Cusa and Renaissance

I’ve posted a number of times on Cusa in the past, and the following builds on notes and outline that I posted in Febrary 2004.

NICHOLAS OF CUSA
This is a continuation of the earlier essay on Renaissance and modernity. To keep my assessment of the Renaissance under control, and to have something other than glittering generalities to offer, I have restricted myself to the examination of one Renaissance thinker, one whose influence on the Renaissance as such is very difficult to assess or know, but one who exemplifies some of the key themes of the Renaissance. And this writer sets out these themes in an explicitly Christian context. I speak of Nicholas of Cusa. To justify concentrating on Cusa, let me cite Heinz Heimsoeth, who claims that Giordano Bruno was the greatest of the Renaissance philosophers. He goes on to say that Bruno?s philosophy is thoroughly indebted to themes he borrowed from Cusa: ?all other decisive themes of his speculation derive from Nicholas of Cusa and were virtually taken over from him in their profoundest formulations.?E

In some ways, Cusa was more medieval than Renaissance. He was a cardinal and served in the Archdiocese of Trier. Yet, his life (c 1400-1464) was in the heart of the Renaissance. Petrarch was crowned as poet in the Capitol of Rome in 1340, sixty years before Cusa was born. Dante died in 1321, Boccaccio wrote the Decameron in 1348. Donatello was flourishing during Cusa?s lifetime, the Cathedral of Florence was completed when he was a young man, Boticelli was born in 1444, da Vinci in 1452, and Michaelangelo a decade after Cusa died.

Cusa?s work also shows his wide interests. He wrote in mathematics as well as philosophy and theology, and displayed the interests associated with being a ?Renaissance?Eman. One of the most striking things about his philosophy and theology is that it completely lacks 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.?E

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 Min is among the things that can be, then it would imply that the Max is not everything whatsoever. But exposing the logical problems with this passage misses Cusa?s intention. He is not trying to establish that the max and min 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 sues it as a step toward CLAIMING that God is beyond all opposition. For he knows that the ?argument?Ecan be ?controverted?Eby anyone who insists upon an unrelenting application of the principle of noncontradiction.?E
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?E(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?Eas well as creator. Sometimes speaks of God as the one in whom all contradictories coincide, and we immediately think, ?Including the contrary of good and evil???E

Another intriguing thing about his theology is his use of Scripture, which he often interprets with philosophical ideas in mind. His doctrine of acquired or learned ignorance comes from 1 Cor 3:19, and his doctrine that God is all things comes out of 1 Cor 15:28. He finds a basis for the via negativa in Eph 1:21, the claim that God is above all principality and power and virtue and dominion.

POSSEST
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 amazing transcendance 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. This comes from his treatise on ?de Possest,?Ea neologism that he invented to express his fundamental doctrine of God.

Cusa begins from the assumption that the sensible world is finite, and therefore must exist from another (ab alio). Because the world cannot fix its own limits, it must have something fixing its limits. Think of it this way: a finite being cannot step outside of finite being and set boundaries around finite being, otherwise he would not be finite. But finite being necessarily has a limit. So, there must be something OTHER than finite being for the finite being to have limits, a being outside the limits who can set the limits.

This ?other-from-which-the-world-exists?Eis a se , that is, exists from itself. It is the boundary-maker for finite being, and creator. Since created things only exist from another, this creator does not exist from another, but from himself. Existing from itself, it is necessarily eternal, and because it is eternal, it is necessarily invisible. Visible things are necessarily temporal, Cusa argues. As one commentator points out, this is not apologetic. We can think of possibilities that Cusa doesn?t try to refute. He is assuming the Creator-creature distinction, and then trying to fill out the features of a metaphysics based on creation.

One of the things that he discovers here is a doctrine of possibilities and actuality, the notion o ?actualized possibility?Eor what he called ?possest,?Ea combination of Latin ?posse?E(able, possibility) and ?esse?E(being, actualization). What does he mean?

First, everything that exists necessarily is able to be what it is. This leads to a consideration of actuality itself. Actuality must itself exist, since it is presupposed by anything that actually exists. If actuality did not exist, then nothing could actually be. Things are; therefore, actuality exists. Just as nothing could be white without the existence of whiteness, no things could be without the actuality of actuality. (The Platonic tenor of the whole argument is obvious. Patience. It gets better.)

