I've been reading the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. When we think of the ascetic athletes of Skete, we think of austere men hardened by fasting and vigil and battle with the demons, keenly aware of their own sins, and intolerant of nonsense in others. Yet, when we read these stories we see nothing of what we might expect from a constant self-negation born of hatred, as the secular understands self-denial to be. Instead of judgment and pride, we see an otherworldly abundance of mercy, humility, and peace. The presence of such fruits, reaching far beyond the limitations of their culture and time, are the strongest proof the Spirit in their midst. As I read these stories, I wonder, what would I have done in these situations? The Fathers' actions are a constant surprise to me, like Christ in the Gospels, by the way they transcend the norms of the social order in service of love.
Here are two of these stories, both of Abba Ammonas.
8. ...Abba Ammonas advanced to the point where his goodness was so great, he took no notice of wickedness. Thus, having become bishop, someone brought a young girl who was pregnant to him, saying, "See what this unhappy wretch has done; give her a penance." But he, having marked the young girl's womb with the sign of the cross, commanded that six pairs of fine linen sheets should be given her, saying, "It is for fear that, when she comes to give birth, she may die, she or the child, and have nothing for the burial." But her accusers resumed, :Why did you do that? Give her a punishment." But he said to them, "Look, brothers, she is near to death; what am I to do?" Then he sent her away and no old man dared accuse anyone any more.
10. Abba Ammonas came one day to eat in a place where there was a monk of evil repute. Now it happened that a woman came and entered the cell of the brother of evil reputation. The dwellers in that place, having learnt this, were troubled and gathered together to chase the brother from his cell. Knowing that Bishop Ammonas was in the place, they asked him to join them. When the brother in question learnt this, he hid the woman in a large cask. The crowd of monks came to the place. Now Abba Ammonas saw the position clearly but for the sake of God he kept the secret; he entered, seated himself on the cask and commanded the cell to be searched. Then when the monks had searched everywhere without finding the woman, Abba Ammonas said, 'What is this? May God forgive you!' After praying, he made everyone go out, then taking the brother by the hand he said, 'Brother, be on your guard.' With these words, he withdrew.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Thought, Creativity, and the Good
"We are by nature creators, not just consumers. We are creators because we think. And because our thought (our rational nature) is also the basis of our personalities, one could say that we are creators because we are persons.... When we act in a manner proper to a person, we always create something: we create something either outside ourselves in the surrounding world or within ourselves--or outside and within ourselves at the same time. Creating as derived from thinking is so characteristic of a person that it is always an infallible sign of a person, a proof of a person's existence or presence. In creating, we also fill the external material world around us with our own thought and being. There is a certain similarity here between ourselves and God, for the whole of creation is an expression of God's own thought of being.
Although thought is the basis of the creativity in which we express ourselves as persons, this creativity neither ends nor culminates in thought. That which is most characteristic of a person, that in which a person (at least in the natural order) is most fully and properly realized, is morality. Morality is not the most strictly connected with thought; thought is merely a condition of morality."
-Karol Woyjtyla, "Thomistic Personalism" in Person and Community, 171-2
This made my jaw drop.
I need to read more of this guy.
Although thought is the basis of the creativity in which we express ourselves as persons, this creativity neither ends nor culminates in thought. That which is most characteristic of a person, that in which a person (at least in the natural order) is most fully and properly realized, is morality. Morality is not the most strictly connected with thought; thought is merely a condition of morality."
-Karol Woyjtyla, "Thomistic Personalism" in Person and Community, 171-2
This made my jaw drop.
I need to read more of this guy.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Ochre Serenity
"Let me return to the mediocre painting that I earlier had my eye on: how can I describe it in its own phenomenality? A generic scene so ordinary, displaying a house, a servant at the window, the animals and a man outside, vegetables and fowl, etc., cannot be analyzed as such. First, because strictly speaking it is impossible to identify it with and by its characteristics as a real being (size, mounting, etc) which would suit so many other objects--it's not a question of a subsisting being. The same goes for the objects it represents intentionally, objects that can be confused with an infinite number of similar ones on similar canvases. And for that matter, its first function is not to instruct us about these objects; as a painting, it has no utility--it is not a question of a being ready-to-hand. What remains once these two identifications have been reduced? For some element does indeed remain--by which it keeps precisely the rank of a painting.
But what do I see when I see with phenomenological rigor? Not the framed canvas, nor the country objects, nor even the organization of the colors and the forms--I see, without any hesitation, the ruddy and ochre flood of the day's last light as it inundates the entire scene. This luminosity itself does not strike me as a fact of color; rather, this fact of color strikes me only in that it makes me undergo a passion: that, in Kandinsky's terms, of ochre tinged with gold--the passion undergone by the soul affected by the profound serenity of the world saved and protected by the last blood of the setting sun. To see the painting, to the point where it is not confused with any other, amounts to seeing it reduced to its effect. The effect of serenity defines the visibility of this painting--its reduced phenomenality. Its phenomenality is reduced--beyond its beingness, its subsistence, and its utility--to this effect: ochre serenity.
Painters look for this phenomenality when, the painting having been completed (or almost so), they wonder to themselves, "ce que cela donne, what [effect] it gives off." What more does a painting give besides what it shows in showing itself as object and being? Its effect. What more does the painting offer besides its real component parts? Its effect. But this effect is not produced in the mode of an object, nor is it constituted or reconstituted in the mode of beings. It gives itself. The painting (and, in and through it, every other phenomenon in different degrees) is reduced to its ultimate phenomenality insofar as it gives its effect. It appears as given in the effect that it gives.
Thus is defined the essential invisibility of the painting, which we can pass by because there is nothing objective or ontic to see in it. In the end, for every reduced being, all that remains is the effect, such that in it the visible is given, is reduced to a given. The painting is not visible; it makes visible. It makes visible in a gesture that remains by definition invisible--the effect, the upsurge, the advance of givenness. To be given requires being reduced--reconducted--to this invisible effect which alone makes visible. Nothing has an effect, except the phenomenon reduced to the given."
--Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given, 51-52
But what do I see when I see with phenomenological rigor? Not the framed canvas, nor the country objects, nor even the organization of the colors and the forms--I see, without any hesitation, the ruddy and ochre flood of the day's last light as it inundates the entire scene. This luminosity itself does not strike me as a fact of color; rather, this fact of color strikes me only in that it makes me undergo a passion: that, in Kandinsky's terms, of ochre tinged with gold--the passion undergone by the soul affected by the profound serenity of the world saved and protected by the last blood of the setting sun. To see the painting, to the point where it is not confused with any other, amounts to seeing it reduced to its effect. The effect of serenity defines the visibility of this painting--its reduced phenomenality. Its phenomenality is reduced--beyond its beingness, its subsistence, and its utility--to this effect: ochre serenity.
Painters look for this phenomenality when, the painting having been completed (or almost so), they wonder to themselves, "ce que cela donne, what [effect] it gives off." What more does a painting give besides what it shows in showing itself as object and being? Its effect. What more does the painting offer besides its real component parts? Its effect. But this effect is not produced in the mode of an object, nor is it constituted or reconstituted in the mode of beings. It gives itself. The painting (and, in and through it, every other phenomenon in different degrees) is reduced to its ultimate phenomenality insofar as it gives its effect. It appears as given in the effect that it gives.
Thus is defined the essential invisibility of the painting, which we can pass by because there is nothing objective or ontic to see in it. In the end, for every reduced being, all that remains is the effect, such that in it the visible is given, is reduced to a given. The painting is not visible; it makes visible. It makes visible in a gesture that remains by definition invisible--the effect, the upsurge, the advance of givenness. To be given requires being reduced--reconducted--to this invisible effect which alone makes visible. Nothing has an effect, except the phenomenon reduced to the given."
--Jean-Luc Marion, Being Given, 51-52
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Skeletons, I
Everything that is, from the beginning, is caught up in order. The blossom only appears through the support of the stalk and leaves - a coherent, functional system that supports - and yet somehow is unlike - the unexpected burst of beauty it produces. Words too, of writers, of poets, flower with layers of meaning unfolding to infinity, yet are supported in their weight and order by the syntax underneath. Yet the external is always the flesh, the surface we touch with our hands and eyes; the syntax is buried underneath, as the skeletons hidden beneath our flesh. A humble job, to synthesize and support with no acknowledgment or recognition. Indeed, a skeleton we touch, that acts as a surface frightens us - it is death, torture, mortality. Syntax by itself, and the rigid methodology of the philosophers, is death when touched by and for itself. Not all death is permanent, of course - sometimes to analyze a poem can later help it to come rise again to new and deeper life. Still, sometimes it merely crumbles to ashes. Many a good syntactician has lost the ability to enjoy a novel. Regardless, the philosophers and linguists touch these skeletons all day, some with the caress of love, many with the cold detachment of a surgeon about to operate on yet another object to take apart.
What does it mean, to caress death, structure, abstraction, to ignore the flesh? Cloaked with these words it sounds like a perversion of thought (must we then strip off this flesh to reveal and judge its truth on the naked ribs?). Certainly it will be morbid perversion if fills the whole of one's activity. And yet these skeletons have an important role that cannot be neglected. They make up an intrinsic part of bodies, the literal human body, the spiritual body of Christ, or the intellectual body of a text. Form and content, Balthsar says, are two poles, not two opposites - for the skeleton supports the flesh and the flesh keeps the skeleton alive. Bones are alive - it is funny to think of, for they are alive precisely when we do not think of them, when we do not see them, when they are properly hidden beneath the flesh. We osteologers, logicians and academics, do a valuable service in studying the skeletal systems, and indeed, knowing the skeleton guides one's ability to bring health to the body, one's own or those of others. Yet we must be careful not to make the living body into a corpse through careless extraction.
What does it mean, to caress death, structure, abstraction, to ignore the flesh? Cloaked with these words it sounds like a perversion of thought (must we then strip off this flesh to reveal and judge its truth on the naked ribs?). Certainly it will be morbid perversion if fills the whole of one's activity. And yet these skeletons have an important role that cannot be neglected. They make up an intrinsic part of bodies, the literal human body, the spiritual body of Christ, or the intellectual body of a text. Form and content, Balthsar says, are two poles, not two opposites - for the skeleton supports the flesh and the flesh keeps the skeleton alive. Bones are alive - it is funny to think of, for they are alive precisely when we do not think of them, when we do not see them, when they are properly hidden beneath the flesh. We osteologers, logicians and academics, do a valuable service in studying the skeletal systems, and indeed, knowing the skeleton guides one's ability to bring health to the body, one's own or those of others. Yet we must be careful not to make the living body into a corpse through careless extraction.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Spirit and Life
"Human bodies are circular."
When a friend of mine made this comment, I thought at first he was making an Origenist joke - as Fr. Peter explained in a Lumen Christi lecture, that we all will inhabit perfectly spherical bodies when we die (and I still remember Thomas following that with one of his best retorts, "Some of us are already becoming that way!")
But my friend went on to explain it in a more metaphysical way - almost everything about us seems to be built on cycles. Metabolism, blood circulation, nervous system, reproductive system (especially for women!), and even the birth and death of every individual cell. It's not only at the internal level, but the external level as well - the seasons change, the sun rises and sets, animal and plant life grows and dies - birth, life, dying, death, and a new birth to begin again. We have become so used to thinking in linear, scientific terms, to Hegelian philosophies of determined development of the consciousness, to narratives that have a beginning and an end (if we even think about the final end at all). And yet, while development is real, "The Circle of LIfe" is not just a song from the Lion King, and it is not just an outdated mythology of tribal civilizations - there is very real truth to the fact that human beings are circular creatures.
