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.