Ignorance has been consciously cultivated as the most fecund moment in the whole process of encountering and relating to an order of beings that transcends the instrumental order of objects known only in terms of their usefulness for human purposes and projects. In the midst of this history, a central and exemplary paradigm of the apophatic mode of thought and discourse is the “learned ignorance” that Nicolaus of Cusa brought to focus and rendered famous in his epoch-making De docta ignorantia. Socratic ignorance serves as the obligatory point of departure for vast and varied currents comprising not only forms of skeptical and critical philosophy, but also several different types of mysticism that flourished in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Further techniques of exploiting emotional resources of ignorance matured through the Baroque and Romantic periods. Further techniques of exploiting emotional resources of ignorance matured through the Baroque and Romantic periods.