Proceedings of a conference held in June 2007 at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute in Jerusalem.

The medieval Christian West's most radical practitioners of a Neoplatonic, negative theology with a mystical focus are John Scottus Eriugena, Meister Eckhart and Nicholas Cusanus. All three mastered what Cusanus described as docta ignorantia: reflecting on their awareness that they could know neither God nor the human mind, they worked out endlessly varied attempts to express what cannot be known. Following Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, they sought to name God with symbolic expressions whose negation leads into mystical theology. For within their Neoplatonic dialectic, negation moves beyond reason and its finite distinctions to intellect, where opposites coincide and a vision of God's infinite unity becomes possible. In these papers Duclow views these thinkers' efforts through the lens of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics. He highlights the interplay of creativity, symbolic expression and language, interpretation and silence as Eriugena, Eckhart and Cusanus comment on the mind's work in naming God. This work itself becomes mystical theology when negation opens into a silent awareness of God's presence, from which the Word once again 'speaks' within the mind - and renews the process of creating and interpreting symbols. Comparative studies with Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius, Anselm and Hadewijch suggest the book's wider implications for medieval philosophy and theology.

This book is an apologia for the rooted intellectual against the disdainful condescension of the cosmopolitan intellectual¿an apology in the Socratic sense of the word. It reflects the author¿s Texas rootedness unapologetically and offers a polemical but thoughtful indictment of the intellectual prejudice against rootedness; but it is ultimately about the universal human struggle with origins. Contents List of Illustrations Foreword Acknowledgments and Disclaimers Introduction: Attempts: Philosophy as Essay One: A Good Intellectual Is Hard to Find Two: Mind Forg'd Manacles Three: Running and Being Four: The Queen's English, or That Awful English Language Five: Wine of Wyoming Six: Wit and the Art of Conversation Seven: The Fish Eight: ¿A Minor Regional Novelist¿ Nine: Wana Ten: Culture Vultures Eleven: Centennial Twelve: The Sweet Science and the Competitive Spirit Thirteen: The Halfe Ars'd Angler Fourteen: Blood Sports and Haute Cuisine Fifteen: Bread and Wine Sixteen: Idols of the Academic Theater Seventeen: Westward I Go Free Bibliograpy About the Author Index

This is the first commentary to have been written on Nicholas of Cusa's most famous work, On Learned Ignorance. This fact testifies to the difficulty of what has long been recognized to be the most significant philosophical text produced by the Renaissance. While there are many passages in the work that can be cited in support of Cassirer's celebration of Cusanus as the first modern philosopher, that judgment is challenged by the way his work is rooted in a faith and a tradition likely to strike us as thoroughly medieval. This commentary shows how closely the two are linked. Despite the many ways in which what the cardinal has to say belongs to a past that the progress of reason would seem to have left irrecoverably behind, it yet provides us with a continuing challenge. Key to On Learned Ignorance is the incommensurability of the infinite and the finite, of God and creation. Cusanus lets us recognize the essential transcendence of reality, so different from the ontology implied by Descartes' insistence on clear and distinct understanding, which has presided over the progress of science and has helped shape our world. What makes Cusanus' thought important is not the way it anticipates modernity, but the way it challenges often taken-for-granted presuppositions of our worldview, most importantly a distinctly modern self-assertion or self-elevation that has made our human reason the measure of reality. If it is impossible to deny the countless ways in which our science and technology have given us ever deeper insights into the mysteries of nature and improved our lives, it is equally impossible to deny that this very progress today endangers this fragile earth and the quality of our lives. Cusanus can help us preserve our humanity.

This volume offers a detailed historical background to Cusanus's thinking while also assaying his significance for the present. It brings together major contributions from the English-speaking world as well as voices from Europe.