The Possibility of Talking About God in Nicholas of Cusa

Abstract

This paper aims to explore Nicholas of Cusa’s, who is regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the fifteenth century, understanding of religious language and opinions on the type of definitions that can be made about God. Considering the abundant Western literature derived from the research on the philosophy of Cusa, it is possible to state that the studies conducted in Turkey have remained quite limited. However, Cusa’s views have the characteristics of a transition between the Medieval Age and the Renaissance due to the period he lived in, making his views worthy of exploring for the influence on and a more accurate understanding of the two periods mentioned. Indeed, while Cusa received education on Scholastic science, he recognized the signs of a new world culture that was just about to emerge in Europe in his early academic career and searched for the opportunities to transition to a humanism-based, more liberal way of thinking. The system he introduced was quite different from Scholasticism benefited from Plato for the philosophical background, theology for the topics, and the dialectical method derived by focusing on the cognitive structure of human beings for the methodology. From this perspective, Cusa can be regarded as one of the important figures following the tradition of Platonism; alternatively, he can also be recognized as a significant figure in the way of drawing an intellectual line to make a clear separation between Platonism and Neoplatonism. Effectively applied mathematical knowledge to his philosophy, Cusa tried to develop a Christ-based ontology and epistemology as well as to interpret the key beliefs of Christianity on this particular basis. According to Cusa, the key attribute of God is unity and simplicity, and therefore it is impossible to understand God through multiplicity in things. Thus, God cannot be understood by intellectual abstraction that is derived from things. Here the issue of talking about God in Cusa is based on exploring the possibilities of human cognitive ability in the face of God’s infinity. Concordantly, the philosophy of Cusa should be considered a dialectical system that features a realistic view on both the unity of God and the reality and deity of the realm and strives to build a language in accordance with this vision. The manifestation of this dialectic in the language is revealed by bringing the concept of mind forward, on one hand, and through the idea of the ontological source of the Divine mind over things, on the other hand. The idea of the inadequacy of such effort that is realized at the level of representative language is philosophically and experimentally manifested as the first stage, and then as the antithesis, a mystical intellectual effort is established in the sense of spiritual purification and withdrawal of the mind from all affirmative knowledge claims, as the second stage. In other words, Cusa, being inspired by the Platonic ontology, first tried to develop a concept of existence at the level of phenomena through the idea of proportionality that he derived from mathematics to employ a representative language, and then he arrived at a view, which he called “Learned Ignorance” (De docta ignorantia), suggesting that the only knowledge we can have about God is that He cannot be known. This, in turn, led to the emergence of an idea of absolution, at a different intellectual level, that aims to release God from all definitions and an endeavor to develop a language in accordance with such an idea. Herein, according to Cusa, human comprehension can only come into contact with the infinite and absolute through such an idea of absolution. The present paper discusses that Cusa considered both affirmative (representation) and negative (absolution) language as a preliminary stage and proposed such language as required by the dialectical methodology he employed, and he used a representative language as the third way to combine these two ways in the person of Christ as almost the Word of God. This point, which is mostly overlooked in Cusa’s use of religious language, is based on the idea of acknowledging God as an intellectual elevation and therefore a subject exceeding the common uses of language, which is achieved as a result of an experimental experience, rather than reaching God through a set of propositions that can be regarded as the product of inferential comprehension. Herein, it seems that Cusa tried to utilize the paradoxical language to the best possible extent and introduced a quite functional and multidimensional language in this sense. Finally, we would like to express the key motivation of the present study, which is our belief that prospective comparisons between the views of Nicholas of Cusa, who can be described as the philosopher of harmony, and several philosophical and religious mystical views that emerged within the Islamic theology, especially with the influence of Platonism, can reveal significant findings.