P
ERFECTIO,
VERITAS,
COMMUNIO.
N
ICHOLAS OFC
USA AND THEN
EOPLATONIC ROAD TOCONTEMPLATION
Enrico Peroli
1.
Itinerarium mentis in deum
The task I take in hand in this paper is to analyse the com-plex issue concerning the relationship between Cusanus’ thought and the Neoplatonic tradition. Among the many spheres of inquiry that could be taken into consideration, I would like to focus, in particular, on the Neoplatonic view of the ascent of the soul to the contemplation of the divine Intellect and of the One. In the first part of my paper, I will deal with the Neoplatonic ‚itinerarium mentis in deum‘; in the second part, I intend to show how Cusanus transforms the Neoplatonic view and inserts it into a new and different context, despite the central role that Neoplatonism plays in his thought, either directly or indirectly.
As for my first point, I would like to start from the open-ing treatise of Plotinus’ Enneads. Its title is: „What is the living being and what is man?“. This treatise, however, is one of the last written by Plotinus, shortly before his death. It was placed as first by Porphyry, the editor of Enneads; he didn’t arrange Plotinus’ writings according to the chronological order of their composition, but according to a succession corresponding to the different stages the reader has to go through in order to attain the goal of Plot-inus’ philosophy, the contemplation of the divine Princi-ples.1 This editorial program was in conformity with a
cen-tral idea of Neoplatonism: the idea that philosophical activ-1 On this, cf. Goulet-Cazé: L’arrière-plan scolaire de la Vie de Plotin, 231 ss.; Saffrey: Pourquoi Porphyre a-t-il édité Plotin?, 31 ss.
ity doesn’t consist only in formulating a body of doctrines, but, first of all, in leading man to a peculiar form of exis-tence, the final goal of which is to bring him back ‚home‘, according to the famous image of Ulysses (often occurring also in the Christian tradition): to bring man back to the ‚land‘ that conforms to his true essence, that is to the di-vine Intellect and to the One.2
Now, according to Plotinus, this road to the divine Princi-ples doesn’t go only through the kosmos; first of all, it goes through the inside of man, because the divine Principles don’t exist only in themselves, separated (χωριστά) from the whole universe, but, at the same time, they are also present ἐν τῷ εἴσω ἀνθρώπῳ according to the Platonic locu-tion, making man possible to carry out all his cognitive ac-tivities. As Plotinus writes: „Just as in nature there are these Principles [the Nous and the One], so we ought to think that they are present in ourselves, that is in the ‚in-ner man‘, according to Plato’s words.“3 For this reason, for
Plotinus the issue of ‚self-knowledge‘, and, together with it, the ‚modern‘ issue of subject and ‚cogito‘, are the starting-point for every philosophical activity.4 In this sense, the
preliminary and central task of philosophy is to investigate the various powers of the soul, by analysing their cognitive capabilities and their conditions of possibility. For, it is through such an investigation that we can become aware of the Nous and of the One as actively present in us, in spite of their transcendence. And this is why, in his edition of Plotinus’ Enneads, Porphyry placed as first the treatise entitled „What is the living being and what is man?“: this treatise is indeed concerned with the question of man’s 2 Plotinus: Enneads, I 6, 8, 16 ss.; V 9, 1, 20-22. Cf. Pépin: The Pla-tonic and Christian Ulysses, 234 ss.
3 Enn. V 1, 10, 7 s.
4 Cf., for example, Enn. IV 3, 1, 11-12: „Since we wish to seek and find other things it would be proper for us to seek the real nature of that which seeks“; V 1, 1, 31-34: „For that which investigates is the soul, and it should know what it is an investigating soul, so that it may learn first about itself, whether it has the power to investigate things of this kind, and if it has an eye of the right kind to see them, and if the investigation is suitable for it.“
‚self-knowledge‘ discussed by Plato in the First Alcibiades, the dialogue regarded by Neoplatonic tradition as the in-troductory reading of the ‚curriculum‘ of philosophical studies. This central idea of Neoplatonism often occurs also in Proclus’ writings; it is expounded, for example, in a text discussed by Cusanus in De venatione sapientiae.5 The passage commented on by Cusanus is contained in the first book of Proclus’ The theology of Plato:
„Indeed Socrates in the [First] Alcibiades rightly observes, that the soul entering into himself will behold all other things and de-ity itself. For verging to her own union, and to the centre of all life, laying aside multitude and the variety of all manifold powers which she contains, she ascends to the highest watchtower of beings […]. For the soul when looking at the things posterior to herself, beholds the shadows and images of beings, but when she converts herself to herself (εἰς ἑαυτὴν ἐπιστρεφομένην) she evolves her own essence, and the reasons she contains. And at first indeed, she only as it were beholds herself; but, when she penetrates more profoundly into the knowledge of herself, she finds in herself both Intellect and the orders of beings. When however, she proceeds into her interior recesses and into the adytum as it were of the soul (εἰς τὸ ἐντὸς αὑτῆς καὶ τὸ οἷον ἄδυτον τῆς ψυχῆς), she perceives with her eye closed the genus of the Gods and the unities of beings.“6
This Neoplatonic ‚itinerarium mentis in deum‘ starts from the analysis of aisthesis, the power characteristic of our empirical Self, connected with body and world. For
aisthe-sis is that form of knowledge by which we are turned to the
outside: „to external things“.7 The first step of
philosophi-cal investigation is to show that this our looking outward is 5 Cf. De venatione sapientiae, XVII 49, 1-7: „Refert Proclus in primo libro Theologiae Platonis Socratem, qui vices Platonis tenet, in Alcibiade dicere intellectivam animam, cum intra se conspicit, deum et omnia speculari. Ea enim quae post ipsam sunt, umbras esse videt intelligibilium; quae vero ante ipsam, ait in profundo clausis quodammodo oculis conspici.“ See also, De mente, I 51, 10-11 („ […] apud Delphos praecepta sit cognitio, ut ipsa se mens cognoscat coniunctamque cum divina mente se sentiat“).
