[lit-ideas] Nicolas of Cusa's "Coincidentia Oppositorum"
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 22:43:07 EDT
"The demonstrable correlation of opposites
is an image of the transcendental correlation
of contradictories."
S. Weil, Le Pensateur et la Grace,
tr. A. Wills.
E. Holder writes:
>It's cute, this square [of opposition].
M. Chase comments:
>It is kind of cute, but like Robert Paul I doubt
>it has anything to do with Weil. Far from drawing
>a distinction between "opposites" and "contradictories",
>Aristotle (Categories 10, 11b15 ff.) considers
>contraries or contradictories to be one of four
>sub-classes of the class "opposites", the others
>being relatives, privation vs. possession, and
>affirmation and negation. Again like R. Paul, I think
>Weil is just using terminology loosely to
>allude to Nicolas of Cusa's
>idea of the *coincidentia oppositorum*.
Wonder what book by Cusa Weil could have read.
Cusa was a favourite author with J.L. Borges -- Cusa's definition of God as
the circle whose center is nowhere and the circumsference is everywhere.
Doesn't the 'coincidentia oppositorum' trace back to Pythagoras and the
other Pre-socratics?
Cheers,
JL
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