There has been much recent debate about the nature of the omnivoyant image that introduces Nicholas of Cusa’s De visione Dei. In this paper, I argue that Cusa’s concept of contraction and his ‘radical perspectivism’ lead us toward stretching the concept of omnivoyance beyond a simple dichotomy between a phenomenology of the image and a phenomenology of the icon. Instead of putting such emphasis on what is seen by the omnivoyant, we should think an omnivoyant optics starting from the material milieu from which it sees. To this end, I define the concept of omnivoyance through the concept of the elemental. Using both the concept of an element derived from Presocratic Ionian philosophy and recent French and American continental philosophy, I put these discourses into conversation with Cusa in several ways: (1) the way omnivoyance functions as a substratum of contracted seeing rather than as a transcendence, (2) its operation as a pure frontality without objectifiable aspects, and (3) the way in which omnivoyance implies not only a gaze that sees ‘all and each’ (Cusa’s formula for omnivoyance) but also a plurality of modes of vision. To help us understand this enlarged concept of omnivoyance, I use the example of animal vision, particularly the gaze of the whale. With respect to cetacean vision, I deploy Melville’s metaphysical speculations in Moby Dick as our primary guide.

最近有很多关于介绍库萨的 Nicholas 的Devisione Dei的无所不知形象的性质的争论。在这篇论文中，我认为库萨的收缩概念和他的“激进透视主义”引导我们将无所不知的概念扩展到超越图像现象学和图标现象学之间的简单二分法。与其如此强调全能者所看到的东西，我们应该从它所看到的物质环境开始考虑一种全能光学。为此，我通过元素的概念来定义无所不知的概念。使用源自前苏格拉底爱奥尼亚哲学和最近的法国和美国大陆哲学的元素概念，我将这些话语以多种方式与库萨进行对话：（1）全知作为收缩观看的基础而不是超越的方式, (2) 它作为没有客观方面的纯粹正面的运作，以及 (3) 全视的方式不仅意味着看到“所有和每个”的凝视（库萨的全能公式），而且还意味着多种视觉模式。为了帮助我们理解这个扩大的全视概念，我以动物视觉为例，尤其是鲸鱼的凝视。关于鲸类视觉，我将梅尔维尔在《白鲸记》中的形而上学推测作为我们的主要指南。