6 Proclus: In Platonis theologiam, I 3, p. 15-22-16, 15 (Westernik-Saf-frey)
actually possible only by an act arising from the inside of our soul. In these sense, Plotinus explains that sense-per-ceptions cannot be reduced to a mere passive receiving of affections coming from external things: „we say – Plotinus writes – that sense-perceptions are not affections (πάθη), but activities (ἐνεργείας) and judgments (κρίσεις) con-cerned with affections.“8 Such an active feature of
sense-perceptions comes out from two points of view: firstly, in sense-organs a ‚vis discretiva‘ is present, as Cusanus call it in De mente, or a dynamis diakritiké, according to Plotinus’ words;9 sense-organs, in fact, are able to make a
discrimi-nation of the external-data, so that each of them can per-ceive its respective quality and distinguish its differences.10
Moreover, single sense-data are then synthesized in the unitary image of the thing, so that this latter can be identi-fied by the judgment of perception. This unifying activity of the soul is performed by our dia-noia, by our discursive reason, which is actively present in the sense-perceptions. According to the Neoplatonic view, however, what makes such a unifying activity of reason possible are the intelligi-ble Forms of things it receives from the divine Intellect. They are, as Plotinus says, „the letters written in us by In-tellect like laws of our thought“, like kanónes or ‚a priori‘ rules of our judgment, by means of which we unify the sense-data.11 It is only this activity of our dianoia,
mediat-ing between aisthesis and Nous, that makes the external objects visible, making them appear in the sphere of our experience as something distinct from perceiving subject: it is the rational soul — Plotinus writes — which „makes 8 Enn. III 6, 1, 1-4; cf. also IV 3, 26, 1-7; IV 4, 19, 4-5; 19, 26-27; 22, 30-32; 23, 20 s.; IV 6, 2, 16-18; VI 1, 1, 20, 26-32; VI 4, 6, 9-11. On the active feature of sense perceptions, cf. Emilsson: Plotinus on Sense-Perception, 126 ss., and Wagner: Sense Experience and Active Soul.
9 Enn. II 4, 12, 29-32; II 8, 1, 12-23; IV 6, 2, 4; VI 3, 17, 20-21. 10 Cf., for example, II 4, 12, 29-32; II 8, 1, 12-23.
11 Enn. V 3, 3, 8; V 3, 4, 2-3; 17: cf. Beierwaltes: Selbsterkenntnis, 73 ss. See also I 6, 3, 5 s.; IV 6, 3, 15 ss.; IV 9, 3, 26 s.; V 1, 7, 37 ss.; 10, 10 ss.; VI 7, 6, 3 ss.
the objects of sense shine out by its power and brings them before its eyes“.12
By this first step of philosophical analysis, a turning of the soul towards itself takes place; through it, our empirical Self finds out that it lives the life of Intellect; finds out that it is properly ‚dia-noetic‘, namely that it thinks „through the Nous and from the Nous“, according to Plotinus’ words.13 In this way, the conversion of soul towards itself
(εἰς τὸ εἴσω ἐπιστρέφειν) acquires the meaning of an as-cent through the different levels of the mind (εἰς τὸ ἄνω βλέπειν), along which the soul becomes aware that Intel-lect is its true ‚Self‘, is the ‚inner man‘, according to Pla-tonic locution.14 This kind of knowledge, however, is only
the starting-point of the spiritual ascent of the soul: in or-der to know itself, the soul must rise to that divine and transcendent Principle which is actively present in our rea-son: „The man who knows himself is double, one knowing the nature of the reasoning which belongs to soul, and one up above this man, who knows himself according to Intel-lect because he has become that IntelIntel-lect.“15 Our
self-knowledge is double, because the Intellect is present in us in a double way: on the one hand, as we have just seen, it is present through the ideal Forms by means of which we unify sense-data and identify single things. On the other hand, however, we connect single things in unities which follow one another and which are related to each other in a causal way. This activity of discursive reason, closely asso-ciated with kinesis and diastasis, with movement and time, doesn’t presuppose only the single ideal Forms: it presup-poses, as a condition of unity and continuity (συνέχεια) of its temporal movement, the original unity in which all ideal Forms are included in the absolute thought of the divine In-tellect. This is why in our rational activity we are always 12 Enn. IV 6, 3, 16-18.
13 Enn. V 3, 6, 20-21; see also VI 7, 6, 9 ss.; 7, 28.
14 Cf. Enn. V 3, 3, 44; see I 6, 9, 7: ἄναγε ἐπὶ σαυτὸν καὶ ἴδε and Au-gustine, Conf. VII 10, 16.
connected with the „partless completion“ (τέλος ἀμερές) of divine Nous — as Plotinus says-16
Nevertheless, we are not usually aware of this connec-tion with the divine Intellect, or we don’t always use Nous, as Plotinus says taking up a main question of the Aris-totelian tradition.17 This is because of the structure of our
discursive reason: as a power of judgment, our reason has a double movement, a movement of dihairesis and of
syn-thesis at the same time. This means that, in order to unify,
our reason must first divide, so that, if the divine Intellect is described as νοῦς ἀμερής, rational soul can be typified as νοῦς μερίζων, or νοῦς διέξοδος.18 As we have just seen,
the soul receives from the Intellect the ideal Forms as ‚a priori‘ rules of its judgment. Within the divine Intellect, however, the ideal Forms exist in a mutual and total inter-penetration: in every ideal Form, in fact, the Intellect thinks itself as a whole without any possible division, so that in each ideal Form the whole noetic system is present.19 Our reason, however, can represent to itself the
ideal Forms it receives from Nous only by separating them from the dynamic unity that they have in the divine Intel-lect: in this way, reason splits up the ideal Forms into sin-gle ‚parts‘, into sinsin-gle conceptual unities,20 by means of
which reason can unify what it receives from aisthesis. Ac-cording to the Neoplatonic view, it is only through this movement of ‚explicatio‘ that the rational soul can have a comprehension of the Principle from which it derives and with which it remains connected: by separating the ideal Forms from the unity of the Intellect and using them as synthetic forms of experience, reason objectifies them on the outside, it puts them in front of itself as if in a mirror, so that it can have an apprehension (ἀντίληψις) of them: 16 Enn. III 7, 3, 19.
