De docta ignorantia

De Docta ignorantia ( "On learned ignorance ") is the title of a Latin script the philosopher and theologian Nicholas of Cusa ( Cusanus ). In it, he developed the foundations of his theology and a closely related speculative cosmology. He dedicated the February 12, 1440 Kues on the Mosel (now Bernkastel -Kues ) completed work to the Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini, with whom he was friends.

Prehistory

Even the ancient philosopher Socrates stressed his knowledge of his ignorance. By that he meant no waiver of knowledge, but a realistic assessment of their own ignorance as a starting point for pursuit of knowledge. Who have recognized their ignorance, can receive instruction.

The expression docta ignorantia has been used in a letter as the first of the late antique church father Augustine of Hippo. He writes: " There are, to express myself so, in us a belehrtes lack of knowledge, but teaches that our weakness stands by the Spirit of God. " He adds, referring to the impossibility of a comprehensive knowledge of God; however, is possible a belehrtes by divine grace not to know. The " instructed not to know" thus belongs to the negative theology, which points to the inadequacy of all positive statements about God and logically limited to statements of what is not God. The most prominent representative of this trend was the late antique Neoplatonist Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. He thinks that man by he rises without knowledge beyond itself ( agnostos anatathēti ), can reach a divine experience to some extent. In the 13th century Franciscan theologian Bonaventure draws on the idea. He understands belehrtem not knowing the elevation of the spirit, which has detached from everything and denies all notions, in the darkness, what is necessary for union with God. Here, Bonaventure cites Pseudo-Dionysius, who, however, the term " learned ignorance " is not used.

Concept of Nicholas of Cusa

Its for the following period relevant to the present day expression is replaced by the phrase docta ignorantia of Nicholas of Cusa, who in his philosophy assigns it a central role and titled the first of its philosophical and theological masterpieces so. Nicholas continues the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius.

In De docta ignorantia Nicholas discards in terms of negative theology all positive statements about God as inappropriate and misleading. How Bonaventura, he turns to God not by raising the claim to be able to possess or attain knowledge of him, but by gaining knowledge of his own ignorance and thus about yourself " learned ignorance ". However, in contrast to Augustine and Bonaventure, he describes the instruction that receives the ignorant, not as pure grace of God, but as the fruit of efforts of the human spirit that transcends to the search for truth and wisdom itself.

Developed by Nicholas " rule of taught ignorance " states that you can never get by observing something that can be quantitative or qualitative increased or increased or decreased, to the knowledge of an absolute maximum. However, the human mind (ratio) can by its nature only able to reproduce or rundown enabled, so relative objects deal, since its activity is a comparison of the familiar with the unknown. In the area of ​​responsibility of the mind, under the increases to a firm concrete objects, there are only degrees of approximation, no absolute equality and no accuracy. God as the Absolute and Infinite is the mind thus in principle inaccessible.

Higher than the mind is after Nicholas ' conviction, the reason ( intellectus ), since it is able to recognize the limits of the intellect. But it is finite and can therefore by De docta ignorantia also not penetrate to true knowledge of God; the paradoxical coincidence of opposites in God, the coincidentia oppositorum, they do not really comprehend. But since they also " something divine ", it may nevertheless the divine truth as it can "see" and "touch". Later, in De coniecturis ( 1442 ), written in the period 1445-1447 in the small fonts and particularly in De visione dei ( 1453) Santa Claus arrives at a more optimistic assessment of the possibilities of reason.

Paradoxically, says Nicholas that a belehrter about his ignorance man " include the incomprehensible without border as" may. While he emphasizes the futility of all rational efforts in the knowledge of God, he looks at the world of knowledge as a process, as a not at the end reaching process of approximation to the truth, which is connected with an increase in cognitive powers: " The deeper we be taught in this ignorance are, the more we will approach the truth itself. "

Reception

A contemporary and adversary of Nicholas of Cusa, theology professor John Wenck, 1442/43 uses the concept of " taught ignorance " in a pamphlet De ignota litteratura ( " About the unknown scholarship " ) as heretical to. He accused Nicholas of pantheism and the destruction of theology. Only a few years later, in 1449, Nicholas, who has been charged by now ( 1448 ) Cardinal reacts doctae with the counter- signature Apologia ignorantiae ( "defense of taught ignorance "). Then Wenck turn responds with a ( non-preserved ) reply.

A fierce opponent of the concept of " taught ignorance " is also the Carthusian Vincent de Aggsbach. He opposes the Benedictine Bernard of Waging, a follower of Nicholas, the 1451/52 a Laudatorium doctae ignorantiae ( " Praise of, taught ignorance ' " ) had written. His conception explains Vincent in 1454 in a letter, later known as Impugnatorium laudatorii doctae ignorantiae ("Attack on the praise, taught ignorance ' "). In it, he denies that recommended by Nikolaus efforts may be a viable option for the knowledge of God. Bernhard responded in 1459 with a Defensorium laudatorii doctae ignorantiae ( " defense of praise of, taught ignorance ' ").