SOURCE: Hopkins, Jasper. Introduction to Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Docta Ignorantia, pp. 1-43. Minneapolis, Minn.: Arthur J. Banning Press, 1981.

[In this excerpt from his edition of De Docta Ignorantia, Hopkins explicates the Cusan concept of “Maximum Absolutum.” Hopkins also provides a brief introduction to the whole work and its emphasis on the human inability to know any given thing perfectly, although limited knowledge is possible.]

A mélange of intellectual tension and excitement pervaded the Universities of Heidelberg, Padua, and Cologne, where Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64) studied in the early fifteenth century. The ecclesiastical clash between the competitive claimants to the papacy—a rivalry adjudicated by the powerful Council of Constance (1414-18)—had badly divided the faculties of law by engendering the dispute over the Conciliar Movement. Moreover, the theological faculties had scarcely adjusted to the prolonged debate between Ockhamism and Thomism, nominalism and realism, when the very underpinnings of Scholasticism were weakened by the rise of Jean Gerson's version of the devotio moderna and by the renewed spirit of Eckhart's speculative mysticism. At Padua advances in the study of mathematics and of natural philosophy fostered the promulgation of new hypotheses about the scope of the universe and the movements of the heavens. And the influence of humanism opened new ways of looking at the past and, at the same time, expanded the horizon of literary learning. On every front, it seemed, the theoretical foundations had begun to shift, thus encouraging—indeed, demanding—the appearance of new conceptual syntheses.

Nicholas of Cusa's [De Docta Ignorantia; hereafter cited as DI] was one such synthesis.¹ In it can be found the influence of Eckhart, of the Hermetic tradition, of Pseudo-Dionysius,² and of Boethian mathematics, together with a newly devised cosmological framework and a newly conceived theology of redemption. In spite of much speciousness, this treatise of three books is a monumental achievement. Rich with suggestiveness, it prefigured, it its bold tendencies, certain dialectical features of later German philosophy. We cannot be sure about the length of time required to produce this magnum opus. We know from the dedicatory letter to Cardinal Julian Cesarini that the central notion of learned ignorance—i.e., of embracing the Incomprehensible incomprehensibly—came to Nicholas while he was at sea, en route from Constantinople to Venice (i.e., sometime between November 27, 1437 and February 8, 1438). And we know from the explicit of Book Three that the work was completed at Kues on February 12, 1440. Between these two temporal boundaries Nicholas organized, refined, and put into writing his fundamental conceptual scheme—which he confessed to have cost him great effort (labor ingens) and from whose main outlines he later never fully veered. Given the political activities in which he was enmeshed—activities associated with the Council of Basel and the Council of Ferrara—it is likely that he wrote the treatise during intermittent intervals, not all of which found him in Kues. Yet, we must guard against supposing that the entire system was developed, even intermittently, within the timespan marked by the foregoing dates; for the letter to Cesarini implies that its author had long been brooding over how best to achieve such a synthesis—one which hitherto could not be formulated, given the absence of its organizing principle.

To be sure, DI is a highly organized work, whose third book, as Cassirer rightly points out,³ is no mere incidental theological appendage but, instead, the essential culmination of the unified system. Book One deals with the maximum absolutum (God), Book Two with the maximum contractum (the universe), Book Three with the maximum simul contractum et absolutum (Christ). As God is a trinity of Oneness, Equality-of-Oneness, and the Union thereof, so the universe (and each thing in it) is a trinity of possibility, actuality, and the union thereof (which is motion), and so Christ, the hypostatic Union, is the medium between the Absolute Union and the maximum ecclesiastical union (viz., the church of the triumphant). God is in all things through the mediation of the universe, just as He is in all believers through the mediation of Christ. In all things God is, absolutely, that which they are, just as in all things the universe is, contractedly, that which each is, and just as Christ is the universal contracted being of each creature. Just as God ontologically precedes and unites contradictories, so the universe ontologically precedes and unites contraries, and the humanity of Christ ontologically precedes and enfolds all creatable things. In God center is circumference, just as God is the center and the circumference of the universe and just as Christ is the center and the circumference of the intellectual natures.

The fulcrum of Nicholas's system is the doctrine of docta ignorantia—the very doctrine reflected in the title of the work. But what exactly is this doctrine? And how is the title to be best construed? Paul Wilpert, in the opening note to his German translation of Book One, maintains that the title is more correctly translated as “Die belehrte Unwissenheit” than as “Die gelehrte Unwissenheit.” By contrast, Erich Meuthen opts for the word “gelehrt” and for the title “Das gelehrte Nicht-Wissen.”⁴ Wilpert feels that the unknowing which Nicholas discusses is not so much an erudite or a wise unknowing (i.e., an unknowing which confers a kind of erudition or wisdom on the one who does not know) as it is simply a recognition-of-limitedness that has been achieved (i.e., an unknowing which has been learned, so that the one who has learned of his unknowing is now among the instructed, rather than remaining one of the unlearned). Wilpert is certainly right that in DI the emphasis is upon instruction in the way-of-ignorance and that the man of learned ignorance is not thought by Nicholas to be a man of erudition. As is clear from the use of the verb “doceo” at I, 19 (55:5: “let us now become instructed in ignorance”) and the verb “instruo” at III, 5 (210:1: “to instruct our ignorance by an example”) Nicholas does mainly understand “docta ignorantia” as an ignorance which has been acquired and which distinguishes its possessor from those who are thus uninstructed.⁵ Yet, it is equally clear from I, 1 (4:16-17: “the more he knows that he is unknowing, the more learned he will be”)⁶ that Nicholas also sometimes understands “docta ignorantia” as an ignorance which renders its possessor wise.⁷ Indeed, in Apologia 2:9-10 Socrates is said to be wise precisely because he knows that he does not know. This kind of wisdom Nicholas would not call erudition (and in this respect Wilpert is also right); for it is available to the common man as well as to the highly schooled. Thus, Nicholas will later write his Idiotae,⁸ in which he exalts the wisdom of the layman. But such a layman, with such a wisdom as Socrates's, might appropriately be called gelehrt (and in this respect Wilpert's statements are misleading). The best English translation will therefore be the traditional one: viz., On Learned Ignorance, where “learned” is understood in the double sense distinguished orally by the different pronunciations lūrnd and lūr'nid—i.e., understood as both belehrt and gelehrt. For it is an ignorance which both distinguishes its possessor from the unlearned, or uninstructed, and elevates him to the place of the learn-ed, or wise.⁹

