Defense Date
3-1-2024
Graduation Date
Spring 5-10-2024
Availability
Restricted
Submission Type
dissertation
Degree Name
PhD
Department
Communication and Rhetorical Studies
School
McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts
Committee Chair
Janie M. Harden Fritz
Committee Member
Erik Garrett
Committee Member
Richard H. Thames
Keywords
communication ethics, dialogue, institutions, leadership, medieval era, philosophical hermeneutics
Abstract
This project brings German philosopher, theologian, and cleric Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) into conversation with dialogic communication ethics. Cusa’s philosophical contributions and church career are well documented, but he has yet to be studied from a rhetoric and philosophy of communication perspective. Cusa offered a distinctive philosophy of language during a chaotic time in Western history. His articulation of the coincidentia oppositorum provided a philosophical vocabulary for the unity of contraries. This dissertation project has five sections. First, it situates dialogic communication ethics as a response to crisis in the public sphere in postmodernity, understood as an era in which multiple historical moments are copresent. Second, the project provides a narrative background for Nicholas of Cusa by examining the interplay of communication ethics perspectives in the Great Schism and the conciliar movement of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. Third, the interpretive heart of the project is Cusa’s doctrine of the coincidentia oppositorum, or unity of contraries, and Martin Buber’s extension of this doctrine into the interhuman. Fourth, the project focuses on Cusa’s doctrine of learned ignorance as interpreted through philosophical hermeneutics, yielding a manifestation of communication ethics literacy. Finally, the project illuminates intersections between Cusa’s career and the scholarly career of Ronald C. Arnett, centered on creative communication ethics leadership in the service of dialogic reformation. Cusa presents a legacy with a unity of contraries at its heart: upholding local narrative ground with tenacious loyalty while working in an increasingly large world.
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Kearney, M. (2024). Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) on Crisis, Difference, and the Revelatory: A Medieval Dialogic Communication Ethic (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/2340