Western History of Modern Philosophy

1st Semester, AY 2020-2021

Lecturer: Fr. Jose Conrado A. Estafia
Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary
Tagbilaran City, Bohol, Philippines

After the Medieval comes a new age called Modernity. We recall Martin Luther
(born on November 10, 1483) who lived in a world unfamiliar to us today: the conclusion
and the “autumn of the Middle Ages.” It was when the Church in Europe was tainted with
many abuses: foremost is the externalization of piety. Reforming the Church was the
demand of the time. Indeed, it was a “transitional period of decline.” The Western Schism
(1378-1417) caused a terrible suffering to the reputation of the papacy. There was for a
while a rivalry of three popes who were mutually excommunicating each other. Theology
was dominated with considerable ambiguity, see for instance, William of Ockham’s
doctrine of grace, which was a result of a new movement (via nova) called “nominalism”.
But to many, the fifteenth century (15th century) was an experience of a new epoch:
the discovery of the new world in America by Vasco da Gama and Columbos;
Constantinople was conquered (1453), thus ending the millennial reign of the Byzantine
Empire; Granada was recaptured (1492) and Islam was expelled definitely from Spain;
Johannes Guterberg developed the art of printing; Copernicus (1473-1543) discovered
that the Earth revolves around the sun. There was then a general feeling that a new age
has begun. The old encountered the new; they overlapped and come into conflict.1 All
these events have contributed to the beginning of the modern period.
The focus of the present lecture, however, is on the history of modern philosophy.
At the outset, I will bring your attention to the book of Hans Schelkshorn, who is a
professor of the Institute for Christian Philosophy of the University of Vienna. The title of
his book is Entgrenzungen: Ein europäischer Beitrag zum philosophischen Diskurs über
die Moderne (Dissolution of Boundaries: A European Contribution to the philosophical
discourse on Modernity).2 Without being exhaustive, we will discuss the dissolution of

1 Cf. Walter Kasper, Martin Luther: An Ecumenical Perspective, trans. William Madges (New
Jersey: Paulist Press, 2016), 5-6. All the details here come from this small book.

2 In our lecture we are following part B of the book of Hans Schelkshorn, Entgrenzungen: Ein
europäischer Beitrag zum philosophischen Diskurs über die Moderne, Zweite Auflage (Weilerswist:

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the boundaries (Entgrenzungen) of classical medieval thinking and the return to the
thinking of the Renaissance. Schelkshorn clarifies that, in intellectual history, it is
extremely unusual to speak of “radical new ideas,” because philosophy is always based
on certain traditions. In viewing modernity anew, Schelkshorn has excavated three
elements: curiosity, self-creation and cosmopolitanism. Once uncovered, a new look
at modernity is opened for us. We will see below these three elements and the person
representing each element.

1) Curiosity: Dissolution of the boundary of the cosmos and revaluation of the

inexhaustible curiosity of the world [Weltneugier] (Nicholas of Cusa [1401-
1464])

This element is represented by Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), who is arguably the

most important German thinker of the 15th century. Cusa is an ecclesiastical reformer,
administrator and cardinal. The revaluation (Die Aufwertung) of a boundless universe is
actually not his achievement, because this tendency is already observable in all of the
late medieval thinking. Cusa, according to Karl Bormann, is not a scholastic. For what
do we mean by being a scholastic? Let us review what we mean by scholasticism.
Scholasticism is generally a form of knowledge/science (Wissenschaft) in the Middle
Ages. This knowledge was developed in cathedral school and community-run school, in
which the universities of the 13th and 14th centuries originated. In scholasticism one is
working with texts, and to be sure with the manifold and newly developed materials
originating from Greek, Hebrew and Arabic languages. The so-called faculties of arts
(Artistenfakultäten), emerging from the philosophical faculties, were working generally
with the texts of Aristotle and under his name there existed a circulation of excerpts from
the texts of late classical Platonists. Scholasticism developed a completely determined
technique of documentation and literary form of presentation. These characteristics were

Velbrück Wissenschaft, 2016), 95-407. Prof. Schelkshorn was one of my panelists during the defense of
my masteral thesis (2018) in the Faculty of Catholic Theology of the University of Vienna.