In the Apologia (21:13-14) Nicholas calls the recognition that God cannot be known as He is “the root of learned ignorance.”¹⁰ At 24:20-22 he reiterates this point in referring to learned ignorance as “a knowledge of the fact that [the symbolic likenesses to God] are altogether disproportional.” But at 27:22-23 he speaks in a more general way; for now learned ignorance is said to be “the seeing that precision cannot be seen.” In fact, DI, in its very first chapter, also contains this twofold exposition. Herein we are told that “the precise combinations in corporeal things and the congruent relating of known to unknown surpass human reason—to such an extent that Socrates seemed to himself to know nothing except that he did not know.”¹¹ But we are also informed that “the infinite, qua infinite, is unknown; for it escapes all comparative relation.” So the foundation and governing principle of Nicholas's system is this twofold recognition. In saying that nothing can be known by us precisely (and adding in [De Possest, hereafter referred to as] DP 42:21-22 that only God's knowledge is perfect and precise), Nicholas does not mean that we therefore do not know anything. That is, he does not equate knowledge with precise knowledge and conclude that because we cannot have the latter we do not have the former. He does not voice unqualifiedly skeptical doubts about whether we know the objects in the world. We do know them, he believes, even though we do not know them in their quiddity or as they are in themselves. Just as we do not attain the precise truth about finite things, which are further specifiable ad infinitum, so we do not cognitively attain unto the Infinite God, who may be regarded as Truth itself.¹² Learned ignorance begins with this twofold awareness.

Nicholas must here be viewed as reacting against the theological doctrine of analogia entis—against all attempts to conceive of Divine Being other than symbolically, against all claims to have a positive-knowledge-of-God, whether derived from nature or from the “revelation” of Christ. What we know about God is that He is unknowable by us, both in this world and in the world to come.¹³ Of course, on the basis of Christ's teachings and works, we ought, affirms Nicholas, to believe by faith that God is loving, merciful, just, powerful, etc. But if we are to conceive of this mercy, justice, etc., we will have to conceive of it analogously to our experiences in the human dimension. We will therefore infinitely misconceive it and, accordingly, not really be conceiving it but only something infinitely short of it. Our conception of God will therefore be, positively, only a shadowy befiguring of some possible—but, alas, all too finite—suprahuman being. Yet, at the beginning of DI I, 26, Nicholas acknowledges that such befigurings and imagings are indispensable aids to a believer's worshipping of God. Moreover, some of these imagings and symbolisms are more befitting than others,¹⁴ when measured by the teachings of Christ, whose own life and works, faith and love, we are to emulate insofar as possible.¹⁵

And yet, learned ignorance is not altogether ignorance. For it instructs us that God must be Oneness, though a oneness which exceeds our conceptual capacity. And it teaches, likewise, that He must be trine, though this trinity too exceeds our comprehension. It teaches, furthermore, that in God oneness and trinity—indeed, all opposites—coincide, that God is Being itself, that the Word of God is “World-soul,” as it were, that God is the center and the circumference of the universe, that He is present in each thing, that each thing is present in each other thing—and a host of other points, all presented in DI and all attesting that Nicholas, in descrying the limits of knowledge, is far from any thoroughgoing agnosticism.

In Nicholas's system there is an interconnection between our inability to comprehend God and our inability to know mundane things precisely. He expresses this interconnection most pithily in De Possest 38: “what is caused cannot know itself if its Cause remains unknown.” In DI II, 2 the same point is stated in a slightly different fashion: “derived being is not understandable, because the Being from which [it derives] is not understandable—just as the adventitious being of an accident is not understandable if the substance to which it is adventitious is not understood.”¹⁶ If derived being is not understandable, still it is not hereby unqualifiedly unknowable. Rather, Nicholas means that we cannot understand how from all-enfolding Absolute Oneness there arose the contracted plurality that constitutes the universe—how if Absolute Oneness is eternal, indivisible, most perfect, and indistinct, then derivative being can in any respect be corruptible, divisible, imperfect, and distinct. In short, he is affirming that we cannot comprehend the creation qua creation and that a knowledge of God would have to precede a precise knowledge of any given thing.

I. MAXIMUM ABSOLUTUM

Nicholas speaks of God as, indifferently, Absolute Maximality, the Absolute Maximum, the absolutely Maximum, the unqualifiedly Maximum.¹⁷ By “the Maximum” he means “that than which there cannot be anything greater.” It follows that the Maximum is also “all that which can be”; for if it were not, it could be something more than what it is. For the same reason, it is actually all that which can be. Moreover, it is greater than can be humanly conceived, since the human mind cannot conceive the totality of possibilities. Because the Maximum is absolutely and actually whatever can be, it is beyond all attribution of differentiated characteristics. Indeed, it is the absolutely Maximum in the sense that it is ultimately and undifferentiatedly everything which is. Hence, everything which it is, it is without opposition and is in such way that, in it, these things coincide and are indistinct and unitary. For this reason too the Maximum cannot be comprehended or conceived by us; for we cannot comprehend or conceive of that whose conception would require us to combine contradictory predicates. Moreover, the absolutely Maximum is so undifferentiated that even the absolutely Minimum coincides with it. (This point, says Nicholas, is clear from the following consideration: There cannot be anything lesser than the absolutely Maximum; for a lesser would have to be something which the Maximum would not be; but the Maximum is all that which can be. Now, the absolutely Minimum is also that than which there cannot be a lesser. Hence, the absolutely Minimum coincides with the absolutely Maximum.) Hence, the absolutely Maximum is infinite—given that not anything, not even the Minimum, is opposed to it or other than it, thus delimiting it.

