Background
Nicholas was born in Kues (Latinized as "Cusa") in southwestern Germany in 1401. He was the second of four children of Johan Krebs (or Cryfftz) and Katherina Roemer.
(Known for his deeply mystical writings about Christianity...)
Known for his deeply mystical writings about Christianity, Nicholas of Cusa wrote this, his most popular work, against a backdrop of widespread Church corruption. God, he believed, is found in all things, and thus cannot be perceived by man's senses and intellect alone. The path to ultimate knowledge, then, begins in recognizing our own ignorance. Deeply influenced by Saint Augustine, Nicholas mixes the metaphysical with the personal to create a deeply felt work, first published in 1453, designed to restore faith in even the most jaded.
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(This is the first English translation of the most importa...)
This is the first English translation of the most important work of political thought of the fifteenth century. The Catholic Concordance is the first major treatise to argue for consent through representative councils as a major prerequisite for legitimate law and government, and is the most learned and original work associated with the conciliar movement in the late medieval church. Cusa's arguments influenced such thinkers as Luther, Bruno and Locke, and Professor Sigmund's introduction places his work in its full historical and philosophical context.
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(For the first time in one volume in English are the spiri...)
For the first time in one volume in English are the spiritual writings of this outstanding intellectual figure (1401-1464) whose work anticipated modern problems of ecumenicity and pluralism, empowerment and reconciliation, and tolerance and individuality.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809136988/?tag=2022091-20
Astronomer jurist philosopher theologian
Nicholas was born in Kues (Latinized as "Cusa") in southwestern Germany in 1401. He was the second of four children of Johan Krebs (or Cryfftz) and Katherina Roemer.
He attended the school of the Brethren of the Common Life in Deventer and studied law at Heidelberg, Padua, and Cologne. After practicing law for a few years in Mainz, he studied theology, became a priest and attended the Council of Basel in 1432.
Entering the service of Pope Eugenius IV in 1437, he was sent as a papal envoy on missions to Constantinople and later to ecclesiastical diets in Germany. Made a cardinal in 1448, he was active in reforming the monasteries in Germany and the Low Countries and became involved in a political conflict with Sigismund, Duke of Tyrol. He died in Umbria August 11, 1464, and was buried in the church of S. Pietro in Vincoli, in Rome. The active part which Cusanus took in the classical studies of his humanist contemporaries is reflected in the rich library which he collected and bequeathed to the hospital of his home town. Besides sermons and other theological works, he composed a number of philosophical treatises which reveal him as one of the most powerful and original thinkers of his century. His central problem, as discussed in his main work, De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance), is the relation between God or the infinite, and created or finite beings. In the infinite, he maintained, all contrasts coincide; hence, the infinite cannot be known directly by means of finite thought but must be approximated through an elimination of all finite attributes. This method constitutes "learned ignorance. " Cusanus, who was deeply interested in mathematics and attached great value and certainty to mathematical knowledge, was in many respects indebted to the traditions of ancient Platonism and of medieval German and Dutch mysticism. His conception of the infinite exercised a strong influence upon Giordano Bruno, upon Spinoza, and upon German classical idealism.
(For the first time in one volume in English are the spiri...)
(Known for his deeply mystical writings about Christianity...)
(This is the first English translation of the most importa...)
Since God is the absolute maximum and also the absolute minimum, Cusanus denied that there can be a perfect rest or movement within the physical universe, suggesting that the earth is neither completely at rest nor the absolute center of the world. The world as a whole is both finite and infinite; whereas all its finite parts are nothing but particular manifestations of the infinite, which is their common archetype or idea. Thus everything is enveloped in God and developed in the universe. Christ, who is both God and creature, thus represents the link between the infinite and the finite.
Quotations:
"When all my endeavor is turned toward Thee because all Thy endeavor is turned toward me; when I look unto Thee alone with all my attention, nor ever turn aside the eyes of my mind, because thou dost enfold me with Thy constant regard; when I direct my love toward Thee alone because Thou, who art Love’s self hast turned Thee toward me alone. And what, Lord, is my life, save that embrace wherein Thy delightsome sweetness doth so lovingly enfold me?"
"All we know of the truth is that the absolute truth, such as it is, is beyond our reach. "
"Nothing could be more beneficial for even the most zealous searcher for knowledge than his being in fact most learned in that very ignorance which is peculiarly his own; and the better a man will have known his own ignorance, the greater his learning will be. "
"In humility alone lies true greatness, and knowledge and wisdom are profitable only in so far as our lives are governed by them. "