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not applicable to Nicholas of Cusa.3 Bormann records that Cusa was never a master of
philosophy or theology, not even of legal sciences, although for a short time, as a doctor
iuris canonici, he probably gave lectures in Köln (Cologne). Cusa never worked and wrote
commentaries on existing texts; his technique in documentation and literary form were
not similar to those of the scholastic. In a word, Cusa is not a scholastic.
If he is not a scholastic, can we consider Cusa as part already of the modern times?
Bormann claims that such classification is hasty. We can notice a strong reception of
Augustine and Proclus4 in several of Cusas’ writings, which are shown in numerous
marginal notes. Nicholas of Cusa was influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius5, who depended
on Proclus and instrumental in putting a distinctive Christian flavor of Neoplatonism. Cusa
was further influenced by John Eriugena6, through the School of Chartres, which played

3 See the introduction of the Latin-German collection, Nikolaus von Krues, Philosophisch-
Theologische Werke, Band I (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002). In this volume one can read Cusa’s
writing, De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance).

4 “Proclus of Athens (*412–485 C.E.) was the most authoritative philosopher of late antiquity and
played a crucial role in the transmission of Platonic philosophy from antiquity to the Middle Ages. For almost
fifty years, he was head or ‘successor’ (diadochos, sc. of Plato) of the Platonic ‘Academy’ in Athens. Being
an exceptionally productive writer, he composed commentaries on Aristotle, Euclid and Plato, systematic
treatises in all disciplines of philosophy as it was at that time (metaphysics and theology, physics,
astronomy, mathematics, ethics) and exegetical works on traditions of religious wisdom (Orphism and
Chaldaean Oracles). Proclus had a lasting influence on the development of the late Neoplatonic schools
not only in Athens, but also in Alexandria, where his student Ammonius became the head of the school. In
a culture dominated by Christianity, the Neoplatonic philosophers had to defend the superiority of the
Hellenic traditions of wisdom. Continuing a movement that was inaugurated by Iamblichus (4 th c.) and the
charismatic figure of emperor Julian, and following the teaching of Syrianus, Proclus was eager to
demonstrate the harmony of the ancient religious revelations (the mythologies of Homer and Hesiod, the
Orphic theogonies and the Chaldaean Oracles) and to integrate them in the philosophical tradition of
Pythagoras and Plato. Towards this end, his PlatonicTheology offers a magisterial summa of pagan
Hellenic theology. Probably the best starting point for the study of Proclus’ philosophy is the Elements of
Theology (with the masterly commentary by E.R. Dodds) which provide a systematic introduction into the
Neoplatonic metaphysical system” (Accessed April 29, 2020: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/proclus/).

5 “Dionysius, or Pseudo-Dionysius, as he has come to be known in the contemporary world, was a

Christian Neoplatonist who wrote in the late fifth or early sixth century CE and who transposed in a
thoroughly original way the whole of Pagan Neoplatonism from Plotinus to Proclus, but especially that of
Proclus and the Platonic Academy in Athens, into a distinctively new Christian context” (Accessed April 29,
2020: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-dionysius-areopagite/).

6 “Johannes (c.800–c.877), who signed himself as “Eriugena” in one manuscript, and who was
referred to by his contemporaries as “the Irishman” (scottus—in the ninth century Ireland was referred to
as “Scotia Maior” and its inhabitants as “scotti”) is the most significant Irish intellectual of the early monastic
period. He is generally recognized to be both the most outstanding philosopher (in terms of originality) of
the Carolingian era and of the whole period of Latin philosophy stretching from Boethius to Anselm.
Eriugena is, also, though this parallel remains to be explored, more or less a contemporary of the Arab

