Cusan Linguistics

Weinsheimer (p. 241) on Gadamer on Nicholas of Cusa: “By allying the creativity of language to the divine creativity that speaks the world into being, Nicholas of Cusa is able to conceive of the multiplicity of human locutions and languages positively. He understands them not merely as mental words, as Aquinas did, but as actual spoken languages; and even these, he implies are – however many – still not a mere dispersiona nd enfeeblement of the one true Word. Whereas the neoplatonic schema of emanation implies degeneration in the process whereby the one proliferates into the many, and whereas the story of Babel explains the division of languages as a punishment, Cusanus suggests that the positive side of human finitude is displayed in the creative fecundity of language, it fundamentally unlimited capacity to generate new expressions and ideas . . . .

Weinsheimer goes on: “Historical variation, discursiveness, synonymy, the variety of tongues – all examples of the plurality of language – seem accidental when judged against the one true order of things as it would appear to the atemporal intuition of an infinite mind. Yet Cusanus conceives of linguistic plurality as a gradual unfolding or explication of that unity, as an interpretive process which, precisely because the human mind is not infinite, continues ad infinitum . Thus human language and languages are revelations of that unity, but they also follow the human aspects of it, and these are many. Languages express and address the specific needs, interests, and priorities of human communities in a variety of concrete circumstances and historical situations. In registering what is humanly important, the diversity of words and languages finds its justification. This plurality is contingent or accidental only if human finitude is so. There is a range of necessary and legitimate variation in words within and among languages, yet all articulate the one divine order in the variety of its aspects and appearances to men. Even if the discrepancy among words implies a corresponding discrepancy, variance, or inexactness with respect to the thing – a certain room for play – nevertheless for Nicholas of Cusa thought and language remain intimately related to the one truth. Despite the variety of languages, he does not retreat into relativism.”