17 Cf. Enn. IV 3, 30 16; IV 8, 8, 4-9; V 1, 12, 1 ss.; V 3, 3, 42; 30, 12-16.
18 Cf. Enn. II 9, 17, 8; III 2, 1, 26 s.; III 7, 3, 16-23; III 8, 8, 30 s.; V 3, 5, 7 s.; 6, 7-8.
19 On this, cf. Peroli: Dio, uomo e mondo, 51-101.
„The act of Intellect is without parts and remains unob-served within [unobunob-served by our reason] until it has come out into open“; thus, reason „unfolds its content and brings it out of the intellectual act and shows its [that] content as if in a mirror, and this is how there is apprehension of it.“21
Through our reason, therefore, we cannot be completely aware of our connection with the divine Intellect. There-fore, the Intellect can be paradoxically defined as „ours and not ours at the same time“22: it is ours because its
transcendence doesn’t mean that it is separated from us, or that it comes to us from the outside, as in the Aris-totelian view (νοῦς θύραθεν).23 On the contrary, the
Intel-lect is present in us as a unifying principle of our reason, and without it we could not have any kind of knowledge, including aisthesis („the sense-perceptions here — as Ploti-nus writes — are dim intellections — ἀμυδρὰ νόησις—, and the intellections there are clear sense-perceptions“: VI 7, 7, 20-22). The divine Intellect is not ours because it is present in us without being a part of ourselves, remaining ἐπάνω, above our reason, so that we are not normally aware of it (V 3, 3, 22-26). We can grasp the active pres-ence of Nous in us by means of an other power (ἄλλῃ δυνάμει: 3, 19), surpassing the activity of rational soul and becoming therefore „another man“, as Plotinus says.24 This
means that with „the better part of the soul“ (τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἄμεινον: 4, 10-13), that is with the Nous which is present in us (νοῦς ὁ τῆς ψυχῆς), we have to contemplate the Intellect itself, the divine Intellect, so that „it belongs to us and we belong to it“ (4, 26). In this way, bringing back the intellect which is present in us to the Intellect from which it derives, we „become altogether other“, we become Intellect, and so we achieve a true self-knowledge (we „look ourselves with ourselves“, as Plotinus says): we achieve that unity or 21 Enn. IV 3, 30, 5-11; see also I 4, 10, 7 s.; III 8, 6, 21 ss.; IV 8, 5, 24-39.
22 Cf. Enn. I 1, 13, 5 s.; V 3, 5, 26.
23 Cf. Aristotle, de an. 408 b 18 s.; de gen. an. 736 b 27-29. 24 Cf. Bodëus: L’autre homme de Plotin.
identity with ourselves, which is the aim of the spiritual as-cent.
For along this ascent we overcome the division of Self which characterizes our reason, which, in order to think, must always separate a ‚subject‘ and an ‚object‘. Even when we think ourselves, we can do it only by distinguish-ing between a subjective side and an objective side. As Plotinus writes, „even when our soul sees itself, it sees it-self as two and as another.“25 By means of our reason, we
cannot therefore achieve that unity between ‚thinker‘ and ‚thought‘ which is the last end we aim at in every knowl-edge, that unity by virtue of which the subject can be „it-self and in it„it-self“ (αὐτὸ ἑαυτό). Therefore, in order to be fully in ourselves, we have to ascend to the contemplation of the divine Intellect. And this ascent of the soul can be also regarded as a process of getting over the time, since the origin of time is the movement of discursive reason which separates the unity of Nous:26 in its ascent to the
di-vine Intellect, the soul surmounts the division of finite con-sciousness, achieves the complete unity with itself and, thus, overcomes the ‚inquietudo‘ characteristic of its tem-poral condition, coming back to the ‚peace‘ or to the ‚quiet‘ or ‚rest‘ (ἡσυχία) which is proper to the divine Intel-lect.27
„Who he has learnt to know himself will know from where he comes.“28 For as I have tried to show, the road leading
man to know himself is indeed an ascent bringing him to his Origin, to that supreme Unity of ‚subject‘ and ‚object‘, of ‚knowing‘ and ‚nature‘, on which every our activity is grounded: that Unity, therefore, that we always presup-pose or postulate in every our knowledge, in our continu-ous inquiring. This is why, however, the ‚itinerarium mentis in deum‘ cannot stop at the divine Intellect. For according to the Neoplatonic view, the Unity we are looking for is not 25 Enn. IV 6, 2, 22-24: ἡ ψυχή δύο καὶ ὡς ἕτερον ὁρᾷ, νοῦν δὲ ἕν καὶ ἄμφω τὰ δύο ἕν.
26 Cf. Enn. III 7, 11, 5 ss. 27 Enn. III 7, 12, 10 ss. 28 Enn. VI 9, 7, 33-34.
fully accomplished within the sphere of Nous. The absolute self-consciousness of the divine Intellect, in fact, is the highest form of unity between ‚thinking‘ and ‚being‘ within, however, the duality of nòesis and noetòn which is proper to every thinking act. For this reason, the nòesis noéseos of the Nous cannot be the first Principle of reality, as Aris-totle believed: it presupposes a more original Principle — the One — as the foundation of the unity of its thought.
