denied that the heavenly bodies are composed of a substance different from that of sublunar bodies.

Nicholas extended his principle of the coincidence of opposites to religion. In his irenical work On the Peace of Faith, while maintaining the superiority of Christianity over other religions, he tried to reconcile their differences. Beneath their oppositions and contradictions he believed there is a fundamental unity and harmony, which, when it is recognized by all, will be the basis of universal peace.

In a century of social, political, and religious unrest, Nicholas revitalized Neoplatonism as the most effective answer to the needs of his time. His thought was firmly rooted in the philosophy of Proclus and Christian medieval Neoplatonism and was opposed to the Aristotelianism that had prevailed in western Europe since the thirteenth century. It was also highly original and expressed in a language abounding in symbolism and paradox. Nicholas of Cusa had many of the traits of the Renaissance person: love of classical antiquity, all-encompassing curiosity, optimism, cultivation of literary style, critical spirit, preoccupation with the individual, and love of mathematics and science. His works were widely read for several centuries, and they influenced the philosophy of the Renaissance and of early modern times.

Bibliography

Nicholas's religious-political works are De Concordantia Catholica (1433–1434); De Pace Fidei (1453); and Cribratio Alchorani (1461).

His theological-philosophical works are De Docta Ignorantia and De Coniecturis (1440); De Deo Abscondito (1444); De Quaerendo Deum (1445); De Genesi (1447); Apologia Doctae Ignorantiae (1449); Idiotae Libri (containing De Sapientia, De Mente, and De Staticis Experimentis ; 1450); De Visione Dei (1453); De Beryllo (1458); De Possest (1460); Tetralogus de Non Aliud (1462); De Venatione Sapientiae (1463); De Ludo Globi (1463); and De Apice Theoriae (1463).

His mathematical-scientific works are De Staticis Experimentis (1450); De Transmutationibus Geometricis (1450); De Mathematicis Complementis (1453); and De Mathematica Perfectione (1458).

Editions of Nicholas's works are Opera (Basel, 1565); Opera, 3 vols. (Paris, 1514; reprinted Frankfurt am Main, 1962); Nicolaus von Cues, Texte seiner philosophischen Schriften, edited by A. Petzelt, Vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1949); Opera Omnia, 14 vols. (Leipzig and Hamburg, 1932–1959); and De Pace Fidei, edited by R. Klibansky and H. Bascour (London: Warburg Institute, 1956).

Translations include The Vision of God, translated by E. G. Salter (New York: Dutton, 1928); The Idiot, translated by W. R. Dennes (San Francisco, 1940); Of Learned Ignorance, translated by G. Heron (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1954); and Unity and Reform; Selected Writings of Nicholas de Cusa, edited by J. P. Dolan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1962).

Literature on Nicholas includes P. Duhem, "Nicholas de Cues et Léonard de Vinci." in Études sur Léonard de Vinci, Vol. II (Paris: Hermann, 1909); E. Vansteenberghe, Le Cardinal Nicolas de Cues (Paris: Champion, 1920); P. Rotta, Il cardinale Nicolò di Cusa, la vita ed il pensiero (Milan: Società editrice, "Vita e pensiero," 1928); and Nicolò Cusano (Milan: Bocca, 1942); A. Posch, Die "Concordantia Catholica" des Nikolaus von Cusa (Paderborn, 1930); H. Bett, Nicholas of Cusa (London: Methuen, 1932); M. de Gandillac, La philosophie de Nicolas de Cues (Paris: Aubier, Éditions Montaigne, 1941); J. Koch, Nikolaus von Cues und seine Umwelt (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1948); P. Mennicken, Nikolaus von Kues (Trier: Cusanus-Verl, 1950); Étienne Gilson, Les métamorphoses de la cité de Dieu (Paris: J. Vrin, 1952); K. H. Volkmann-Schluck, Nicolaus Cusanus (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1957); E. Meuthen, Die letzten Jahre des Nikolaus von Kues (Cologne: Westdeutscher, 1958); G. Santinello, Il pensiero di Nicolò Cusano nella sua prospettiva estetica (Padua: Liviana, 1958); G. Heinz-Mohr, Unitas Christiana (Trier, 1958); E. Zellinger, Cusanus-Konkordanz (Munich: Hueber, 1960); P. E. Sigmund, Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963); and Ernst Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance (Leipzig: Teubner, 1927), translated by Mario Domandi as The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963).

See also Louis Dupre and Nancy Hudson, "Nicholas of Cusa," in A Companion to Philosophy in the Middle Ages, edited by Jorge J. E. Gracia (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003); Jasper Hopkins, "Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464): First Modern Philosopher?" Midwest Studies in Philosophy (26[2002]: 13–29; John Longeway, "Nicolas of Cusa and Man's Knowledge of God," Philosophy Research Archives (13[1987–1988]: 289–313.