Apophatic and Mystical Realism. Nicholas’ of Cusa Lesson

Nicholas of Cusa and Raymond Lull: a comparison

Nicholas of Cusa (NC) (1401-1464) is one of the most prominent neo-platonic philosophers of the Renaissance. Son of a rich merchant, he studied liberal arts and canon law in Heidelberg (1416), Padua (1417-1423) and Cologne (1425-1426). His time in Padua let him breathe the free air of Italian quattrocento. There he first met some of his later friends who would become influential men of Church, ...

“nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464): First Modern Philosopher?”

The Intellect-will Problem in the Thought of Some Northern Renaissance Humanists: Nicholas of Cusa

This essay and a subsequent one will attempt to demonstrate the inadequacy of the definition of Renaissance humanism as a movement which sought primarily secular "wisdom" by the exercise of man's wholly autonomous intellect and will. Such a definition implies that humanist thought involved a radical separation of the realm of faith-grace from the realm of intellectwill. It would exclude certain...

An Apophatic View of God and Creation

The English Dominican Herbert McCabe highlighted some ideas of Thomas Aquinas on the knowability of God and on creation, which can usefully challenge some widespread commonplaces. The purposes of this article are two: to present McCabe’s sophisticated doctrine on the knowability of God and on creation in a systematic way, and to put this doctrine into its historical context. In the scattered an...

Mystical Experience and Metaphysics

In Chapter 2 of Beyond Physicalism, I suggest that mystical experience, if a source of genuine metaphysical insight, can shed light on a variety of extraordinary phenomena, including psi and near-death experience, as well as the mystery that is ordinary consciousness. It is striking that mystics are often left with the conviction that they came into contact with deeper realities during their ex...