The last end of the spiritual ascent of the soul, therefore, is to raise to the contemplation of the One, by overcoming every kind of knowledge, included the absolute thought of the divine Intellect. „The soul must let go of all outward things and turn altogether to what is within, and not be in-clined to any outward thing, but ignoring all things (as it did formerly in sense-perceptions, but then in the realm of Forms) and even ignoring itself, come to be in contempla-tion of the One.“29
This contemplation of the One is frequently described by Plotinus as a union in love.30 For this kind of union is
in-deed the original relation of the divine Intellect to the One, to the Principle from which it derives. According to Ploti-nus, in fact, there are two levels of the divine Intellect, cor-responding to the different phases of its origin: one is the „Intellect in love“ (νοῦς ἐρῶν) and the other is „the thinking Intellect.“31 Nous eròn is the original stage of the Intellect
proceeding from the One; it precedes the development of the Intellect as absolute thought, as unity of ‚thinking‘ and ‚being‘. In this original stage, Nous „was not yet Intellect“ — as Plotinus says —, since „it looked at the One, but looked unintellectually“ (VI 7, 16, 13-15). „Statu nascenti“, in fact, Nous had a direct connection with the One, without any mediation of thought; it was in a loving „touch“ with the One. Taking up the language of platonic eros, Plotinus describes „the Intellect in love“ as a νοῦς ἄφρον, as an In-tellect „going out its mind“, and says that it was „drunk 29 Enn. VI 9, 7, 21-23.
30 Cf. Pierre Hadot, Plotin ou la semplicité du regard, Paris, Gallimard, 1997, 73-107.
with the nectar“, drunk with delight and love, since it was in direct contact with the One (35, 24 s.).
These two levels of the divine Intellect (νοῦς ἔμφρωνος and νοῦς ἄφρον or νοῦς ἐρῶν), however, are also two grades of our Self and of our spiritual life, so that it is also within ourselves that the generation of the Intellect from the One happens. In its spiritual ascent, therefore, the soul has to attain „the thinking Intellect“ and then it has to rise to the Nous eròn, so that it can be united in love with the One. This way, soul comes back to its first Origin, which is also the Origin of the Intellect and of all things: „and it has become that which it was before when it was happy“. Like the lovers described in Plato’s Symposium, the Plotinian soul comes now to find out that the One is „what it de-sired“ and what, from the beginning, moved the soul in its spiritual ascent („for our love from the beginning was love of this great light“).32 For if the Intellect, as unity of
‚think-ing‘ and ‚be‚think-ing‘, is the original sphere of the truth, the soul comes now to realize that, without the ‚light‘ coming from the One, the truth by itself would not be something desir-able, something which could move it along its spiritual as-cent; so, the soul finds out that what moved it was some-thing ‚more‘ than its ‚desiderium veritatis‘: somesome-thing of which the truth is only a manifestation. Plotinus sometimes describes this ‚more‘, coming from the One, as a ‚grace‘:
„When anyone sees this light (coming from the One and playing upon the Intellect), he is also moved to the Forms, and longs for the light which plays upon them and delights in it. For, before this, he is not moved even towards Intellect for all its truth and beauty; the truth of Intellect is inactive till it catches a light from the One; but it becomes desirable when the One colours it, giv-ing a kind of grace (ὣσπερ χάριτας δόντος αὐτοῖς), and passion-ate love to the desirers.“33
As I have just said, Plotinus frequently uses the language of Platonic love, the language of Phaedrus and Symposium. The Plotinian eros, however, is different from the platonic one. This latter is restless and possessive: Platonic love 32 Enn. VI 7, 34, 25-39.
wants to have a spiritual offspring, and is strictly con-nected with the philosophical education and the organiza-tion of the city. The Neoplatonic love, on the contrary, is characterized by the ‚waiting‘: arrived at the end of its spiritual ascent, the soul „waits quietly“ (ἡσύχῃ μένειν) for the appearing of the One, „as the eyes awaits the raising of the sun“: what the soul has to do is „to prepare itself to contemplate the One“.34 This means that it has to give up
every activity and put at rest all its powers (ἐν ἠρεμίᾳ τῶν δυνάμεων πρὸς αὐτὸ τὸ θεῖον ἀνατείνεισθαι, according to Proclus’ words35): it has to „take away everything“ (ἄφελε
πάντα), so that it can be at the disposal of the arriving of the One. For
„it is not possible for one who has anything else and is actually occupied about it to see or to be fitted in. But one must not have evil, or any other good neither ready to hand, that soul alone may receive it (μόνη μόνον). But when it comes to it, or rather, being there already, appears, when that soul turns away from the things that are there, and has preparing by making itself as beautiful as possible and has come to likeness, it sees it in itself suddenly appearing (ἰδοῦσα ἐν αὐτῇ ἐξαίφνης φανέντα), for there is nothing between.“36
2. Desiderium veritatis
The Plotinian distinction between two grades of the spiri-tual ascent of the soul, described as νοῦς ἔμφρωνος and νοῦς ἐρῶν, will play a great role in the following tradition. For such a distinction is the origin of that long discussion about the nature of the mystical knowledge of God which will arrive until Cusanus.37 However, as I have already said
at the beginning, I don’t want to investigate the Neopla-tonic ideas received by Cusanus, whether directly, or indi-rectly. This issue has been examined many times and from different points of view. For example, the relationship be-34 Enn. V 5, 8, 1- 6.
35 Proclus: In Plat. theol., I 3, p. 16 19-20 (Westernik-Saffrey). 36 Enn. VI 7, 34, 3-6.
tween Cusanus and Plotinus’ doctrine of the two levels of intellect has already been pointed out by Gerda von Bre-dow in an essay published in 1976.38 In the second point of
my paper, I would rather like to point out how Cusanus fol-lows a different path from the Neoplatonic ‚itinerarium mentis in deum‘. To this end, I would like to start from the first pages of De pace fidei.
