The principle of relationality: Nikolaus Cusanus’ ontological model of cognition as an epistemological foundation for interreligious dialogue

Introduction to the problem:

Whenever different cultures and religions meet, the question arises of how to deal with the stranger as the non-self, who at first gets experienced as resistance – and often also as a threat – against my own self. In order to avoid for the men who aspire a consistency of sense, that this – often forced – dealing with alterity does not to lead to an identity crisis, but rather a positive process, it requires a rational ascertainable inclusion of other and his beliefs in ones own life plan.

A promising approach for dealing with such intra-and interreligious tensions can be found in the thinking of the German cardinal Nikolaus of Kues (1401-1464) who shows in his  relational-ontological model of cognition – using the principle of concordance – how diversity can function as a sustaining element of a fertile (interreligious) dialogue.
Short placement in the historical context:

It is thanks to the historical situation of his time that Cusanus had to face the challenge of plurality. The ideal of untity, which dominated the Middle Ages, was in question: at state level slowly the formation of nation states started to take place. But also within itself, the unity of Christianity was being challenged: Western Christianity stood on one hand between conciliarism and papacy. On the other hand there was still the tense relationship to the Eastern Church. While the former was decided in favor of the, the union with the Byzantine church on the other side was only achieved on the paper papacy (in which case Cusanus had made a significant contribution) and lapsed with the fall of Constantinople in the year 1453. This political event leads to the final great challenge at that time:  both theoretically – concerning religious beliefs – as well as on a military level Islam rose up as a direct threat to Christianity.
Cusanus – particularly shaken by the fall of Constantinople – was looking for philosophical and theological arguments to develop a base for a peaceful dialogue of religions without robbing each of the religions of their uniqueness. The result is widely known: his writing De pace fidei – written shortly after the fall of the Byzantine empire – is still regarded as groundbreaking, and its slogan “una religio in rituum varietate” is up to this day a symbol for a successful interreligious discourse.
Thesis of the lecture:

But the thesis of my following lecture shall not be about this dialogue but shall regard the following: It will be argued that a more accurate and more stable basis for a fruitful interreligious discourse can be based on the cusanic model of cognition, which itself is based on an ontology of relations in which the cardinal exceeds the predominant scholastic ontology of substance that goes back to Aristotle.
Starting point: the structure of the divine being:

Cusanus finds the basis for his approach in the trinitarian structure which he develops in his theological reflections: The essence of God who is threefold can be summarized as follows: It is composed of the unity (god-father), equality (Christ the Son) and the connection (the Holy Spirit) – one already sees that trying to capture the divine essence completely by the means of language, must fail. But the reflections upon the relationship between identity, difference and their relations are crucial for the following considerations. Cusanus tries to grasp it again in the notion of the non-other, the non-aliud. In this relational nature of the referral of the Other to the non-other the relation reveals itself to be an image of the Absolute.
Transfer to the ontology:

As a first step the Cardinal now transfers this structure to ontology. The exact determination of the ontological level is crucial for two reasons: First, it is not only the place of human existence, but also the space in which religion takes place. But  – and that is just as important – the ontological structures are also the targets which must be followed by any attempt to achieve knowledge, if it does not want to miss its owns intentions which are to gain knowledge of reality and truth.

By rooting the world – which is characterized by difference and plurality -  in a previous entity – God -, he gives it  both its legitimacy as well as value. Thus he can avoid the neoplatonic view on diversity as negative and contrary to the divine unity: hereafter world can be seen as the created or finite infinity, the infinitas finita which descends from the infinitas infinita; it is also called the universe and is the location of all beings which can show themselves within the world only through otherness and demarcation. Now, however, non-idem and idem can only be determined if they are in some way related to each other. Thus the first fundamental relation is an ontological one, meaning that the things stand to each other in an infinite number of relations of being. World – as an expression of infinite multiplicity created by God – thus turns out to be a multifunctional pattern of relations.

