SOURCE: Duclow, Donald F. “Anselm's Proslogion and Nicholas of Cusa's Wall of Paradise.” Downside Review 100, no. 338 (January 1982): 22-30.

[In the following essay, Duclow juxtaposes Anselm's ontological argument with the symbolism of Nicholas of Cusa's “wall of paradise” in order to emphasize Anselm's use of limit or boundary thinking in his Proslogion.]

Perhaps Gilson gave the best excuse for presenting yet another essay on Anselm's Proslogion when he wrote that one simply cannot resist the temptation.¹ An author does, however, need some justification for indulging his concupiscence. I would therefore make two claims for the following essay. First, it develops a new comparison between Anselm and Nicholas of Cusa. In particular, discussion of Cusanus's ‘wall of paradise’ discloses the implicit structure of the Proslogion's argument. Second, this comparison suggests a re-interpretation of the Proslogion in terms of phenomenology and contemporary hermeneutics. I shall first develop the textual comparison in some detail. Then, in evaluating the analogy, I shall briefly indicate its relation to contemporary thought.

I

Comparisons of Anselm and Nicholas of Cusa are appropriate for several reasons. First of all, there are clear historical connections between them. Nicholas occasionally cites Anselm by name, and in Cusanus's library there is a twelfth-century manuscript of Anselm's works.² While this manuscript contains several of Anselm's major works, it unfortunately has neither the Monologion nor the Proslogion. Nevertheless, there are structural similarities between Cusanus's teaching on the divine maximum and Anselm's argument in the Proslogion, as when Nicholas writes of the maximum, quo nihil maius esse potest.³ Cusanus also echoes the Proslogion quite directly when he describes God as id quo maius concipi nequit.⁴ Since Dangelmayr and Flasch have already discussed these similarities,⁵ I propose a slightly different comparison between Cusanus's symbolism of the wall of paradise and Anselm's Proslogion.

Nicholas of Cusa's De docta ignorantia (1440) provoked a prolonged controversy over mystical theology.⁶ During this controversy, Cusanus wrote several works, including De visione Dei (1453) which develops the spiritual vision appropriate to learned ignorance. Addressed to the Benedictine monks of Tegernsee, the De visione Dei resembles Anselm's Proslogion since it too is an alloquium or colloquy which blends intense spirituality, richly symbolic language and novel speculative analysis. Suggestive as this formal similarity may be, for this comparison I shall isolate one image from De visione Dei, that of the wall of paradise. Selection of this image is scarcely arbitrary, since it expresses two of Cusanus's major themes: the coincidence of opposites, and divine infinity.

Cusanus presents the wall of paradise as a gloss on the account in Genesis of fallen man's exile. He writes, ‘I have discovered the place where You [God] are found unveiled. It is surrounded by the coincidence of opposites. This is the wall within which you dwell. … Therefore, You may be seen on the far side of the coincidence of opposites, but not on this side of it.’⁷ In this image we find three elements: the enclosed garden where God dwells, the wall of paradise, and the exterior realm of exile. As Nicholas interprets the image, each element assumes precise meaning. Outside the wall is the region of finite distinction, where opposites are distinguished by the logic of non-contradiction. Here unity is distinct from multiplicity, beginnings from ends, etc. Reason (ratio) rules this realm, and with its flaming sword bars entry to the garden. For the wall's ‘door is guarded by highest … reason, and unless it is conquered the entrance will not be open’ (VD 132, IX). The wall itself is the coincidence of opposites, where the power of reason gives way to intellectual insight (intellectus). The distinctions of reason are unified in the wall, since it is ‘that coincidence where later coincides with earlier, where the end coincides with the beginning, where Alpha and Omega are the same’ (VD 136, X). Here rational knowledge passes into learned ignorance, whose dialectic then leads to the final element in Cusanus's image: the central, enclosed garden where the infinite God dwells. ‘When I see You [God] as absolute infinity … then I begin to see You unveiled and to enter the garden of delights. You are no such thing as can be spoken of or conceived, but are infinitely and absolutely superexalted above all such things’ (VD 144, XII). Here Cusanus turns from the logic of coincidence to the Dionysian via negativa. For as utterly transcendent, this divine infinity is beyond both the distinction and the coincidence of opposites.