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Neoplatonist Al-Kindi. Since the seventeenth century, it has become usual to refer to this Irish philosopher
as John Scottus (or “Scotus”) Eriugena to distinguish him from the thirteenth-century John Duns Scotus
(see entry). Eriugena’s uniqueness lies in the fact that, quite remarkably for a scholar in Western Europe in
the Carolingian era, he had considerable familiarity with the Greek language, affording him access to the
Greek Christian theological tradition, from the Cappadocians to Gregory of Nyssa, hitherto almost entirely
unknown in the Latin West. He also produced a complete, if somewhat imperfect, Latin translation of
the Corpus Dionysii, the works of the obscure, possibly Syrian, Christian Neoplatonist, Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite, a follower of Proclus. In addition, Eriugena translated Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis
opificio and Maximus Confessor’s Ambigua ad Iohannem, and possibly other works, such as
Epiphanius’ Anchoratus. Eriugena’s thought is best understood as a sustained attempt to create a
consistent, systematic, Christian Neoplatonism from diverse but primarily Christian sources. Eriugena had
a unique gift for identifying the underlying intellectual framework, broadly Neoplatonic but also deeply
Christian, assumed by the writers of the Christian East. Drawing especially on Basil, Gregory of Nyssa,
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus Confessor, as well as on the more familiar authorities
(auctores) of the Latin West (e.g., Cicero, Augustine, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, Boethius), he
developed a highly original cosmology, where the highest principle, “the immovable self-identical one”
(unum et idipsum immobile,Periphyseon, Patrologia Latina 122: 476b), engenders all things and retrieves
them back into itself. Contrary to what some earlier commentators supposed, it is most unlikely that
Eriugena had direct knowledge of the original texts of Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, or other pagan
Neoplatonists, but he did have some direct knowledge of Plato (a portion of Timaeusin the translation of
Calcidius) as well as familiarity with the pseudo-Augustinian Categoriae decem. Overall, Eriugena develops
a Neoplatonic cosmology according to which the infinite, transcendent, and “unknown” God, who is beyond
being and non-being, through a process of self-articulation, procession, or “self-creation”, proceeds from
his divine “darkness” or “non-being” into the light of being, speaking the Word who is understood as Christ,
and at the same timeless moment bringing forth the Primary Causes of all creation. These causes in turn
proceed into their Created Effects and as such are creatures entirely dependent on, and will ultimately
return to, their sources, which are the Causes or Ideas in God. These Causes, considered as diverse and
infinite in themselves, are actually one single principle in the divine One. The whole of reality or nature, is
involved in a dynamic process of outgoing (exitus) from and return (reditus) to the One. God is the One or
the Good or the highest principle, which transcends all, and which therefore may be said to be “the non-
being that transcends being”. In an original departure from traditional Neoplatonism, in his
dialoguePeriphyseon, this first and highest cosmic principle is called “nature” (natura) and is said to include
both God and creation. Nature is defined as universitas rerum, the “totality of all things”, and includes both
the things which are (ea quae sunt) as well as those which are not (ea quae non sunt). This divine nature
may be divided into a set of four “species” or “divisions” (divisiones) which nevertheless retain their unity
with their source. These four divisions of nature taken together are to be understood as God, presented as
the “Beginning, Middle, and End of all things”. Apart from having a minor influence in France in the ninth
century, Eriugena’s cosmological speculations appear too conceptually advanced for the philosophers and
theologians of his time, and his philosophical system was generally neglected in the tenth and eleventh
centuries. His main work, Periphyseon, was revived by twelfth-century Neoplatonists, and also circulated
in a compendium, Clavis Physicae (The Key of Nature) of Honorius Augustodunensis.
The Periphyseon was popular among the philosophers of Chartres and St. Victor (e.g., Hugh of St. Victor
refers to it) but was condemned in the thirteenth century, alongside the writings of David of Dinant and
Amaury of Bène, for promoting the identity of God and creation. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
Eriugena continued to have a relatively clandestine but still important influence on Christian Neoplatonists
such as Meister Eckhart and especially Nicholas of Cusa. The first printed editions of his works appeared
in the seventeenth century, but it was not until the nineteenth century that interest in him was revived,
especially among followers of Hegel who saw Eriugena as a forerunner to speculative idealism, as a
“Proclus of the West” (Hauréau, 1872) and the “Father of Speculative Philosophy” (Huber, 1861). The first
truly scholarly attempt to establish the facts of his life, his works and influence was by the Belgian scholar
Maiul Cappuyns, whose 1933 work Jean Scot Erigène: sa vie, son oeuvre, sa pensée is still reliable. Many
valuable twentieth-century studies (e.g., Contreni, 1992; Marenbon, 1981, 2006; Schrimpf, 1982; O’Meara,
1969, 1988) have explored Eriugena’s Carolingian background and continuity with Latin authors. However,
systematic studies of his thought (Beierwaltes, 1980, 1987, 1990; Gersh, 1978, 2006; Moran, 1989, 1999)
have also recognized him as a highly original metaphysician and speculative thinker of the first rank whose