This is not only built into our environment or our bodies, but our spirits themselves - we get up, we work, we sleep. We go to school, we wait for summer. We get bored of summer, and wait for school. We wear down grooves in our consciousness that diverts the flow of energy directly to certain thought patterns and actions - the very philosophy of virtue depends on our circular nature! How do we become virtuous, or gain excellence at anything? By practice, by entering the circle and repeating over and over until this circle is absorbed into the fabric of our being, whether this practice is the virtue of patience, acquiring a foreign language, or developing the musical sensitivity and muscle memory to play guitar.
There is something so beautiful about this. We are not a monad, nor is life a collection of objects that happen to lie near each other. There is always a return to the start, a going out and coming back, exitus and reditus as we artfully craft each circle around us, weaving in the motion of the external world into the free desires of our internal world like the invisible dynamism of each atom, our own personal solar system. And yet at the same time, this circular nature seems to be the source also of mankind's biggest enemy, or one of them. Boredom.
Indeed, boredom can lead us to make more of ourselves, to challenge us to press beyond the easy, cowardly limits we might set for ourselves to dare something greater, the echo of our desire for transcendence and infinity despite the limits imposed on us by our corporeality. Yet all too often boredom comes almost immediatley - we want to pursue our circles as long as they are enjoyable. Once it becomes too difficult, we want to move on to something we feel will be a greater thrill to us. This restlessness makes us dissatisfied with our circles, unhapppy with familiar grooves, itching for something new and exciting. And yet it can't be radically new and unlike the past, or we are frightened - it must be at least familiar enough that we can understand it. Thus, there is a balance between which satisfaction lies - completely new is terrifying, completely old is mind-numbingly dull. Different people find different balances in acclimation and boredom, yet this cycle of novelty and boredom is a cycle shared by all. And almost invariably, unless the focus is survival itself, boredom is a deep enemy to our futures. Its damage is seen in hobbies and friendships, careers, marriages, families, and lies deep at the heart of the consumerist culture we live in, which pursues novelty and entertainment above all else.
The fact is, cycles die. Scientifically we know that no energy is ever truly lost, but have we ever found a truly closed system on this earth? There is a slow decline of energy loss in all things that move, breathe, or participate in the remotest scrap of being. Decay, rot, the gradual slow as all things naturally move towards the stagnant equilibrium of death. And so with our human cycles. We become sick of those same faces, the same sections of the city or neighborhood. We loathe the routine of our obnoxious jobs and our irritating professors. Enough of the same, it is time for something new! Abandon this circle, start a new one, or at least try to find a way to infuse life into this old, dead circle.
Yet how to rescue or revive it? We can try to run away, start new circles, but the more circles we start, the quicker we get bored with them. We try to distract ourselves by being workaholics, or devoting our lives to cheap entertainment, but this does not help. Nor can we run for ever - we are meant to have roots, and so we will either be unhappy without nourishment, or settle them down only to find ourselves trapped in the same old circles, bound by the dependence of others, our own lack of energy, our lack of health, or fear of new things in this familiar but dreary pattern.
"Vanity of vanities, says Qoholeth, vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
"What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun." (Eccl 1:1-11)
And yet, the plea for newness is at the very heart of man, and it does not go unanswered - "Behold I make all things new!" Hear again, wonder anew at the marvels the Lord has done for us, for he will refresh our weary hearts! Christ promises this - "Behold I make all things new... for the former things are passing away.!" (Rev 21:5) He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death, the death of our lives and the death of the cycles which ground them, will be no more. But that is then - and this is now. There is a long gap between here and eternity, where we may shed our tired circles like dead scales to enter the eternal circle of the beatific vision, where we may gaze ever deeper and deeper on God.
Yet this precisely is the message of today: even now the kingdom of God is at hand, even now the world may be renewed and these tired old circles inrupted with the infinity of the Divine to shatter our narrow conceptions of familiarity and routine - "Send forth your spirit and they shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth." (Ps. 104:30) We are often mystified by the Holy Spirit - Fathers we know, the Son of course lived as one of us... but what is this third extra person who fits in no easy category? The Holy Spirit is precisely the one who dwells within us and loves through us, who renews us!
In light of the mysteries of the Spirit we see that life is not truly a circle, but a spiral - an ever deepening spiral upwards and inwards. We come around to the same point again and again, but if it appears the same it is only an illusion - we are never the same, we are alive and constantly growing - either acclimating ourselves flatly upon the earth or breathing the life of the Spirit who will take us deeper and deeper. The mysteries of faith we celebrate over and over, the three year liturgical cycle, the cycle of the week, the cycle of every Mass itself, birth, death, and rebirth, ending not with death or even a different birth from the same ashes, but Resurrection, the revival of the dead into a new and impossible life, followed by the commission to participate in the Spirit's mission to go and bear the news to the ends of the earth. As we live ever more in the Spirit, we come to the same truths again and again, and find in them an inexhaustible source of newness. This is because the true newness is not really cheap novelty - newness, the truth and refreshing newness we all seek is the life of the Spirit breathed into us, the breath of existence perfumed with that second breath by which we become one with divine nature, the new cycle, the exitus which proceeds from the Father through the Son in the Spirit, and the reditus catching us all up together in the Spirit to return through the Son to the Father.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus! Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love! Send out your spirit, and renew the face of the earth! Revive our dead bones with the consuming fire of divinity, let us live this mystery that is never changing and ever new!
Holy Spirit, Lord of life
From your pure celestial height
Your pure beaming radiance give
Come, O Father of the poor
Come with treasures that endure
You, O light of all that live.
You of all consolers best
Visiting the troubled breast
Most refreshing peace bestow
You in toil are comfort sweet
Pleasant coolness in the heat
Solace in the midst of woe
Light immortal, light divine
Visit now this heart of mine
And my inmost being fill
When you take your grace away
Nothing good in us will stay
All our good is turned toward ill
Heal our wounds our strength renew
On our dryness pour your dew
Wash the stains of guilt away
Bend the stubborn heart and will
Melt the frozen, warm the chill
Guide the steps that go astray
Grant to us who evermore
You confess and you adore
In your sevenfold gift descend
Give us comfort when we die
Give us life with you on high
Give us joys that never end
Amen. Alleluia.