This relation of being is in turn the prerequisite for ensuring that human beings as beings within the world and subjects trying to gain knowledge can recognize world and reality of life in their Truth (which means their true reality and existence). Also as a result of their participation in the otherness non-self and self are bound together in a relationship of similarity, making it possible to draw conclusions about a certain object by watching and gaining knowledge about another object. Since thus everything can be traced back to one origin, it becomes possible by using this principle of similarity to converge to the essence of the thing itself via rational cognition processes. As a result, we take in the world as an infinity of Relations, which suggests that all knowledge can always only be imprecise: veritas impraecisa. One always finds himself within the world of the aliud, never in the idem, for the latter would be the world of the precise and therefore can only be reached within the uncreated infinity: Only here are the things in acutaliter all that they can be precisely in their true and constitutive condition.

Again, the considerations of Cusanus of the worldly existence have to be looked upon by taking the horizon of Christian targets into view, because all Beings owe their reality to the creator. Only then can also Cusanus’ statements concerning his speculation of infintiy make sense: because things are created by God (and thus real and true) the thesis of the coincidentia oppositorum gains its meaning: the opposites must face themselves as true opposites for their full meaning to unfold. If we now think these arguments together with the other consequence of his considerations on infinity, which place the center of an infinite circle at any given point, it means – transferring it to the universe as a maximum contractum – that as a result of the immanence of the Infinite Being in every finite being that every finite being is at the same time the center of the universe, which also means that everything – not just human beings – are opened up to the Infinite. In this opening each being strives to achieve its own perfection, because nothing in the world has exhausted all its possibilities and is completely brought to reality. Rather, it is a constant flow, a conversion of potency and act. Thus Cusanus gains an absolute value for each individual: “Every being is infinitely valuable in itself, simply because it is.” In other words: Each creature actualiter expresses the reality of its own potency, meaning the active force, which manifests itself in it. Each Other, even each contradiction acts multifunctional in this pattern of Relations and thus – since through correlativity all things are integrated by surpassing their own limits – loses its negative character.
The conclusion: A knowledge model based on an ontology of relations:

Cusanus gains an image of a basic pattern of relations as the basic definition of being, existence and knowledge: By relationality emerging as the supporting moment of (divine) reality Cusanus can show further that the searching mind can only push forward to the absolute in mediating abstraction processes. The diversity of relations remains inexhaustible.

Even for finite Cusanus can easily show that recognition of the world works only by relating the equal and the unequal to one another. Thus it can only be thought of as a kind of closing in on the actual truth: All that the dialectics of Cusanus are capable of is discovering an infinite amount of relations even in the smallest part of the universe. This means for the ratio that all its findings – gained by messuring – retain their full validity in the context of the relative.

This is true even for the Infinite, which exists in space and time as the image of the eternal infinity: the universe. But: No matter how close one gets in recognition of an object, there always remains an infinitely large distance between the measured and the measurement itself, equality understood as identity is impossible.
What does this mean for the question about God or the Absolute?

These considerations lead Cusanus now to the problem of how the discursive operating (and thus contradictions excluding) rational thinking, can tap the Divine, which hides behind the wall (as an expression of Cusanus) of the coincidentia oppositorum. Using the methods of speculative mathematics and hypothetical deduction, he shows both a antecedence of the identity before the Difference as well as how the increase in the opposite characteristics to the limits of their assets suggests their constitutive unit: The Biggest and the Smallest, or – another picture – the infinite geometric imaginary forms of circle and straight coincidide, not because they lose their identity in infintiy, but because in the perfect realization of all possibilities the differences are revoked.

The epistemological instrument for this coincidence of opposites (and thus the essence of God himself) is the reflexive cognition of the intellectus, which is detected as the root of all rational cognition and becomes the place where the finite and infinite meet within a human being: When the distinctions using ratio reaches this point, it can refer to its divine origin (in which the intellectus is rooted) and thus can at the same time overcome his own limitations. On the other hand, the intellectus, which achieves its participation of the Divine in the concrete implementation of its synthetic abilities, needs the ratio for the dialectical ascent through the rational and the use of (mathematical or linguistic) symbols.

But for Cusanus language is not simply another level (that it is also), but has its own connection to reality. One can say with Heidegger, that language “als das entbergende Wort den anfänglichen Bezug des Seins zum Menschen und damit erst den Bezug des Menschen zum Seienden innehat.“

” the revealing word carries the initial relation of Being to man, and thus the terms of the relation of men to Being .”

For the relational model of cognition the following relations are revealed: While the embodied subject of cognition is related to others Beings in a relation of being – the ontological relation  – it relates in the process of cognition in relation of cognition to the perceived object, which is not yet identical with the actual being object, but is related to that in a relation of similarity.