Nicholas further argues that all three elements of the image form a unified structure which begins and ends in the infinite God. He writes, ‘Because we admit that there is an end of the finite, we necessarily admit the infinite, or the ultimate end, or the end without end. But we cannot not admit finite beings, and thus cannot not admit the infinite. Therefore, we admit the coincidence of contradictories, above which is the infinite’ (VD 148, XIII). The full implications of the image now become clear. The ‘external’, finite region by its very nature has an end or limit, which the wall of paradise represents, and beyond which is divine infinity. Finitude, limit and infinity thus constitute a dialectical pattern, within which thinking is continually in motion. Cusanus uses the wall of paradise to illustrate this motion: ‘I go in from creatures to You the creator, from effects to their cause; I go out from You the creator to creatures, from the cause to the effects. I go in and go out simultaneously when I see that going out is going in, and that going in is simultaneously going out’ (VD 140, XI). Realizing this unity of going in and going out, thinking finds itself in the ‘wall of coincidence, beyond which You [God] exist, utterly free from everything that can be said or thought’.⁸ In sum, Cusanus's wall of paradise symbolizes the limit-situation of thinking; it is the fluid boundary where thinking oscillates between finite opposition and infinite unity. And in this oscillation, thinking discloses the common genesis of thinking and being in actual, divine infinity.

Anselm's Proslogion displays a similar symbolic context and speculative structure. Anselm frames the Proslogion between an elaborately rhetorical lament for man's fallen state (ch. I) and an ecstatic anticipation of man's restoration to God (ch. XXV-XXVI). In this way, the Proslogion shares the common Christian symbolism and devotional context of Cusanus's wall of paradise. More significant, however, is the structural similarity between Cusanus's interpretation of this symbolism and Anselm's argument. Here I shall consider Anselm's argument as extending through the entire Proslogion, rather than as confined to the locus classicus of chapters II-IV. In the ‘Preface’ Anselm claims that the Proslogion develops ‘one single argument’ which concerns not only God's existence, but also his supreme goodness and ‘whatever we believe about the Divine Being’.⁹ The argument thus continues well beyond the early chapters' discussion of God's existence, and is complete only at the work's end. This extended context permits a full comparison with Cusanus's image, and may yield a more adequate interpretation of the Proslogion itself.

The structural analogy that I propose is the following: like Cusanus's wall of paradise, Anselm's id quo maius cogitari nequit (Pr. 101, II) and its variants articulate the limit-situation of thinking. As though claiming ‘Beyond this nothing can be thought’, Anselm marks out the boundary between the thinkable and that which transcends thinking. Like Cusanus's wall, this boundary looks two ways: toward the region of finite distinction and contingent being, and toward God who is infinitely maius quam cogitari possit (Pr. 112, XV) and has maxime omnium … esse (Pr. 103, III). Given this double directedness, ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’ is not one concept among others, but the very limit of the conceivable. Anselm underlines the distinctiveness of this limit with the negativity of each formulation of the argument: ‘something than which nothing greater can be thought’, ‘that than which a greater cannot be thought’, etc. In their negativity, these formulations lack the determinacy of a positive concept; they rather indicate the boundary of all finite conceptions and contingent being, since none of these is adequate to the God who ‘dwells in inaccessible light’. As Gillian Evans remarks, for Anselm

That which is higher than all things lies at the boundary of our understanding. So we cannot fully understand it, and we must be content to know that it is there. … It is therefore essential to our powers of understanding that God should be regarded as coming to meet us precisely at the limit of our understanding, and that we should recognize that where understanding ends, God is to be found.¹⁰

