Nicholas of Cusa

"Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) was a German cardinal, philosopher, and administrator. For many years he served as papal legate to popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Pius II. In addition to leading an extremely active public life, Nicholas managed to write extensively on a wide variety of juridicial, theological, philosophical, and scientific subjects. In his philosophical writings he departed from the prevalent Aristotelian and scholastic doctrines. His first and most famous treatise, On Learned Ignorance (De docta ignorantia), is a mystical discourse on the finite and the infinite. In addition to presenting his important philosophical concepts of learned ignorance and coincidence of opposites, this seminal treatise also contains various bold astronomical and cosmological speculations that depart entirely from traditional doctrines. For example, long before Copernicus, he proposed that the earth is not at the center of the cosmos, and is not at rest. He also argued long before Kepler that the motions of the planets are not circular. These speculations, however, were not based on empirical observations but on metaphysical principles."

"Nicholas read widely in various languages and was influenced by Plato and Neoplatonic thinkers such as Plotinus and Proclus. Nicholas also drew inspiration from Dionysius and Meister Eckhart. From Anselm he took the notion of God as ultimate Maximum. From Ramon Lull he took the idea that the infinite is the joining of beginning, middle, and end. The fundamental insight that inspires Nicholas’s thought, however, comes not from his wide learning, but from a mystical illumination in 1437 during a journey home from Constantinople. This gift from God, as he describes the vision, provided him with the key that allowed him to talk about the ineffable, and provided a way of viewing opposites as coincident from the point of view of infinity. According to Nicholas, this logic of infinitude unites opposites, transcends comparison, overcomes limits of discursive reasoning, and goes beyond both positive and negative theology."

"Cardinal Cusa claimed that God sent a variety of prophets into the world in order to reveal Himself to humanity. To achieve this goal these prophets created a variety of faiths, the customs of which have, over time come to be regarded as immutable truths founded not by prophets, but by God. Since the human person has freewill, and because over time opinions, languages and interpretations undergo change, humanity needs a number of visitations to eliminate the religious errors which inevitably develop. In this manner Cusa gives such figures as Buddha and Muhammad a similar status to that of prophets of the God of Israel...In short there is but one religion, but a diversity of religious faiths. Because of this Cusa does not think that religious diversity need be a source of conflict. For Cusa since the diversity of faiths are merely different ways of articulating the same underlying truth, there is no real basis for mutual attacks over these differences"