There is no need to explain why the foregoing reasoning is specious. Of interest are several items other than the argument itself. First of all, we see that in commencing with his doctrine of God, Nicholas makes no attempt to prove God's existence. Rather, he here premises the existence of the Maximum and describes the Maximum as “what is (is actually) all that which can be.” He will go on in I, 6 to advance some considerations in support of the proposition that the Maximum cannot fail to exist and that nothing at all would exist if the Maximum did not exist. But these considerations are not argued for in such way that they can seriously be regarded as attempts to undertake a proof.

Secondly, because of Nicholas's insubstantial reasoning on behalf of the doctrine that the absolutely Maximum and the absolutely Minimum coincide, this doctrine here appears to spring forth in too unmotivated a way. The underlying motivation may be better sensed from the intriguing and vivid illustration in De Possest, where the picture of a top spinning at infinite speed provides an elucidation for the claim that maximal motion and minimal motion are indistinguishable at infinity.¹⁸ Of course, Nicholas denies that in the created world there actually is any infinite motion.¹⁹ And, of course, it follows herefrom, as he also explicitly asserts, that in the created world there is not actually any absolute rest: everything in the universe is in motion, whether or not it appears to us to be.

Thirdly, Nicholas explicitly maintains in I, 4 not only that the Maximum is, coincidingly, all that which is conceived to be: he maintains as well that it is whatever is conceived not to be. If we set aside the philosophical problem about what it would mean to conceive something to be or to conceive it not to be—a difficulty familiar to students of St. Anselm's ontological argument—we will see that Nicholas is propounding the doctrine that in God even being and not-being coincide.²⁰ Since not-being (which is minimally being) is identical with maximally being, how can we—it is asked rhetorically in I, 6—rightly think that the Maximum is able not to exist?

Finally, in DI Nicholas nowhere says, in so many words, “Deus est coincidentia oppositorum.” In I, 4 he indicates that the absolutely Maximum is beyond all opposition, the word “opposites” being subsequently replaced by the word “contradictories”; and at the beginning of I, 22 God is said to be the Enfolding of all things, including contradictories. But only in the dedicatory letter does he first use the phrase “ubi contradictoria coincidunt,” when he speaks of the intellect's raising itself to “that Simplicity where contradictories coincide.” It seems that God's being beyond contradictories is the same, for Nicholas, as His being the Simplicity where they coincide. For when in the Apologia he reiterates the phrase from the dedicatory letter (a phrase which John Wenck regarded as espousing a strategem),²¹ he likewise affirms that God is beyond the coincidence of contradictories (e.g., is beyond the coincidence of oneness and plurality).²² Although it sounds different to say that in Deo contradictoria coincidunt and to say that Deus super coincidentiam contradictoriorum est, Nicholas does not draw any distinction by means of these expressions but simply uses them interchangeably.

In I, 5 Nicholas introduces numerical considerations to establish that the Maximum is one; he will introduce different considerations in I, 7 to establish that the Maximum is three. No number can be an infinite number, we are told.²³ For if it were, it would be a maximum, and thus would be beyond all differentiation and thus would not even be number. And if number ceased, so too would all plurality, distinctness, and comparative relation, since these presuppose it. Although a number series may progress upwards without limit, it is only potentially unlimited, not “actually” so. That is, at whatever point we stop counting, we still will have counted only a finite set of integers, and that number at which we have stopped will itself be a finite number. But in descending the number scale, observes Nicholas, we must come to a source, or beginning, of number. For if there were no source of number, there could not be any number. For number is something generated. Moreover, that from which it is generated can only be oneness, which is a minimum because it is something than which there cannot be a lesser; hence, it must also be a maximum, because maximum and minimum coincide. But oneness cannot itself be a number, because number, which admits of comparative greatness, cannot be either a minimum or a maximum, which is beyond all comparative relation. (In the attempt to follow Nicholas's reasoning, we must bear in mind that he does not regard fractions as numbers but as relations between two numbers. Similarly, he has no notion of negative numbers. Nor does he consider either zero or unity to be a number.) If we read between the lines, it becomes tempting to detect in I, 5 a further reason for concluding that number has a beginning: viz., that if it did not, then there could not be numbering, since there would be no starting point in numbering. Hence, we could not know how many items were contained in a group of things. But surely if there are a number of, say, men (i.e., a plurality of men), then it must be possible to determine how many men there are—or so, at least, Nicholas would presumably contend.

All of the immediately foregoing serves to illustrate how the absolutely Maximum, because it coincides with the absolutely Minimum, is Absolute Oneness. God, who is the Absolute Maximum, is one both in the sense that there exists only one God and in the sense that there is no plurality in this one God's nature. In accordance with the illustration, we are now allowed to make the following inferences: (1) Anyone who would deny the existence of the one God must also deny the existence of the world, because in the absence of Oneness there can be no plurality. And (2) whoever would deny the oneness of the one God's nature must likewise deny His eternity; for only what precedes composition and otherness is eternal.

DI I, 6 is a curious chapter—one which gives rise to the controversy over whether or not Nicholas is intent upon proving the existence of an absolutely Maximum. I have already stated that he is not; and I, 6 is seen not to conflict with this statement. The title of the chapter, “The Maximum is Absolute Necessity,” does not indicate that any proof of existence is being undertaken. Moreover, we must read this chapter in the light of the aim expressed at the end of chapter 5: “whoever would say that there are many gods would deny, most falsely, the existence not only of God but also of all the things of the universe—as will be shown in what follows.” Even the opening section of I, 6 moves in the direction of showing that the Maximum so bounds all finite things that they cannot exist apart from it.

But in accordance with its heading, I, 6 also argues that the absolutely Maximum, already premised as existing, is such that it exists necessarily. The reasoning here is thoroughly implausible and unrigorous. We are told that the Maximum is not able not to exist because not-being is not opposed to that which transcends all opposition. Similarly, we are presented with an exhaustive list of alternative possibilities, each of which is alleged to attest to the existence of the absolutely Maximum. Hence—we are supposed to conclude—it is not possible that the Maximum not exist; hence, the Maximum exists necessarily, as Absolute Necessity.