When a friend of mine made this comment, I thought at first he was making an Origenist joke - as Fr. Peter explained in a Lumen Christi lecture, that we all will inhabit perfectly spherical bodies when we die (and I still remember Thomas following that with one of his best retorts, "Some of us are already becoming that way!")
But my friend went on to explain it in a more metaphysical way - almost everything about us seems to be built on cycles. Metabolism, blood circulation, nervous system, reproductive system (especially for women!), and even the birth and death of every individual cell. It's not only at the internal level, but the external level as well - the seasons change, the sun rises and sets, animal and plant life grows and dies - birth, life, dying, death, and a new birth to begin again. We have become so used to thinking in linear, scientific terms, to Hegelian philosophies of determined development of the consciousness, to narratives that have a beginning and an end (if we even think about the final end at all). And yet, while development is real, "The Circle of LIfe" is not just a song from the Lion King, and it is not just an outdated mythology of tribal civilizations - there is very real truth to the fact that human beings are circular creatures.
This is not only built into our environment or our bodies, but our spirits themselves - we get up, we work, we sleep. We go to school, we wait for summer. We get bored of summer, and wait for school. We wear down grooves in our consciousness that diverts the flow of energy directly to certain thought patterns and actions - the very philosophy of virtue depends on our circular nature! How do we become virtuous, or gain excellence at anything? By practice, by entering the circle and repeating over and over until this circle is absorbed into the fabric of our being, whether this practice is the virtue of patience, acquiring a foreign language, or developing the musical sensitivity and muscle memory to play guitar.
There is something so beautiful about this. We are not a monad, nor is life a collection of objects that happen to lie near each other. There is always a return to the start, a going out and coming back, exitus and reditus as we artfully craft each circle around us, weaving in the motion of the external world into the free desires of our internal world like the invisible dynamism of each atom, our own personal solar system. And yet at the same time, this circular nature seems to be the source also of mankind's biggest enemy, or one of them. Boredom.
Indeed, boredom can lead us to make more of ourselves, to challenge us to press beyond the easy, cowardly limits we might set for ourselves to dare something greater, the echo of our desire for transcendence and infinity despite the limits imposed on us by our corporeality. Yet all too often boredom comes almost immediatley - we want to pursue our circles as long as they are enjoyable. Once it becomes too difficult, we want to move on to something we feel will be a greater thrill to us. This restlessness makes us dissatisfied with our circles, unhapppy with familiar grooves, itching for something new and exciting. And yet it can't be radically new and unlike the past, or we are frightened - it must be at least familiar enough that we can understand it. Thus, there is a balance between which satisfaction lies - completely new is terrifying, completely old is mind-numbingly dull. Different people find different balances in acclimation and boredom, yet this cycle of novelty and boredom is a cycle shared by all. And almost invariably, unless the focus is survival itself, boredom is a deep enemy to our futures. Its damage is seen in hobbies and friendships, careers, marriages, families, and lies deep at the heart of the consumerist culture we live in, which pursues novelty and entertainment above all else.
The fact is, cycles die. Scientifically we know that no energy is ever truly lost, but have we ever found a truly closed system on this earth? There is a slow decline of energy loss in all things that move, breathe, or participate in the remotest scrap of being. Decay, rot, the gradual slow as all things naturally move towards the stagnant equilibrium of death. And so with our human cycles. We become sick of those same faces, the same sections of the city or neighborhood. We loathe the routine of our obnoxious jobs and our irritating professors. Enough of the same, it is time for something new! Abandon this circle, start a new one, or at least try to find a way to infuse life into this old, dead circle.
Yet how to rescue or revive it? We can try to run away, start new circles, but the more circles we start, the quicker we get bored with them. We try to distract ourselves by being workaholics, or devoting our lives to cheap entertainment, but this does not help. Nor can we run for ever - we are meant to have roots, and so we will either be unhappy without nourishment, or settle them down only to find ourselves trapped in the same old circles, bound by the dependence of others, our own lack of energy, our lack of health, or fear of new things in this familiar but dreary pattern.
"Vanity of vanities, says Qoholeth, vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
"What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains for ever. The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun." (Eccl 1:1-11)
And yet, the plea for newness is at the very heart of man, and it does not go unanswered - "Behold I make all things new!" Hear again, wonder anew at the marvels the Lord has done for us, for he will refresh our weary hearts! Christ promises this - "Behold I make all things new... for the former things are passing away.!" (Rev 21:5) He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death, the death of our lives and the death of the cycles which ground them, will be no more. But that is then - and this is now. There is a long gap between here and eternity, where we may shed our tired circles like dead scales to enter the eternal circle of the beatific vision, where we may gaze ever deeper and deeper on God.
Yet this precisely is the message of today: even now the kingdom of God is at hand, even now the world may be renewed and these tired old circles inrupted with the infinity of the Divine to shatter our narrow conceptions of familiarity and routine - "Send forth your spirit and they shall be created, and you will renew the face of the earth." (Ps. 104:30) We are often mystified by the Holy Spirit - Fathers we know, the Son of course lived as one of us... but what is this third extra person who fits in no easy category? The Holy Spirit is precisely the one who dwells within us and loves through us, who renews us!
