Coincidence of opposites

The coincidence of opposites (coincidentia oppositorum) is Nicholas of Cusa’s name for the way contraries meet in God. Reason works by distinguishing and comparing, and cannot think that a thing is both greatest and least; but in the infinite, Cusa argued, the absolute maximum and the absolute minimum coincide. In On the Vision of God he describes God as dwelling beyond the wall of paradise, which is the coincidence of contradictories, guarded by the highest spirit of reason.

The idea has older roots. Heraclitus taught that opposites belong together in a hidden harmony, and that the way up and the way down are one. Dionysius the Areopagite placed God beyond both affirmation and negation. After Cusa, Jacob Boehme taught that God becomes manifest only through contraries, and the idea passed to Schelling, Hegel and, in the twentieth century, to C. G. Jung and the historian of religions Mircea Eliade.

Outside the West, Zhuangzi describes the sage who stands at the pivot of the Way, where “this” and “that” no longer stand opposed, and Madhyamaka refuses to say of the ultimate either that it is, or is not, or both, or neither.