Nicholas Cusa's Thought Of Immanence

Nicolaus Cusanus' thought of immanence, namely his statement of the close relation of the absolute (God) and the individual beings (creatures), is the dominating content and central thread of his lifelong thinking. The wise of his consideration and statement of this problem, makes him different from the traditional scholasticism of the medieval Christianity on the one hand, and also from the negative theology and the mysticism on the other hand. This dissertation trys to illuminate the particularity of Nicolaus Cusanus' thought against the background of the traditional inheritance.In the "Introduction", based upon the clarification of the historical background of Cusanus' thought, I will firstly make clear of the task of Cusanus' thought, namely under the premise that God's transcendence is not hurted, to manifest the direct and close relationship between God and individual creatures, through a wise which we human can understand and know, rather than a wise which we only can feel or experience through some sort of ecstasis-the former represents Cusanus' thought and expression of God's immanence:then I will summarize the important foreign and domestic researches on this theme; finally I will show the main construction of this dissertation.Chapter 1 illustrates the sources of Cusanus' thought of immanence. The direct and important sources are the neoplatonic thought of emanation and its dialectics of ascending and descending, which comes from Plato's consideration of the relation of the One and the many, and the so-called Christian Platonism, among which the thoughts of Pseudo-Dionysius and Master Eckhart are very important for Cusanus' thought. Despite the important influences of all theses sources, Cusanus makes a transformation when useing them.Chapter 2 discusses the thought of immanence in earlier Cusanus. His thought of this stage is deeply influenced by the negative theology and mysticism, but also goes beyond these two kinds of thought. The reflection of the "Most" and the "integration of opposites", comes to a conclusion that "all in all and each in each", depending on the definition of God as the infinite in the sense of abundance and richness, which makes God transcending infinitely over all of the finite creatures on the one hand, and as the one and only essence, measure and limit of all the things, also immanent in all of the creatures on the other hand. Chapter 3 presents the consideration of the relation of the infinite spirit and the human spirit in middle Cusanus. Resorting to the neoplatonic thought of emanation and the dialectics of ascending and descending, Cusanus thinks about the immanence of the infinite spirit in all the levels of the human spirit. As a result of this mode, all the activities of the human spirit becomes a conjecture (coniectura), which is the manifestation of the truth, but not the truth itself. Besides, the creativity and the autonomy of the human spirit is also thereby illustrated and confirmedChapter 4 gives the ontological grounding and the completion of Cusanus' thought of immanence. The thought of "can-is" (possest) in later Cusanus is grounded on the structure of "possibility-reality" (dynamis-energeia) in Aristoteles, and the applying and reconstructing of this structure. He also makes this structure and the trinity of the Christian God to relate and interpret with each other, and thereby clarifies the ontological grounding of God's immanence in everything in this world. Some central problems in the earlier and middle thought of immanence are also fundamentally resolved here. In this sense, the thought of "can-is" is the completion of Cusanus' thought of immanence.In the end is a postscript:On the basis of the elucidation of the development of Cusanus' thought of immanence and the main characters of various periods of this development, we try to compare preliminarily Cusanus' thought and the relative thoughts in modern philosophy (Descartes, Leibniz and Kant), and thereby to illuminate the particularity of the thought of Cusanus.