Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), canon lawyer at the Council of Basel, papal legate to Constantinople, cardinal and bishop of Brixen — and the most original speculative mind of the fifteenth century. He argued that God is reached not by reasoning but by learned ignorance, at the point where opposites coincide and the intellect gives out.
Works (1)
- The Vision of God — Written in 1453 for the monks of Tegernsee, who had asked him to explain mystical theology. Cusa sends them a painting whose eyes follow every viewer at once, and builds from it an account of a God whose seeing is His creating, approached through the coincidence of opposites that reason cannot cross. (25 notes)