How does Cusa work?

Nicholas of Cusa, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Nicholas of Cusa answers

The question is broad enough to invite the deepest answer I can give, so let me begin at the root. Every domain of knowing has its own proper principle, and the principle of rational knowing — the root from which all the sciences grow — is this: a coincidence of opposites is not attainable by reason.1 From that single root, everything in mathematics follows: that every number is either even or odd, that there is numerical order and proportion, that the diameter of a circle bears no rational proportion to the circumference — because to know that proportion would require reason to attain a coincidence of such different things, which it cannot do.2

Reason is, at its deepest, the faculty that holds opposites apart; it is constituted by that very holding-apart. This is not a defect. It is what reason is. But reason is not the highest faculty. Intelligence — intellectus — stands above it, and where reason denies that opposites can coincide, intelligence sees that they do, at a higher level.

In the Divine Enfolding, all things coincide without difference; in intellectual enfolding, contradictories are compatible; in rational enfolding, only contraries are compatible, insofar as opposed differences are present within a single genus.3 The three levels are not contradictions of one another — they are nested, each one the alterity of the one above it.

Reason is the alterity that derives from intelligence's enfolding-oneness, and so intelligence is present in reason only through an altered, diminished partaking.4 Now apply this to God. When you say that in God understanding and willing are two distinct acts, you state what is true at the rational level — but not what is true in God's domain, where to understand and to will do not differ.5

Preciseness, as reason measures it, is always preciseness-with-otherness: every precise rational claim partakes of Absolute Truth with a degree of otherness, just as every being partakes of Absolute Being with a degree of otherness.6 The Absolute itself — the Maximum — is therefore not attained by reason's route. Reason approaches it asymptotically, as the inscribed polygon approaches the circle, multiplying its angles without ever becoming the circle.

The world, the universe, is the contracted maximum: it precedes contracted opposites — contraries — and enfolds them, just as God enfolds contradictories absolutely.7 Contracted infinity is infinitely lower than Absolute Infinity, disproportionally so, such that the eternal world falls short of Absolute Eternity as contracted oneness falls short of Absolute Oneness.8

The contraction is real: what is white is white through whiteness, yet restricted by non-whiteness in the actual white thing — necessity is contractedly restricted in something opposed to it.9 This is how the whole structure works: God as Absolute Enfolding, the universe as contracted enfolding, and the human intellect as the faculty that can, in its highest act, glimpse the coincidence of opposites that reason necessarily denies.

When Johannes Wenck charged that the coincidence of opposites destroys the first principle of the sciences, the answer was already given in the structure itself: that principle — non-contradiction — is first with respect to discursive reasoning, but not at all with respect to intuitive understanding.10 The sciences are not destroyed; they are located at their proper level.

And in God, the coincidence is not merely the meeting of contraries within a genus, as reason can manage, nor merely the compatibility of contradictories, as intellect glimpses — it is the coincidence of the temporal with its contradictory, the non-temporal; past, present, and future coincide in one and the same now of eternity.11 God is spoken of as in Paradise surrounded by the wall of coincidence, as Infinity itself within which opposites coincide, and as above and beyond the coincidence of contradictories — all three formulations in De Visione Dei, and none of them cancels the others, because the doctrine is complex and evolving precisely as the intellect that grasps it ascends.12

That is how the work proceeds: from the root-principle of rational knowing, up through the nested levels of sense, reason, and intellect, to the Absolute that enfolds all of them — and back down again, in the contraction that is creation.

Sources

  1. the root of all rational assertions is the following: viz., that a coincidence of opposites is not attainable.
    De Coniecturis, p. 200
  2. every number is either even or odd; hence, there is numerical order; hence, there is numerical progression; hence, there is numerical proportion. Hence, the diameter of a circle is disproportional to the circumference, because reason does not attain the coincidence of such different things.
    De Coniecturis, p. 200
  3. In the Divine Enfolding all things coincide without difference; in intellectual enfolding contradictories are compatible; in rational enfolding contraries are compatible, insofar as opposed differences are present in a [single] genus.
    De Coniecturis, pp. 201–202
  4. reason is the alterity that derives from intelligence's enfolding-oneness, intelligence is present in reason only with respect to an altered partaking [of it by reason].
    De Coniecturis, p. 200
  5. when you assert that an intelligence's act-of-understanding is one thing, its act-of-willing another thing, and so on, you state what is true in the intellectual domain but not what is true in God's domain, where to understand and to will do not differ.
    De Coniecturis, p. 200
  6. preciseness is not attained except insofar as it is other—as if all preciseness partook of Absolute Truth (which is God) with a degree of otherness, just as every being partakes of Absolute Being with a degree of otherness.
    De Coniecturis, p. 200
  7. the world, or universe, is a contracted maximum and a contracted one. The world precedes contracted opposites—i.e., contraries.
    De Docta Ignorantia II, p. 69
  8. contracted infinity, simplicity, or indistinction is, with regard to its contraction, infinitely lower than what is absolute, so that the infinite and eternal world falls disproportionally short of Absolute Infinity and Absolute Eternity.
    De Docta Ignorantia II, p. 69
  9. as if whiteness had, in itself, absolute being apart from any abstracting on the part of our intellect, and as if what is white were contractedly white from whiteness; in this case whiteness would be restricted by non-whiteness in something actually white.
    De Docta Ignorantia II, p. 69
  10. that principle is first with respect to discursive reasoning but not at all with respect to intuitive understanding.
    Apologia Doctae Ignorantiae, pp. 479–480
  11. in God, the contrary temporalities 'past,' 'present,' and 'future' coincide. But, likewise, in God, the temporal coincides with its contradictory, viz., the non-temporal; for in God 'all temporal succession coincides in [one and] the same now of eternity.'
    De Apice Theoriae, p. 1438
  12. Nicholas speaks (in changing metaphors) of God (1) as in Paradise, surrounded by the wall of coincidence, (2) as Infinity itself, within which opposites coincide, and (3) as above, or beyond, the coincidence of contradictories.
    De Apice Theoriae, p. 1438