In a typically difficult passage from De li non aliud, this thinker claimed that “Not-other is not other; nor is it other than other; nor is it other in an other… because Not-other is not other than anything.” For 10 points each:
[10m] Name this 15th-century German philosopher. While traveling back from a papal embassy to Constantinople, this man conceived his book On Learned Ignorance.
ANSWER: Nicholas of Cusa [or Nicolaus Cusanus or Nicolaus Cusanus]
[10h] Nicholas of Cusa used a “method of theological befigurings” to explain this view of God. Nicholas illustrated this doctrine by imagining a circle of infinitely growing radius gradually merging with a tangent line.
ANSWER: coincidence of opposites [or coincidentia oppositorum]
[10e] Ideas like the “coincidence of opposites” and God as the “Not-other” reflect the asymmetry between Forms and particulars found in this school of thought, which Nicholas absorbed from the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite (“air-ee-OP-ug-ite”).
ANSWER: Neoplatonism [prompt on Platonism]
<JG, Philosophy>