We really want to know that we are ignorant. If we could achieve this fully, we would have achieved learned ignorance. To man, however strange he may be, nothing better can happen to him in the order of knowledge than knowing himself most learned in ignorance. And the more ignorant you recognize yourself. Nicholas of Cusa
It is questionable whether Nicholas of Cusa was a philosopher or a mystic. Indeed, he is no longer a scholastic, although in some way he could also be considered a medieval in which Platonic sources predominate.
Coincientia Oppositurum
“ The unit cannot be a number, since the number always admits something that exceeds it, and therefore cannot be absolutely minimal or maximum. It is, on the contrary, the principle of every number, in the least; and the end of every number, in maximum singing. Absolute unity, to which nothing is opposed, is therefore absolute maximity, which is God blessed.” By learned ignorantia, Nicholas of Cusa
It will add that the maximum unit is not possible to multiply and that it cannot become number either. This reasoning is not intended to be a demonstration but rather a sort of metaphor that uses neoplatonic mathematizations. The unit (the monad) would not be a number but the origin of every number, so there is no maximum or minimum number since a greater or lesser number is always possible. The unit is the maximum and the minimum number, not being a number, and in it the seemingly contradictory coincides and reconciles.
In the world of things, we find opposites, it is therefore the kingdom of multiplicity, not of unity, and in it is found the great and the small, the being and the non-being. Everything can be measured according to the plus and minus: the kingdom of number.
The relationship established between God and the world is expressed with the terms com plicatio-explicatio: the world is deployment and differentiation (explicatio) of everything that is understood and unified (complicatio) in God.
In this way, the thought of Cusa presupposes a rupture with the cosmos delimited by medieval geocentrism. The universe is no longer infinite because God alone is infinite, but it is not finite, because it lacks limits. The cosmos has no center, therefore the earth is not there. And if the world is not the center, then it is necessary that it is on the move... ::
“ The machine of the world will have the center anywhere and the circumference in none, for the circumference and the center are God, who is everywhere and nowhere.” By learned ignorantia, Nicholas of Cusa