Nicholas of Autrecourt (c.1300–after 1350), French philosopher and theologian. Born in Autrecourt, he was educated at Paris and earned bachelor’s degrees in theology and law and a master’s degree in arts. After a list of propositions from his writings was condemned in 1346, he was sentenced to burn his works publicly and recant, which he did in Paris the following year. He was appointed dean of Metz cathedral in 1350.
Nicholas’s ecclesiastical troubles arose partly from nine letters (two of which survive) which reduce to absurdity the view that appearances provide a sufficient basis for certain and evident knowledge. On the contrary, except for ‘certitude of the faith,’ we can be certain only of what is equivalent or reducible to the principle of noncontradiction. He accepts as a consequence of this that we can never validly infer the existence of one distinct thing from another, including the existence of substances from qualities, or causes from effects. Indeed, he finds that ‘in the whole of his natural philosophy and metaphysics, Aristotle had such [evident] certainty of scarcely two conclusions, and perhaps not even of one.’ Nicholas devotes another work, the Exigit ordo executionis (also known as The Universal Treatise), to an extended critique of Aristotelianism. It attacks what seemed to him the blind adherence given by his contemporaries to Aristotle and Averroes, showing that the opposite of many conclusions alleged to have been demonstrated by the Philosopher – e.g., on the divisibility of continua, the reality of motion, and the truth of appearances – are just as evident or apparent as those conclusions themselves.
Because so few of his writings are extant, however, it is difficult to ascertain just what Nicholas’s own views were. Likewise, the reasons for his condemnation are not well understood, although recent studies have suggested that his troubles might have been due to a reaction to certain ideas that he appropriated from English theologians, such as Adam de Wodeham.
Nicholas’s views elicited comment not only from church authorities, but also from other philosophers, including Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen, Albert of Saxony, and Nicholas of Oresme. Despite a few surface similarities, however, there is no evidence that his teachings on certainty or causality had any influence on modern philosophers, such as Descartes or Hume.
See also ARISTOTLE , OCKHAM, RATIONAL- IS. J.A.Z. Nicholas of Cusa, also called Nicolaus Cusanus, Nicholas Kryfts (1401–64), German philosopher, an important Renaissance Platonist. Born in Kues on the Moselle, he earned a doctorate in canon law in 1423. He became known for his De concordantia catholica, written at the Council of Basel in 1432, a work defending the conciliarist position against the pope. Later, he decided that only the pope could provide unity for the church in its negotiations with the East, and allied himself with the papacy. In 1437–38, returning from a papal legation to Constantinople, he had his famous insight into the coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) in the infinite, upon which his On Learned Ignorance is based. His unceasing labor was chiefly responsible for the Vienna Concordat with the Eastern church in 1448. He was made cardinal in 1449 as a reward for his efforts, and bishop of Brixen (Bressanone) in 1450. He traveled widely in Germany as a papal legate (1450–52) before settling down in his see. Cusa’s central insight was that all oppositions are united in their infinite measure, so that what would be logical contradictions for finite things coexist without contradiction in God, who is the measure of (i.e., is the form or essence of) all things, and identical to them inasmuch as he is identical with their reality, quiddity, or essence. Considered as it is contracted to the individual, a thing is only an image of its measure, not a reality in itself. His position drew on mathematical models, arguing, for instance, that an infinite straight line tangent to a circle is the measure of the curved circumference, since a circle of infinite diameter, containing all the being possible in a circle, would coincide with the tangent. In general, the measure of a thing must contain all the possible being of that sort of thing, and so is infinite, or unlimited, in its being. Cusa attacked Aristotelians for their unwillingness to give up the principle of non-contradiction. His epistemology is a form of Platonic skepticism. Our knowledge is never of reality, the infinite measure of things that is their essence, but only of finite images of reality corresponding to the finite copies with which we must deal. These images are constructed by our own minds, and do not represent an immediate grasp of any reality. Their highest form is found in mathematics, and it is only through mathematics that reason can understand the world. In relation to the infinite real, these images and the contracted realities they enable us to know have only an infinitesimal reality. Our knowledge is only a mass of conjectures, i.e., assertions that are true insofar as they capture some part of the truth, but never the whole truth, the infinite measure, as it really is in itself. Cusa was much read in the Renaissance, and is somethimes said to have had significant influence on German thought of the eighteenth century, in particular on Leibniz, and German idealism, but it is uncertain, despite the considerable intrinsic merit of his thought, if this is true.
See also PLATO. J.Lo.