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a big role in the philosophical Renaissance of the 12th century. This school followed the
teachings of Boethius as well as of Meister Eckhart and some writings of Albertus
Magnus. Bormann continues suggesting that it is premature to localize Nicholas of Cusa
between medieval and modern times, because through him medieval thinking was
transposed into the modern times. I learned before that Cusa can also be considered as
the Father of Modern Philosophy, but Bormann mentions a better description of Nicholas
of Cusa: “For a number of years it has become almost fashionable to present Cusa as
the forerunner of modernity or as a gatekeeper of the new era, etc.”7 I need not go further
in discussing this issue. Our interest here is this element of curiosity, which Nicholas of
Cusa represents.
Schelkshorn writes: “In the second book of the early major work De docta
ignorantia (1440) Nicholas of Cusa examines a radical dissolution of the boundary of the
cosmological world picture of classical medieval thought. Through the spectacular thesis
on the boundless universe and the movement of the earth, the cosmology of Nicholas of
Cusa is sometimes interpreted as anticipation of the copernican revolution.” 8 The title of
the first chapter of the second book of De docta ignorantia goes: Correlaria praeambularia
ad inferendum unum infinitum universum (Supplementary remarks as preamble to the
demonstration of one infinite universe).9
However, Schelkshorn clarifies that this theory of Cusa did not arise from nothing.
Few decades earlier, there were already commentaries on the cosmological work of
Aristotle, De caelo. Notable here were the Christian commentaries of St. Thomas
Aquinas and his mentor Albert the Great. In the medieval universities there developed a
complex criticism of the metaphysical and empirical premises of the geocentric world

work transcends the limitations of his age and mode of expression” (Accessed April 29, 2020:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scottus-eriugena/).
7 „Seit einer Reihe von Jahren ist es fast Mode geworden, Cusanus als den Vorläufer der Moderne
oder als >>Pförtner der neuen Zeit<< usw. auszugeben“ (Nicholas von Krues, Philosophisch-Theologische
Werke, Band I), IX.
8 “Im zweiten Buch des frühen Hauptwerkes De docta ignorantia (1440) nimmt Nikolas von Kues
eine radikale Entgrenzung des kosmologischen Weltbildes des antik-mittelalterlichen Denkens vor. Durch
die spektakulären Thesen über die Grenzenlosigkeit des Universums und die Erdbewegung ist die
Kosmologie von Nikolaus von Kues zuweilen als Antizipation der korpernikanischen Revolution gedeutet
worden“ (Schelkshorn, Entgrenzungen, 96). Translations mine.

9 I am basing my English translation from the German translation, Ergänzende Bemerkungen als
Einleitung zum Erweis des einen unendlichen Universums.

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picture. The Parisian bishop Etienne Tempier in 1277 condemned Aristotle’s thesis on
the impossibility of more than one world, because this would questioned God’s
omnipotence. In the 14th century, Nicole Oresme already presented an argument against
the thesis of Aristotle that the earth rotates daily on its axis. The theory of Cusa was not
the only thesis concerning the movement of the earth. It did not exhibit also the new
astronomical observations and accounts like that of Galilei.
Nicholas of Cusa is one of the proponents of German Renaissance humanism. He
anticipated many later ideas in mathematics, cosmology, astronomy and experimental
science while constructing his own original version of systematic Neoplatonism. His
famous work De docta ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) is divided into three books:
Book I, on God as the absolute Maximum transcending all our understanding; Book II, on
natural universe as a created image of God and the “contracted” (finite status of creatures)
or restricted maximum; Book III on Jesus Christ who unites the first two books, that is, as
the Maximum and at once absolute and contracted.
This is the significance of Cusa’s speculation: Revision of metaphysical premises
of geocentrism world model. In Book II, 1, n. 81, 3f, he speaks of unum infinitum
universum (one infinite universe), but in 1, n. 97, 4f, not infinite but without boudary
(boundless universe).
With Nicholas of Cusa an entirely new horizon for astronomy has been opened.
His significance indeed lies in his carrying out of an epochal revaluation of limitless
curiosity of the world. This is evident from his De docta ignorantia (1440) to his 1450
dialogue, Idiota de mente (The Layman: About Mind) and to his late philosophy.10 As a
fascination shining through in ancient thinking, like that in Ceciro and Seneca, this
insatiable curiosity of the world is metaphysically founded. The Neoplatonic unity of
thinking has been transformed and ancient cosmology delimited. Already in De docta
ignorantia comes a glimpse of the idea of an interminable approximate cognitive process