The main purpose of this work is to lead the different his-torical religions to reflect on the basic ‚praesuppositum‘ of every religious consciousness. De pace fidei, in fact, starts with these words addressed by God to the representatives from various religions: „You will find that you should not change your faith, sed ‚eandem unicam undique praesup-poni‘.“39 There has been a long discussion about the
mean-ing of this „una religio“ presupposed „in rituum varietate“. I don’t want to go into this discussion, but I intend to con-sider the question of ‚presuppositum‘ in its more wide meaning which often occurs in Cusanus’ writings. In this sense, ‚praesuppositum‘ means, first of all, that, within the 38 Cf. v. Bredow: Der Punkt als Symbol, 92-93: „Die berühmte Stelle bei Plotin (VI 7, 35 [=νοῦς ἔμφρωνος-νοῦς ἐρῶν]) ist möglicherweise die ursprüngliche Quelle für die Unterscheidung der verschiedenen Betrachtungs-Ebenen an der behandelten Stelle von De mente 7 des Nikolaus von Kues […]. Die Unterscheidung der intellektuellen Prinzipienerkenntnis und der begrifflich nicht mehr faßbaren Schau der absoluten Wahrheit in De mente 7 entspricht wohl der des Plotin von der vernünftigen Erkenntnis und jener Trunkenheit, die besser ist als nüchterner Ernst (ebd. 26-27). Freilich hat Nikolaus Plotin nicht lesen können. Doch konnte er im Parmenides-Kommentar des Proklos an verschiedenen Stellen die klassische Aussage Plotins wiederfinden, so im 6. Buch (Cousin 1086), wo sie durch zwei Erkenntnisarten (positive und negative) erläutert wird. Die Negation, die der Trunkenheit zugeordnet wird, zeigt sich als erfüllt durch ein positives Element nichtbegrifflicher Art, das nicht aussagbar ist, aber sich kundgibt als existentielle Macht der Einung. – In dem nur lateinisch erhaltenen Schlußteil des 7. Buch des Parmenides-Kommentar hat Nikolaus an der entsprechenden Stelle eine Marginalie gemacht, aus der das Folgende zitiert werden soll: ‚licet divinus intellectus non cognoscat le unum, sed unitus ad ipsum inebriatus nectare quidem melius quam cognitione habet‘.“
structure of every consciousness, there is an original refer-ence to an ‚Unconditioned‘, to a ‚Maximum‘, as condition of every activity of the consciousness itself. In this sense, the issue of ‚praesuppositum‘ is a leit-motif of Neoplaton-ism, as I tried to stress in my first point. Starting from this leit-motif, I want now to show how the road to contempla-tion is understood by Cusanus in a different way from Neo-platonism, and this from two points of view: the road to contemplation cannot be understood either according to the Neoplatonic ideal of the „via remotionis“ (ἄφελε πάντα), or according to the Plotinian φυγὴ μόνου πρὸς μόνον: „this is the life of godlike and blessed man (ἀνθρώπον θείων καὶ εὐδαιμόνων βίος): escape in solitude to the solitary.“40
Eudaimonia is also the starting-point of De pace fidei. At
the beginning, the language of De pace fidei is Augus-tinian. In the tenth book of Confessiones, in fact, develop-ing an investigation influenced in many aspects by Neopla-tonism, Augustine stressed that the first and main „notitia innata“ inherent in all men is the idea of „vita beata“, un-derstood as „gaudium de veritate“.41 According to Cusanus
too, this „notitia innata“ is the first ‚praesuppositum‘ of ev-ery consciousness. In this sense, Cusanus starts from the Neoplatonic and Augustinian distinction between ‚the inner man‘ and the ‚outer man‘, and points out that the ‚homo interior‘ has an original desire for ‚perfectio‘, for a full com-pletion of his life. This is the inner man’s „ultimum desiderium“.42 The ‚inner man‘, however, is the man
en-dowed with ‚intellectus‘, and therefore his ‚ultimum desiderium‘ is for the ‚truth‘ (veritas), since the truth is ‚the food of intellect‘, according to a locution which often occurs in Cusanus and goes back to Augustine’s
Confes-siones.43 This means that the search after truth is the way 40 Plotinus: Enn., VI 9, 11, 51.
41 Cf. Augustine: Confessiones, X 20, 29-23, 34. 42 De pace fidei, II 7, 5 ss.
43 Cf., for example, De concordantia catholica, I 3, 17, 1 s.; De coniecturis, I 3, 10 ss.; De sapientia, I 15, 1 ss.; 18, 4 ss.; De venatione sapientiae, I 2, 5 ss. See also Augustine: Conf., IX 10, 24.
by means of which beings provided with intellect preserve and perfect themselves, just as all natural beings seek for nutriment suiting their nature in order to grow and to con-serve themselves. A bit later, this view is shared by the Arab too:
„I think it altogether true that all men by nature desire the truth. For the truth is the life of Intellect, which cannot be sustained in its own vitality by any other food. For, just as every thing desires whatever it cannot exist without, so the intellectual life desires the truth.“44
The parallel between spiritual and natural self-preservation introduced here by Cusanus would become a main topic in the first modern age.45 This topic often occurs in Cusanus
and it is already present in De docta ignorantia. From the first pages of this work, Cusanus points out the ‚desiderium veritatis‘ as that form of existence through which beings provided with intellect develop an original and universal tendency belonging to all living beings:
ap-petitus or nisus driving all creatures to preserve and to
perfect their own being.46 In this way, Cusanus’ intention is
to point out that the ‚desiderium veritatis‘ is not a mere ‚regulative idea‘ of reason; on the contrary, this specific activity of human intellect is included within a natural or-der in which, according to a law disposed by God, all natu-ral beings are provided with an original attitude to pre-serve and to accomplish their own being in the best possi-ble way (meliori modo) and are provided with the most ap-propriate powers to achieve this aim.47
Now, what I want to point out is the connection made by Cusanus between the appetitus to natural self-preserva-tion, the ‚desiderium veritatis‘ and the idea of ‚communio‘. This connection comes clearly out in De docta ignorantia, but is already present in De concordantia catholica. As I said, the parallel between natural and spiritual self-preser-44 De pace fidei, IV 15, 7-14.