In the context of the Proslogion as a whole, chapters II-IV present God at the limit of thinking, and Anselm then sets himself in that limit and looks toward the garden of delights. Yet it is not a purely affective contemplation, but the very dialectic of Proslogion II-IV that effects this transition. In chapter XV Anselm says, ‘Therefore, Lord, not only are You that than which a greater cannot be thought, but You are also something greater than can be thought. For since it is possible to think that there is such a one, then, if You are not this same being, something greater than You could be thought—which cannot be.’¹¹ Here Anselm attains learned ignorance since he ‘now knows why it is that God dwells in impenetrable light: God is greater than can be thought’.¹² This new awareness of divine transcendence and unknowability in Proslogion XV develops from the negative formulations of chapters II-IV in two related ways. First, the applicability of quiddam maius quam cogitari possit to God is deduced directly from the earlier formulations. Second, and more fundamentally, this deduction completes the self-transcending dialect of thinking. Whereas quo maius cogitari nequit expresses thinking at its limit, quiddam maius quam cogitari possit thrusts beyond that limit toward God's ultimate inconceivability. As other commentators have noted, this apophatic turn places the Proslogion within the tradition of the via negativa.¹³

Nor do the similarities between Cusanus and Anselm end with this description of thinking's limits and acknowledgement of divine transcendence. For both Nicholas and Anselm proceed to characterize divine being in terms of infinity. Following Augustine, Anselm correlates divine infinity with spiritual being and omnipresence:

That is unlimited which is wholly everywhere at once; and this is true only of You alone. That, however, is limited and unlimited at the same time which, while wholly in one place, can at the same time be wholly somewhere else but not everywhere; and this is true of created spirits. For if the soul were not wholly in each of the parts of its body it would not sense wholly in each of them. You then, O Lord, are unlimited and eternal in a unique way and yet other spirits are also unlimited and eternal.¹⁴

In discussing God's eternity, Anselm also uses the language of coincidence and infinity. Commenting on the ‘age of ages’, he says, ‘Just as an age of time contains all temporal things, so Your eternity contains also the very ages of time. Indeed, this [eternity] is an “age” because of its indivisible unity, but “ages” because of its immensity without limit.’¹⁵ Further, as Cusanus speaks of infinite simplicity beyond all opposites and contrasts, Anselm writes, ‘You [God] are unity not divisible by any mind. Life and wisdom and other [attributes], then, are not parts of You, but all are one and each of them is wholly what You are and what all the others are.’¹⁶ In each of these discussions, Anselm looks beyond the contrasts of finite being and toward divine infinity. The analogy between Cusanus and Anselm is now complete: Anselm's argument parallels Cusanus's wall of paradise in overcoming finite distinctions, and in insisting on the limit of thinking and on divine infinity. Cusanus's threefold pattern of finite, limit and infinite thus expresses the implicit structure of the Proslogion.

While Anselm and Cusanus share this basic pattern, each perceives it differently. Concerning the via negativa and divine transcendence, Cusanus claims that the divine nature is essentially hidden and unknowable. For Anselm, however, it is not only the excessive brilliance of God's light that renders it inaccessible, but also and primarily man's fallen state which has weakened our vision of God (Pr. 111-13, XIV-XVII). Further, while Cusanus develops a systematic doctrine of divine infinity, Anselm's God is infinite in the traditional Augustinian sense of omnipresence, eternity and unity. Finally, whereas Nicholas thematizes the limit-situation in the logic of coincidence, Anselm posits it as a basic intuition which yields a different rule for thinking about God, who is ‘whatever it is better to be than not to be’.¹⁷ Even when this rule gives way to the apophatic turn of Proslogion XV, Anselm does not develop as thoroughgoing and radical a negative theology as does Cusanus. With Dangelmayr we can trace these differences to Anselm's reliance on Augustine and Cusanus's primarily Dionysian Neoplatonism.¹⁸ Yet this contrast should obscure neither the family resemblance of Neoplatonism in its Augustinian and Dionysian forms, nor the structural similarity between Anselm's Proslogion and Cusanus's wall of paradise.

