Nicholas of Cusa on Contradiction

We are admitting, therefore, the coincidence of contradictories, above which is the infinite. But this coincidence is a contradiction without contradiction, and it is an end without end.

You, Lord, tell me that just as in unity otherness is without otherness because it is unity, so in infinity contradiction is without contradiction because it is infinity. ...contradiction does not exist without otherness. Yet in simplicity otherness exists without otherness because it is simplicity itself. ...The opposition of opposites is an opposition without opposition, just as the end of finite things is an end without an end. You are, therefore, O God, the opposition of opposites, because you are infinite, and because you are infinite, you are infinity itself. In infinity the opposition of opposites is without opposition.

De Visione Dei (‘On the Vision of God’) 1453 in Nicholas of Cusa, Selected Spiritual Writings, Trans., H. Lawrence Bond, Paulist Press, New York, 1997, p. 259

Now, hot things are originated from the beginning of heat. Therefore, the beginning of heat is not hot. Now, in the cold I see that which belongs to the same genus (as does the hot) but which is not the hot. The situation is similar regarding other contraries. Therefore, since in the one contrary the beginning of the other contrary is present, their transformations are circular, and there is a common subject for each contrary.

...Thus, you see how it is that receptivity is transformed into actuality.

De Beryllo (‘On [Intellectual] Eyeglasses’) 1458 in Nicholas of Cusa: Metaphysical Speculations: Six Latin Texts Translated into English, Trans., Jasper Hopkins, The Arthur J. Banning Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1998, pp. 792-827, p. 813

Engels on China

From Comments at The Virtual Politician:

http://thevirtualpolitician.wordpress.com/2014/03/14/an-introduction-to-american-inequality/

philstanfield

Worth considering: ‘The war in China has given the death-blow to the old China. Isolation has become impossible; the introduction of railways, steam-engines, electricity, and modern large-scale industry has become a necessity, if only for reasons of military defence. But with it the old economic system of small peasant agriculture, where the family also made its industrial products itself, falls to pieces too, and with it the whole old social system which made relatively dense population possible. Millions will be turned out and forced to emigrate; and these millions will find their way even to Europe, and en masse. But as soon as Chinese competition sets in on a mass scale, it will rapidly bring things to a head in your country and over here, and thus the conquest of China by capitalism will at the same time furnish the impulse for the overthrow of capitalism in Europe and America…’

Engels to Friedrich Adolf Sorge in Hoboken; London, November 10, 1894, Marx Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1982, 450-451

--

zeroBelief

I am unfamiliar with Engels and Friedrich Adolf Sorge, let alone their designs upon destroying American and European capitalism. Might you expound a bit on that for us?

Thanks!!!

--

philstanfield

Hello zeroBelief,

Thank you for your interest. Essentially I quoted Engels not to argue for destruction but for how the world works – that the only absolute is change and that matter (objective reality) is primary to consciousness (that consciousness is the product of objective reality – what one thinks, whatever that may be, is secondary to and derivate of the world). Accepting these two points orients and focuses one’s thought on all subjects.

The one-party state in China, as you know, is demonised in capitalist ideology. Western democracy is held up as the highest form of political organisation, the standard. But look not only at the damage the Democrat/Republican divide is doing in the United States (and to the world – echoes of of which division are playing out in Australia where I live, with similar hostility between Labor and Liberal parties, and in other capitalist nations), think of the enormous forces – economic and social, that are being impacted on by these divisions.

In China with its population of 1.3 billion (and as Engels foresaw) is taking place rapid economic development, following on the reforms of Deng Xiaoping. With that development, and dialectically informing it, is the equally rapid rise of millions into the middle class. The middle class has historically been the agent of democracy as we know it and I believe that this rising middle class in China (as it has done everywhere else) will put increasing pressure for economic influence and a political voice on their one-party state and that the inter-relationship of these two (party and middle class) will result in forms of political, economic and social organisation that will be models for the world.

I think that these developments, together with the benefits they bring, underscored by the vast size of the Chinese population will force similar and fundamental economic, political and social change on the Western (capitalist) nations. And this is what Engels foresaw in 1894, in outline. We are witnessing and experiencing the unceasing, contradictory change of dialectics at work.

