Explicatio

Explicatio ( Latin explicatio , unfolding, unraveling, expressing ') means in the philosophy of late antiquity and the Middle Ages a separation, unfolding or fanning out of the unity (the whole , the concept , God ) into the multiplicity of its inner components.

In Plotinus , things are called an expanded number . With Nikolaus von Kues the number is the explicatio unitatis , and the movement the explicatio quietis (in De docta ignorantia , 1440). He called explicatio dei the self-development of God, which enables the existence of God in everything finite. This definition finds a correspondence in complicatio , which expresses the state of God's containment in all finite things. In contrast to the deus absconditus (i.e. God as hidden creative force), the deus explicitus is the world as a created form (see also Emanation ).

In logic, the explicatio of a concept consists in making its characteristics clear , which makes the concept itself clear: the more characteristics become aware, the more reliably it can be decided whether a given something falls under this concept or not. This is followed by modern explication as a more precise definition of a vague term.