Review: Paula Pico Estrada, Nicholas of Cusa on the Trinitarian Structure of the Innate Criterion of Truth

Paula Pico Estrada, Nicholas of Cusa on the Trinitarian Structure of the Innate Criterion of Truth.  Leiden: Brill, 2022.  XIV + 237 pp.  $119 (105,93 €).[*]

This volume explores “the philosophical foundations” of Cusanus’ ethics from an unusual angle:  Nicholas’ concept of the ‘innate power of judgment (iudicium concreatum)’.  Pico Estrada’s approach is not narrowly philosophical, but wisely includes Cusanus’ Trinitarian theology and Christology.  Indeed, the book’s objective is “to show that the innate power of judgment has a Trinitarian structure which is formed by a cognitive, an affective and a social dimension, and that all three dimensions are equally important as conditions for the possibility of Cusanus’ ethics” (2).  The Introduction surveys the scholarly literature on Nicholas’ view of the human mind – specifically as ‘intellect’ – in relation to both ethics and mystical theology.  To probe “the metaphysical foundations of human nature,” Chapter 1 examines De docta ignorantia, highlighting Book III where the incarnate Christ perfects humanity and the entire universe.  Pico Estrada then traces Nicholas’ development of this theme in his later works and sermons, culminating in De filiatione dei’s account of “adoptive filiation,” theosis and the call to Christiformitas.  For Cuanus, Christ is the exemplar and goal of human seeking and desire.

Chapter 2 addresses the book’s central theme: “The Innate Power of Judgment as the Human Mind’s Guiding Principle.”  Here Pico Estrada traces the phrase ‘iudicium connatum / concreatum’ and its variants through Nicholas’ works from De concordantia catholica (1433) to De venatione sapientiae (1463).  Rather than a catalogue of quotes, the chapter offers nuanced commentaries on each citation.  For example, looking at De docta ignorantia (1440), Pico Estrada finds that “wonder stimulates the love of knowledge ‘so that the intellect (whose understanding is its being) will perfect itself by the study of truth’” (47; DDI, n.1).  Here the innate power of judgment is at once the desire and the criterion “that guides the mind to its end, which is truth” (56).  The dialogue Idiota de mente (1450) develops these points and adds a new, ethical dimension to this power when Nicholas says that it “judges this thing to be good, that thing to be just, another thing to be true – and reproving us if we veer from what is just” (64; IDM, n.78).  What is innate is the human power of judgment as “a guiding principle, not a source of given information” (64).  Chapter 3 clarifies the issue of innatism and traces its role in Nicholas’ account of the virtues.  From Sermon 6 (1431) to the Compendium (1463), he speaks of ‘innate’ or ‘natural’ virtues that become moral virtues.  In contrast to the “infused” theological virtues, “the cardinal virtues are inborn dispositions that have to become moral through experience” (94).  They must be awakened by sensory experience and guided by the iudicium connatum.  Since the human mind is the created image of God, its “inner power of judgment functions as the hinge between the universal realm of moral principles and individual selves, which, being viva imago, has been called to freely sculpt humans after the divine exemplar” (95).

The following three chapters use Nicholas’ Trinitarian scheme of unity, equality and nexus to analyze the power of judgment’s cognitive, social and affective dimensions.  Chapter 4 focuses on the cognitive dimension.  Human knowing requires comparison and proportion, but “there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite” (105).  Since truth in itself escapes us, we must acknowledge the mind’s limits in learned ignorance and seek truth indirectly through symbols (aenigmata).  For Pico Estrada, Cusanus’ primary symbol is the human mind itself because as imago Dei its intellectual nature mirrors God’s triune oneness and creativity.  It expresses itself in number and freedom.  Indeed, “number is the reflection of God the Son…, while freedom is the reflection of God the Father in his omnipotence” (127).  Further, since divine unity becomes sheer dynamism and movement as it begets equality and nexus, Nicholas similarly “conceives the human mind not as a property-bearer subject, but as self-sustaining, albeit created activity” (131).

