The mirror nature in the light of the aenigmatica scientia

MARÍA CECILIA RUSCONI

Spiegel und Porträt ? zur Bedeutung zweier zentraler Bilder im Denken des Nikolaus Cusanus

Shaker

Lugar: Maastricht; Año: 2005; p. 95 - 102

In Cusa?s anthropology man is introduced as a creative principle, since he is finite image of the infinite mind, and with his knowledge he opens his own power as a proportional creation from the unity of a mens, already considered (on previously plays) as a living number, which, by reason of it being image of the divine intellect, is capable of creating the similarities of the similarities of that intellect. Such parallelism in the field of creating is the core that allows to know enigmatically (that is: by image and not in a direct way), the creation of the first principle by looking in the mirror of the human creation, which requires to look itself in the mirror of the created thing (what was measured on the way of the proportional knowledge): what is known. Thus, the way to the incomprehensible comprehension of the first principle is not a direct rout, but it supposes a first look to the world, in the knowledge ?measurement? of objects, in which the mind that knows them has put something of itself: the number, to know in a quantitative way, what, because of its nature, is qualitative. Such a display required to know objects makes possible the operation of these as a first image which makes it possible to reflect the own creative power. This power is nothing but the finite image of the infinite power of the first principle. In this way ?on so that?, the mens imago dei, knowing itself through the first movement, will be able to become itself  an image, by using the intellect as if it were a lens, and thus, to reflect in itself, by means of a second movement, the ineffable wanted object: the infinite principle. Such indirect way is which Nicolas of Cusa tries to present in an opuscule in 1458: De Beryllo, under the name of aenigmatica scientia.