Nicholas of Cusa broke with traditional Aristotelian views of uniform substance and motion.  No two things are ever exactly the same: ”two or more objects cannot be so similar and equal that they could not still be more similar ad infinitum . Consequently, however equal the measured and the measured thing may be, they will always remain different.” Thus, difference is the universal reality of the creation.  ”Wherefore it follows, that, except for God, all positable things differ.” And this in... Read more

In his book on the origins of German Romanticism and idealism ( Mystical Sources of German Romantic Philosophy (Pittsburgh Theological Monographs) ), Ernst Benz notes that, in contrast to France where philosophical terminology could be smoothly translated from Latin, German philosophy drew its first philosophical language from mysticism: “The philosophical and theological language, the language of German schools and universities, was the same Latin as in France, since Latin was the European language of theologians and scholars.  No philosophical terminology... Read more

According to Slavoj Zizek, German idealism is characterized by the combination of two insights that appear contradictory: “(1) subject is the power of ‘spontaneous’ (i.e., autonomous, starting-in-itself, irreducible to preceding causality) synthetic activity, the force of unification, of bringing together, linking, the manifold of sensual data we are bombarded with into a unified representations of objects; (2) subject is the power of negativity, of introducing a gap/cut into the given-immediate substantial unity, the power of differentiating, of ‘abstracting,’ of tearing... Read more

Milbank again: “thought, as Eckhart also pointed out, is a kind of jullity precisely because (after Augustine) it is intentional.  To think something is kenotic – it is to let that thing be and not to try to be that thing, even not to try to be oneself when thinking oneself.  Hence we can see color only if our eye is colorless, come to know something only if our mind goes blank and receptive.” Read more