"Squaring the circle": Cusan metaphysics, mathesis and the pansophic vision of Jan Amos Comenius

According to Charles Lohr, Nicholas of Cusa was instrumental in inaugurating a new and profoundly Trinitarian vision of reality. One of the most important inheritors of this legacy was the Czech theologian and pedagogue Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670), who was deeply influenced by Cusanus, and especially his notion of the coincidence of opposites. In particular, as Jan Patočka has shown, Comenius’ famous pansophic method was clearly shaped by his reading of Cusanus’ De docta ignorantia and other works. Building on this scholarship, this chapter seeks to examine the specifically Trinitarian character of this pansophic vision, in the context of both Comenius’ philosophical works and his anti-Socinian tracts. For Comenius the upholding of the natural knowledge of the Trinity was a crucial weapon against the Socinian heresy. Yet in affirming this he was well aware of the need to balance the competing claims of sense, reason and faith. Tracing Comenius’ developing discussion of the Cusan motif of “squaring the circle” it demonstrates the role of the coincidence of opposites in unifying his philosophical and theological thought. It then shows the way in which this emerged in Comenius’ mature attempt to develop an alternative mathesis universalis – one which affirmed with Descartes and the new philosophy the mathematical structure of all reality, but always remained open to its Trinitarian and transcendent ground.