Article
-
Man’s “knowledge” and “ignorance” for God in the teaching of Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa
Eirini ARTEMI
Original title: Man’s “knowledge” and “ignorance” for God in the teaching of Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Gregory of Nyssa, Knowledge of God, Nicholas of Cusa, Ousia, attributes.
The knowledge of God has been the main subject of the theological teaching since the expanding of the Christian doctrine and teaching. Ecclesiastical writers as Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa accept that the knowledge about God is conventional and symbolic (deliberately). His attributes are known, however His essence “ousia” is not known. God is in finite. He is unlimited in every kind of perfection or that every conceivable perfection belongs to Him in the highest conceivable way. God is self-existent and does not depend on any thing else for his existence. The biblical I am that I am. Related to divine immutability: God does not undergo any change. God is externally related to the world: no event in the world has any effect on God. God conforms to the substance metaphysics of Greek philosophy. A substance is independent, self- contained, and self - sufficient. Man knows only the God’s attributes and not His “ousia”. This happens, because the finite human mind cannot grasp the essence of the infinite God. Besides God is unknowledgeable and inconceivable to His “ousia” while He is knowledgeable and comprehendible to His energies. It is clear that it only is possible for man to acquire indistinct “amydros” and weak “asthenis” vision of God according to his attributes “ta kathautou”. In this article, we are going to examine this knowledge and vision of God through the writings of eastern and western ecclesiastical writers, Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa.
-
Interreligious Dialogue before and after Nicholas of Cusa: an Exegetical Approach
Marica COSTIGLIOLO
Original title: Interreligious Dialogue before and after Nicholas of Cusa: an Exegetical Approach
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Exegesis, Hermeneutic, Interreligious Dialogue, Nicholas of Cusa, Rites.
In this article my aim is a philosophical reflection on a history of interreligious dialogue from the perspective of the dialectical relation between rites of different religions: given that rite is one of the most essential aspects of religions, it should be profitable to examine the significance of rites in light of interreligious dialogue. First, I will explain some theories about religions' difference. I will analyse texts written by Christian and Jewish authors from the Middle Ages to the Modern period in order to compare the crucial role of rite in philosophical and religious discourse among different chronological and cultural panoramas. Among the authors who wrote outstanding works focused on the relations between Islam and Christendom, I wish to mention in particular Nicholas of Cusa, who wrote the De pace fidei, one of the most famous interreligious dialogue in the Middle Ages. The following paragraph of my article is on a 12th century Jewish scholar, Judah Halevi, who wrote the book Kitab al Khazari (Sefer ha-Kuzari, in Hebrew), which is considered one of the most polemical and well-known medieval works and a source of Ramon Llull (1235-1315), the most relevant source of the De pace fidei. The second paragraph is on Aberlard, who, like Cusanus, wrote his Dialogus inter philosophum, Judaeum et Christianum in a period of conflicts and violence. Like De pace fidei Abelard’s dialogue is a work of the author’s maturity which deals with the theme of rational and intellectual knowledge as an instrument of confrontation between different confessions. I will analyse the theme of rites in this Abelard's work. I will also take a look of the work of Lessing, to highlight the fundamental role of transmission of traditions and rites for the construction of a specific religious identity.
-
Nicholas of Cusa in dialogue with his sources: the redefinition of Platonism
Claudia D’AMICO
Original title: Nicolás de Cusa en diálogo con sus fuentes: la re-definición del platonismo
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Medieval Platonism, Nicholas of Cusa, Sources.
This paper presents the Cusanus’s thought given its knowledge of the Platonic tradition considering its Christian version –Dionysius, Scotus Eriugena, the Chartrenses, Meister Eckhart, Bertold of Moosburg – as some authors Athenian Neoplatonism, especially Proclus. The text is divided into three points (I) the presence of this tradition in early works; (II) the defense of these sources in the Apologia doctae ignorantiae; (III) the reinterpretation of tradition from new receiving texts from 1450.
-
Considerations on Nicholas of Cusa’s De genesi. Thinking beyond the coincidentia oppositorum in light of the enigmatic name “idem”
José GONZÁLEZ RÍOS
Original title: Consideraciones en torno al De genesi de Nicolás de Cusa. Pensar más allá de la coincidentia oppositorum a la luz del nombre enigmático “idem”
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: De genesi, Nicholas of Cusa, Thinking beyond the coincidentia oppositorum, “Idem”.
In De docta ignorantia (1440), Nicholas of Cusa presents the first comprehensive formulation of his system of thought. In De coniecturis, which he began writing at the time, he not only completes the anthropology and theory of knowledge, which he suggested in De docta ignorantia, but also presents the proposal of thinking the divine beyond thecoincidentia oppositorum. In the following years, he writes a group of opuscula in which he revists the topics treated in his previous works. Notorious amongst them is the dialog De genesi (1447). In it, Cusanus speculates on one of the most cherished subjects of his investigation, i.e. the relationship between the one and the multiple, by means of a new aenigmatic name: “idem”. Our work seeks to show that Nicholas of Cusa conjectures about that problem –in terms of identity and difference– in taking up his proposal of thinking the absolute beyond the coincidentia oppositorum.
