Paradigms for a metaphorology.pdf - Townsend Humanities Lab

126 Paradigms for a Metaphorology
is “infinite in capacity,” and “outside all, while all-encompassing”; as diameter, it is
“all-penetrating.” 22 Metaphor requires each of its elements to be interpreted according
to its function; otherwise it lapses into allegory, where the wheels on the chariot
of some goddess or other can be identified with the four cardinal virtues, and such
like. At times, the functional aptness of Cusanus’s metaphors can be perceived only
with difficulty, or even not at all, as when he purports to make the following inference
from the infinite circle: “Because it is the center it is the efficient cause, because
it is the diameter it is the formal cause, because it is the circumference it is the final
cause. It gives being because it is the center, it governs because it is diameter, it
conserves in being because it is the circumference.” 23 At the end of this chapter, the
circle, which as sphaera infinita has become the ‘model’ of statements about God, is
now equally characterized as a key figure of theological thought and procedure: “I
would ask you especially to note how all theology is circular and lies within a circle,
to such an extent that even the terms of the attributes are truly convertible: infinite
justice is infinite truth, and infinite truth is infinite justice, and so it is with all of
them . . .” 24 Here it becomes clear that the ‘truth’ of explosive metaphorics, in keeping
with the account we have given of absolute metaphor, is essentially pragmatic: it
induces an attitude, a stance or behavior that may be classified with broad generality
as ‘mystical’, and in Cusanus’s case more specifically as docta ignorantia, as that
ignorance that ‘knows’ itself to indicate the surpassing greatness of its indispensable
object, thereby distinguishing itself from Scholasticism as a science that falls
short of that object. The stance or bearing induced by the metaphor is actualized
with each use of the metaphor, whose implication is docta ignorantia; this processual
circle is reinforced in the peculiarly unprogressive fecundity of Cusan metaphorics,
which has no ambition to go ‘outside’ and ‘beyond’ itself. Cusanus no longer shares
the faith of High Scholasticism in the servile subordination of logic to metaphysics;
he snubs logic with a certain apotropaic deviousness, seeing original sin in man’s
seduction by the idea of knowledge, his will to resemble God in scientia. The inner
unity and gestalt of a style of existence can be grasped here under the dominance of
circle metaphorics. 25
22. capacissimus . . . extra omne omnia ambiens . . . omnia penetrans. [Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance,
trans. Heron, 47; translation modified.]
23. Causa efficiens, quia centrum; formalis, quia diameter; finalis, quia circumferentia. Dans esse, quia
centrum; gubernans, quia diameter; conservans, quia circumferentia. [Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance,
trans. Heron, 48.]
24. Hoc tantum notandum esse admoneo, quomodo omnis theologia circularis et in circulo posita existit,
adeo etiam quod vocabula attributorum de se invicem verificentur circulariter: ut summa iustitia est summa
veritas et summa iustitia et ita de omnibus . . . [Nicholas of Cusa, Of Learned Ignorance, trans. Heron, 48.]
25. The circle metaphor, along with the idea of the coincidentia oppositorum, can perhaps be traced
to a common historical source as well. Ten years after the “Docta ignorantia,” Cusanus published his
“Idiota” dialogues (1450), which included the “Experiments with the Scales.” It is likely that he had already
been reflecting on these mechanical thought experiments for some time; perhaps he had stumbled
across the pseudo-Aristotelian “Quaestiones mechanicae” in the process, at the beginning of which
the circle is conceived as a coincidence of opposites, a ‘wonder’ said to be the cause of leverage as well: