The negative theology of absolute infinity: Cantor, mathematics, and humility (Q6570465)

Noticing Cantor's profound engagement with metaphysics and theology, his knowledge of central notions of negative theology, and his awareness, arrived at by the diagonal argument, that ``absolute infinity is beyond mathematical comprehension, that the domain of mathematics cannot be grasped using mathematical tools'' (p.\ 233 ff.), the authors argue that ``this inability constitutes a foundational problem'', delve into the theological significance of Cantor's treatment of absolute infinity and indicate that it can be interpreted in terms of negative theology, with Nicholas of Cusa as one of the main protagonists, as well as Plotinus and Neoplatonism.\N\NThis interpretation has been previously proposed, as noted by the authors, by \textit{G. Kreis} [Negative Dialektik des Unendlichen: Kant, Hegel, Cantor. Berlin: Suhrkamp (2015)]. Kreis, however, also argued that the solution offered by Cantor is incoherent and therefore not tenable in the same manner as the negative theology argument is untenable, for ``claiming that God is beyond human comprehension is self-defeating, since this claim appears to constitute a comprehensible proposition about God.'' (p.\ 243)\N\NThe authors see a solution to the paradox of negative theology by seeing it instead ``as a practice that performatively undermines our putative knowledge of God. Indeed, for most of its protagonists, negative theology is not aiming at a negative theoretical statement about God, but at an experiential understanding of God's incomprehensibility that is achieved through the practice of negation.'' For Nicholas of Cusa, it is ``an experiential understanding that he describes as learned ignorance, as \textit{docta ignorantia}'' (p.\ 243) that is the result of the \textit{via negativa}.\N\NThey find that ``this experience is transformative, since it engenders an attitude of humility with respect to our boundedness. Even more, the experience is not just personally, but also epistemically transformative, since the new attitude is linked to an experiential understanding of the incomprehensibility.'' (p.\ 243)\N\NIn the same vein, they find that ``the diagonalization argument that leads to Cantor's paradox can be interpreted as a performative undermining of the notion of absolute infinity that evokes a transformative experience'' which ``can thereby lead to an attitude that acknowledges the incomprehensible character of the domain of mathematics.'' (p. 244 ff.)\N\NSimilarly, the problem of unrestricted quantification, which assumes the existence of a universe of all objects (shown to be contradictory by Cantor), or the problem of absolute generality ``shows that human life takes place inside a `domain' -- the incomplete universe -- that is beyond human comprehension.'' (p.\ 247)\N\NIn a final section they sketch ``a constructive way of dealing with the foundational problem of mathematics that differs from Cantor's solution.'' (p.\ 245)\N\NThey conclude that what one gains by abandoning the illusion of understanding totalities is humility:\N\N``The \textit{via negativa} undermines our grasp of the domain of metaphysics, i.e., the totality of everything that exists, as well as our understanding of God. On our reading, the failure of securing mathematics thus shows that, like human practice in general, the practice of mathematics is not fully transparent to us. We cannot step outside our everyday practice and we cannot step outside mathematical practice by mathematical means. In both cases, we cannot fully oversee what we are doing; on that note, we are limited.'' (p. 250)