Why we Need Cusanus

In the history of the scholarship on Nicholas of Cusa 1964 was a remarkable year. The fifth centenary of Cusanus’s death was celebrated and two famous Conferences were held in Bernkastel-Kues and Brixen/Bressanone, Nicholas’s German birthplace and episcopal see in South Tyrol, respectively. In the summer of the same year, the theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar published a long article in the cultural supplement of the Swiss newspaper „Basler Volksblattes“ entitled: „Warum wir Cusanus brauchen“. Almost sixty years after Balthasar’s article, in this book philosophers, theologians and scholars from different European countries return to debate on the topicality of Cusanus’s thought and its relevance for contemporary culture.
The contributors to this volume address the question raised by Balthasar in 1964 („Why we need Cusanus“) from various perspectives and from different approaches. In this way, the studies collected here offer the reader a picture of the multiple legacies of Cusanus’s philosophy and, at the same time, enable him to have a look at the new directions of research on Nicholas of Cusa and its developments in the last few decades.

The editors
Enrico Peroli is Full Professor of Moral Philosophy and he is currently teaching at the “G. D'Annunzio“ University of Chieti-Pescara. He is the author of several books and many articles ranging from Ancient Philosophy to the Patristic Tradition, from Neoplatonic thought to German idealism. To Nicholas of Cusa he devoted many essays and an extensive monograph published in Italy in 2021 (Niccolò Cusano. La vita, l'opera, il pensiero, Carocci, Roma 2021, 608 pp.). He also edited the Italian translation and the systematic commentary of all Cusanus’s philosophical and theological writings (Bompiani, Milano 2017).

Marco Moschini is Associate Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Perugia, where he teaches “Theories of the Subject“ and “Philosophy of Religion“. His research focuses mainly on the topics of ontology and dialectics. He is the author of articles and books on classical German and Italian Idealism of the 19th century, on the ontological school of the 20th century and on Cusanus.