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The Method of Learned Ignorance by William F Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1995 The Method of Learned Ignorance by William F. Wertz, Jr. s Lyndon H. Learned Ignorance, he was LaRouche, Jr. has able to attain an under- Acorrectly empha- standing of things, which sized, modern science was he had “long desired to launched single-handedly attain by various doctrinal by one individual, Cardi- approaches [variis doctri- nal Nicolaus of Cusa narum viis], but could not.” (1401-64), with the com- As we shall see, although pletion of his ground- Cusanus does not thereby breaking book, On deviate from the teachings Learned Ignorance, on of the Catholic Church, by February 12, 1440. As we employing the Platonic know from his letter de- method with its emphasis dicating the book to Car- on creative intellect and dinal Julian Cesarini, rejecting the Aristotelian Cusanus was led to em- method with its emphasis brace the central method- on inductive and deduc- ological concept of learned tive logic based on the ignorance while returning “law of contradiction,” by sea from Constantino- Cusanus was able not Albrecht Dürer, “The Last Supper,” 1510. ple to the Council of Flo- only to render the “doc- rence via Venice between trines” of Christianity November 27, 1437 and February 8, 1438. Cusanus had intelligible, but in doing so to found modern science. left the Council of Basel in order to travel to Greece on The method of learned ignorance is not the method of behalf of Pope Eugene IV. There he was to organize rep- rote memorization. It is the Socratic method of negation resentatives of the Greek Orthodox Church to attend the and hypothesis, as is further clarified by another work, ecumenical council in Florence which briefly achieved On Conjectures, which was also completed in the year reunification of the Roman Catholic Church and the 1440 and was conceived as a companion piece to On Eastern Orthodox Churches which had split from Rome Learned Ignorance. In his Defense of Learned Ignorance in the year A.D. 1055. (1449), Cusanus explicitly identifies his method as that of As Cusanus also writes in his letter to Cesarini, in On Socrates. He writes that Socrates excelled the Athenian 38 © 1995 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. intelligentsia of his day, “in that he knew that he was the “coincidence of opposites” in the Divine Mind. The ignorant, whereas the others [who were boasting that fact that Cusanus’ concept of the “coincidence of oppo- they knew something important, though being ignorant sites” was an attack on Aristotelianism, was immediate- of many things] did not know that they were ignorant.” ly recognized by John Wenck, who accused Cusanus of Cusanus writes further that he found a similar concept destroying the “fundamental principle of all knowl- in Philo Judaeus, who wrote in Questions on Genesis that edge, viz., the principle that it is impossible both to be “the summit of knowledge is reserved only for God, and not to be the same thing, as we read in Metaphysics. whom the soul calls as a witness to the fact that with a But this man cares little for the sayings of Aristotle.” pure conscience it is confessing its ignorance. For by itself Wenck attributed Cusanus’ method to a “meagerness of the soul knows that it knows nothing unfailingly.” instruction in logic” and insisted that Cusanus’ notion In the same location Cusanus likened doctrinaire the- of coincidence of opposites “destroys Aristotle’s entire ologians who boast of their knowledge of theology to doctrine.” blind men. “For almost all who give themselves to the In response to Wenck, Cusanus wrote: “But the Aris- study of theology spend time with certain positive tradi- totelian sect now prevails. This sect regards as heresy the tions and their forms; and when they know how to speak method of the coincidence of opposites. Yet, the endorse- as do the others whom they have set up as their instruc- ment of this method is the beginning of the ascent unto tors, they think that they are theologians.” mystical theology. Hence, this method, which is com- As we shall see, the response of the Aristotelians to On pletely tasteless to those nourished in this sect, is pushed Learned Ignorance, beginning with a work written by far from them, as being contrary to their undertaking. John Wenck entitled On Unknown Learning and written Hence, it would be comparable to a miracle—just as between March 26, 1442 and mid-summer of 1443, was would be the transformation of the sect—for them to to denounce Cusanus—who was later elevated to the reject Aristotle and to leap higher.” position of Cardinal—for violating traditional “ortho- From the 1440’s to today, those, as Cusanus wrote, doxy.” To this day, if one consults a standard Catholic “laboring with the Aristotelian tradition,” be they adher- encyclopedia, Nicolaus of Cusa, the founder of modern ents of the later Reformation or the Counter-Reforma- science