Chapter 5, the book’s longest chapter, focuses on the power of judgment’s social dimension.  Building on recent work of H. Schwaetzer and others, Pico Estrada takes aequalitas – associated with the divine Son – as the key to Cusanus’ analysis.  Since the mind is created in God’s image, our task is to “reconstruct in an ascending movement the aequalitas that descends from above” (148).  In light of this project, Nicholas writes in De coniecturis that “all moral virtue in enfolded in… equality and there cannot be any virtue unless it exists through partaking of this equality” (143; DC, n. 183).  Equality thus shapes his discussions of self-love, the Golden Rule, dialogue, social life and freedom.  De visione Dei says that “there is no thing which does not prefer its own being to everything else” (138; DVD, n. 10).  By emphasizing “the dynamic bond between equality and oneness” (141), a bond fueled by love, Nicholas reconciles self-regard with the command to love one’s neighbor in communal justice and the Golden Rule.  For the Rule “directs individuals both inwards to their own will and outwards towards the will of others” (147).  This requires dialogue, through which our “primordial self-love transforms into love of our neighbors” (152).  Pico Estrada emphasizes that we speak with one another as embodied beings.  For Cusanus, “the mind, whose essential nature is intellect, the highest form of life, enfolds within itself all of its other manifestations, that is, the sensitive and vegetative ones, and it unfolds them while it is the form of the body” (166).  Discussions of freedom, original sin, and human creativity – of concepts and values – follow.  The chapter concludes by noting the imago Dei’s fulfillment when De visione Dei affirms “the divine desire that you become yourself” (174; DVD, n.25).

In the book’s most illuminating pages, Chapter 6 highlights the union of affect and intellect throughout Cusanus’ works.  De docta ignorantia starts from the desire for truth and ends by affirming Christ as “the Endgoal of intellectual desire” (177-79).  Using the etymology of ‘wisdom’ (sapientia) as ‘tasty knowledge’ (sapida scientia), the Layman in Idiota de sapientia says that “wisdom is tasted untasteably through our affections and comprehended incomprehensibly through our intellect” (187; IDS, n. 12 ).  Here the power of judgment enjoys a “foretaste” of wisdom and truth.  Nicholas clarified his view in an exchange of letters with the monks of Tegernsee who asked if knowledge plays a role in union with God, or if love alone moves into mystical union.  Nicholas responded that affect or desire requires some knowledge of the good that it seeks.  Indeed, “love (dilectio) and knowledge (cognitio) coincide” (192).  Yet the God we seek to know and love is infinite and therefore elusive.  The cognitive quest begins in learned ignorance and “innate faith” which move into understanding.  This movement’s affective dimension opens the way towards “faith formed by charity” (205).  And “caritas is an intellectual love” (210) which – as in De docta ignorantia – leads to Christ.  But how are we to grow into charity?  In Sermon 241 (1456), Cusanus describes love of neighbor as an “image” and practice that opens into the fullness of charity.

Paula Pico Estrada has given us a rich and comprehensive account of Cusanus’ thought from a novel perspective.  Her focus on the “innate power of judgment” not only clarifies the foundations of his ethics, but also casts new light on his methods and thought as a whole.  Since the Neo-Kantian revival of Cusanus, commentators have emphasized his works’ epistemological features.  Pico Estrada discusses the cognitive dimension with admirable clarity, but insists that we also consider the power of judgment’s social and affective dimensions. Since scholars have rarely discussed affect and love in Nicholas’ works, her insightful commentary on the affective dimension in Chapter 6 is especially welcome.  Nicholas of Cusa on the Trinitarian Structure of the Innate Criterion of Truth is a major contribution to Cusanus scholarship.

Donald F. Duclow

                                                                                                          Gwynedd Mercy University

[*] The review was first published in the American Cusanus Society’s Newsletter, Vol. XL, December 2023.