In light of the mysteries of the Spirit we see that life is not truly a circle, but a spiral - an ever deepening spiral upwards and inwards. We come around to the same point again and again, but if it appears the same it is only an illusion - we are never the same, we are alive and constantly growing - either acclimating ourselves flatly upon the earth or breathing the life of the Spirit who will take us deeper and deeper. The mysteries of faith we celebrate over and over, the three year liturgical cycle, the cycle of the week, the cycle of every Mass itself, birth, death, and rebirth, ending not with death or even a different birth from the same ashes, but Resurrection, the revival of the dead into a new and impossible life, followed by the commission to participate in the Spirit's mission to go and bear the news to the ends of the earth. As we live ever more in the Spirit, we come to the same truths again and again, and find in them an inexhaustible source of newness. This is because the true newness is not really cheap novelty - newness, the truth and refreshing newness we all seek is the life of the Spirit breathed into us, the breath of existence perfumed with that second breath by which we become one with divine nature, the new cycle, the exitus which proceeds from the Father through the Son in the Spirit, and the reditus catching us all up together in the Spirit to return through the Son to the Father.
Veni, Sancte Spiritus! Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love! Send out your spirit, and renew the face of the earth! Revive our dead bones with the consuming fire of divinity, let us live this mystery that is never changing and ever new!
Holy Spirit, Lord of life
From your pure celestial height
Your pure beaming radiance give
Come, O Father of the poor
Come with treasures that endure
You, O light of all that live.
You of all consolers best
Visiting the troubled breast
Most refreshing peace bestow
You in toil are comfort sweet
Pleasant coolness in the heat
Solace in the midst of woe
Light immortal, light divine
Visit now this heart of mine
And my inmost being fill
When you take your grace away
Nothing good in us will stay
All our good is turned toward ill
Heal our wounds our strength renew
On our dryness pour your dew
Wash the stains of guilt away
Bend the stubborn heart and will
Melt the frozen, warm the chill
Guide the steps that go astray
Grant to us who evermore
You confess and you adore
In your sevenfold gift descend
Give us comfort when we die
Give us life with you on high
Give us joys that never end
Amen. Alleluia.
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Life of the Mind, Part III
Evagrius Ponticus was a late 4th century figure, trained in the theology and politics of big city ecclesial life under the Cappadocians, who ended up as a monk in the remote Egyptian desert. He was often criticized for being too intellectual, and indeed his theology did have very systematic theory behind it, unusual in the midst of often uneducated Coptic monks who focused more exclusively on the practical monastic experience, and often held anthropomorphic beliefs of God. Yet his theology also had a very practical side, for he gives a keen psychological analysis and develops battle tactics against the eight logismoi, or tempting thoughts, that attack a monk learning to pray.
From him come the very well known words, "the one who prays is a theologian, the theologian is one who prays."
And yet, this phrase is not so simple to unravel as it might appear. To understand them, you need to have a specific understanding of anthropology, epistemology, and the ascetic life, and how these all link together. Evagrius had a very particular idea about what a knowledge of God is, and the way it can be reached based on the kind of minds we have, and the way that body relates to that. Because of his Origenist creation account, he believed that we are all created originally to be minds contemplating God. But then we got distracted and fell away, cooling our fiery spirits into bodies. Those that fell the least were given angelic bodies, those that fell the most were given demonic bodies, and we are somewhere in between. Although bodies are not evil, exactly, they are not a full reflection of what we were meant to be - we were meant to contemplate God in undistracted unity. This is exactly the goal of monastic life, to return as far as possible to this contemplation.
This is prayer. But this itself is also theology.
How do we know something? Well, we can kind of get knowledge encountering things in this world of multiplicity, but we can't really know a thing until we grasp its nature. This is very much like Plotinus (who was a contemporary of Origen, Evagrius' biggest theological influence) - there is the knowledge you get through discursive reasoning, but a higher knowledge comes through immediate intuition of truth (like angelic knowledge). But this is still not the greatest kind of knowledge, because it is still in the world of multiplicity - this is not yet the unity of God himself. So there are three stages - discursive reasoning, intuitive knowledge of natures, and intuitive knowledge of God himself. But God does not come to just anyone, and it's not something we can do on our own. We have to first clear our minds of distractions (again, what caused us to fall away from our original bliss) by battling the logismoi until we reach the state of apatheia, a sort of unshakable peace. THEN we are in a place that God can show himself to us. This is theology.
The way Evagrius sees it, theology does not involve active thinking. Theology is conceptless prayer in which God reveals himself to us.
Again, note the connection this has to Plotinus. The highest form of philosophy was conceptless union with the One - to approach its utter simplicity required one to "close the eye of the intellect". Of course, Plotinus saw this mainly as a human activity, rather than a gift of God - his One remained unremoved from everything, as opposed to the Christian God who became incarnate. God is a goal rather than a means. However, interestingly enough, Plotinus himself was considered to be a fairly severe ascetic by his Greek peers (though nothing compared to Christian ascetics).
So there seems to be a relationship between different kinds of knowledge and access to truth, and how the body affects this.
For Greeks, knowledge WAS the access to truth - askesis was to prepare for this, and even the philosophers did this to some extent, although most of them fairly moderately.
For today's culture, if there is truth, it is an scientific, academic pursuit, with lots of computers and data, and no askesis is necessary to attain it. If there is truth, it doesn't really pertain to what we do. The skepticism about truth is combined with a strange dualism, in which we see no need to act in particular ways because our body is whatever our minds want it to be (since there's no objective truth) - asceticism is pointless. (Again, recall the lack of asceticism for those who theoretically need their minds most.)
What should we say as Christians? Well, there is certainly access to truth through scientific knowledge, but this is not everything. There is also through the infused wisdom of the Holy Spirit, able to be received only by those who have purified themselves from disordered attachments - ascesis is to prepare for the second kind of knowledge, unless these stages are not at all distinct. If they are not distinct, then you need to practice asceticism and virtue to be a good physicist, and I am very skeptical of such claims.
This leads into a further question: what kinds of truth really requires ascesis or holiness to understand? I think probably the deeper the knowledge penetrates to the natures of things, the closer to God it comes, the more purity of heart is necessary to understand it.
