Zborovska K. Anthropological reception of Dionysius Areopagite’s legacy in the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa

The thesis analyzes the anthropological reception of Dionysius Areopagite’s heritage in the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa in view of the fact that Corpus Areopagiticum ideas were perceived by Cusa both directly and through the intermediaries’ works (Albert the Great, Meister Eckhart, Raimund Lully and Heimerikos de Campo). Thus, they have been modified according to the spirit of the era and the mood that prevailed in the theological worldview discourses of that time. The scientific novelty of the study has been based to present the results of a comprehensive reconstruction of the anthropological reception of Dionysius Areopagite’s philosophy in the works of Nicholas of Cusa. The work has defied the specific features of the anthropological conception of Nicholas of Cusa in the context of the legacy of Christian philosophy of the late Middle Ages, and has discovered the key points in the interpretation of human nature by the German thinker. It has been argued that the philosophical systems of Dionysius Areopagite and Nicholas of Cusa are not Christian Neoplatonism, since the neo-Platonic terms borrowed by them have been redefined in a new ideological paradigm, and instead of the "unity" around which the understanding of the human individual is based in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Western patristics, the idea of "otherness" as a constituent ontological principle of Christian personalism has been suggested. These are foundations that the idea of humanity of the late Middle Ages is based concerning the unity of humanity based on the specific purpose of human nature.