Abstract

Bergman's account of Cusanus's view of the relationship between God and the world leaves room for reservations. Bergman maintains that Cusanus is either a pantheist or a panentheist. This view, at variance with Cusanus's explicit theism, is hardly tenable in the light of a suitable interpretation of his apparently pantheistic or panentheistic formulations. Bergman's treatment of enfolding and unfolding, and especially of the arithmetical illustration of those relations, is deficient. His ascription of manifest Platonism to Cusanus's theory of enfolding is objectionable, since, for Cusanus, the enfolding entities are not universals and need not even be existents. The way in which Bergman compares Cusanus with Goethe and with Rudolf Otto is misleading. So is his account of Cusanus's principle of the coincidence of opposites.