This chapter constitutes, perhaps, the nadir of the entire treatise of three books. For against the backdrop of the detailed debates conducted between Thomists, Scotists, and Ockhamists—debates packed with important logical, metaphysical, and terminological distinctions—Nicholas surely owed his own era a more elaborate and philosophically sophisticated presentation. His failure in this regard may say something about his philosophical intelligence. But, more likely, it reflects his penchant for another way of doing another kind of philosophy. Usually, his way of doing this other kind of philosophy—which we may call Neoplatonic, if we like—is not unintelligent. In the present case, however, his instincts and preferences have let him down. For he is all too content merely to sketch and to hint. Yet, we his contemporary readers are left with no idea of what he might have been hinting at when at the end of I, 6 he alludes, with no small measure of hyperbole, to “an infinity of similar considerations” which show clearly that the unqualifiedly Maximum is Absolute Necessity.

In line with the Christian tradition, Nicholas endeavors to work out a rationale for his belief that God is both one and trine—i.e., is triune. His strategy in I, 7 is to argue as follows: oneness is eternal, equality eternal, and union eternal; but since there can be only one eternal thing, it follows that oneness, equality, and union are a oneness which is trine or a trinity which is one. To this trine eternity Nicholas then likens the members of the Divine Trinity. He prefers this likeness to the traditional likeness—viz., of father, son, and spirit—which perhaps seems to him too creaturely a likeness to be befitting. Yet, he is willing to call Oneness Father, Equality of Oneness Son, and Union of both Oneness and Equality of Oneness Holy Spirit. He does not expect anyone to become a trinitarian on the basis of finding his arguments persuasive—any more than he expects anyone to become a monotheist on the basis of his previous points about the absolutely Maximum. He is not writing a polemical work, not confronting his readers with an apologia on behalf of Christianity. At this juncture he is simply trying to articulate philosophically the theological doctrines he holds by faith. If he can detect any rationale at all in these doctrines, if he can find some intellectual “picturing” of them, as it were, then his ignorance will, he believes, be to that extent more learn-ed. For the intellect, now having become more apprised of its limitations and incapabilities, will be less likely to mistake its symbolisms and images for anything other than a disproportional similitude of the underlying reality.

In assessing the nuances of Nicholas's philosophical approach, we really ought to do so—at least initially—from within the philosophical tradition in which he is writing. In I, 7 his method is akin to, say, Plato's in the second half of the Parmenides or to Proclus's in The Theology of Plato—except that whereas Plato is laughing up his sleeve at the monists by deliberately making use of fallacy, Nicholas has no comparable ulterior motives and no intentional use of sophistry. His conceptualizing is born from that Platonic and Neoplatonic matrix in which it is assumed to be perfectly intelligible to regard otherness and mutability and equality as realia and to draw conclusions such as “equality naturally precedes inequality” or “oneness is by nature prior to otherness.” At the agora of Neoplatonic speculation, Nicholas's arguments in I, 7 would have gained some currency.

But not every chapter of DI proceeds in the Q.E.D. fashion of I, 7. Sometimes the language of showing has more to do with illustrating than with proving. [And sometimes even the very language of proving has more to do with affirming than with demonstrating (e.g., I, 17 (49:2))]. In I, 8 Nicholas claims to show that, apart from any occurrence of multiplicity, Oneness generates Equality of Oneness (i.e., that the Father begets the Son). He shows this, though, only in the reduced sense of illustrating it by the arithmetical proposition “1 × 1 × 1 = 1.” In weighing his statements, we must be careful that we not automatically construe the verbs “ostendere” and “probare” as heralding a deductive proof, when all that Nicholas is promising us may perhaps be only such an illustration.

Not surprisingly, then, the most ingenious part of Book One—viz., chapters 12 through 21—utilizes both deductive and nondeductive inference. This fact can be clearly seen from the statement of method at the beginning of chapter 12: “We must first consider finite mathematical figures together with their characteristics and relations. Next, [we must] apply these relations, in a transformed way, to corresponding infinite mathematical figures. Thirdly, [we must] thereafter, in a still more highly transformed way, apply the relations of these infinite figures to the simple Infinite, which is altogether independent even of all figure.” With regard to finite and infinite mathematical figures Nicholas advances deductive proofs. From the conclusions of the latter he infers, nondeductively, certain symbolic parallels in the case of Divine Infinity. For example, his method permits him to claim, in the title of I, 16, that “in a symbolic way the Maximum is to all things as a maximum line is to [all] lines.” Pursuing his parallelism, he infers that the Maximum is the Essence of all essences and the Measure of all things.

In particular, he has contended that an infinite line is a straight line, a maximum triangle, a maximum circle, and a maximum sphere—in short, “is, actually, whatever is present in the potency of a finite line” (I, 13). The word “actually” is here misleading; and, indeed, it misled John Wenck, who pounced upon Nicholas as falsely teaching that there actually exists an infinite line.²⁴ In Apologia 32:9-11 Nicholas claims to have indicated sufficiently in DI that the actual existence of an infinite line is impossible. But he is not aware of how much trouble he causes for his readers when in I, 13 he begins by using the subjunctive (“if there were an infinite line”) but soon switches to the indicative, thus obscuring the contrary-to-fact conditional nature of his claim: if there were an infinite line, it would be, actually, whatever is present in the potency of a finite line.

One infinite line cannot be longer or shorter than another; indeed, says Nicholas, these would be the same infinite line, since there could not be more than one infinite line. Now, since each “part” of the infinite line is likewise infinite, “one foot of an infinite line,” so to speak, is convertible with the whole infinite line; and therefore in an infinite line one foot is not shorter than are two feet, which also are convertible with the whole (I, 16). In the infinite line, the part is the whole. Accordingly, an infinite line is indivisible; and in this regard it is unlike a finite line. But although a finite line is infinitely divisible, it is not divisible to the point that it is no longer a line. Hence, it is indivisible in its essence: “a line of one foot is not less a line than is a line of one cubit” (I, 17). It follows, we are told, that the infinite line is the essence of a finite line. But the essence is the measure of all the lines which participate in it, since not all of them participate equally in it. Hence, finite lines are measurable in relation to their degree of participation.