Yet, if actuality exists, it is able to exist, because nothing can exist unless it is capable of existing. But it would not have the possibility for existing unless something else existed, and that something else is possibility itself: ?without possibility nothing is possible.?E If actuality is able/possible to exist, then possibility must also actually exist. Neither possibility and actuality cannot be prior to the other. If possibility were prior to actuality, then possibility would not ACTUALLY exist; but if actually were prior to possibility, then it would not be able/possible to exist. Therefore, the two are co-dependent, and must be equally ultimate, equally originary. In fact, possibility exists eternally, and since it cannot be prior to actuality, actuality also exists eternally. This possible-actuality or actualize possibility is God. God is different from all other beings in being that being that is the actuality of all possibility: ?He alone is, actually, everything of which ?is able to be?Ecan be predicated truly.?E In contrast to Aquinas, Cusa does not describe God in terms of essence and existence, but in terms of possibility and actuality.

Some corollaries follow for Cusa form this conclusion. First, God is all that is possible to be. He cannot be other than He is: ?
He is also actually all that He can be, whereas no other existing thing is ever all that IT can be?E(Hopkins). The sun is capable of being brighter or larger than it is, and therefore the sun is NOT all that it could be. There are possibilities for the sun that the sun does not actually exhibit. But God is all that He can possibly be. He is the only one who has made it through boot camp, and has become ?all that He can be?E
One response to this line of argument would be to draw a distinction between potentiality and possibility. Potentiality is based on the properties of a thing, possibility is a bare abstract able-to-be. In this sense, the sun is all that it has the potency of being. Given its essence as sun, it cannot be brighter, hotter, larger. In a purely abstract sense of logical possibility, it could be greater, hotter, brighter than it is. But the sun doesn?t exist as an abstraction, but as a particular thing with a particular character. This would be an Aristotelian response, based on an Aristotelian conception of potentiality that is tied to nature. For the Aristotelian, there is some inherent property that enables the thing to change and become something else.

Nicholas does not recognize this distinction. Instead, he uses potentia, posse, and possibilitas interchangeably. In his view, ?anything (other than God) can become something else (other than God), since God Himself has the power ?to turn any created thing into any other created thing.?? Things have no ?potential?Ein themselves, other than what God makes of them. And since He is creator, He can make anything of anything.

From this angle, it becomes clear that the Aristotelian doctrine of potentiality actually conflicts with the creation ex nihilo. It suggests that there is something in the thing itself that RESISTS God?s making of it what He will. There is some potentiality that is DIFFERENT FROM what God is able to do with it. In a metaphysics based on creation, we have to say that there is NO inherent potentiality in the creation, but only God?s word with what He has made. This same point can be brought against the doctrine of forms: forms are pre-arranged models to which substance conform or not. The substance cannot transcend the form, and there is no progress past a certain point. Once tragedy reaches its zenith, it cannot develop but just continue in infinite identical repetition. Once man has reached the form, he cannot advance in humanity. But again this posits some control or limit in the creation that stands over against God?s Word and Will. Though Cusa begins with a Platonic style argument ?Eassuming the actual existence of abstractions like ?actuality?Eand ?possibility?E?Ethat argument is ultimately in the interests of a radically un-Hellenistic metaphysics.

The Trinity is the background to Cusa?s doctrine of possest, possibility and being. ?Without possibility and actuality and the union of the two there is not, and cannot be anything. For if something lacked these, it could not exist. For how would it exist if it did not actually exist (since existence is actuality)? And if it were possible to exist but it did not exist, in what sense would it exist? (Therefore, it is necessary that there be the union of possibility and actuality.) The possibility-to-exist, acutally existing, and the union of the two are not other than one another.?E He uses the example of a rose. There is a possible rose, the actual rose, and the possible that is actual are one and the same rose. If the rose were not possible, I could not see it; it if were not actual, I could not see it; if there were not some combination of possibility and actuality, I could not see it. The rose is triune: ?I see a triune rose from a triune Beginning.?E This Triune origin is thus manifest in all things: ?nothing which is originated fails to be triune.?E God is not Triune in the sense that he combines various principles. He is the absolute Trinity, from which all other trinities are derived.

These three match the three persons: Father is ?Absolute Possibility,?Eomnipotent; the Son is ?existence itself?Eand therefore the actuality of the Father?s possibility; and the Spirit is the union of the two, ?since natural love is the spiritual union of the Father and the Son.?E The Father is not defined in otherness from the Son since for Cusa God trasncends all otherness; ?That the Father is not the Son is not on account of not-being; for God is triune prior to all not-being.?E Rather, the Father and Son and Spirit are distinguished by the dynamics of actuality and possibility. The Father is ?God who does not presuppose a beginning for Himself?E Son is ?God who does presuppose a beginning for Himself?E and the Spirit ?God who proceeds from both of these.?E Another way to say this is that the Son ?IS that which the Father can.?E The Father is possibility, the Son is the actuality of all possibilities, which is to say that all possibilities are actualized first of all in the Son.