So is the theologian the one who prays? Supposing we don't espouse an Origenist anthropology, and supposing we think that knowledge comes both through science and infused wisdom, instead of the more singular divine illumination epistemology of Neo-Platonism... does Evagrius' statement about theology become meaningless? It seems you can do theology without prayer, at least to some extent. But if you take the scholastic route which allows for scientific knowledge, is there a place for contemplative prayer? If it is not to gain knowledge in the way Evagrius has it, then what is it for?
I think in order to really answer this question, we would need to first examine more carefully these two different kinds of epistemology - divinely infused knowledge, and then natural knowledge... but really, I think "natural knowing" is a broader concept than a single identical kind. It seems that way. An artist knows truth in a different way than a philosopher, even if they are knowing the same truth. There are different facets to be had with different approaches.
Second, we would need to find out how knowledge is related to union. Likeness is a principle for knowing - "like knows like," and so the more we are like God the more we know him. We become like God through union with him. We are in union with him the more we love. So Evagrius says to pray is to be a theologian... where does love enter this equation as well?
Nope, I'm not going to answer those questions. I don't know enough yet. They are familiar points in a trajectory that reaches many years into the future, at which point I may have answers more clearly laid out.
From him come the very well known words, "the one who prays is a theologian, the theologian is one who prays."
And yet, this phrase is not so simple to unravel as it might appear. To understand them, you need to have a specific understanding of anthropology, epistemology, and the ascetic life, and how these all link together. Evagrius had a very particular idea about what a knowledge of God is, and the way it can be reached based on the kind of minds we have, and the way that body relates to that. Because of his Origenist creation account, he believed that we are all created originally to be minds contemplating God. But then we got distracted and fell away, cooling our fiery spirits into bodies. Those that fell the least were given angelic bodies, those that fell the most were given demonic bodies, and we are somewhere in between. Although bodies are not evil, exactly, they are not a full reflection of what we were meant to be - we were meant to contemplate God in undistracted unity. This is exactly the goal of monastic life, to return as far as possible to this contemplation.
This is prayer. But this itself is also theology.
How do we know something? Well, we can kind of get knowledge encountering things in this world of multiplicity, but we can't really know a thing until we grasp its nature. This is very much like Plotinus (who was a contemporary of Origen, Evagrius' biggest theological influence) - there is the knowledge you get through discursive reasoning, but a higher knowledge comes through immediate intuition of truth (like angelic knowledge). But this is still not the greatest kind of knowledge, because it is still in the world of multiplicity - this is not yet the unity of God himself. So there are three stages - discursive reasoning, intuitive knowledge of natures, and intuitive knowledge of God himself. But God does not come to just anyone, and it's not something we can do on our own. We have to first clear our minds of distractions (again, what caused us to fall away from our original bliss) by battling the logismoi until we reach the state of apatheia, a sort of unshakable peace. THEN we are in a place that God can show himself to us. This is theology.
The way Evagrius sees it, theology does not involve active thinking. Theology is conceptless prayer in which God reveals himself to us.
Again, note the connection this has to Plotinus. The highest form of philosophy was conceptless union with the One - to approach its utter simplicity required one to "close the eye of the intellect". Of course, Plotinus saw this mainly as a human activity, rather than a gift of God - his One remained unremoved from everything, as opposed to the Christian God who became incarnate. God is a goal rather than a means. However, interestingly enough, Plotinus himself was considered to be a fairly severe ascetic by his Greek peers (though nothing compared to Christian ascetics).
So there seems to be a relationship between different kinds of knowledge and access to truth, and how the body affects this.
For Greeks, knowledge WAS the access to truth - askesis was to prepare for this, and even the philosophers did this to some extent, although most of them fairly moderately.
For today's culture, if there is truth, it is an scientific, academic pursuit, with lots of computers and data, and no askesis is necessary to attain it. If there is truth, it doesn't really pertain to what we do. The skepticism about truth is combined with a strange dualism, in which we see no need to act in particular ways because our body is whatever our minds want it to be (since there's no objective truth) - asceticism is pointless. (Again, recall the lack of asceticism for those who theoretically need their minds most.)
What should we say as Christians? Well, there is certainly access to truth through scientific knowledge, but this is not everything. There is also through the infused wisdom of the Holy Spirit, able to be received only by those who have purified themselves from disordered attachments - ascesis is to prepare for the second kind of knowledge, unless these stages are not at all distinct. If they are not distinct, then you need to practice asceticism and virtue to be a good physicist, and I am very skeptical of such claims.
This leads into a further question: what kinds of truth really requires ascesis or holiness to understand? I think probably the deeper the knowledge penetrates to the natures of things, the closer to God it comes, the more purity of heart is necessary to understand it.
So is the theologian the one who prays? Supposing we don't espouse an Origenist anthropology, and supposing we think that knowledge comes both through science and infused wisdom, instead of the more singular divine illumination epistemology of Neo-Platonism... does Evagrius' statement about theology become meaningless? It seems you can do theology without prayer, at least to some extent. But if you take the scholastic route which allows for scientific knowledge, is there a place for contemplative prayer? If it is not to gain knowledge in the way Evagrius has it, then what is it for?
I think in order to really answer this question, we would need to first examine more carefully these two different kinds of epistemology - divinely infused knowledge, and then natural knowledge... but really, I think "natural knowing" is a broader concept than a single identical kind. It seems that way. An artist knows truth in a different way than a philosopher, even if they are knowing the same truth. There are different facets to be had with different approaches.
Second, we would need to find out how knowledge is related to union. Likeness is a principle for knowing - "like knows like," and so the more we are like God the more we know him. We become like God through union with him. We are in union with him the more we love. So Evagrius says to pray is to be a theologian... where does love enter this equation as well?
Nope, I'm not going to answer those questions. I don't know enough yet. They are familiar points in a trajectory that reaches many years into the future, at which point I may have answers more clearly laid out.
Friday, April 30, 2010
The Life of the Mind, Part II
Note, in the above post - there are ways to strategize about using your mind well. Sleeping well, moderating diet, being cautious to how caffeine intake gives you that big lack of energy if you drink too much, being careful what kinds of music you listen to and the quality of environment around you - finding out quiet places, or thinking places, not distracting your mind too much with lots of images and movies all the time...
