The All‐Seeing: Fraternity and Vision of God in Nicholas of Cusa
Emmanuel Falque
Abstract “I am because you look upon me.” This phrase from Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei sive icona is enough to sum up the stakes and originality this treatise sent in 1453 Tegernsee monks. “Speaking order see,” “seeing speak,” “hearing believe” chart different stages unique experience, at once aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual, mystical. Whereas one might have believed that mere call transcendence would be justify gathering together before God, collective contemplation Rogier van der Weyden’s painting by community monks instead allows see even hear “the revelation witness” (and thus brother”) validates truth communally shared experience. Reaching “wall paradise” does not so much mean “escaping through wall” or “getting over as it “inhabiting boundary” where opposites “coincide” man God meet within a human community.
Modern Theology