10 From here onwards we are following Schelkshorn’s summary of his discussion of Nicholas of
Cusa’s revaluation of the boundless universe, see Entgrenzungen, 159-162. What I have here is a liberal
translation of the German text. For our purposes, I am no longer documenting the German text for one can
refer directly to these pages of Schelkshorn’s book. However, from time to time I am also consulting the
original texts of Cusa. See Nikolaus von Kues, Philosophische-Theologische Werke, Band 2 (Hamburg:
Felix Meiner Verlag, 2002), 11ff. Cusa’s works in this volume are De coniecturis, Idiota de sapientia and
Idiota de mente.

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(eines unabschließbaren approximativen Erkenntnisprozesses) through the imprecision
thesis; but the decisive step towards a clear affirmation of boundless curiosity of the world
takes place only on the basis of the new philosophy of spirit and the idea of God's self-
revelation in the world. In this way, the infinite variety of things suddenly gains a dignity
that frees the insatiable curiosity of the world from the suspicion of godlessness and loss
of self. The direction of man’s openness to the infinite riches of the world (unendlichen
Reichtum der Welt) is the divine fullness of being, where one’s measure of being lies; the
insatiabilis curiositas no longer has to be exiled in the afterlife as with Cicero or as with
Seneca in the politically free niches of the mundane world.11 Likewise, however, Cusa
remains steadfast to the thomistic principle of pushing the knowledge of things to the very
bottom. The cognitive process finds its fulfillment in the absolute, which every reason
cannot recognize, every measure cannot measure, because it is endless, limitless, and
incomparable. In exploring the mundane world, the danger of one’s quest for knowledge
lies in its premature reassurance, in its devotion to eventual tranquility. Cusa insists that
the mind can truly find rest only in the thinking of the absolute. Unbounded curiosity can
only be justified if the primacy of the knowledge of the eternal is unquestioned. This
curiosity can only be affirmed if it rests on a philosophical theology. The Platonic maxim
that man should not stop at earthly things, but must rise to the divine, is true for Cusa.
The ultimate goal of human knowledge is cognitio Dei.
Contrary to Hans Blumenberg’s thesis that the rehabilitation of the curiosity of the
world is a reaction to the medieval theology of Deus absconditus (hidden God), Cusa
believes that it is not about the hidden God or the dead God but the God who
communicates himself and prepares the way for limitless curiosity of the world. Already

11 Cicero believes that the insatiable curiosity is allowable only in certain life situations. The
happiness of being curious becomes perfect only after death and when all earthly duties have ended (read
further the text of Schelkshorn: “Der unersättlichen Neugier darf sich der Mensch daher nur in bestimmten
Lebenssituationen... In vollkommener Weise kann der Mensch das Glück der Weltneugier jedoch erst nach
dem Tod, wenn er allen Pflichten um das irdische Wohl entlastet ist“ (Schelkshorn, Entgrenzungen, 130).
About Seneca, he writes, thus, „Die fehlgeleitete Neugier stürzt den Menschen in Unruhe und
Orientierungslosigkeit. Die wahrhafte Wissbegier, die sich in rechter Weise der harmonischen Ordnung des
Kosmos zuwendet, führt hingegen zur Seelenruhe, dem untrüglichen Maßstab eines glücklichen Lebens“
(The misdirected curiosity plunges people into restlessness and disorientation. The true curiosity, which
turns in the right way to the harmonious order of the cosmos, however, leads to peace of mind, the
unmistakable standard of a happy life) [ibid., 134].

