The Second-Person Perspective in the Preface of Nicholas of Cusa's De Visione Dei

Abstract

In De visione Dei’s preface, a multidimensional, embodied experience of the second-person perspective becomes the medium by which Nicholas of Cusa’s audience, the benedictine brothers of Tegernsee, receive answers to questions regarding whether and in what sense mystical theology’s divine term is an object of contemplation, and whether union with God is a matter of knowledge or love. The experience of joint attention that is described in this text is enigmatic (paradoxical, resisting objectification), dynamic (enactive, participatory), integrative (cognitive and affective), and transformative (self- creative). As such, it instantiates the coincidentia oppositorum and docta ignorantia which, for Cusa, alone can give rise to a vision of the infinite.