Regards, Philip

Aristotle and Nicholas of Cusa: To be and/or not to be, that is the question

‘Now it is also the case that there can be nothing intermediate to an assertion and a denial. We must either assert or deny any single predicate of any single subject. The quickest way to show this is by defining truth and falsity. Well, falsity is the assertion that that which is is not or that that which is not is and truth is the assertion that that which is is and that that which is not is not. Thus anyone who asserts anything to be or not to be is either telling the truth or telling a falsehood. On the other hand, neither that which is is said either not to be or to be nor is that which is not.

And if there were an intermediate of contradictory statements, then it would either be like grey between black and white or like the non-man-non-horse between man and horse.’

Aristotle The Metaphysics, Gamma 7 1011b, Trans. and Introduction by Hugh Lawson-Tancred, Penguin, London, 2004, 107

‘I want to tell you of one more thing that I see to be marvellous above other things. ...since all things are singular, they are both similar, because they are singular, and dissimilar, because they are singular; (and they are not similar, because they are singular), and not dissimilar, because they are singular. A corresponding point holds regarding same and different, equal and unequal, singular and plural, one and many, even and odd, concordant and discordant, and the likes, although this (claim) seems absurd to the philosophers who adhere - even in theological matters - to the principle that each thing either is or is not (the case).’

Nicholas of Cusa, De Venatione Sapientiae (On the Pursuit of Wisdom), Nicholas of Cusa: Metaphysical Speculations, Six Latin Texts Translated into English, Trans., Jasper Hopkins, The Arthur J. Banning Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1998, 1320-21

On the Mystical Shaping of Self

One of the greatest, most fruitful and resonant metaphors in Western culture:

From Plotinus:

‘But how are you to see into a virtuous Soul and know its loveliness? Withdraw into yourself and look. And if you do not find yourself beautiful yet, act as does the creator of a statue that is to be made beautiful: he cuts away here, he smoothes there, he makes this line lighter, this other purer, until a lovely face has grown upon his work. So do you also: cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue, until there shall shine out on you from it the godlike splendour of virtue, until you shall see the perfect goodness surely established in the stainless shrine.’

The Enneads, Trans., Stephen MacKenna, Penguin, London, 1991, 54, 1.6.9

through Christianity:

‘A sculptor who wishes to carve a figure out of a block uses his chisel, first cutting away great chunks of marble, then smaller pieces, until he finally reaches a point where only a brush of hand is needed to reveal the figure. In the same way, the soul has to undergo tremendous mortifications at first, and then more refined detachments, until finally its Divine image is revealed.’

From: https://catholicismpure.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/sculpting-our-souls-during-lent-3-quotes-from-ven-fulton-sheen/

to Cusanus:

‘For the wise thought as if [along the following line]: a craftsman [who] wants to chisel a statue in stone and [who] has in himself the form of the statue, as an idea, produces - through certain instruments which he moves - the form of the statue in imitation of the idea’

De Docta Ignorantia II.10, in Jasper Hopkins, Nicholas of Cusa On Learned Ignorance (De Docta Ignorantia, 1440), The Arthur J. Banning Press, Minneapolis, 1985, 112

through Nietzsche:

‘Man is no longer an artist, he has become a work of art: the artistic power of the whole of nature reveals itself to the supreme gratification of the primal Oneness amidst the paroxysms of intoxication. The noblest clay, the most precious marble, man, is kneaded and hewn here, and to the chisel-blows of the Dionysiac world-artist there echoes the cry of the Eleusinian mysteries, “Do you bow low, multitudes? Do you sense the Creator, world?"'

Friedrich Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) Penguin, Trans., Shaun Whiteside, Ed., Michael Tanner 1993, 18

through Foucault:

‘This transformation of one’s self by one’s own knowledge is, I think, something rather close to the aesthetic experience. Why should a painter work if he is not transformed by his own painting?’

in Michel Foucault, Politics, Philosophy, Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977-1984,  Ed., Lawrence D. Kritzman, Routledge, London, 1990, 14

And what does the concealed priesthood in academic philosophy, who have failed so profoundly in their social and intellectual responsibility have to say about all this mysticism in their and our midst?