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in De docta ignorantia, this insight into the limits of human knowledge does not lead to
resigned skepticism, but rather opens up new horizons, both in the field of theology and
cosmology, as evidenced by the teaching of the coincidentia oppositorum12 and the
unbounded universe. Secular science would view such religious-metaphysical
justifications as defective. However, given the fact that epistemological questions have
been negotiated for thousands of years in the context of theological metaphysics, the
question arises from the perspective of intellectual history that the rehabilitation of
curiosity could historically be done in a different way than through a transformation of
philosophical theology .
Furthermore, Cusa’s bold speculations about a limitless universe and the creative
potency of the human mind continue to be fascinating until today; this unleashed curiosity
continues to emerge in a “strange innocence” (in einer merkwürdigen Unschuld), slipping
past the arguments of the powerful theoretical critique of modern science. The progress
of knowing the world has an ultimate reason: a re-enchantment which is philosophically
mediated. With this the process of unbounded curiosity begins. What determines the
motive of the rational exploration of the world is not fear (as in the assumption of the
Enlightened reason) but astonishment sparked by the power of the human mind and not
only by the beauty of the world.
This is the reason why Cusa’s typical modern idea of an expansive knowledge of
the world still seems to escape the compulsion of nature’s repressive dominance. In De
coniecturis (Part 1, Chapter 2), Cusa mentions about the number as symbol and example
of things (Symbolicum exemplar rerum numerum esse).13 Number in Cusa is already
moving into the center of the theory of knowledge. He claims that it is the nature of
number to originally sprout from the very structure of reason. Animals do not count,
because they don’t have minds. Number is generally an unfolded reason. Number
demonstrates that it is originally attained by reason and that without it one must admit
that nothing at all can remain.14

12We shall see this later when we again discuss Cusa.

13 Nikolaus von Kues, Philosophische-Theologische Werke, Band 2 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag,
2002), 11ff. Cusa’s works in this volume are De coniecturis, Idiota de sapientia and Idiota de mente.

14 “Rationalis fabricae naturale quoddam pullulans principium numerus est; mente enim carentes,
uti bruta, no numerant. Nec est aliud numerus quam ratio explicata. Adeo enim numerus principium eorum,

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 Number is essentially the first “archetype of the spirit.” It is where we find the trinity
or unity as firstly impressed but also contracted in the majority. With our conjecture15, we
symbolically come from the rational numbers of our mind to the real, inexpressible
numbers of the divine mind. The reason is that we call the number the first archetype of
things in the spirit of the Creator, just as the number that emerges from our reason is the
archetype of his world in which it is represented.16
The first archetype of things in the spirit of the Creator is number, because the
delight and beauty inherent in all things is based on proportion which is about number.
Hence, number is the most important trace that leads us to wisdom.17 Through number
there is an opening up of the qualitative diversity of beings, not a reduction of beings to
quantifiable relations. There is in Cusa’s philosophy of the spirit, which begins in De
coniecturis, an unrestricted imagination that is radical: as the divine spirit “unfolds a world
without boundaries,” the human spirit too creates “an infinite wealth of ideas and linguistic
worlds.” And yet the awareness of the self-power of the human spirit does not lead, as
Heidegger assumes to modern thinking, to the hubris of restricting imagination to self-
ensuring certainty. Rather, Cusa’s philosophy of knowledge eludes Martin Heidegger's
alternative of disposing imagination against the remembering of being. There is already
in Cusa a consciousness of the world-shaping power of the human spirit. The order of

quae ratione attinguntur, esse probator, quod eo sublato nihil omnium remansisse ratione convincitur” (De
coniecturis, Pars prima. Capitulum II). The papraphrased translations above are through the help of the
German translation of this text (ibid, 11).

15 “A conjecture is a mathematical statement that has not yet been rigorously proved. Conjectures
arise when one notices a pattern that holds true for many cases. However, just because a pattern holds
true for many cases does not mean that the pattern will hold true for all cases. Conjectures must be proved
for the mathematical observation to be fully accepted. When a conjecture is rigorously proved, it becomes
a theorem. A conjecture is an important step in problem solving; it is not just a tool for professional
mathematicians. In everyday problem solving, it is very rare that a problem's solution is immediately
apparent. Instead, the problem solving process involves analyzing the problem structure, examining cases,
developing a conjecture about the solution, and then confirming that conjecture through proof”
(https://brilliant.org/wiki/conjectures/).