That sounds suspiciously like the ascetic life.
Yet, surprisingly (?) it does not seem any graduate students follow the above advice for keeping one's brain healthy. As a general rule, grad students don't sleep enough, and overload on caffeine, or illegally obtain prescription drugs to concentrate longer (especially in high pressure schools), get drunk on the weekends (I know of someone who insists he writes best hungover), eat junk food, don't exercise, listen to what we feel like, although some music is just too distracting, study in noisy coffee shops (which, granted, are also good thinking places - I wonder why?), and as a general rule, although we may think about the short term effects of our actions on our mind, we rarely think of the long-term ones.
But the Greeks did, and not with a simple utilitarian desire to maximize their brainpower:
"In his masterful study of ancient philosophy, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot has called our attention to the intensely practical character of philosophy in the Greco-Roman world. Far from being a merely academic, intellectual exercise of asserting and demonstrating "cognitive claims," all the schools of philosophy in the ancient world were forms of training—of askêsis—that sought to reshape the student's basic sensibilities and attitudes so that he or she could not only come to know the highest truths but could also actually live in light of them. Conceived in this way, ancient philosophy can be seen to have concentrated on what Hadot calls "spiritual exercises" which had as their purpose cultivating the student not simply as a "knower" but in his or her total existence: "We can perhaps get a better idea of this spiritual exercise if we understand it as an attempt to liberate ourselves from a partial, passionate point of view— linked to the senses and the body—so as to rise to the universal, normative viewpoint of thought, submitting ourselves to the demands of the Logos and the norm of the Good. Training for death is training to die to one's individuality and passions, in order to look at things from the perspective of universality and objectivity." (94-95) [-a description from an article by Ligne]
[RIP, Pierre Hadot - February 21, 1922 – April 24, 2010]
So, asceticism seems profoundly linked to seeking and trying to live the truth.
Philosophy today is not about truth. It is about either what other people have said, or whether their arguments were valid (as in, sound, not true), and maybe their applications to political issues sometimes. I have spoken to several philosophy graduate students here who switched from English to philosophy... because the tools for arguing were much more refined. Not because they wanted to get to something after their arguments.
Why we are in the place we are today is a long story, and involves names like Duns Scotus, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre. The list could go on. Perhaps that will come in a different post, perhaps not.
My interest here is simply to point out that there seems inherently a friendship between philosophy and asceticism, which bridges right into the question of the medieval debates about the theologian, and whether his proper identity should be a scholastic (Abelard, Aquinas, etc) or a monk (Bernard). Tied up in this question is prayer. What is the relation between philosophy, asceticism, and prayer?
To be continued: Evagrius and Plotinus.
That sounds suspiciously like the ascetic life.
Yet, surprisingly (?) it does not seem any graduate students follow the above advice for keeping one's brain healthy. As a general rule, grad students don't sleep enough, and overload on caffeine, or illegally obtain prescription drugs to concentrate longer (especially in high pressure schools), get drunk on the weekends (I know of someone who insists he writes best hungover), eat junk food, don't exercise, listen to what we feel like, although some music is just too distracting, study in noisy coffee shops (which, granted, are also good thinking places - I wonder why?), and as a general rule, although we may think about the short term effects of our actions on our mind, we rarely think of the long-term ones.
But the Greeks did, and not with a simple utilitarian desire to maximize their brainpower:
"In his masterful study of ancient philosophy, Philosophy as a Way of Life, Pierre Hadot has called our attention to the intensely practical character of philosophy in the Greco-Roman world. Far from being a merely academic, intellectual exercise of asserting and demonstrating "cognitive claims," all the schools of philosophy in the ancient world were forms of training—of askêsis—that sought to reshape the student's basic sensibilities and attitudes so that he or she could not only come to know the highest truths but could also actually live in light of them. Conceived in this way, ancient philosophy can be seen to have concentrated on what Hadot calls "spiritual exercises" which had as their purpose cultivating the student not simply as a "knower" but in his or her total existence: "We can perhaps get a better idea of this spiritual exercise if we understand it as an attempt to liberate ourselves from a partial, passionate point of view— linked to the senses and the body—so as to rise to the universal, normative viewpoint of thought, submitting ourselves to the demands of the Logos and the norm of the Good. Training for death is training to die to one's individuality and passions, in order to look at things from the perspective of universality and objectivity." (94-95) [-a description from an article by Ligne]
[RIP, Pierre Hadot - February 21, 1922 – April 24, 2010]
So, asceticism seems profoundly linked to seeking and trying to live the truth.
Philosophy today is not about truth. It is about either what other people have said, or whether their arguments were valid (as in, sound, not true), and maybe their applications to political issues sometimes. I have spoken to several philosophy graduate students here who switched from English to philosophy... because the tools for arguing were much more refined. Not because they wanted to get to something after their arguments.
Why we are in the place we are today is a long story, and involves names like Duns Scotus, Descartes, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre. The list could go on. Perhaps that will come in a different post, perhaps not.
My interest here is simply to point out that there seems inherently a friendship between philosophy and asceticism, which bridges right into the question of the medieval debates about the theologian, and whether his proper identity should be a scholastic (Abelard, Aquinas, etc) or a monk (Bernard). Tied up in this question is prayer. What is the relation between philosophy, asceticism, and prayer?
To be continued: Evagrius and Plotinus.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
The Life of the Mind, Part I
Graduate school is a very interesting thing.
I have come to realize first, that it's not just about learning things. That's an undergraduate's job: absorb, learn, expand, wonder at the beautiful and marvelous world we live in! But real scholars do not simply listen - they speak and produce. That is for PhD students to worry about, mostly - producing journal articles and dissertations and conference papers.
