Imprecision, Levels of Intensity, Grades of Reality

Presuppositions of Nicholas of Cusa’s Concepts of Precision, Contraction and ‘More and Less’ in Medieval Philosophy

Abstract

In traditional medieval ontology, based primarily on Greek and specifically on Aristotelian presuppositions, every being is well defined by its proper noetic structure or by its substance. The corresponding or adequate conceptual counterpart of this noetic structure, what Aristotle called the “logos tês ousías”, and Plato, before him, the “idea” of it, is essentially a definition with the logical basic form of a proposition which connects a predicate term with a substantial term indicating the relation between genus, specific difference and accidents.