The Fate of Place. Edward Casey

side of itself, and this something in turn requires “space” in which to be located. It is significant that Cusa uses locus, not spatium, in the phrase “and space” just cited. For the kind of space that is at stake in the situation is locatory, not infinite space. Locatory space is tantamount to “place” as this concept had been employed since Aristotle. It is a matter of a place for something—an “in which”—that lies beyond the boundary. But just such a place is lacking, indeed is superfluous, in a circumstance in which there is no effective boundary. To be infinite qua unbounded is to be placeless qua located. Between the full but nonspatial infinity of God and the essentially empty but precisely positional place of physical things lies the unbounded state, the spatial infinity, of the universe. Thanks to the articulation of this infinity, “a new spirit, the spirit of the Renaissance, breathes in the work of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa.”⁶⁵

      Bruno, deeply influenced by Cusa as he was, differed from him on at least two basic matters. For one thing, the infinity of the physical universe was for Bruno not less dignified or worthy than the infinity of God. As Paul Kristeller says, “Whereas Cusanus reserves true infinity for God alone, Bruno uses the relation between the universe and God as an argument for the infinity of the former.”⁶⁶ Then again, Bruno extends spatial infinity from this world to all worlds, worlds that are themselves infinite in number. A third form of infinity, that of worlds in their innumerability, is thus added to the spatial and divine infinities distinguished by Cusa. The proposal of infinite worlds ensues from a principle of sufficient reason: “Insofar as there is a reason why some finite good, some limited perfection, should be, there is a still greater reason why an infinite good should be; for, while the finite good exists because its existence is suitable and reasonable, the infinite good exists with absolute necessity.”⁶⁷ As Arthur Lovejoy puts it, it is “because of the necessity for the realization of the full Scale of Being that there must be an infinity of worlds to afford room for such a complete deployment of the possibles.”⁶⁸ Crucial for the thesis of infinite worlds is thus a principle of plenitude, as is made explicit in Bruno’s On the Infinite Universe and Worlds: “For just as it would be ill were this our space not filled, that is, were our world not to exist, then, since [particular] spaces are [otherwise] indistinguishable, it would be no less ill if the whole of space were not filled.”⁶⁹ It would be ill, indeed, if the whole of space were not filled, for it then would be an utterly indistinct and purposeless void. For Bruno, however, things and the worlds they constitute do not fill in a preexisting void; they remove the need to presume the existence of any such emptiness, since their presence gives to space a distinctive, qualitative heterogeneity otherwise wholly lacking. The only space that exists is fully qualified, plenary space, described by Bruno as “not merely reasonable but inevitable.”⁷⁰ The issue is not that of horror vacui, since nature does not rush to repair any momentary gaps but is always already full, never gappy or vacuous. As Bruno says explicitly, “Where there is no differentiation, there is no distinction of quality.”⁷¹ Worlds and the things they contain differentiate and fill up that which, without their distinguishing presence, would be a merely undifferentiated “undistinguishable inane” (in Locke’s memorable phrase).

      Bruno agrees with Cusa that the idea of a strictly bounded world lands us in the Stoic predicament of positing an empty extramundane space that has no other role than that of being occupied by some possible world. But God ensures that every possible world will become an actual one—”the possible and the actual [are] identical in God”⁷²—and thus such space is otiose. Moreover, to believe that a given world occupies a preexisting empty space is to require a reason why it occupies this particular space rather than some other.