The mystic Wittgenstein spoke for them: ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.’

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921), Trans., D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness, Routledge, New York, 2005

What does materialism have to do with mysticism?

Not only is materialism indebted to mysticism - as Marx implicitly acknowledged when he correctly described the Christian Neoplatonist Hegel’s philosophy as mystical1 - mysticism and its influence pervade Western culture.

The contribution of mysticism in all areas has been profound - to literature, the visual arts, religion, particularly to and through philosophy with its concealed priesthood (which priesthood was identified by the overt priest Nietzsche), to science - it inspired Copernicus to the greatest scientific hypothesis, and Kepler. In the West, its primarily Neoplatonic form, in reflecting the contradictory, poetic dynamism of the world - and having been stood on its feet by Marx - became the engine of dialectical materialism itself.2

We, in the West, on the back of all that has been achieved, believe a monumental lie, a monumental arrogance, a monumental delusion - that while others worship idols, stare at their navels, are committed to 'failed' or 'backward' ideologies or are obsessed with filial piety, we have risen above this to become the triumphal bearers of millennial ‘Reason’. We wear this self-awarded badge of ‘Reason’ as a cultural definition. It is the belief we have relied on to most distinguish the West from the rest.

The impact of mysticism argues against this. Linguistic reason, a core tool of all authoritarians from Plato onwards, is not the only form of reason. At the heart of mysticism is another - powerful and fluid, complex, subtle and evanescent. And in the inspiration of its 'connectedness', immensely creative.

Linguistic reason draws on this 'connectedness' as its proponents seek to contain and deny it. The artist and theologian Plato is a prime example. I refer you to the lyrical power of the Ion:

For a Poet is indeed a thing ethereally light, winged, and sacred...

Linguistic reason, while reason’s jewel, is but its tip. When we wake in the middle of the night with the solution to a long-standing problem, had we been dotting every ‘i’ and crossing every ‘t’, or might trotting chairs and fluttering wings have borne fruit in creative 'space'?

Or when you round a corner and bump into a stranger - no time for considered words and structured sentences - think of the richness, at multiple levels, of what has taken place in your brain - in a moment's silence. Such a cognitive experience (that of 'first impressions') is so intense it merges seamlessly with the physical. This thinking is the ever-present underlay of what is done linguistically.

Intuitive thought draws most directly on our connectedness - to all that comprises us, to what we remember, and to the world. It provides us with perhaps our deepest cognitive experience of the world. That this has been given not only religious but mystical meaning does not detract from its objective nature and potential.

In considering what comprises 'reason', the materialist must begin with how the brain functions in its totality, recognising that those functions bear on the whole dialectically, that they are inseparable and plastic, and not focus only on the brain's capacity for its highest product - linguistic expression.

Notes
1. Marx wrote: ‘I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker...The mystification which the dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general forms of motion in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be inverted, in order to discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.‘ Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1, Postface to the Second Edition 1873, Penguin, London, 1982, p. 103.

2. See William Franke's two volume anthology On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, 2007

*   *   *

Nicholas of Cusa: On the World

Who would not admire this Artisan, who with regard to the spheres, the stars, and the regions of the stars used such skill that there is - though without complete precision - both a harmony of all things and a diversity of all things? (This Artisan) considered in advance the sizes, the placing, and the motion of the stars in the one world; and He ordained the distances of the stars in such way that unless each region were as it is, it could neither exist nor exist in such a place and with such an order - nor could the universe exist. Moreover, He bestowed on all stars a differing brightness, influence, shape, colour, and heat. (Heat causally accompanies the brightness.) And He established the interrelationship of parts so proportionally that in each thing the motion of the parts is oriented toward the whole. With heavy things (the motion is) downward toward the centre, and with light things it is upward from the centre and around the centre (e.g., we perceive the motion of the stars as circular).

With regard to these objects, which are so worthy of admiration, so varied, and so different, we recognise - through learned ignorance and in accordance with the preceding points - that we cannot know the rationale for any of God's works but can only marvel; for the Lord is great, whose greatness is without end.

Nicholas of Cusa, De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance), 1440, II.13, in Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance, Jasper Hopkins, The Arthur J. Banning Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1990, (online) p. 100