45 On this, cf. Leinkauf: Nicolaus Cusanus, 34 s. 46 De docta ignorantia, II 12, 166, 9-12.
47 On Cusanus’ intention to ground man’s spiritual activity on a natu-ral order, cf. Kremer: Praegustatio natunatu-ralis sapientiae, 57 ss., 232 s.
vation would become a main topic in the first modern age and it will be conveyed by authors (Cicero, Seneca) who prove the Stoic origin of this view: its origin from the Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis, «self-conciliation», understood as the natural striving of every living creature:48 «Every living
creature – it is said in Cicero’s De finibus – loves itself, and from the moment of birth strives to secure its own preser-vation; because the earliest impulse bestowed on it by na-ture for its life-long protection is the instinct of self-preser-vation and for maintenance of itself in the best conditions possible to it in accordance with its nature».49 Nicholas of
Cusa probably had direct knowledge of this Stoic doctrine only during the last years of his life, when he could read the Latin translation of Diogenes Laërtius’s Lives of the
Philosophers made by Ambrogio Traversari (whom Cusanus
knew since Basel). However, Cusanus already deals with this important subject in De concordantia catholica, where he refers to the Stoic views expounded in Cicero’s De
finibus, but interprets them in a peculiar way. For in the Preface of the third book, the specific human expression of
the natural drive to self-preservation is seen by Cusanus in the fact that man develops the principles of ‚consodalitas‘ and ‚communio‘, and thus the principles of civic and state society, and these are the origins of ‚civitates‘ organized in accordance with the right:
„That ‚divina super admiranda lex‘ [that is, the natural law ac-cording to which all beings strive to conserve themselves] was infused in the human heart, so that man understood, ‚rationabili discursu‘, that ‚consodalitatem ac communionem‘ are necces-sary ‚suae conservationi ac etiam fini propter quem quisque est‘, and so that man understood that ‚consodalitas et communio‘ can be preserved only through ‚consensus omnium‘.“50
Also in this case, as at the beginning of De docta
ignoran-tia, Cusanus’ intention is to point out that in human
‚praxis‘ a fundamental structure of reality which is peculiar to all creatures appears, because of the creating action of 48 Cf., for example, SVF I 497; II 367, 458; 549, 555-556.
49 Cicero: De finibus, V 9, 24; see also IV 7, 16. 50 De concordantia catholica, III 270, 1 ss.
God. This structure of reality is characterized by the essen-tial connection between the original relation of every crea-ture with itself (according to the Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis)
and the relation with the others, between the natural
im-pulse (appetitus, nisus) driving every creature to preserve itself and to search for all that increases and promotes its own good and ‚communio‘: in the case of man, this con-nection consciously shows in cultural and spiritual produc-tions of the right, but it is infused in the nature of every creature as a ‚munus‘ given by God. For this reason, in De
docta ignorantia, dealing with the world, Cusanus takes
the remarks on the social factor of self-preservation again and applies them to all creatures: „Deus benedictus omnia creavit, ut dum quodlibet studet esse suum conservare quasi quoddam munus divinum, hoc agat in communione cum aliis.“51
As in the social-political sphere, so in the world taken as a whole there is a real ‚communio‘ which connects all crea-tures with each other and which is deep-rooted in their on-tological constitution, namely in that original drive to pre-serve and to perfect their own being which is peculiar to each living creature. As we have seen, in man’s ontological constitution this original ‚appetitus‘ or ‚nisus‘ displays in man’s ‚studium veritatis‘ and ‚desiderium veritatis‘, through which man performs his drive to ‚perfectio‘ and ‚beatitudo‘. Becoming aware of this ‚inner man’s ultimate desire‘ means therefore to understand the ‚conexio‘ which links together ‚perfectio‘ and ‚communio‘ in all creatures. It is such a ‚conexio‘ that the philosophical and theological reflection has to attend to; only in this way, in fact, (1) it can rightly look at that ‚Maximum‘ which is the ‚presup-positum‘ of every consciousness, and (2) it can clarify man’s relation to that ‚veritas‘ which man’s ‚desiderium beatitudinis‘ aims at.
3. Veritas, perfectio, communio
The first point comes out at the beginning of the second book of De docta ignorantia: here Cusanus is concerned with the problem regarded by Plotinus as the ‚vexata quaestio‘ of all philosophical tradition, that is as the basic problem of every rational consciousness. Plotinus formu-lated it in this way: „How from the One did come into exis-tence such a great multiplicity, as that which is seen to ex-ist in beings and which we think it is right to refer back to One?“52 That is: how must we look at the variety of things
existing in our world if we suppose that there is a unitary principle from which they derive? Cusanus formulates this question starting from the famous passage of St. Paul’s
Epistle to the Romans (1, 20): „How is it that – Cusanus
asks – God can be made manifest to us through visible creatures“, if creatures have various and different forms, while God is „the one infinite Form“?53
‚Communio‘ is the answer to this Neoplatonic question. ‚Communio‘ shows ‚where‘ it is possible to meet the divine dimension in the comprehensive structure of reality. We cannot realize the relationship binding creatures to God until we consider the variety of things and of natural phe-nomena only as a multiplicity of autonomous and indepen-dent entities, which ‚then‘ would also have a relation to each other. If we want to understand the universe in its own nature, that is in its connection with God, we have to overcome this view grounded, according to Cusanus, on the scholastic metaphysics of substance: „Considera atten-tius — it is said in De docta ignorantia — et videbis quo-modo quiescunt omnia in quolibet, quoniam non posset unus gradus esse sine alio.“54
„Non posset unus gradus esse sine alio“: in this way, Cu-sanus follows a different path from the scholastic one, not only from the ‚via antiqua‘, but also from the ‚via moderna‘ 52 Plotinus: Enn., V 1, 6, 3-8. See also III 8, 10, 14-15; III 9, 4, 1 s.; V 2, 1, 3-5; V 3, 15, 1 ss.; 16, 6 ss.; V 9, 14, 2 ss.
