- Lived:
- 1401–1464 · born in Kues on the Moselle, Germany; died in Todi, Italy
- Tradition:
- Late medieval mysticism shading into Renaissance philosophy — the hinge between the two
- The Big Idea:
- The infinite God is strictly beyond the reach of finite minds, so the highest knowledge is learned ignorance — a precise, even mathematical, understanding of exactly how and why we cannot know; and at infinity, all opposites coincide.
- In their words:
- "The more he knows that he is unknowing, the more learned he will be."
- If you remember one thing:
- On a ship home from Constantinople, a boatman's son from the Moselle received the idea that the deepest knowing is knowing that you cannot know — and used geometry to prove it.