Nicholas transfers his considerations about the infinite line to apply in the case of God (I, 16): Just as the maximum line is the essence of all lines, so the Absolute Maximum is the Essence of all essences. Just as in the maximum line every line is the maximum line, so in the Absolute Maximum everything is the Absolute Maximum. Just as the maximum line is the measure of all lines, so the Absolute Maximum is the Measure of all things. Let us examine these three points, thus illustrated, one by one.

1. Nicholas calls God not only “the Essence of all essences,”²⁵ “the Form of [all] forms,” “the Form of being,” and “the Being of beings,” but also, more simply, “the Essence of all things” (essentia omnium) and “the Being of things” (rerum entitas)²⁶—the last two expressions coming from Thierry of Chartres. Perhaps all of these expressions seemed objectionable to Wenck, who in effect singles out the last two, seeing in them only signs of heresy.²⁷ In general, Wenck feels that Nicholas is in danger of losing the metaphysical distinction between Creator and creature—by teaching that God is all things²⁸ and that all things coincide with God.²⁹ And he sees both Nicholas and Eckhart as committed, by their respective metaphysic, to a denial of the individual existence of things within their own genus.³⁰ Yet, none of Nicholas's statements either convey such meanings or entail propositions expressing them. When he says that God is the Being of [all] things and the Essence of all things, he is neither denying the respective finite essences of finite things nor confounding these essences with the Divine Essence. In DI he attributes to things their own essences. In II, 9 (146:2), for example, he uses the clause “since the essence of stone is distinct from the essence of man” in such way as, apparently, to be endorsing it. And in III, 12 (260:12-13) he speaks of each of the blessed—“having the truth-of-his-own-being preserved (servata veritate sui proprii esse)”—as existing in Christ Jesus as Christ. In the Apologia he explicitly repudiates Wenck's charge, insisting that things have their own respective form and being.³¹

“God is the Essence of all things” and “God is the Being of all things” are simply Nicholas's shorthand for “God is the Essence of all essences” and “God is the Being of all beings.” And these latter expressions are intended to teach, not to exclude, the doctrine that finite things have their own being and their own essences. What they do not teach, but rather exclude, is the doctrine that finite things have underived and absolutely independent being—something reserved for God alone. But a thing's being can be totally derivative, in an ultimate sense, without thereby failing to be that thing's being. That is, its being can be totally dependent, in an ultimate sense, without its thereby failing to be its own, in some more immediate sense. So just as for God to be the Cause of all things does not ipso facto exclude the existence of secondary causes, so for Him to be the Essence of all things does not thereby exclude the existence of secondary essences. Indeed, God, is the Essence of all essences in the sense that if God were not what He is, these other things would not be what they are.³² And He is the Being of all beings in the sense that if He did not exist, then no thing at all would exist.³³

Though Nicholas's point is clear, it has sometimes been obscured by a failure of interpreters to grasp the meaning of two or three passages which, for one reason or another, they take to be key texts. For example, at the end of I, 17 there is the following passage: “We have now seen clearly how we can arrive at God through removing the participation of beings. For all beings participate in Being. Therefore, if from all beings participation is removed, there remains most simple Being itself, which is the Essence (essentia) of all things. And we see such Being only in most learned ignorance; for when I remove from my mind all the things which participate in Being, it seems that nothing remains. Hence, the great Dionysius says that our understanding of God draws near to nothing rather than to something.” This passage does not teach that each thing in its being is God, that if we imaginatively strip away the attributes of some given finite being, we will arrive at simple Being itself, which is the proper “core,” as it were, of this thing.³⁴ Rather, Nicholas's point may be rephrased as follows:

All beings participate in Being. To remove any being's participation in Being is to remove that being (i.e., to remove its existence). If participation is removed from all beings, then there remains only Being, i.e., Being itself, which was participated in. But Being itself is not a being, for it is not differentiated. Hence, it is not positively conceivable. But not-being is also not positively conceivable. Accordingly, in this respect, the case is similar with Being itself and with not-being. Since God is Being itself, Dionysius rightly says that our understanding of God is more like an understanding of nothing than of something.

Another example of a passage frequently misunderstood is II, 2 (101:1-3); “But since the creation was created through the being of the Maximum and since—in the Maximum—being, making, and creating are the same thing: creating seems to be not other than God's being all things.” Some interpreters have supposed that Nicholas is here in some way identifying God and His creation. Nicholas is presented as teaching that “in creating, God somehow takes on privation—that He somehow becomes the creatures.”³⁵ Yet, Nicholas's point is much too dialectical to be accommodated by such an insensitive interpretation. Nicholas is perplexed about whether or not God's act of creating is comprehensible. For he cannot understand how from the eternal, the temporal could arise, how from the indistinct, there could come forth a plurality and a succession. He proceeds to make a distinction: insofar as the creation is God's being, it is eternity; insofar as it is subject to time, it is not from God, who is eternal. “Who, then, understands the creation's existing both eternally and temporally?” In the course of his dialectical reasoning Nicholas makes it clear that the creation is God's being—and therefore eternal—only insofar as it exists in God. But as it exists in God, it is God and not something finite and differentiated. In Nicholas's mind, this point is associated with his second comparison with the infinite line—a comparison to which we may now turn.

