The Ways God Overcomes Contradictions in Human Understanding: Nicholas of Cusa
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F61989592%3A15210%2F25%3A73632296" target="_blank" >RIV/61989592:15210/25:73632296 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783111369983-009" target="_blank" >http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783111369983-009</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783111369983-009" target="_blank" >10.1515/9783111369983-009</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
The Ways God Overcomes Contradictions in Human Understanding: Nicholas of Cusa
Original language description
Paradoxes and logical impossibilities are at the core of negative theology. Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus) made it his major task to investigate, outline, and accept those conditions for speaking of God. “Learned ignorance” was one of his formulas, that is, to understand what is unintelligible by transcending what is understandable so that contradictions coincide. In his dialogue On the Hidden God,he addresses the epistemological problem by stating that God is not even the root of contradictions, but God is simplicity preceding any root. Propositions about God are caused by God himself. With that, Cusanus qualifies all theology as apophatic: nothing is God if ‘nothing’ is supposed to have a referent. Thus, he circumvents pantheism that purports to understand God by His works. This program is elaborated upon in the conversation De non aliud. With explicit reference to the philosophical theologies of Proclus and Plato’s Parmenidesand mainly profiting from Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, Cusanus aims at the identity of definition and defined, which amounts to the proposition that the defined is ‘non-other’ than the definition. Hence, God is all that can be defined and none of it. God gives the definition to the defined. The non-other (God), then, is present in that which is other. One implication is that that which is identical with its definition – and which defines all there is – is “all in all and nothing in nothing.” What sounds like a version of pantheism, however, is the contrary to it, provided we acknowledge the hypothetical character of the discourse and, along with that, the divine perspective – which eventually is inaccessible to humans. God ‘acts’ as his own contradiction: the double negation entailed in ‘non-other.’
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
C - Chapter in a specialist book
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60301 - Philosophy, History and Philosophy of science and technology
Result continuities
Project
<a href="/en/project/GA21-17059S" target="_blank" >GA21-17059S: Pantheism and Panpsychism in the Renaissance and the Emergence of Secularism</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)
Others
Publication year
2025
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Book/collection name
Contradiction and the Absolute Theories engaging contradiction in five main world religions
ISBN
978-3-11-136498-8
Number of pages of the result
16
Pages from-to
169-184
Number of pages of the book
400
Publisher name
Walter de Gruyter
Place of publication
Berlin
UT code for WoS chapter
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