Deus Ludus: The Christocentric Games of Nicholas of Cusa and Blaise Pascal

Nicholas of Cusa and his daringly speculative theology seem odd matches for Blaise Pascal, the constant critic of the philosophies en vogue during his life. A commonality they share is their mutual concern for the apparent disproportion between the infinite God and the finite human. In this paper, I compare and analyse the shape this question takes in Cusanus's De ludo globi and Pascal's Pensées. Both men observe a sort of ‘ludic’ character inherent to the pursuit of bridging finite and infinite. Cusanus's ‘ball game’ realises the universe and the human being's pursuit of salvation as a circular field in which the player seeks to reach the vanishing point of its centre. Pascal likewise portrays human life as a cosmic game that everyone must ‘play’ with their ethical decisions. Ultimately, they both come to register Christ as the agent and object of their games, the divine player who fashions finitude into infinity. I conclude by sketching a way to reconcile Pascal with natural theology based on his universal game.     

The All‐Seeing: Fraternity and Vision of God in Nicholas of Cusa

“I am because you look upon me.” This phrase from Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei sive De icona is enough to sum up the stakes and originality of this treatise sent in 1453 to the Tegernsee monks. “Speaking in order to see,” “seeing in order to speak,” and “hearing in order to believe” chart the different stages of this unique experience, at once aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual, and mystical. Whereas one might have believed that the mere call to transcendence would be enough to justify gathering together before God, the collective contemplation of Rogier van der Weyden’s painting by the community of monks instead allows one to see and even hear that “the revelation of the witness” (and thus “the revelation of the brother”) validates the truth of this communally shared experience. Reaching the “wall of paradise” does not so much mean “escaping through the wall” or “getting over the wall” as it does “inhabiting the boundary” where opposites “coincide” and man and God meet within a human community.     

Unknowability and Incarnation: Creation and Christology as Philosophy of Science in the Work of Nicholas Cusanus

Nicholas Cusanus contributed to the development of modern science through a philosophy of unknowability, according to which the fact that the world makes sense is interpreted as a gift from the Creator, and the fact that it makes sense for the human is seen as an implication of the human being created in God's image. As placed on the crossroads between the eternal and the finite, the human is thus confronted with the challenge of discerning the manifestations of the infinite in the finite. This challenge was realized by Christ, who is thus epistemologically relevant as a demonstration of the possibility of adequate human knowledge through the coincidence of the human difference from and union with God.     

That He Might Fill All Things: Creation and Christology in Two Treatises by Nicholas of Cusa

Abstract:  Theology in modernity is especially assisted by elements of Christian tradition which work to reunify, after Louis Dupré's formula, the lost synthesis of self, world and God. This article examines the tradition of Christ's immanence in creation, as seen in two short treatises by Nicholas of Cusa from 1445–46. Read together, these treatises illumine Cusa's 'pan-Christic ontology'. The first describes the prospect of 'filiation', the intellect's virtual participation in the Word's sovereignty over created being; the second explains how all beings are lesser theophanies participating in the theophany of God which is the body of Jesus.     

Personale Seinsweisen bei S.L. Frank: Schnittstellen zwischen Anthropologie und Ontologie

This article strives to combine conceptions of the person by Semën Frank. From his early critical Marxist works to his metaphysical personalism and late Christian anthropology, he covered normative-ethical, transcendent-epistemological, and ‘total unity’—ontological questions in equal measure. This diversity will be synthesized in comparisons of his personalist and ontological thought. The text will highlight Frank’s different schemes of personal modes of being, i.e. correlations between the ‘I–thou’ relationship and the absolute being, and move on to contrast his concepts of ontological personality.     

Explicatio and Complicatio: On the Understanding of the Relationship between God and the World in the Work of Nicholas Cusanus

Cusanus understands the relationship between God and the world through the concept of participation, which he explores through the twin concepts of explicatio (unfolding) and complicatio (enfolding). In Cusanus' view, the dialectics of explicatio and complicatio even apply concerning the relationship between God and humanity. This is explored concerning the relation between divine providence and human freedom, concerning the problem of worship and idolatry, and concerning the understanding of Christ as unfolded divinity and enfolded humanity. It is argued that this allows for an understanding of salvation through grace without reducing the importance of human involvement.     

Revolution and the counter-revolution: The conflict over meaning between P. B. Struve and S. L. Frank in 1922

Lecturer in the Lomonossov University, Moscow, specialist in the young Hegel; has also worked quite extensively on Russian prerevolutionary thought. Nikolaj Plotnikov is notably the co-editor of the recently re-published texts,Vekhi, Iz Glubiny in the collection 'Iz istorii oteestvennoj filosofskoj mysli' in conjunction withVoprosy Filosofii.     

Review of: Gennadij Aljaev,Tereza Obolevitch,Tatjana Rezvykh,Aleksandr Tsygankov,S.L. Frank o F.M. Dostoevskom: novye materialy (S.L. Frank on F.M. Dostoevsky: new materials), Moscow,Institut filosofii RAN, 2021, 368 pp.

Studies in East European Thought -