II

With our comparison complete, let us briefly examine its implications for the truth of Anselm's argument. We may begin with a critique of Gaunilo's classic discussion of Proslogion II-IV. In his Proslogion Anselm insists that Gaunilo has mis-interpreted the Proslogion, and that ‘Nowhere in all that I have said will you find such an argument’ as Gaunilo foists upon Anselm.¹⁹ This conflict of interpretations is historically important because Gaunilo's critique has provided the standard reading of the ‘ontological argument’. Yet the analogy with Cusanus clarifies these conflicting interpretations, and supports Anslem's response. For Gaunilo omits precisely those negative, limiting features which Anselm and Cusanus use to articulate the ontological difference between divine infinity and finite being. The contrast between Anselm and Gaunilo is evident in their very language, for Gaunilo's formulations lack the fluidity and boundary character of Anselm's language of comparison, conceivability and negation.²⁰ Where Anselm speaks of conceivability and its limit, Gaunilo speaks of a determinate concept. But Anselm's quo nihil maius cogitari possit can be neither adequately compared to Gaunilo's lost island, nor translated into his aliquid omnibus maius,²¹ since by their determinate, positive nature these formulations set Anselm's argument within the finite domain, and hence ‘outside’ Cusanus's wall of paradise. While Anselm correctly insists on the negativity and distinctiveness of his argument, Gaunilo consistently gives it affirmative form and views it as one concept among many. In the light of so serious a misinterpretation, it is unfortunate that Gaunilo's statement of Anselm's position has become canonical. Interpreters like Gaunilo should reject Anselm's argument, because they have failed to understand it from the beginning.

But if we consider the argument of chapters II-IV in relation to the entire Proslogion and to Cusanus, we may acknowledge its validity. For then Proslogion II-IV marks but one phase of a meditation which discloses a previously hidden presence, and the argument's truth hinges upon the success of this disclosure. The Proslogion's devotional character, its boundary language, and Anselm's doctrine of truth support this interpretation. Throughout the Proslogion Anselm seeks a progressive disclosure of God's concealed presence, as when he says,

O supreme and inaccessible light; O whole and blessed truth, how far You are from me who am so close to You! How distant You are from my sight while I am so present to Your sight! You are wholly present everywhere and I do not see You. In You I move and in You I have my being and I cannot come near to You. You are within me and around me and I do not have any experience of You.²²

In the Proslogion Anselm seeks to move from faith into an understanding and experience of God's presence. For these purposes, the rhetoric of persuasion and devotion is as fundamental to advancing the work's ‘one single argument’ as is Anselm's dialectical virtuosity. He designs both his rhetoric and dialectic so as to engage his audience and drive us to the boundaries of language and understanding, where the hidden God emerges. In the light of the comparison with Cusanus, the Proslogion's limit character here becomes crucial. Anselm uses dialectic as ‘a lever whereby thought is raised above finite thinking to become insight into the reality of God, which is radically different from knowledge of the real things of the world’.²³ He also evokes God's presence in prayer, biblical allusion and all the devices of Augustinian rhetoric, which yield affective and experiential insight.

Although narrowly formal analyses of Proslogion II-IV have dominated studies of Anselm's ‘ontological argument’, they fail to address either the work's full scope or Anselm's conception of truth. As De veritate makes clear, Anselm's doctrine of truth includes strong normative, practical and ontological dimensions. He defines truth as rectitude, and anchors propositional truth in the truth of action and of being.²⁴ For these reasons, philosophical analogues for Anselm's argument may be found less in contemporary logic than in existential phenomenology, especially Jaspers's and Heidegger's explorations of the ‘horizon’ of thinking and Being.²⁵ Jaspers's central theme is the boundary situation of human experience and thinking, and Heidegger discusses truth as the disclosure or unconcealment of Being. The relevance of these themes to the Proslogion is evident. For rather than moving from concept to existence, Anselm's argument moves consistently within being, from the questing activity of thinking to its boundary and existential foundation. Because it articulates the self-transcending limit of thinking, the Proslogion suggests the distinctive mode of divine existence: God cannot exist as a finite object to which a concept may or may not conform, but must rather exist as an infinite unity which is ‘greater than can be thought’. As Jaspers comments, ‘In Anselm God is present without becoming an object’.²⁶ The truth of the Proslogion and its argument consists in their fidelity to the limit-situation of human thinking, and in their partial disclosure of the elusive God beyond that boundary.

