Nicholas of Cusa and the mens ipsa. Notes on a long-standing debate

Resumo

A long scholarship (Koch, Senger, Peroli, Fiamma) recognized the peculiarity of Nicholas of Cusa’s theory of mens ipsa, exposed in De coniecturis I, 4. On the other hand, there are several alternative readings of that ambiguous theory: indeed, it is not clear whether that theory appears only in De coniecturis or also in other later works; in addition, it has been described variously as an ontological doctrine, concerning the being of the universe, and as a gnoseological one, concerning the human faculties of knowledge. Some scholars, like Flasch, even saw in the mens ipsa a forerunning of a theory of spirit. With this paper I want to take a position on this long-standing debate: the theory of mens ipsa remains over the De coniecturis and it is developed both in ontological (De dato patris luminum) and in gnoseological (De mente II) direction.

Keywords: mens ipsa; categories; ontology; human mind; spirit.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21747/21836884/med41a24