Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World

Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004385681
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Nicholas of Cusa and Early Modern Reform sheds new light on Cusanus’ relationship to early modernity by focusing on the reform of church, the reform of theology, the reform of perspective, and the reform of method – which together aim to encompass the breadth and depth of Cusanus’ own reform initiatives. In particular, in examining the way in which he served as inspiration for a wide and diverse array of reform-minded philosophers, ecclesiastics, theologians, and lay scholars in the midst of their struggle for the renewal and restoration of the individual, society, and the world, our volume combines a focus on Cusanus as a paradigmatic thinker with a study of his concrete influence on early modern thought. This volume is aimed at scholars working in the field of late medieval and early modern philosophy, theology, and history of science. As the first Anglophone volume to explore the early modern reception of Nicholas of Cusa, this work will provide an important complement to a growing number of companions focusing on his life and thought.

Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World

Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004385681
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book Here

Book Description
Nicholas of Cusa and Early Modern Reform sheds new light on Cusanus’ relationship to early modernity by focusing on the reform of church, the reform of theology, the reform of perspective, and the reform of method – which together aim to encompass the breadth and depth of Cusanus’ own reform initiatives. In particular, in examining the way in which he served as inspiration for a wide and diverse array of reform-minded philosophers, ecclesiastics, theologians, and lay scholars in the midst of their struggle for the renewal and restoration of the individual, society, and the world, our volume combines a focus on Cusanus as a paradigmatic thinker with a study of his concrete influence on early modern thought. This volume is aimed at scholars working in the field of late medieval and early modern philosophy, theology, and history of science. As the first Anglophone volume to explore the early modern reception of Nicholas of Cusa, this work will provide an important complement to a growing number of companions focusing on his life and thought.

Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition

Nicholas of Cusa and Times of Transition PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004382410
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) was active during the Renaissance, developing adventurous ideas even while serving as a churchman. The religious issues with which he engaged – spiritual, apocalyptic and institutional – were to play out in the Reformation. These essays reflect the interests of Cusanus but also those of Gerald Christianson, who has studied church history, the Renaissance and the Reformation. The book places Nicholas into his times but also looks at his later reception. The first part addresses institutional issues, including Schism, conciliarism, indulgences and the possibility of dialogue with Muslims. The second treats theological and philosophical themes, including nominalism, time, faith, religious metaphor, and prediction of the end times.

Cusanus Today

Cusanus Today PDF Author: David Albertson
Publisher: CUA Press
ISBN: 0813238110
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 399

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Book Description
At the end of the nineteenth century, German theologians and philosophers rediscovered the Renaissance cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). Immediately they hailed Cusanus as the first modern thinker, a brilliant German rival to the French Descartes. But since the founding of the Cusanus critical edition in 1927 up to its conclusion in 2005, historians have gradually learned that Nicholas was more of a medieval preacher and contemplative than a modern philosopher. Yet over the same century, modern German and French readers were already digging into Nicholas's many works. There they encountered an exciting voice with fresh perspectives about God's immanence in the cosmos and the awesome capacities of the human mind. Leading philosophers and theologians from Erich Przywara to Karl Jaspers to Hans-Georg Gadamer, and from Gilles Deleuze to Jacques Lacan to Michel de Certeau, found their own thinking stimulated by the cardinal's innovative concepts and interdisciplinary style. Even as Nicholas shifted from modern to medieval among historians, he was emerging as a contemporary interlocutor for moderns and postmoderns. Who could have guessed that the first debate between Jean-Luc Marion and Emmanuel Falque would take place over the fifteenth-century mystical dialogue, De visione dei? If Meister Eckhart found his moment amidst Deconstruction in prior decades, Nicholas of Cusa is our thinker for today. His interests anticipate themes in continental philosophy of religion, whether alterity, invisibility, the fold, or the icon. His habit of interweaving philosophy and theology anticipates current debates on the thresholds of phenomenology. Our volume first maps the contours of modern receptions of Nicholas of Cusa in French and German spheres, and then beyond Europe to the Americas and Japan. It also hosts the next round of engagement by some of today's most original Christian thinkers: Emmanuel Falque, John Milbank, and David Bentley Hart.

Encountering Others, Understanding Ourselves in Medieval and Early Modern Thought

Encountering Others, Understanding Ourselves in Medieval and Early Modern Thought PDF Author: Nicolas Faucher
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110748932
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
Recent research has challenged our view of the Abrahamic religious traditions as unilaterally intolerant and incapable of recognizing otherness in all its diversity and richness; but a diachronic and comparative study of how these traditions deal with otherness is yet to appear. This volume aims to contribute to such a study by presenting different treatments of otherness in medieval and early modern thought. Part I: Altruism deals with attitudes and behaviors that benefit others, regardless of its motives. We deal with the social rights and emotions as well as the moral obligations that the very existence of other human beings, whatever their characteristics, creates for a community. Part II: Religious recognition and toleration considers identity, toleration and mutual recognition created by the existence of religious or ethnic otherness in a given social, religious or political community. Part III: Evil deals with religious otherness that is considered evil and rejected such as heretics and malevolent, demonic entities. The volume will ultimately inform the reader on the nature of religious toleration (including beliefs and doctrines, even emotions) as well as of the self-definition of religious communities when encountering and defining otherness in different ways.

