Metaphysics

[6.10.1] Cusanus, Nicolaus on God, Universe, Christ, and Human Being

A. L. KomáromiLeave a comment

Nicholas of Cusa (Nikolaus Cryfftz or Krebs in German, then Nicolaus Cusanus in Latin, 1401-1464) “Christian Neoplatonic framework to construct his own synthesis of inherited ideas”. 

  • Cusanus addresses the four categorical realities traditionally found in Christian thought: God, the natural universe, Christ and human beings.
  • God is absolute and maximum.

The following OntoUML diagram shows Cusanus model of God:

Cusanus on God and Christ:
ClassDescriptionRelation
God“Nicholas of Cusa’s most complete set of proposals about what is real occurs in his best-known work of 1440, De docta ignorantia: On Learned Ignorance. Here Cusanus addresses the four categorical realities traditionally found in Christian thought: God, the natural universe, Christ and human beings.
[…]
Nicholas begins with a single trope or symbol to lay out the parallels between his teachings in the three books, that of the “maximum.” God is the absolute Maximum; the universe is a
created image of God, the “contracted” or restricted maximum.
[…]
“Absolute” is used in its etymological sense of “free from” (ab-solutus) to characterize God’s infinity. As absolute maximum God is both unlimited and transcendent, unreachable by human conceptions that measure the limited or contracted realm of more and less.” 
Absolute“Absolute” is used in its etymological sense of “free from” (ab-solutus) to characterize
God’s infinity. As absolute maximum God is both unlimited and transcendent, unreachable by human conceptions that measure the limited or contracted realm of more and less. 
Once Cusanus conceptualizes human knowing as measuring, he proposes that our knowledge also cannot measure exactly the essence of any limited thing. A fortiori, when it comes to the unlimited God, Nicholas asserts that “there is no proportion between finite and
infinite.” The infinite God remains beyond our ken. Human efforts to understand the depth and implications of this assertion are what will render our ignorance “learn-ed.”		characterizes God
Maximum“Nicholas begins with a single trope or symbol to lay out the parallels between his teachings in the three books, that of the “maximum.” God is the absolute Maximum; the universe is a
created image of God, the “contracted” or restricted maximum.”		characterizes God
Universe“Here Cusanus addresses the four categorical realities traditionally found in Christian thought: God, the natural universe, Christ and human beings.”member of God
Christ “Here Cusanus addresses the four categorical realities traditionally found in Christian thought: God, the natural universe, Christ and human beings.
[…]
God is the absolute Maximum; the universe is a created image of God, the “contracted” or restricted maximum. Christ unites the first two as the Maximum at once absolute-and-contracted.”		component of Universe
HumanBeing“Here Cusanus addresses the four categorical realities traditionally found in Christian thought: God, the natural universe, Christ and human beings.”component of Universe

Sources

First published: 2023/2/28

[6.0.0] Lorenzo Valla Ontology

A. L. KomáromiLeave a comment

The humanist Lorenzo Valla (c. 1406–1457) in Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, disagreed with the structure of Aristotelian categories [1.3.2]:

  • The world consists of things, simply called res.
  • Valla’s list of categories contains substance, quality, and action. 
  • “At the back of Valla’s mind are the grammatical categories of noun, adjective, and verb; but in many places he points out that we cannot assume that, for instance, an adjective always refer to a quality or a verb to an action (Repastinatio, 1:134–156; 425–442; DD 1:240–80). These three categories are the only ones Valla admits; the other Aristotelian categories of accidents such as place, time, relation and quantity can all be reduced to quality or action. Here, too, grammar plays a leading role in Valla’s thought. From a grammatical point of view, qualities such as being a father, being in the classroom, or being six-feet tall all tell us something about how a particular man is qualified; and there is, consequently, no need to preserve the other Aristotelian categories”.
  • The Soul is a substance with special importance.

The following OntoUML diagram shows the main classes in this model:

CLASSDESCRIPTIONRELATIONS
Thing“His main concern in the first book is to simplify the Aristotelian-scholastic apparatus. For Valla, the world consists of things, simply called res. Things have qualities and do or undergo things (which he refers to as “things”).”
Substance“Hence, there are three basic categories: substance, quality, and action.
At the back of Valla’s mind are the grammatical categories of noun, adjective, and verb; but in many places he points out that we cannot assume that, for instance, an adjective always refer to a quality or a verb to an action (Repastinatio, 1:134–156; 425–442; DD 1:240–80). These three categories are the only ones Valla admits; the other Aristotelian categories of accidents such as place, time, relation and quantity can all be reduced to quality or action. Here, too, grammar plays a leading role in Valla’s thought. From a grammatical point of view, qualities such as being a father, being in the classroom, or being six-feet tall all tell us something about how a particular man is qualified; and there is, consequently, no need to preserve the other Aristotelian categories. […]

He thus thinks that it is ridiculous to imagine prime matter without any form or form without any matter, or to define a line as that which has no width and a point as an indivisible quantity that occupies no space. Valla’s idea is that notions such as divisibility and quantity are properly at home only in the world of ordinary things. For him, there is only the world of bodies [substances] with actual shapes and dimensions [quality]; lines and points are parts of these things, but only, as he seems to suggest, in a derivative sense, in other words, as places or spaces that are filled by the body or parts of that body. If we want to measure or sketch a (part of a) body, we can select two spots on it and measure the length between them by drawing points and lines on paper or in our mind, a process through which these points and lines become visible and divisible parts of our world (Repastinatio, 1:142–147; 2:427–431;  DD 254–64). But it would be wrong to abstract from this diagramming function and infer a world of points and lines with their own particular quantity. They are merely aids for measuring or outlining bodies. In modern parlance, Valla seems to be saying that ontological questions about these entities—do they exist? how do they exist?—amount to category mistakes, equivalent to asking the color of virtue.”		subkind of Thing
Quality“Hence, there are three basic categories: substance, quality, and action. […]”subkind of Thing
Action“Hence, there are three basic categories: substance, quality, and action. […]”subkind of Thing
Soul“The soul as an incorporeal substance is treated by Valla in a separate chapter (
Repastinatio, 1:59–73; 2:408–410; 418–419; 
DD 1:104–29). Rejecting the Aristotelian hylomorphic account, he returns to an Augustinian picture of the soul as a wholly spiritual and immaterial substance made in the image of God, and consisting of memory, intellect, and will. 		subkind of Substance
ParticularA particular thing

Related posts in theory of Universals: [1.2.2], [1.3.1], [1.3.2], [2.5], [2.7.3], [4.3.1], [4.3.2], [4.4.1], [4.5.2], [4.9.8], [4.11], [4.15.6], [4.18.8]

Sources

First published: 8/9/2022