Creativity and Embodied Knowledge in Nicholas of Cusa's De mente (1450)

This article aims to nuance the widespread view that embodied experience plays a secondary role in the acquisition of human knowledge in Nicholas of Cusa's thought. With a focus on De mente (1450), I contend that the body is not limited to being a necessary stimulus to provoke the mind's activity, but rather that finite, material experience enters into such a fertile conversation with the human mind in such a way that the unfolding of its creative power acquires the character of an event. I begin by examining the mind's creativity achieved by abstraction from the body, whereby concepts and mathematical entities are produced. I claim that Cusanus's view on human creativity as epistemological stems from his original conception of an internal mathematical structure of the mind. Subsequently, I turn to the artisan's production of a spoon as an illuminating case for identifying the defining features of an embodied creativity . Unlike abstract creativity, the creation of ideas does not necessarily make an artefact creative, since Cusanus ultimately does not conceive of the artefact's conception in terms of a sheer imposition of a mental form on matter. Instead, I contend that the novelty of such an artefact occurs at the level of implementation, where the artisan precisely fails to embody perfectly the mental idea of the spoon. I conclude by situating this example within Cusanus's broader anthropological framework in De mente , arguing for a soul‐body unity that supports the view that human knowledge generated through making has intrinsic epistemic value. It is through such an embodied unfolding of their creativity that human beings find a legitimate and personal way to imitate Christ.