2. In the infinite line all lines are the infinite line; similarly, in the Absolute Maximum all things are the Absolute Maximum. The word “in” is all-important. For Nicholas nowhere states that all things are the Absolute Maximum, or God, but maintains only that in God all things are God:³⁶ ontologically prior to their creation they are “enfolded” in God as God; and the act of creation is God's act of “unfolding” them from Himself. Since it seems strange to speak, plurally, of things existing in God prior to their creation, Nicholas's expression might give rise to confusion. For instead of regarding this as simply another modus loquendi, someone might take him to be affirming that things exist in God as the forms of their finite selves. Yet, Nicholas takes pains to prevent such a misunderstanding. In I, 24 (77:1-7) he asks rhetorically: “Who could understand the infinite Oneness which infinitely precedes all opposition?—where all things are incompositely enfolded in simplicity of Oneness, where there is neither anything which is other nor anything which is different, where a man does not differ from a lion, and the sky does not differ from the earth. Nevertheless, in the Maximum they are most truly the Maximum, [though] not in accordance with their finitude; rather, [they are] Maximum Oneness in an enfolded way.”³⁷ The very same point is repeated in Apologia 27:2-5; and the rationale for the point is generalized in DI II, 5 (119:12-20).

This doctrine of enfolding overlaps with the doctrine that in God opposites coincide, though it is primarily correlated with the theology of creation, whereas the doctrine of coincidentia is primarily correlated with the via negativa and with God's inconceivability and simplicity. Of course, Nicholas does not hesitate to state that “God is the enfolding of all things, even of contradictories” (I,22), and here the topic is not creation. But it is a topic directly associated with creation; and what is said to be enfolded is all things, not simply contradictories. These linguistic patterns are matters of idiom, not matters of substance. Since all things are in God as what is caused is in the cause, it is more felicitious to say “the effect is enfolded in its cause” than to say “in the cause the effect coincides with the cause.” Moreover, “enfolding” and “unfolding” serve as a balanced couple for portraying the relation between Creator and creation. But what could balance as fittingly with “coinciding”?

It is the height of irony that Nicholas, who thus restricts the use of “coincidere” by avoiding it when discussing the Creator-creature relationship should have been accused by Wenck of having taught, tout simplement, that all things coincide with God. Wenck's mistake befigured the central mistake that would come to be made by Nicholas's subsequent frondeurs: viz., to excerpt from DI some key word or key sentence, while ignoring the restrictions and qualifications that had been placed upon its use.

3. As an infinite line is the measure of all lines, so the Absolute Maximum is the Measure of all things. This point about the Absolute Maximum Nicholas illustrates not only by the hypothesized infinite line but also by the relationship between substance and accident: “accidents are more excellent in proportion to their participation in substance; and, further, the more they participate in a more excellent substance, the still more excellent they are” (I, 18). By comparison, God—who orders all things in measure and number and weight, according to Wisdom 11:21, a verse Nicholas is fond of quoting—is variously participated in by various things. A thing's entire perfection derives from God, who created it to exist in the best manner possible for it.³⁸ But one thing is more perfect than another in accordance with its degree of participation in Divine Perfection.

To say that finite things participate in the Absolute Maximum is tantamount to saying that they owe their existence to the Maximum, which created them and which sustains them for as long as they exist. Their being is therefore dependent being, illustrated by an accident's dependency upon the substance in which it participates—with the proviso that whereas an accident modifies the substance, the universe does not modify God.³⁹ God is the Measure of all these things in that He alone has bestowed upon each thing its degree of perfection, which He alone knows precisely, though He knows this immediately and apart from any comparative relation to Himself.

Though the Maximum is not of the nature of the things it measures, it nonetheless receives the name of the things it measures—i.e., of the things that participate in it (I, 18). But these transferred names and significations befit God only infinitesimally. Even “Oneness,” though it seems to be a quite close name for the Maximum, is still infinitely distant from the true and ineffable name of the Maximum—a name which is the Maximum.⁴⁰ The same point holds true, a fortiori, for “Substance,” “Justice,” “Truth,” and all the other names traditionally applied to God. In last analysis, Nicholas regards these names as religiously useful metaphors. They are not proper names but are simply words whose significations have been transferred so as to apply figuratively to God. Or better, what is customarily signified by these words can, by a kind of extension, as it were, be considered as “likenesses” of God. And yet, they are not likenesses that correspond to what God is but are only quasi likenesses that direct the mind in its worship of the Deity. Accordingly, Apologia 24:19-22 declares: “to all who do not have learned ignorance (i.e., a knowledge of the fact that [the likenesses to God] are altogether disproportional), [the likenesses] are useless rather than useful.”

The foregoing names belong to affirmative theology. According to negative theology, however, “there is not found in God anything other than infinity” (I, 26). Thus, according to negative theology God is known only to Himself; the human mind, even in the life to come, will be unable to know Him other than as He shows forth in Christ.

We have now reached the fundamental tension within the entire system of learned ignorance. For if affirmative theology terminates in likenesses that are infinitely remote from Divine Being and if negative theology conceives of God only as Inconceivable Infinity, what entitles Nicholas to refer to creatures as a reflection or an image of God, as he does in II, 2 (103:3-9)?⁴¹ And how, on the basis of the creation can he see clearly God's eternal power and divinity, as Paul teaches in Romans 1:20?

The foregoing problem is so philosophically grave that unless it can be dealt with successfully, it threatens to undermine the very basis of learned ignorance. Let us be content to examine here only one small aspect of the network of interlacing difficulties. Wenck reproached Nicholas for tacitly repudiating Wisdom 13:5: “By the greatness of the beauty of creation the Creator can be knowably seen.”⁴² To this reproach Nicholas responded: “Since there is no comparative relation of the creature to the Creator, no created thing possesses a beauty through which the Creator can be attained. But from the greatness of the beauty and adornment of created things we are elevated unto what is infinitely and incomprehensibly beautiful—just as from a work of craft [we are referred] to the craftsman, although the work of craft bears no comparative relation to the craftsman.”⁴³

The first thing for us to notice is Nicholas's reaffirmation of the principle “non est proportio creaturae ad creatorem.” But a second feature also strikes our attention: viz., that the illustration of the craftsman does not serve Nicholas's purpose. True, a craftsman's work furnishes us with some basis for making inferences about the craftsman himself, even though the work does not resemble the craftsman. For example, from a Greek vase we can justifiably make inferences about the Greek potter, even though the vase does not resemble the potter. Similarly, Nicholas wants to say, from the works of God we can justifiably make inferences about God, even though the works of God do not resemble God. Yet, the comparison does not hold: it is defeated by Nicholas's unremitting claim—at the beginning, the middle, and the end of Book One—that God, unlike a craftsman, is inconceivable.⁴⁴ We therefore cannot justifiably draw any inferences about what He is like. We remain stranded in the realm of the as if.