Our inquiry cannot halt with this affirmation of the argument's truth, since we have yet to take the whole limit-situation into account. For if Cusanus's symbol and Anselm's argument point to the infinity and existence of God, they simultaneously point to the limited conditions of human reflection. The Proslogion and De visione Dei address the concerns of specific Benedictine monastic communities, and use traditional symbolism to articulate intensely personal quests for meaning. In particular, both works rely on the account in Genesis of man's fall and exile, and seek experiential, redemptive insight. This emphasis on history, belief and symbol highlights a central ambiguity in the Proslogion. On the one hand, Anselm starts from faith so that he may understand, and, on the other, claims for his argument a power such that ‘if I did not want to believe that You [God] existed, I should nevertheless be unable not to understand it’.²⁷ Anselm's thinking is rooted in faith and its cultural context, yet also achieves its own autonomy. Commentators like Barth and Stolz have emphasized the former, while philosophical analyses have generally concentrated on the latter.²⁸ But neglect of either phase seriously distorts our interpretation of the Proslogion, where Anselm sustains a paradoxical tension between understanding's dependence on faith and its autonomy.

To do justice to this tension, we may turn to the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur. In developing his ‘essentially Anselmian schema’, Ricoeur restates the Proslogion's dialectic of faith and understanding as follows: ‘The symbol gives rise to thought’, which in turn begins its own inquiry into the symbol's meanings and foundations.²⁹ Interpretation thus requires a double vision which both attends to the conditioned reality of history and culture, and remains open to the trans-historical truth of their symbolic and speculative creations. Only this double vision is adequate to the limit-situation, where thinking oscillates between the given, finite standpoint of the human subject, and the transcendent horizon of God. For the issues of divine infinity and transcendence emerge only within the life-world of belief, culture and tradition. In this light, the truth of Cusanus's symbolism and Anselm's argument is both necessary in virtue of the enduring structure of the limit-situation, and contingent upon the symbolic matrix of medieval Christianity and upon the personal and practical attitude of faith.

Notes

1. E. Gilson, ‘Sens et nature de l'argument de Saint Anselme’, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge IX (1934), p. 5.

2. Listed in J. Marx, Verzeichnis der Handschriften-Sammlung des Hospitals zu Cues (Trier, 1905), pp. 67-68.

3. Nicholas of Cusa, De beryllo, in Philosophisch-Theologische Schriften, ed. L. Gabriel, German trans. W. and D. Dupré (Vienna, 1964-67) III, p. 8 (ch. 7). See the classic discussion in Cusanus, De docta ignorantia, Schriften I, pp. 199ff. (bk I, ch. 2ff.); translated by J. Hopkins in Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance (Minneapolis, 1981), pp. 51ff.

4. Cusanus, Apologia doctae ignorantiae, Schriften I, p. 534; translated by J. Hopkins in Nicholas of Cusa's Debate with John Wenck (Minneapolis, 1981), p. 48. See also Cusanus, De principio, Schriften II, p. 242: ‘quo melius cogitari nequit’.

5. S. Dangelmayr, ‘Maximum und Cogitare bei Anselm und Cusanus’, Analecta Anselmiana IV, 1 (1975), pp. 203-10; ‘Anselm und Cusanus’, Analecta Anselmiana III (1971), pp. 112-40; and K. Flasch, Die Metaphysik des Einen bei Nikolaus von Kues (Leiden, 1973), pp. 161-8. J. Hopkins criticizes Flasch and denies any analogy between Cusanus and Anselm in A Concise Introduction to the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa (Minneapolis, 1978), pp., 14-15; but his critique focuses so narrowly on the issue of ‘proof’ that he dismisses a priori any fuller, thematic comparison of Anselm and Cusanus.

6. See E. Vansteenberghe, Autour de la docte ignorance, in Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters XV (1915). M. L. Führer discusses Cusanus's adaptation of Pseudo-Dionysius's spirituality in ‘Purgation, Illumination and Perfection in Nicholas of Cusa’ in Downside Review, vol. XCVIII (1980), pp. 169-89.

7. Cusanus, De visione Dei, Schriften III, p. 132 (ch. IX); hereafter cited as ‘VD’ with page and chapter following. The Vision of God is available in an English translation by E. G. Salter (New York, 1960; reprint of 1928 ed.).

8. VD 140, XI. On this theme, see D. F. Duclow, ‘Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa’ in Downside Review, vol. XCII (1974), pp. 102-08.