53 De docta ignorantia, II 2, 103, 1-5; 10-11. 54 De docta ignorantia, II 5, 121, 1-2; 120, 1-2.
of the scholastic theology. A different path, for example, from Duns Scotus’ view, according to which the ontological actuality of every individual consists in his „aptitudo ad subsistentem in se“, and thus in what Duns Scotus calls his „ultima solitudo“.55 . Or, a different path from Ockham’s
nominalistic view, according to which there are only single and discrete entities, devoid of any intrinsic relationship with each other; it is only our language which puts connec-tions between things, each of which can exist without the others: „omnis res absoluta, distincta loco et subiecto ab alia re absoluta, potest existere alia re absoluta dex-tructa“, or „toto mundo destructo“.56 In De docta ignoran-tia, on the contrary, Cusanus replies to the ‚vexata
quaes-tio‘ asked by Plotinus explaining that God created, in only one act, the single things and the world, that is the rela-tional web in which all creatures are included. In this way God manifests and conserves in the creation that original ‚complicatio‘ in which all creatures are included in God, in that relational unity of the divine Principle stated by the Christian doctrine of Trinity.57
55 Cf. Duns Scotus, Quodl., q. 19, n. 20; Ordinatio, III, dist, 1, q. 1, n. 17. Duns Scotus sees the constitutive and distinctive characteristic of each individual as a kind of ‚negative‘ feature, that is as his not being dependent on something other (cf. Mühlen: Sein und Person, 106 ss.). In this way, what is pointed out by Duns Scotus is not the relational character of the creature, but its autonomous being in-itself (see Det-tloff: Duns Scotus/Scotismus, 282 ss.)
56 William of Ockham: Quodlibeta VI, q. 6. In this sense, as Alessandro Ghisalberti wrote, „secondo Ockham l’esperienza attesta l’esistenza degli individui e non quella dell’ordine reale delle classi, tant’è vero che i singoli individui, pur fondando la legittimità dei raggruppamenti concettuali in classi di generi e di specie, nella realtà vivono e muoiono secondo i tratti della singolarità, contraggono cioè la loro nuda esistenza individuale, la sviluppano e la depongono in modo del tutto separato dalle esistenze degli individui dello stesso genere e della stessa specie“ (Ghisalberti: Medioevo teologico, 148).
57 According to Cusanus, this relational system of creatures is the „constitutio universi“: cf., for example, Sermo XXII, 17, 17-35: „unitas enim infinita est trina, quia est unitas, quae est indivisibilitas a se, est et discretio infinita, quae est aequalitas essendi omnia, est et conexio infinita. Per hoc enim, quod Deus est unitas infinita, tunc ab ipso
Understanding this ‚conexio‘ between esse, perfectio et
communio characterizing all creatures means, for man,
re-considering his relation to the truth, and so clarifying his ‚desiderium veritatis‘, through which man carries out the universal tendency to ‚perfectio‘. In his work on
Cate-gories, Aristotle pointed out that the metaphysics of ousia
is the basic ‚grammar‘, on which our language is organized and, together with it, our experience of the world and the ways of life mediated by the language. Reconsidering the traditional metaphysics of ousia in terms of a ‚communio‘-ontology means reconsidering this grammar, which has ex-erted a strong influence on the western tradition. An effect of such a revision is the introduction of a ‚decentralizing‘ dynamic: it doesn’t lead only to a new view of the uni-verse, transforming the old hierarchical image of kosmos; it also confers a new ‚dignitas‘ on the single things. For within the mutual relation connecting all beings of the world, no creature can be regarded as a „pars proportion-alis sive aliquota mundi“,58 nor can it be reduced to a mere
element of the whole. Within the mutual relation connect-ing all the creatures, each particular thconnect-ing becomes a ‚point‘ on which all the others depend, a ‚point‘ in which the whole condition of universe appears.59 For this reason,
the world cannot be regarded as a mere juxtaposition of ‚parts‘; the universe is rather a ‚whole of wholes‘, where
omnis res est una et a se indivisa. Per hoc, quod est aequalitas, tunc discretionem complicat omnium [...]. Deinde, per hoc, quod est conexio infinita, omnes res habent ad invicem quandam conexionem. Unde ex unitate, quae in omnibus est, et aequalitate discretiva oritur et procedit proportionalis nexus omnium; et hic nexus est constitutio
universi.“ Cf. also De docta ignorantia, II 10, 154, 1 ss.; see 7, 127, 1
ss. (De trinitate universi); De pace fidei, X 29, 5 ss. About this cf. Wolter: Apparitio Dei, 91 ss.
58 De docta ignorantia, II 12, 164, 7.
59 Cf., for example, De docta ignorantia, II 5, 117, 11-15 („In qualibet enim creatura universum est ipsa creatura, et ita quodlibet recepit omnia, ut in ipso sint ipsum contracte“); 118, 1-3; 13-16 („omnis res actu contrhait universa, ut sint actu id quod est“); 119, 15-20; 120, 3 ss.; 4, 115, 2-4; 11-14; see also De ludo globi, I 42, 6-10: „in omnibus autem partibus relucet totum, cum pars sit pars totius [...] sic universum in qualibet eius parte relucet.“
each single part is a centre: it is a ‚gravitational centre of being‘, but only according to its specific form, to its partic-ular perspective. Reconsidering the ‚grammar‘ of ousia means therefore understanding the dynamic structure of the world as this connection between ‚centrality‘ and ‚rela-tivity‘ —connection which is proper to every true form of
communio.
Now, man is the only creature who can become aware of this structure of reality, because only man, as provided with intellectus, can go beyond his horizon without tran-scending it. So, man can realize that there is no creature which can escape its constitutive relationship connecting it with the others and which can offer an absolute and com-plete view of the world. In this way, man also becomes aware of his relation to the truth; he becomes aware that such a relation is always a „partecipatio veritatis in alteri-tate“, as it is said in De coniecturis.60 This expression
de-scribes the paradoxical condition of human consciousness: it always acts in the sphere of what is finite, conditioned, relative and thus ‚maius et minus‘;61 however, it could not
know what is conditioned and ‚maius et minus‘ if it didn’t have an original reference to an ‚Unconditioned‘, to an ab-solute ‚Maximum‘. Nevertheless, this ‚presuppositum‘ of every consciousness, by virtue of which difference and ‚al-teritas‘ can be known, is always expressed ‚in alteritate‘, that is within the language and the conditioned perspec-tive of a consciousness bound to its empirical condition.