Had Nicholas throughout his works not emphasized and reemphasized the inconceivability of God (except to Himself), we might have had grounds for construing the principle of nulla proportio in a different way. For we might understand it merely to mean that there is no fully adequate likeness between God and creation. But in order for this interpretation of his words to be plausible, there would have to be found in his works the parallel thesis that we have no fully adequate concept of God but only a partially adequate one. But for better or for worse, this latter thesis does not square with the texts.⁴⁵

Throughout his works Nicholas shies away from using the word “analogia.” This aversion goes so far that it leads him to substitute the word “proportio” for the word “analogia” in the passage he cites, in De Venatione Sapientiae 30, from Ambrose Traversari's translation of Pseudo-Dionysius's The Divine Names; and on folio 65^r of Codex Cusanus 106 (works of Heimeric de Campo) he strikes out the word “analogae” and writes instead “proportionalis.”⁴⁶ Many explanations for his having done so would be viable. But it is tempting to view him as simply going further in the direction of disassociating himself from the doctrine of analogia entis. For in place of Thomisticlike distinctions between analogia proportionis and analogia proportionalitatis, we find, in DI, the use of infinite geometrical figures to illustrate Divine Infinity and, in later works, “object lessons,” such as the lessons learned from the eyeglass in De Bervllo, the spinning top in De Possest, and the glowing ruby in De Li Non Aliud. It would be wrong to suppose that these object lessons and illustrations are variants of the Thomistic doctrine of analogia. True, Nicholas does draw various kinds of analogy—e.g., that an infinite line is to finite lines as God is to the world. But he never believes, as does Thomas, that on the basis of analogies something that is really the case can be signified about God's relation to the world—or even about God's nature. Because analogies do not correspond to any reality to be found in Infinite Being or its relations, they are better called illustrations. Nicholas himself calls them aenigmata, i.e., symbolisms; and he uses them to direct the mind's reflection so that the mind's ignorance may be learn-ed. For the human intellect is supposed to recognize that though these symbolisms help it to form a lofty conception of God, this conception is nonetheless only an as if—infinitely distant from and infinitely other than the Reality itself.⁴⁷ Now, since there are alternative—indeed, conflicting—sets of symbolisms, Nicholas needs criteria for deciding which sets are fitting and which unfitting. But if all of these symbolisms and illustrations are infinitely distant from Infinite Reality, then in accordance with Nicholas's own example of an infinite line, a “fitting” symbolism will be no closer to the Reality than an “unfitting” one. For “it is not the case that an infinite line exceeds the length of one foot more than it exceeds the length of two feet”;⁴⁸ for it exceeds both lengths infinitely.

Notes

1. Throughout the Introduction the title “De Docta Ignorantia” will be abbreviated by “DI”.

2. In Ap. 12:19-22 Nicholas denies that he received the idea of learned ignorance from (Pseudo-) Dionysius or “any of the true theologians.” But he acknowledges that after his voyage to Greece he began to examine these teachers. In DI he several times cites the opinions of Dionysius, though the main influences came subsequently to the writing of DI and to his having been presented with the translations made by Ambrose Traversari. Nicholas seems to have received these translations in 1443. See p. 187 of Paul Wilpert's translation Vom Nichtanderen (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1976, 2nd edition).

3. Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario Domandi (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963), p. 38.

4. Erich Meuthen, Nikolaus von Kues 1401-1464. Skizze einer Biographie (Münster: Aschendorff, 1976, 3rd ed.), p. 53.

5. Also see I, 2 (5:3) and I, 3 (10:20-22). Note the use of “ad indoctorum manus” in Ap. 5:20.

6. The entire passage (4:13-17) reads: “For a man—even one very well versed in learning—will attain unto nothing more perfect than to be found to be most learned in the ignorance which is distinctively his. The more he knows that he is unknowing, the more learned he will be.” To translate this last sentence even Wilpert has recourse to the word “gelehrt”!

7. Cf. DP 41:15: “Therefore, the one who knows that he is unable to know is the more learned.”

8. Idiota de Sapientia, Idiota de Mente, Idiota de Staticis Experimentis.

9. Provided the latter point were not denied, I myself would not find anything objectionable in translating the title as “On a Knowledge of Our Ignorance” (though some purists might object). Even Wenck takes “docta” in the sense of “notum” (IL 23:4) and takes “doctrina” in the sense of “scientia” (IL 34:2).

10. Cf. DI III, 11 (245:20-23).

11. DI II, 1 elaborates and illustrates this point.

12. In DP 43 the Abbot (John Andrea) protests that our knowledge of mathematical truths is exact knowledge. Nicholas does not deny this but instead makes the following distinction: “Regarding mathematical [entities], which proceed from our reason and which we experience to be in us as in their source [principium]: they are known by us as our entities and as rational entities; [and they are known] precisely, by our reason's precision, from which they proceed. … Without these notional entities reason could not proceed with its work, e.g., with building, measuring, and so on. But the divine works, which proceed from the divine intellect, remain unknown to us precisely as they are. If we know something about them, we surmise it by likening a figure to a form. Hence there is no precise knowledge of any of God's works, except on the part of God, who does all these works. If we have any knowledge of them, we derive it from the symbolism and the mirror of [our] mathematical knowledge.”

13. DI I, 26 (88:16-20). Cf. De Visione Dei 13 (51:4-8); 16 (67:7-8). Cribratio Alkoran II, 1 (88:6-19).

14. Note the frequent appearance of the verb “convenire” in DI I, 24.

15. Cf. DI III, 11 (e.g., 252). Notice that in III, 12 (257:9-10) Christ is called faith and love.

16. DI II, 2 (100:12-15). Cf. II, 13 (180:1-11). Idiota de Mente 10 (91:18-21); De Deo Abscondito 2:9-4:9; VS 12 (31:14-16); DP 38:12-15.