The trinity is not mathematically three, but ?a trinity of vitally reciprocal relations.?E Creation is triune, and thus perfect life is perfectly triune: ?it is of the essence of the most perfect Life that it must be more perfectly triune, so that the Possibility-to-love is so omnipotent that from itself it begets a life of its own. From these two proceeds eternal Joy and the Spirit of love.?E

Another related concern in Cusa?s philosophy and theology was the question of the relation between infinite and finite, and here again we see Cusa?s transcendence of Hellenistic categories. Contrary to what we might think, the ancient philosophers all thought of the infinite as something threatening, bad, inferior to the finite. The infinite was unbounded, outside control, and associated with chaos and with change and becoming. For the Greeks that was a bad thing. The better thing was ?being,?Ewhich was a static, bounded, finite reality. To ?be?Emeant staying within one?s bounds and not spilling over, it meant unchangingness. Later in antiquity, Plotinus came up with a more positive understanding of infinity, in that for him infinity was a plenitude, not a chaos. Plotinus thus comes closer to Christian conceptions.

The idea of a personal, infinite God was brought by Christianity. Christianity reversed the ancient duality of infinite/finite. For the Greeks, the material world was infinite and therefore imperfect; for the Christian world, the material world was finite and therefore imperfect. But this reversal was not really breaking out of the paradigm of the contrast of infinite and finite. Certainly, many did not see the possibility of infinity within the created world. Throughout the Middle Ages, thinkers maintained the contrast of infinite God v finite world, and struggled to make sense of it.

Only with the Renaissance do we arrive at the notion of an infinite created thing: ?Everywhere the Renaissance (e.g., Ficino) emphasizes the soul?s infinite longing and the infinite power to know and to will.?E As Heimsoeth says, Cusa made the decisive step: ?every creature is a finite infinite, as it were.?E Thus, ?Whereas Aristotle always regarded the infinite as the merely potential and all actuality as finite, Nicholas now said that a never-ending line is actually everything that a finite line describes in potency. Although the ancients always viewed measure and anything it measured as the limited, pure and simple, not the infinite stood for the proper, ?most adequate measure?Eand RATIO [proportion] of the finite line! And so, in general terms: Absolute infinite is the ground and therefore the most adequate measure of all that exists. We always know the finite only through contact with, in and through, the infinite.?E Since God holds in compact form all that the world is, the world itself must be infinite. Because the world is the unfolding of what preexists in God, ?the universe in space and time must be infinite too, because it expresses and unfolds infinity.?E

To return to the Renaissance: Cusa provided a philoso
phical grounding for the Renaissance emphasis on self-presentation, self-fashioning. In the light of his speculations about God as Possest, Cusa had speculated about the Second Person of the Trinity as the ?Art?Eof God, so that, without denying the Nicene formula, he could speak of a kind of eternal ?making?Eor artistry in the Father?s begetting of the Son, which rendered ?God?s inner creativity definatory of the divine essence.?E Since all truth and wisdom is contained in the Word of the Father, who is generated by the Father, verum and factum are convertible even in the Godhead. In this way, ?factum?Ebecame one of the transcendentals. ?Making?Eor creativity is among the leading attributes of the Trinity; a ?creation?Ead intra grounds the ab extra. On Milbank?s reading, Cusa makes creation rather than esse the principal philosophical concept. Made in God?s image, man is homo creator and, just as the Father is never without His eternal ?Art,?Eso human artifacts are not a secondary reality grafted onto a more basic ?natural?Eexistence but ?fully equiprimordial?Ewith humanity itself. Since human making reflects the eternal trinitarian nature and the continually creative work of God, however, it is not ?secular?Eor ?neutral?Ebut a reaching for transcendence, and an imitation of and participation in the ongoing creative action of God. Reflecting the divine making, human art even partakes of the ex nihilo of the original divine creation. Though the original creation is unique, it implies that the essence of created existence is ongoing origination, a continual bringing-into-existence of new things and new states of affairs.

What Stephen Greenblatt has called ?Renaissance self-fashioning?Egives more popular expression to this theme. It was also central to the Renaissance conception of human life that living a human life was a matter of creative self-fashioning, creative construction, and NOT a matter of conformity to preconceived molds. Yet, this was not seen, at least initially, as a departure from a Christian vision of reality. And again Toulmin’s theory fits here: After the burst of creativity in the Renaissance, there was a counter-Renaissance effort to limit the range of self-fashioning, forcing people through various mechanisms to conform to a limited series of cultural models. And Foucault can take it from here . . . .