9. Anselm, Proslogion, in Opera omnia, ed. F. Schmitt (Edinburgh, 1946), I, p. 93; Charlesworth, p. 103. References to the Proslogion will be to the Schmitt edition, cited as ‘Pr’ with page and chapter following; translations will be from M. Charlesworth, St Anselm's Proslogion (Oxford, 1965). Concerning Anselm's unum argumentum, see G. Evans, Anselm and Talking about God (Oxford, 1978), pp. 45-48.

10. Evans, op. cit., pp. 63-64.

11. Pr 112, XV; Charlesworth, p. 137. See Cusanus, De venatione sapientiae, Schriften I, p. 120 (ch. 26), where he cites Anselm, Deus esse maius quam concipi possit.

12. A. Pegis, ‘St Anselm and the Argument of the Proslogion’, Mediaeval Studies XXVIII (1966), p. 248.

13. Evdokimov, ‘L'Aspect apophatique de l'argument de Saint Anselme’, Spicilegium Beccense (Paris, 1959), pp. 233-58; M. Gogacz, ‘La “Ratio Anselmi” en face du problème des relations entre métaphysique et mystique’, Analecta Anselmiana II (1970), pp. 169-85; and J. Gracia, ‘A Supremely Great Being’, New Scholasticism XLVIII (1974), pp. 371-7.

14. Pr 110-11, XIII; Charlesworth, pp. 133-5. See E. Gilson, ‘L'Infinité divine chez Saint Augustin’ in Augustinus Magister (Paris, 1954) I, pp. 569-74.

15. Pr 116, XXI; Charlesworth, p. 143. See Cusanus, VD 138-40, XI.

16. Pr 114-15, XVIII; Charlesworth, p. 141. See Cusanus, VD 148-50, XIII.

17. Pr 104, V; Charlesworth, p. 121.

18. Dangelmayr, ‘Anselm und Cusanus’, p. 120. See also V. Lossky, ‘Les Éléments de “théologie negative” dans la pensée de Saint Augustine’ in Augustinus Magister I, pp. 575-81.

19. Anselm, ‘Responsio editoris’, Opera omnia I, p. 134 (V); Charlesworth, p. 179. See K. Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum, trans. I. Robertson (Cleveland, 1962), pp. 84-89.

20. See Gracia, art. cit.

21. Gaunilo, ‘Pro insipiente’ in Anselm, Opera omnia I, p. 127 (IV); Anselm, ‘Responsio’, pp. 134-5.

22. Pr 112-13, XVI; Charlesworth, p. 137.

23. K. Jaspers, Anselm and Nicholas of Cusa, trans. R. Mannheim (New York, 1974), p. 11.

24. See K. Flasch, ‘Zum Begriff der Wahrheit bei Anselm von Canterbury’, Philosophisches Jahrbuch LXXII (1964-65), pp. 322-52; R. Pouchet, La Rectitudo chez Saint Anselme (Paris, 1964), especially pp. 67-83 and 225-9; and D. F. Duclow, ‘Structure and Meaning in Anselm's De veritate’. American Benedictine Review XXVI (1975), pp. 406-17.

25. See, inter alia, K. Jaspers, Philosophy (Chicago, 1970); and M. Heidegger, Discourse on Thinking (New York, 1966).

26. Jaspers, Anselm and Nicholas of Cusa, p. 16.

27. Pr 104, IV; Charlesworth, p. 121.

28. Barth, op. cit,; A Stolz, ‘Zur Theologie Anselms im Proslogion’, Catholica II (1933), pp. 1-24; A. Stolz, ‘Das Proslogion des Hl. Anselm’, Revue Bénédictine XLVII (1935), pp. 331-47. A useful survey of the philosophical literature is The Ontological Argument, ed. A Plantinga (Garden City, N.Y., 1965).

29. P. Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. E. Buchanan (New York, 1967), pp. 347-57. Along similar lines, see W. Dupré Religion in Primitive Cultures (The Hague, 1975). This hermeneutical turn reaffirms Gilson's description of the Proslogion as une étude de l'Ecriture Sainte sur l'intelligiblité, de la foi; Gilson, ‘Sens et nature de l'argument de Saint Anselme’, p. 50. See also R. Herrera, ‘St Anselm's Proslogion: ‘A Hermeneutical Task’, Analecta Anselmiana III (1971), pp. 141-5.