-
The All-seeing of Nicholas of Cusa: Icon or Picture?
Anca MANOLESCU
Original title: L’omnivoyant de Nicolas de Cues: tableau ou icône?
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Icon, Path of mystical knowledge, Picture, Theory of image.
The treaty De visione Dei, with the alternative title De icona, was translated in French by Agnès Minazzoli as Le tableau ou la vision de Dieu. The path of mystical knowledge commences indeed with an image of the All-seeing: an image which is „artistic”, „manufactured”, as the one produced by the art of the „great master Roger”. But in the „experiment” for which Nicholas of Cusa gathered his friends, the Benedictines of Tegernsee, is this image regarded just as an artistic picture? Does the „meeting of eyes” between the monks and the portrait not have the intensity of a personal communication? Hence, we wonder if Nicholas of Cusa does not regard this image as both a picture and an icon. The picture manufactured by artistic craft, the icon that houses the presence of the divine – what is the relation between these two instances of image in the cardinal’s thought? It has already been said that Nicholas of Cusa has phrased the content of medieval Wisdom in the modern language of the Renaissance. But doesn’t he also propose a new way of relating to the image of the divine? A way that blends concepts from both Eastern and Western Christianity and still manages to innovate on both „official” theories of image.
-
The Love as the greatest virtue in the Sermons of Nicholas of Cusa
Maria Simone Marinho NOGUEIRA
Original title: O Amor como a maior das virtudes nos Sermões de Nicolau de Cusa
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Love, Nicholas of Cusa, Sermons, Virtue.
Nicholas of Cusa approached the theme of love throughout his philosophical-theological work. A part of this work, however, deserves our special attention when we analyze this theme. We refer to the Sermons: in various moments of his life the German Thinker has prepared and preached these writings. We propose, from them, a reflection on the love as the greatest of virtues.
-
Possest: indications for thinking relationality principle in Nicholas of Cusa
José TEIXEIRA NETO
Original title: Possest: indicações para se pensar a relacionalidade do princípio em Nicolau de Cusa
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Nicholas of Cusa, Possest, Unitrinity.
We hope to achieve with the term possest one name, like other divine names, leading to the understanding of the principle. In this case, more specifically, we believe that possest indicates as enigma, the trinity of principle and further speculates that leads to the nexus that shows how key element to understanding this same unitrinity and, therefore, the idea of the first principle in itself is relational. Among all cusanus works the term “possest” only appears in three texts called “late period”. Appears on De apice theoriae (1464) probably the last work written by Nicholas of Cusa. In turn, the De venatione sapientiae (1463) the possest will be the second field, immediately after and before the learned ignorance of non aliud, which takes hunting wisdom. The themes taken up in De venatione sapientiae been deeply addressed in De possest (1460) that constitutes as a “trialogue” between Nicholas of Cusa , Bernardo of Krayburg, chancellor of the Archbishop of Salzburg, and John André Vigevio, secretary of Nicholas and then bishop of Aleria.
-
The relation between wealth, timē, axia and moira in the Homeric poems
Adriana Santos TABOSA
Original title: A relação entre riqueza, timē, axia e moira nos poemas homéricos
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Axia, Homer, Moira, Timē.
This paper analyzes the concept of wealth and its relation to the equation timē-axia-moira and the relation between the fundamental concepts of timē − agalmata contained in the Homeric poems.
-
Imperial administration and acquirement power in Late Antiquity: power agents from the viewpoint of Synesius
José Petrúcio de FARIAS JUNIOR
Original title: Administração imperial e aquisição de poder na Antiguidade Tardia: agentes de poder sob a ótica de Sinésio
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: De Providentia, De Regno, Imperial Administration, Synesius of Cyrene, Theodosian Code.
Based on the comparative analysis between the Theodosian Code, specifically the laws promulgated in the fourth century, and the discourses De Regno and De Providentia of Synesius of Cyrene, produced on the occasion of his embassy to Constantinople, we reflect on the strategies of acquiring political power in Late Roman Empire, in view of the legal and non-legal institutional mechanisms that ensured the entry for political office in the imperial administration and how such mechanisms reaffirmed the theory of decline of the Roman Empire by contemporary historiography.
-
Albert the Great and the treatise De Prudentia
Matteo RASCHIETTI
Original title: Alberto Magno e o tratado De Prudentia
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Albert the Great, Auriga, Prudence, Virtues.
Last part of the Summa creaturis (or Summa Parisiensis), written by the Doctor Universalis, the moral treatise De bono considers the good by the point of view moral and organizes the matter into five treaties. The fourth one is the De Prudentia, briefly presented in this article, that sticks his roots in the classical tradition, in the patristic and scholastic.