The Analogical Turn

The Analogical Turn PDF Author: Johannes Hoff
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 0802868908
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Recovers a 15th-century thinker s original insights for theology and philosophy today Societies today, says Johannes Hoff, are characterized by their inability to reconcile seemingly black-and-white scientific rationality with the ambiguity of postmodern pop culture. In the face of this crisis, his book The Analogical Turn recovers the fifteenth-century thinker Nicholas of Cusa s alternative vision of modernity to develop a fresh perspective on the challenges of our time. In contrast to his mainstream contemporaries, Cusa s appreciation of individuality, creativity, and scientific precision was deeply rooted in the analogical rationality of the Middle Ages. He revived and transformed the tradition of scientific realism in a manner that now, retrospectively, offers new insights into the completely ordinary chaos of postmodern everyday life. Hoff s original study offers a new vision of the history of modernity and the related secularization narrative, a deconstruction of the basic assumptions of postmodernism, and an unfolding of a liturgically grounded concept of common-sense realism.

Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus

Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus PDF Author: Jason Aleksander
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004536906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus engages with the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy through the lens of the 15th century philosopher and theologian, Nicholas of Cusa. The volume comprises nineteen essays that break down the barriers between medieval and Renaissance studies, reinterpreting Cusanus’ place in the history of thought by exploring the archive that informed his thinking, while also interrogating his works by exploring them from the standpoint of their later reception by modern philosophers and theologians. The volume also offers tribute to the career of Donald F. Duclow, a leading scholar in the field of Cusanus studies in particular and of the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy more generally.

Ramism and the Reformation of Method

Ramism and the Reformation of Method PDF Author: Simon J. G. Burton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197516351
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Ramism and the Reformation of Method explores the popular early modern movement of Ramism and its ambitious attempt to transform Church and society. It considers the relation of Ramism to Reformed Christianity and its development as a divine logic attuned to understanding both Scripture and the world. In doing so, it reveals how Ramists rejected the notion of a philosophy or worldview independent of God and sought to encompass everything under an overarching Christian philosophy indebted to Franciscan ideals. The supreme goal of the Ramists was the remaking of the world in the image of the Triune God.

Religion, the Supernatural and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe

Religion, the Supernatural and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe PDF Author: Jennifer Spinks
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004299017
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
This volume brings together some of the most exciting new scholarship on these themes, and thus pays tribute to the ground-breaking work of Charles Zika. Seventeen interdisciplinary essays offer new insights into the materiality and belief systems of early modern religious cultures as found in artworks, books, fragmentary texts and even in Protestant ‘relics’. Some contributions reassess communal and individual responses to cases of possession, others focus on witchcraft and manifestations of the disordered natural world. Canonical figures and events, from Martin Luther to the Salem witch trials, are looked at afresh. Collectively, these essays demonstrate how cultural and interdisciplinary trends in religious history illuminate the experiences of early modern Europeans. Contributors: Susan Broomhall, Heather Dalton, Dagmar Eichberger, Peter Howard, E. J. Kent, Brian P. Levack, Dolly MacKinnon, Louise Marshall, Donna Merwick, Leigh T.I. Penman, Shelley Perlove, Lyndal Roper, Peter Sherlock, Larry Silver, Patricia Simons, Jennifer Spinks, Hans de Waardt and Alexandra Walsham.

The Atom in Seventeenth-century Poetry

The Atom in Seventeenth-century Poetry PDF Author: Cassandra Gorman
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1843845938
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
An investigation into the remarkable "poetics of the atom" in English literary texts from the mid to late seventeenth century. The early modern "atom" - understood as an indivisible particle of matter - captured the poetic imagination in ways that extended far beyond the reception of Lucretius and Epicurean atomism. Contrarily to fears of atomisation and materialist threat, many poets and philosophers of the period sought positive, spiritual motivation in the concept of material indivisibility. This book traces the metaphysical import of these poetic atoms, teasing out an affinity between poetic and atomic forms in seventeenth-century texts. In the writings of Henry More, Thomas Traherne, Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter and Lucy Hutchinson, both atoms and poems were instrumental in acts of creating, ordering and reconstructing knowledge. Their poems emerge as exquisitely self-conscious atomic forms, producing intimate reflections on the creative power and indivisibility of self, soul and God. The book begins with a survey of the imaginative possibilities surrounding the early modern "atom", before considering the indivisible centres of the Cambridge Platonist Henry More's cosmic, Spenserian poetics. The focus then turns to the lyrical bond formed between atom and soul in the writings of Thomas Traherne, and from there, to the experimental sequences of Margaret Cavendish and Hester Pulter, whose poetic spaces create new worlds and imagine alternative lives. The book concludes with a study of Lucy Hutchinson's creation poem Order and Disorder, which anticipates the regeneration of fallen being in atomic and alchemical terms.

Art and Mysticism

Art and Mysticism PDF Author: Louise Nelstrop
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351765140
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
From the visual and textual art of Anglo-Saxon England onwards, images held a surprising power in the Western Christian tradition. Not only did these artistic representations provide images through which to find God, they also held mystical potential, and likewise mystical writing, from the early medieval period onwards, is also filled with images of God that likewise refracts and reflects His glory. This collection of essays introduces the currents of thought and practice that underpin this artistic engagement with Western Christian mysticism, and explores the continued link between art and theology. The book features contributions from an international panel of leading academics, and is divided into four sections. The first section offers theoretical and philosophical considerations of mystical aesthetics and the interplay between mysticism and art. The final three sections investigate this interplay between the arts and mysticism from three key vantage points. The purpose of the volume is to explore this rarely considered yet crucial interface between art and mysticism. It is therefore an important and illuminating collection of scholarship that will appeal to scholars of theology and Christian mysticism as much as those who study literature, the arts and art history.