and defender of the Christian faith, is falsely tion, have found common cause in rejecting and mischar- characterized as a pantheist, in large part based upon acterizing the fundamental intellectual breakthrough Wenck’s discredited writing. achieved by Cusanus in On Learned Ignorance. Cusanus is also usually dismissed by such truly ignorant In this essay I intend to identify what is unique about people as a conciliarist, that is, as an adherent of the view this work, which in conjunction with Cusanus’ later predominant at the Council of Basel (1431-38) that the work, “On the Quadrature of the Circle” (1450), con- church council should have supremacy over the Pope. In tributed to a qualitative shift in world history following doing so, they ignore the fact that it was Cusanus who left the Council of Florence. the Council of Basel in support of Pope Eugene IV in 1437, based precisely upon the principles he espoused in his On Cusanus’ Concept Catholic Concordance (1433); while it was Wenck who, as Cusanus writes in his Defense of Learned Ignorance, “took of God up the condemned cause of the men of Basel.” ON LEARNED IGNORANCE As Wenck’s attack on On Learned Ignorance and is comprised of three Cusanus’ Defense make clear, the real issue then and as it books. The first book continues to be today, both within and without the deals with God, with Catholic Church, is the issue of Plato versus Aristotle. Absolute Maximality. The From the standpoint of Plato, God is the Creator, man is second book deals with created in His image (imago Dei) and is capable of creativi- the universe, which he ty (capax Dei), and the physical universe is not-entropic. describes as a contracted From the standpoint of Aristotle, God is not present in the maximum. The third world, man is merely capable of ratiocination and not of book deals with Jesus creativity, and the physical universe is entropic. Christ, and in particular The primary polemic of both On Learned Ignorance with the notion of the Incarnation. Jesus Christ is and its companion piece, On Conjectures, was against described as the Absolute Maximum and the contracted the Aristotelian “law of contradiction,” which denied maximum. In the third book, Nicolaus of Cusa attempts 39 Figure 1 FIGURE 1. Truth (circle) Truth (circle) Truth (circle) Intellect (an 1/6060° inscribed polygon of 216 [65,536] sides) seen under a magnifying glass. 1/60° Intellect Intellect (an inscribed polygon of 22 sides) (an inscribed polygon of 24 sides) to render intelligible the concept of the Incarnation, the studies its implications, then the Incarnation, specifically idea that Jesus Christ is the Logos and man. This, of the person of Jesus Christ, is the one in whom all the trea- course, is something unique to Christianity and is not sures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden and to be accepted by other religions, including Judaism and discovered. Islam. Since Cusanus’ notion of Jesus Christ is that he is the If one wishes to understand the qualitative break- Word of God and is therefore Maximal Reason, this is through in world history achieved in the aftermath of the totally integral to the idea that, through the imitation of Council of Florence, one must consider precisely this Christ, one rises to the level of creative reason and thus is issue—not, however, at the level of blind faith, but rather, able to act, as a microcosm, upon the universe or the as Cusanus did, in his attempts to put forward an intelli- macrocosm as a whole. gible representation of the Incarnation which was coher- ent with the notion of the Filioque, the central issue at the The Maximum-Minimum Principle Council of Florence. In St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, he writes that Cusanus’ discussion of God builds on that of St. “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are hidden Anselm, who in his Prologium wrote that God is “that in Christ. “He is the image of the invisible God, the first- being than which a greater cannot be conceived.” born of all creation. For in him were created all things . Cusanus writes that the Maximum is “that than which . He is before all things, and in him all things hold there cannot be anything greater.” But Cusanus goes together.” Similarly the Apostle John says: “In the begin- beyond Anselm to argue that the maximum is also ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and simultaneously the minimum. the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. In Book I, Chapter 3 of On Learned Ignorance, All things came to be through him, and without him Cusanus uses the impossibility of squaring a circle to nothing came to be.” demonstrate the inability of the finite, i.e., created If these statements are true, then knowledge of Christ human intellect in the realm of Becoming, to know the is the necessary key to understanding God, the physical Absolute Infinite or God with precision (SEE Figure 1).
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