17. In DI I, 4 Nicholas does not present a tightly sequential line of reasoning. In fact, the order of his steps there differs from the order in which they are sketched in I, 2, his “preliminary clarification.” In discussing the intent of his thought, I do not fully adhere to the actual order of his presentation in I, 4, since there is no special need—whether philosophical or hermeneutical—for doing so. In slightly rearranging what Nicholas says, I am not thereby transforming or in any important sense reconstructing his argument, which is more of a conglomeration than a set of deductive steps. N.B. Nicholas also uses “unqualifiedly minimum” and “unqualifiedly maximum” in contexts in which they do not refer to God [e.g., in I, 20 (60:7-8) and II, 11 (156:12, 16)]. The role of “unqualifiedly” (“simpliciter”) is to indicate that there are no degrees of comparatively more and less.

18. Just as the faster the top spins the more it seems to be at rest, so if it could spin with infinite speed it would be at rest. (See DP 18-20).

19. DI II, 10 (155:2-3); II, 11 (156:11-12). DP 10:19-21.

20. DI I, 21 (65:7-8).

21. IL 21:20-25. Ap. 14:5-9.

22. Ap. 15:14-15; 9:6. See PNC, pp. 12 and 21.

23. In DI II, 1 (96:15) Nicholas alludes didactically to the infinite number, which he does not however posit. See the entire discussion in section 96 of DI.

24. IL 32:7-8.

25. DI I, 16 (45:4). Cf. NA 10 (37:13-14).

26. DI I, 23 (70:23-24); II, 7 (130:14-15); I, 17 (51:8); I, 8 (22:8).

27. IL 23:27 and 33:3.

28. Wenck associates Nicholas with the Beghards, whom he refers to as teaching “that God is, formally, whatever is” (IL 25:19-20).

29. See Wenck's first thesis.

30. IL 26:20-21.

31. See the entire passage at Ap. 26:4-25; also note 33:19-25. Cf. NA 10 (39). Also see Giovanni Santinello, Il pensiero di Nicolò Cusano nella sua prospettiva estetica (Padova: Liviana, 1958), p. 95, and Maria T. Liaci, “Accenti spinoziani nel ‘De dato patris luminum’ del Cusano?” NC, pp. 217-242.

32. This theme is a central theme of NA, where Nicholas teaches that God, who is Not-other, is the definition of all things. Not-other is definable solely in terms of itself (“Not-other is not other than Not-other”); and in the absence of Not-other no thing at all is definable. The sky is the sky because it is not other than the sky. The very existence and self-identity of the sky is dependent upon the existence and self-identity of Not-other.

    See also De Visione Dei 9 (34:10-15); 14 (60:1-10). De Ludo Globi 2 (91:10-92:1).

33. DI II, 3 (110:4-5). Cf. DP 57:21. NA 7 (26:1-2); 17 (80:6).

34. Cf. De Coniecturis I, 8 (35:12-22), a passage likewise often misunderstood.

35. Vincent Martin, “The Dialectical Process in the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa,” Laval théologique et philosophique 5 (1949), 257.

36. Mark Fuehrer claims, mistakenly, that for Nicholas “everything is, in fact, God himself.” But Fuehrer bases this claim on his mistranslation of DI I, 22 (69:3-4). See “The Principle of Contractio in Nicholas of Cusa's Philosophical View of Man,” Downside Review, 93 (October 1975), 290.

37. Cf. chap. 34 of St. Anselm's Monologion. Also see Augustine, Confessions 7.15.21 (PL 32:744).

38. DI II, 2 (104:5-11).

39. DI II, 3 (110:15-21).

40. DI I, 24 (77:13-15).

41. And what entitles him to assert?: “The negations which remove the more imperfect things from the most Perfect are truer than the others. For example, it is truer that God is not stone than that He is not life or intelligence …” (I, 26). See PNC, p. 20.

42. IL 24:2-3.

43. Ap. 18:26-19:4.

44. DI I, 4 (11:7-9); I, 12 (33:4-6); I, 26 (87:1-3). In II, 13 (177:1) Nicholas sets forth a proportionality: “Earth is to fire as the world is to God.” But he includes the word “quasi”: “so to speak,” “as it were.” And this word must be understood as still applicative when he goes on to write: “Fire, in its relation to earth, has many resemblances to God.”

45. See especially the dialogue DP.

46. The first of these observations is Werner Schulze's, the second Rudolf Haubst's. Both are cited from W. Schulze, Zahl, Proportion, Analogie. Eine Untersuchung zur Metaphysik und Wissenschaftshaltung des Nikolaus von Kues (Münster: Aschendorff, 1978), 35n.

47. Cf. DI I, 20 (61:28-31). In discussing God's relation to the universe, Nicholas frequently uses the language of “as if”; see II, 2 (104:3, 6); II, 3 (111:15); II, 4 (114:14, 15).

48. DI I, 16 (46:5-6).

Abbreviations

Ap. Apologia Doctae Ingorantiae

DI De Docta Ignorantia

DP De Possest (Reprinted in PNC)

IL De Ignota Litteratura

MFCG Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft (ed. Rudolf Haubst)

NA De Li Non Aliud (reprinted in J. Hopkins. Nicholas of Cusa on God as Not-other: A Translation and an Appraisal of De Li Non Aliud. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979)

NC Nicolò da Cusa. Florence: Sansoni, 1962 (Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Magisterio dell’Università di Padova)

NK Nikolaus von Kues. Einführung in sein philosophisches Denken. Ed. Klaus Jacobi. Munich: K. Alber, 1979

PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne

PNC J. Hopkins. A Concise Introduction to the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978; 2nd ed. 1980

SHAW Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschafter. Philosophisch-historiche Klasse. Heidelberg: C. Winter