De docta ignorantia

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The beginning of De docta ignorantia in a manuscript from the property of the author, Bernkastel-Kues, Library of the St. Nicholas Hospital , Codex 218, fol. 1r

De docta ignorantia ("About the learned ignorance") is the title of a Latin script by the philosopher and theologian Nikolaus von Kues (Cusanus). In it he developed the foundations of his theology and a closely related speculative cosmology . He dedicated the work completed on February 12, 1440 in Kues on the Moselle (today Bernkastel-Kues ) to Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini , with whom he was friends.

prehistory

The ancient philosopher Socrates already emphasized his knowledge of his ignorance . He did not mean renouncing knowledge, but a realistic assessment of one's own ignorance as a starting point for striving for knowledge. Those who have recognized their ignorance can receive instruction.

The late antique church father Augustine of Hippo was the first to use the term docta ignorantia in a letter. He wrote: "There is, to put it this way, in us a taught ignorance, but taught by the Spirit of God, who assists our weakness." With this he referred to the impossibility of a comprehensive knowledge of God; however, ignorance taught by divine grace is possible. The "taught ignorance" thus belongs to negative theology , which points to the inadequacy of all positive statements about God and consequently is limited to statements about what God is not. The most prominent representative of this direction was the late antique Christian Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita . He believed that by rising above himself without knowledge (agnōstōs anatathēti) , to a certain extent a person could come to an experience of God. In the 13th century the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure took up the idea. He understood by instructed ignorance the elevation of the spirit, which has detached itself from everything and denied all ideas, into darkness, which is necessary for the union with God. In doing so, Bonaventure referred to Pseudo-Dionysius, who, however, did not use the expression "learned ignorance".

Concept of Nikolaus von Kues

The expression docta ignorantia from Nikolaus von Kues, who assigned it a central role in his philosophy and gave the title of the first of his main philosophical-theological works , received its decisive expression for the following period until today . Nikolaus took up the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius.

In De docta ignorantia Nicholas rejected all positive statements about God in the sense of negative theology as inappropriate and therefore misleading. Like Bonaventure, he did not turn to God by claiming to have knowledge about him or to be able to obtain it, but by acquiring knowledge of his own ignorance and thus an “ignorance taught” about himself. In contrast to Augustine and Bonaventure, however, he described the instruction which the ignorant receives not as the pure grace of God, but as the fruit of the efforts of the human spirit, which transcends itself in the search for truth and wisdom.

The "rule of learned ignorance" developed by Nikolaus says that one can never come to the knowledge of an absolute maximum by looking at something that can be increased or decreased quantitatively or qualitatively. According to its nature, however, the human understanding (ratio) can only deal with objects that are capable of increasing or decreasing, i.e. relative objects, since its activity is a comparison of the known with the unknown. In the area of ​​competence of the mind, among the concrete objects that can be improved, there are only degrees of approximation, no absolute equality and no precision. God as the Absolute and Infinite is therefore fundamentally inaccessible to the understanding.

According to Nikolaus' conviction, reason (intellectus) ranks higher than understanding , since it is able to recognize the limits of intellectual activity. But it, too, is finite and, according to De docta ignorantia , cannot advance to real knowledge of God either; It does not really grasp the paradoxical collapse of opposites in God, the coincidentia oppositorum . But since it is at the same time “something divine”, it can at least “see” and “touch” the divine truth. Later, in De coniecturis (around 1442), in the small writings written in the period 1445–1447 and especially in De visione dei (1453), Nicholas came to a more optimistic assessment of the possibilities of reason.

Paradoxically , Nikolaus said that a person who was instructed about his ignorance could "comprehensively embrace the incomprehensible". While he emphasized the hopelessness of all rational endeavors with regard to the knowledge of God, he regarded the knowledge of the world as a process, as a never-ending process of approaching the truth, which is connected with an increase in the powers of knowledge: “The more deeply we are instructed in this ignorance the closer we will come to the truth itself. "

reception

A contemporary and adversary of Nikolaus von Kues, the theology professor Johannes Wenck , attacked the concept of “learned ignorance” in a pamphlet De ignota litteratura (“About the unknown erudition”) as heretical in 1442/43 . He accused Nicholas of pantheism and the destruction of theology. It was not until a few years later, in 1449, that Nikolaus, who had been promoted to cardinal the previous year, responded with the counter- writ Apologia doctae ignorantiae (“Defense of the learned ignorance”). Wenck replied to this with a reply (not received).

A sharp opponent of the concept of "learned ignorance" was also the Carthusian Vincent von Aggsbach . He turned against the Benedictine Bernhard von Waging , a follower of Nicholas, who had written a laudatory doctae ignorantiae (“praise of 'learned ignorance'”) in 1451/52 . Vincent explained his view in 1454 in a letter that later became known as Impugnatorium laudatorii doctae ignorantiae ("Attack on the praise of 'learned ignorance'"). In it he denied that the efforts recommended by Nikolaus can be a viable path to knowledge of God. Bernhard responded in 1459 with a Defensorium laudatorii doctae ignorantiae ("Defense of the praise of 'learned ignorance'").

Text output

Without translation

  • Nicolai de Cusa opera omnia (complete edition of the Heidelberg Academy):

With translation

  • Writings of Nikolaus von Kues in German translation (commissioned by the Heidelberg Academy; Latin text of the critical complete edition, but without the critical apparatus, and German translation):
    • H. 15a: The ignorance taught. De docta ignorantia. Book I , ed. Paul Wilpert, Hans Gerhard Senger, 4th edition, Meiner, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 978-3-7873-1158-3
    • H. 15b: The ignorance taught. De docta ignorantia. Book II , ed. Paul Wilpert, Hans Gerhard Senger, 2nd edition, Meiner, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7873-0416-9
    • H. 15c: The ignorance taught. De docta ignorantia. Book III , ed. Hans Gerhard Senger, Meiner, Hamburg 1977, ISBN 3-7873-0362-6

literature

Remarks

  1. ↑ Augustine, Epistula 130, 15, 28.
  2. ↑ Bonaventure, Breviloquium 5,6,7; See also Bonaventura's commentary on sentences: In II Sententiarum , distinctio 23, articulus 2, quaestio 3, ad 6.
  3. ↑ Nikolaus von Kues, De docta ignorantia I 3.
  4. ↑ Jasper Hopkins: Nicholas of Cusa's Debate with John Wenck , Second Edition, Minneapolis 1984, pp. 3-6.
  5. ↑ See on the conflict James Hogg et al. (Ed.): Autour de la docte ignorance: une controverse sur la théologie mystique au XVe siècle , Salzburg 1992 (contains a reprint of the study of the same name by Edmond Vansteenberghe , Münster 1915, with edition of source texts on the controversy ); Stephan Meier-Oeser: The presence of the forgotten. On the reception of the philosophy of Nicolaus Cusanus from the 15th to the 18th century , Münster 1989, pp. 26–31; Wilhelm Baum : Nikolaus Cusanus in Tyrol. The work of the philosopher and reformer as Prince-Bishop of Brixen , Bozen 1983, pp. 63–79, 129 f .; Kurt Flasch : Nikolaus von Kues. History of a development , 3rd edition, Frankfurt am Main 2008, pp. 181–194.