Original Research - Special Collection: Ignatius van Wyk Dedication

Dionisiese spore in Kusa se metafisika

Johann Beukes
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies | Vol 74, No 4 | a5112 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v74i4.5112 | © 2018 Johann Beukes | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 18 May 2018 | Published: 22 November 2018

About the author(s)

Johann Beukes, Department of Philosophy, University of the Free State, South Africa

Abstract

This article investigates the palimpsest reception of Pseudo-Dionysius (ca. 500) in the metaphysics of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464). The article covers Cusa’s political theory and metaphysics, which are intertwined. Reading Cusa against the backdrop of an analysis of Pseudo-Dionysius’ metaphysics in a preceding article, the author, in a synthetic conclusion, isolates seven Dionysic ‘trails’ (S1 to S7) in Cusa’s metaphysics: the interpretation of transcendence as bound to immanence; the affirmation of God’s transcendence in the world (or a metaphysics of ‘creation as teophany’); the radical transcendence and simultaneous radical immanence of God (that is, God as ‘Beingness’); fundamental restrictions of language and the analogical ‘Naming’ of God; creation as a system of dialectical symbols about God; the analogical participation of the subject in creation; and unification (reditus, the ‘flowing of things back to God’). The Dionysic trails in Cusa’s metaphysics are described as a noteworthy, if not important, palimpsest in the corpus of late Medieval philosophy and is indicative of what the author puts forward as ‘discursive memory’, which is presented as a modern-critical concept.

Keywords

Pseudo-Dionisius die Areopagiet; Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite; Pseudo-Denys; Dionysius; Cusanus; Kusa; Nikolaus van Kusa; Kues; Cusa; Nicholas of Cusa; palimpses; palimpsest; E.D. Perl; Middel-Platonisme; Middle Platonism; Neoplatonisme; Neoplatonism

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