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Document Details : Title: De waarheid der gewoonte Subtitle: De spanning tussen veritas en consuetudo als ruimte voor pluralisme in het denken van Nicolaus Cusanus Author(s): BOCKEN, Inigo Journal: Bijdragen Volume: 63 Issue: 4 Date: 2002 Pages: 417-431 DOI: 10.2143/BIJ.63.4.820 Abstract : The thinking of Nicholas of Cusa is characterized by a very refined sensibility for the plurality of truths and values. The ultimate truth can never be reached by human beings and there are as many truths as there are human individuals. Nevertheless, Cusanus believes that there can be found a common measure, with which the different religious truths can be reconciliated. This is the principle of the una religio in rituum varietate. The article shows the differences between this cusanian principle of pluralism and the modern – political – solutions of the social and religious conflicts. This comparison shows that the cusanian way of thinking can offer a contribution to the actual debates on the multicultural society, debates in which the liberal solution is questioned. The metaphysical way of arguing which we can find in the work of Cusanus – in De coniecturis (1441-1445) and De pace fidei (1453) is not just a restoration of the medieval ‘order’ (ordo), but offers the possibility to think about the relation to the absolute which every individual according Cusanus has. But this relation to the absolute is embedded in the traditional ways of life, the consuetudines (customs). In modern philosophy these consuetudines got a negative meaning in advantage of a more abstract idea of truth. In the discussions on the crisis of modernity and the limits of liberal thinking, this way of thinking may show some new directions. |