This being originated in the pattern of relations also makes it clear why it is not possible, to set timelessly valid standards, since these are also based within the horizon of the constantly changing relations. The standards themselves can never actually be the truth, but only have their origins in it, just as the world never is truth (in the sense of absolute reality).

That the consequence is not scepticism and we still have valid standards is based on the fact that certain relationships and situations don’t vanish ort change over time. An example would be the human being as such: So long as it exists, it also carries its values, which might (among others) manifest themselves in the human dignity.
Consequence for interreligious discourse:

This structure-ontological approach has far-reaching consequences for dealing with intra-and interreligious differences: Because the universe emerges as a complex of relations, it can also only be reflected upon by following this relational structure. Thus the confrontation with the other(s) becomes the central momentum of a dialectical operating ratio, which in all its acts of cogintion always integrates the reflection upon its own self and thus reassuring its identity. By using and binding both positions (mine and the other) in a dynamic truth finding process, they are themselves again anchored in the structure of relations of the world and at the same time constantly reassure their own anewed identity.

The ( interreligious) discourse proves to be not only a prevention strategy for the greater evil (war), but as a constitutive for heterogenic societies.

At the same time, this approach defines anew the relation of men to his rationality because it reveals an anewed confidence in one’s own reason because of the reflected and communicated position. It is only because of that that a conscious affirmation of ones own position can take place, but it also knows itself being installed and kept in a pattern of relations and thus an antecedent reality, and thus also knowing that it can never exhaust the infinite number of possible relations. With the adoption of such a reality the mind, which is operating dialectically – it becomes aware that securing its own relationality is vital to the stability-  of its own position  – even if that makes it necessary that corrective movements have to be made.

Taking a closer look into by this acceptance of relationality practiced opening to the non-self, one realizes this reveals a structure of question or inquirement in a double sense: First, it is an inquiring of others concerning me, my values, my identity, that is my beliefs are ultimately being questioned; but by turning myself questioningly to the other, it also the case that I open myself for the inquiring other and thus risk the disclosure of my own self: the act of  cognition processed in the encounter with the non-self takes me in its dialectical movement inevitably to the point where I discover the stranger within myself (Rombeaud: Je C’est un autre) – the parts that, despite all inquiries to myself, have not yet been accessible by my own reflection. Therefore one always takes a risk, to let ones own convictions – the basis of ones own lives draft – being questioned with the only consequence to direct it towards a truer position.

Such a dual structure of question guarantees in its intentionality to keep the questioning self open – especially to the unknown within itself – and binds it by questioning, in the pattern of relations of the world. At the same time it is in the impetus to the dynamic cognitive process, on which every self-knowledge and identity is based. (It would be an interesting question to ask if this dynamic momentum even before the act of cognition is revealed to be a basic principle of human life as a living principle upon which all development is based.)

The quest for positioning, as a necessary foundation for a strict life plan, is not only for the individual, but also for the community as a self-concept, which, whatever the worldview, protects of an ideological fixation of any prior assumptions and thus protects the people shielding themselves from the relationships of interacting and thus removing themselves from the pattern of a dynamic structure to rather being fixed in a static system. If the latter is the case, it would mean a rigid understanding of identity as it is in ideologies, but because of the lack of compatibility with the dynamic structures would have a highly unstable identity as a consequence.
Conclusion:
With his model of cognition Cusanus gives us an epistemological foundation and a foundation for the double structure of questioning which makes up the main structure of an interreligous dialogue that is always communicating on a rational level: the seriousness of the participation will be shown by the willingness to let my beliefs being inquired and also seriously and honestly challenging different positions myself.

By that ones own (religious) identity, which is discovered being neither fully accessible and reflected upon, will thus be secured anew – on the basis of the rational engagement with others and his convictions – within itself (immanent moment) and the pattern of relations (transcendental moment). Both moments are existentially necessary for the process of self-insurance through self-discovery. Thus the cusanic concept is revealed not to be a purely western thought and life, but reveals a fundamental momentum of constituting identities within a dynamic system.

(talk given in Palermo at the IVe Congrès européen d’études médiévales: Coexistence and Cooperation in the Middle Ages at June 24th 2009)

(copyright only by the author)