Chapter 8 The Notion of Faith in the Works of Nicholas Cusanus and Giordano Bruno
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It is well known that Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), the famous Italian philosopher and scientist, was deeply influenced by Nicholas of Cusa. Yet scholarship so far, perhaps unsurprisingly given Bruno’s heterodoxy, has neglected the important relation between their accounts of faith. From his first works Bruno shows a deep knowledge of Cusanus’ writings, frequently quoting terms from him and sometimes entire passages. In the De umbris idearum he states the importance of faith by almost paraphrasing the third book of the De docta ignorantia. In his Spaccio de la bestia trionfante Bruno proposes a reform of religion and moral values, and holds trust and charity as the principles of human society. Here Cusanus is directly mentioned. Cusanus’ philosophy always remains a major source for Bruno’s epistemology and for his conception of the search for divinity. However, Bruno’s interpretation of faith is not the same as Cusanus’. For, as Meredith Ziebart has argued, Cusanus aims at merging faith intended in an epistemological sense (as a non-rational kind of knowledge that can orientate human reasoning) and faith intended in a religious sense (as faith in God and in Christ). By contrast, Bruno omits every reference to the Christian God and to Christ when writing about faith. He conceives faith as a disposition of the soul that evaluates the activities of every faculty, thus laying the foundation of every relationship that man can establish with external objects. This kind of faith becomes a key element in Bruno’s epistemology, ethics and magic. In short, with Bruno, a Christian virtue is remodelled in a non-Christian philosophy.