16 “Numeri igitur essentia primum mentis exemplar est. In ipso etenim triunitas seu unitrinitas,
contracta in pluralitate, prioriter reperitur impressa. Symbolice etenim de rationalibus numeris nostrae
mentis ad reales ineffabiles divinae mentis coniecturantes, dicimus ‘in animo conditoris primum rerum
exemplar’ ipsum numerum, uti similitudinarii mundi numerus a nostra ratione exsurgens” (Ibid., 12).

17 “Hoc ostendit delectatio et pulchritudo, quae omnibus rebus inest, quae in proportione consistit,
proportio vero in numero. Hinc numerus praecipuum vestigium ducens in sapientiam” (Idiota de mente, VI,
n. 94).

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the universe, since it is immersed in the mystery of the Absolute, cannot simply be read
from things. Therefore, the human spirit is expected to establish order through the
creation of linguistic worlds. Since man and the world are teleologically correlated
(teleologisch zugeordnet sind) with one another through the divine order of creation, the
sense of theoretical curiosity is not exhausted in self-assurance and world empowerment,
in which nature is transformed into a projection surface (Projektionsfläche) of human
imaginative worlds. In the midst of the appreciation of the creative power of the spirit, the
ancient astonishment at the beauty and harmony of the universe remains to a greater
degree the fundamental motive of thought.18

2) Self-Creation: Dissolution of Human Nature (Pico della Mirandola [1463-

1494])19;

Pico della Mirandola is a nobleman and philosopher of the Italian Rennaissance.

He is influenced by Plato, Aristotle, Pseudo-Dionysius, Cusa, etc.
In the anthropology of the Renaissance there is an epoch-making appreciation of
the creative power of man. The human spirit, as we have seen earlier in Cusa, is already
analogous to divine creative power. In itself the manifestation of vis creativa in Cusa, on
the one hand, is in the formation of conceptual and linguistic worlds, but on the other
hand, it manifests in a new quality of self-relationship. In his work Oratio de hominis
dignitate (1486/87), Pico della Mirandola has famously described the “creative dimension
of human freedom.” Man for him is a “creator and sculptor of himself.” However, human
beings can either degenerate into animals or can recover their divinity.
The Oratio is one of the noblest legacies of Renaissance philosophy, describes
Jacob Burckhardt; according to Ernst Cassirer, the image of “free self-creation” contains
a “rhetorical pathos” which simultaneously includes a specifically “modern thought
pathos.” In fact, Pico's idea of human self-creation involuntarily arouses associations with

18 I am here freely translating the German texts of Prof. Schelkshorn. For verifications one can see
pages 159-162 of his book, Entgrenzungen.

19 Again I am here translating and paraphrasing in English the text of Schelkshorn. For verification
and further reading see, Schelkshorn, Entgrenzungen, 163-205.

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German idealism’s and, above all, Sartre’s understanding of freedom.20 There is even a
more recent connection between Pico and modern human genetics (the scientific study
of inherited human variation). Because it seemingly shines like a flash in Pico’s Oratio,
this Promethean21 character of modern freedom has unsurprisingly been an object of
criticism; for instance, Karl Jasper saw in Pico’s idea of freedom as “a break into the
modern hubris of self-deification.”
In the last few decades of the history of philosophy, Pico’s image has extensively
been questioned as an ancestor of “modern subjectivity.” However, the idea of the self-
creation of human nature, in relation to neo-Kantian interpretations, is not to be
understood literally but metaphorically in Pico’s Oratio. Craven suggests that man's self-
transformation into moral or divine nature is not an issue of ontology but of morality. It is
within man’s power to be angelic and even godly, hence not to vegetate, not to act like
animals is a moral exhortation. Theologically, however, Pico's position has multiple
relationships with Christian tradition. According to Lubac, Pico's idea of self-creation
primarily includes motifs from the theology of the church fathers; for Dulles, Pico's concept
of freedom is closely related to scholasticism: essentially, it’s anthropology is from the
Christian Middle Ages. But because Pico’s research belongs to the Renaissance, we can
emphasize a clear difference from scholasticism: the Oratio has been embedded in the
broad stream of appreciation of human creative power since the end of the 14th century.
From this perspective, Pico's Oratio appears as a rhetorically daring variant of an
anthropological tradition that reaches back via Ficino and Cusanus to Sabundus.22

20 The high period of German Idealism is from 1781 (the date of the publication of Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason) to 1831 (the death of Hegel). It is one of the most revolutionary periods in the history of
philosophy, in which the focus is centered on the ideas of history, freedom and the self. Man for Jean-Paul
Sartre in a lecture titled, “Existentialism is a Humanism” (1946), is “condemned to be free.” Hopefully later
in our discussion on the Western History of Modern Philosophy, we will discuss in depth Kant and Hegel.
We shall reserve Sartre in Contemporary Philosophy.