What I want to point out, however, is that such a ‚per-spective‘ feature of consciousness is not a mere limit, an obstacle we should overcome in order to see better and more clearly: on the contrary, without it, the basic ‚prae-suppositum‘ of each consciousness, its original reference to a ‚Maximum‘, would remain completely undetermined and empty. For this reason, for Cusanus the road to the achievement of human ‚desiderium veritatis‘, and thus to
teleiosis or perfectio, cannot be any more the ‚via
remotio-nis‘ showed by Neoplatonism (ἄφελε πάντα). For this rea-60 De coniecturis, I 11, 57, 1 ss.
son, unlike Neoplatonism, Cusanus can frequently praise ‚multitudo‘, ‚alteritas‘, ‚varietas‘, with an emphasis which sometimes foreshadows modern thought. He can do this, because ‚varietas‘, ‚multitudo‘ and ‚alteritas‘ are no more regarded as a ‚regio dissimilitudinis‘, turning us away from the One: they don’t hide the reality of the One, but make it visible, since what makes it visible is the ‚communio‘ con-necting the various and different things each other. This is true for man too: ‚alteritas‘ is not an obstacle, but a posi-tive way through which man can really achieve his ‚parte-cipatio veritatis‘ only when the ‚alteritas‘ is aware of itself; that is, when it is aware of being an ‚otherness of identity‘, a contracted and finite manifestation of the Infinite: a manifestation, therefore, which is by itself referred to and related to the other determined and contracted manifesta-tions of the same Absolute.
Therefore, the Neoplatonic road to the divine Principles is not the right one because our original reference to a ‚Maxi-mum‘, which transcends every human words, can occur only within the various and different words of our historical languages: without these latter, our original ‚desiderium veritatis‘ would remain undetermined or empty. On the other hand, however, the historical languages must pre-serve within their words the ‚un-namability‘ of what ceeds every language, so that they have to express the ex-perience of a ‚partecipatio veritatis‘ without understanding it as a closed event, as an absolute and exclusive defini-tion. ‚Meliori modo‘ or ‚perfectiori modo‘, ‚the best possible way‘ by which such a dialectic can be actually performed is ‚communio‘; therefore, ‚communio‘ is what preserves our ‚ultimum desiderium‘.
This is pointed out by Cusanus also in the latest pages of
De visione dei. The subject of this work is no longer how
the historical religious traditions have to look at God, as in
De pace fidei, from which I started; in De visione Dei,
writ-ten some months later, the subject is how the single indi-viduals have to look at God. Therefore, while De pace fidei was an international congress located in Jerusalem, De
commu-nity of ‚brothers‘ looks at a painting. In this painting, Christ’s face is so portrayed that the painted eyes seem look directly into every viewer’s eyes at the same time. This portrait of Christ’s face serves as central symbol to il-lustrate the dialectical relation between God and human beings. This dialectical relation has two sides. The first side could be described as ‚Neoplatonic‘: reflecting on their vis-ual experience, the viewers find out that the God’s seeing is the basic ‚presuppositum‘ of their seeing, is what makes their vision of God possible: „Nemo te videre potest nisi in-quantum tu das ut videaris. Nec est aliud te videre, quam quod tu videas videntem te.“62 This awareness, however,
doesn’t lead to give up the initial experience of God’s gaze as directed to each viewer in his own ‚singularitas‘:63
„vi-sum noster semper per angulum quantum videt“.64 We
don’t have to remove this particular, individual ‚angulus oculi‘, in order to see better and more clearly: the ‚angle of our eye‘, with its restricted personal perspective, is rather the ‚place‘, where I make the experience of God’s gaze, where I become aware of his presence. By this ‚itinerarium mentis in deum‘ what is removed is not the ‚singularitas‘ of our ‚visual angles‘, but its their pretention to exclusive-ness and absoluteexclusive-ness; for each sight sees in God’s face something which only that individual, with his own ‚singu-laritas‘, can see, but no sight can exhaust the infinite face of God. So, reflecting on his own visual experience, every ‚intellectual spirit‘ realizes that his seeing, like the whole creation of God, lives on this dynamic of ‚centrality‘ and ‚relativity‘, which I have spoken about: that dynamic which is proper to a true ‚communio‘. In this way, in fact, the sights of the single viewers, initially fixed into their respec-tive ‚visual angles‘, open to a common space, to a mutual communication of their respective visual experiences. And this is the conclusion of De visione Dei: the book, which started with each monk looking separately at the painting sent by Cusanus, ends with this reference to ‚communio‘ 62 De visione Dei, V 15, 2-4.
63 De visione Dei, Prologus, 15-19. 64 De visione Dei, VIII 32, 15-18.
as ‚perfectio‘ of man’s ‚desiderium veritatis‘. In this sense, Cusanus first compares the whole world to a self-portrait of God, in which the divine artist used various and different colours „in order to be able to paint himself“, „quia virtus suae infinitae similitudo non potest nisi in multis perfectiori modo explicari“. Then Cusanus adds:
„All intellectual spirits are useful to each intellectual spirit. Now, unless they were countless, you, o infinite God, could not be known in the best possible way (meliori modo). For each intellec-tual spirit sees in you my God something without which the oth-ers could not in the best possible way (meliori modo) attain unto you, their God. Full of love, the spirits reveal to one another their respective secrets; and as a result, their knowledge of the one who is loved and their desire for him is increased; and the sweet-ness of their joy is aflame.“65
I believe that this view of Cusanus’ could be expressed by the words written some years ago by Charles Taylor about the Augustinian doctrine of the Trinity: „When you get to the point of seeing that what is important in human life is what passes between us, then you are coming close to God.“66
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