Possest

Nicholas of Cusa's Trinitarian metaphysics

Nicholas of Cusa’s philosophy and theology seems to lack the precision and exacting argumentation of scholasticism. In de docta ignorantia 1.4, he writes: “Since the absolute Maximum is all that which can be, it is altogether actual. And just as there cannot be anything greater, so for the same reason there cannot be anything lesser, since it is all that which can be. But the Minimum is that than which there cannot be a lesser. And since the Maximum is of this kind, it is evident that the Minimum coincides with the Maximum.”

What to make of this? As an argument, it doesn’t work. If the absolute Maximum exists and is everything that can possibly be, we might infer that the Minimum is not among things that can be. Or, if the Minimum is among the things that can be, then it would imply that the Maximum is not everything whatsoever. But exposing the logical problems with this passage misses Cusa’s intention. He is not trying to establish that the Maximum and Minimum are identical. Rather, as Karl Jasper says, “he is endeavouring to render plausible his notion that the absolutely Maximum is beyond all opposition and otherness. That is, he does not use the preceding passage to prove that God is beyond all opposition; rather, he uses it as a step toward claiming that God is beyond all opposition. For he knows that the ‘argument’ can be ‘controverted’ by anyone who insists upon an unrelenting application of the principle of noncontradiction.”

Another indication is his use of terminology that is not clearly defined and his tendency to say things that lend themselves to misunderstanding. For instance, “Homo enim deus est, sed non absolute, quoniam homo; humanus est igitur deus” (“man is God, but not absolutely; for he is man: he is therefore a human God”). Or in de visione dei 12, when he claims that God is “created” as well as creator. Sometimes he speaks of God as the one in whom all contradictories coincide, and we immediately think, “including the contrary of good and evil”?

Cusa’s use of Scripture is also intriguing. He often interprets texts with philosophical ideas in mind. His doctrine of acquired or learned ignorance comes from 1 Corinthians 3:19, and his doctrine that God is all things comes out of 1 Corinthians 15:28. He finds a basis for the via negativa in Ephesians 1:21, the claim that God is above all principality and power and virtue and dominion.

This can seem like mere confusion, and to some philosophers, especially in the analytic tradition, this is just what it is. But I think in fact it’s an example of Cusa’s transcendence of Greek philosophy in a Christian direction. His achievement is not perfect by any means, but it is quite remarkable. An extended example will be useful to treat: his treatise on de Possest, a neologism that he invented to express his fundamental doctrine of God.