21 The demigod Prometheus is known to be rebelliously creative and innovative.

22 Marsilio Ficino, (born October 19, 1433, Figline, republic of Florence [Italy]—died October 1,
1499, Careggi, near Florence), Italian philosopher, theologian, and linguist whose translations and
commentaries on the writings of Plato and other classical Greek authors generated the Florentine
Platonist Renaissance that influenced European thought for two centuries (see
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marsilio-Ficino). Along with Ficino, Raimundus Sabundus (1385-
1436) is another Rennaissance author, whose actual name is Ramon Sibiuda, a Catalan philosopher [he
was born in Barcelona] (see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raimundus_Sabundus).

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 Beyond doubt, Pico’s motif of self-creation has an epochal significance despite the
extremely different assessments of this position within European intellectual history. In
many ways it was received and modified in the Renaissance and early modern thought.
But it is necessary to precisely understand the transformations of the idea of man as a
creator of his nature in the various stages of modern thought. Their original meaning
must be ascertained, to which our next consideration may now turn.
This is the anthropological thesis of Pico’s Oratio: Homo miraculum est. The
position of man in the cosmos lies in the middle between the ephemeral and the eternal,
the earthly and the divine. The medieval debate about the relationship between man and
pure spiritual beings is the background of Pico’s Oratio. The main thesis of the Oratio,
namely the superiority of man over angels, is explained by Pico through a creation
narrative that is structured in three sequences: First, the cosmological framework in which
man is envisioned to become; in the second step, Pico explains the position of man in the
cosmos through two anthropological theses, namely the indeterminacy or middle position
of human nature and man's ability to transform himself.
For Pico, freedom is understood as the power to shape oneself in relation to human
nature. This means that with regard to man, he is not just in the middle of the hierarchy
of being, but is also united to all the different elements. However, this union is in the
mode of freedom, for the essence of man consists in reason and freedom.
The doctrine of the middle position of man and the idea of man as a creator of his
own nature are connected. The rational part is peculiar to the human being and he is
connected to the angel through the spiritual part. In the intelligible part, man is rescued
to a perfect life. With the interpretation of the middle as a free union of different natures,
Pico breaks the microcosm anthropology from within. Just as God as Creator unites and
gathers the essence of all things in their absolute perfection, so man calls all natures of
the universe together and unites them with God. This means: God contains all things as
their principle of being, man as the mediating center.

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 With the exuberant praise of the chameleon-like nature of mankind, Pico cautiously
distances himself from the millennia-old anthropological prerogative of Western thought,
namely to determine human nature exclusively from its perfection. However, the dynamic
interpretation of human freedom in the sense of self-transformation also contains a
dangerous ambivalence. The reason is that Pico always determines the dignitas hominis
in a double sense: the dignity of man is based, on the one hand, in being in the image of
God, on the other hand, in the self-elevation to angelic existence. While man's likeness
to God cannot be lost, there are clear differences in rank in the pursuit of self-perfection,
from which Pico draws a fatal consequence: whoever destroys his person through moral
transgressions no longer deserves to be called human. This is a dangerous consequence
of Pico’s thinking.
Pico stands on the basis of the ethical universalism of Stoic-Christian thought;
however, the dynamic anthropology of self-creation unlocks an extremely dangerous
relativization of the idea of universal human dignity. People who indulge themselves in
sensual pleasures are no longer seen as people but just bushes or animals. Therefore,
Pico's understanding of the dignitas hominis is ambivalent which leads to the fatal
perversions of the Stoic-Christian idea of the unity of the human race in modern thinking.
This danger has become evident in the debates about the American conquest. And this
brings us to our next element: cosmopolitanism.

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