At the MA level, you are caught in between. You must be open and listening, to get a broad base, and yet you must start to turn towards production. But in order to do so, there are many new frameworks one must take in; it is not just theology I am learning.
There is the framework of my discipline - theology is subdivided into fields, and these fields all have their own ways of speaking and thinking. I cannot speak like a systematician in a historical class; I must be sensitive to the approach and the questions that are being asked. (more on this for another post) So what kinds of questions must I be asking, what kinds of answers will people find helpful within the context of this field?
There is also the framework of my own mind. Many jobs are about simply doing things, and perhaps finding small ways to streamline your tasks to the ultimate goal, but the things you are modifying are tasks, protocols, stages, actions. To understand the process of graduate study is to come to know what this instrument is, this mind of mine, and how I can use it, and how I can't use it. There is first of all finding out how I think - in theology it is astonishingly easy to find one's sub-discipline simply by examining the nature of one's mental tools - what kinds of questions do you ask? If you want to know what culture this idea came from, be a historian - I want to know what it means and what we can take from it, and how it connects to everything else - I am a sytematician, and of a very philosophical variety. Yet how must I balance the analytic tools with the intuitive sensibilities, considering the view that I have on the nature of truth? This is a question that I must constantly attune myself to, so that I can be making the most of these tools I have, keeping the blades sharp, and perhaps shaping new tools for myself if possible.
But there is also the framework of pragmatic use - one's mind does not function at its best at all moments. This involves a whole new set of questions: when I can use it - what times of day, where I can use it, how to make it carry on when it wants to shut down, and when to give up and relax for a time before trying again. Little things can become critically important - fasting days in Lent by necessity turn into days of fasting from work as the day goes on, for as my body does not receive its proper nourishment my mind turns to water. Sleep is enormously important for keeping a sharp edge to my thought, to swim with the current instead of being buried under ideas. Diet probably is important too - but ask Lisa about that, that's not my expertise. To be at my peak requires discipline in the activities I do - I know that starting the day with a passive entertainment form like a TV show will ruin my concentration for perhaps the whole day; I know that dawdling on the internet divorces me from this deeper mode of thought and concentration - a certain quality in the environment that is the deepest wellspring of thoughts. Of course, this place of deepest thought involves a steady pace and a concentration unhindered by what needs are being pressed upon me from the outside - this is often unhelpful for times when I need to be writing papers, for I must adapt myself to the needs of the day, not simply what I wish to think about.
I use myself almost as a third person, but in a way graduate studies can make of it a commodity, a detached objectification of your being - it is not only me, but my livelihood. But you see my point - the MA level is in part to get a preliminary understanding of the subject of theology, but it is largely to learn about yourself, whether you are capable and willing to move on to a doctoral program and devote the rest of your life to studies, to brave the risk of failing and having to start your life completely over if you find you can't be hired. This is a very real possibility that graduate students must face in this market. Graduate school is a real challenge to one's very self - we find how sharp our mind is, how far we can push ourselves, how much discouragement we must weather, and what kind of reward at the end is necessary to keep us going - if it is something outside of the joy that comes through learning and discovering both inside and outside of class, it probably is not enough to get us through. We're all asking ourselves, "Do I have what it takes to make it?" We all look up at our famous professors with a mix of awe and envy at times, hear success stories and hope that ours will some day sound the same. It can almost become a slavery - to ideas, to work, to this box that we are expected to fit inside.
It is a system we must understand and cooperate with, and yet keep ourselves detached and untamed by its easy categorizations. For, like all human structures, it bears the deep wounds of the fall, and can become a force antithetical to the dignity of the human person - ourselves, our peers, or those "outside."
"It's all in the balance," they say - find that balance. We must learn to be excellent teachers, excellent researchers, excellent writers, and excellent networkers. We must have an excellent grasp of the generals, and a solid specialization in particulars. We must work hard, but keep our sanity. We must work with the system, but never let it dominate us. I cannot help wondering if "balance" means to them "absolute perfection in everything we do" - but this is only another balance - to resist the vain pull of the spectral scholar-you-wish-you-were against the under- or overrated scholar-you-are-now, to find the scholar you may truly hope become -- and yet to not be too attached to this notion either.
Above all else, there is one aspect, one balance of this system in particular that greatly concerns me, especially in the field of theology or philosophy. But I will have to save this for another post. My paper is calling.
I have come to realize first, that it's not just about learning things. That's an undergraduate's job: absorb, learn, expand, wonder at the beautiful and marvelous world we live in! But real scholars do not simply listen - they speak and produce. That is for PhD students to worry about, mostly - producing journal articles and dissertations and conference papers.
At the MA level, you are caught in between. You must be open and listening, to get a broad base, and yet you must start to turn towards production. But in order to do so, there are many new frameworks one must take in; it is not just theology I am learning.
There is the framework of my discipline - theology is subdivided into fields, and these fields all have their own ways of speaking and thinking. I cannot speak like a systematician in a historical class; I must be sensitive to the approach and the questions that are being asked. (more on this for another post) So what kinds of questions must I be asking, what kinds of answers will people find helpful within the context of this field?
There is also the framework of my own mind. Many jobs are about simply doing things, and perhaps finding small ways to streamline your tasks to the ultimate goal, but the things you are modifying are tasks, protocols, stages, actions. To understand the process of graduate study is to come to know what this instrument is, this mind of mine, and how I can use it, and how I can't use it. There is first of all finding out how I think - in theology it is astonishingly easy to find one's sub-discipline simply by examining the nature of one's mental tools - what kinds of questions do you ask? If you want to know what culture this idea came from, be a historian - I want to know what it means and what we can take from it, and how it connects to everything else - I am a sytematician, and of a very philosophical variety. Yet how must I balance the analytic tools with the intuitive sensibilities, considering the view that I have on the nature of truth? This is a question that I must constantly attune myself to, so that I can be making the most of these tools I have, keeping the blades sharp, and perhaps shaping new tools for myself if possible.
But there is also the framework of pragmatic use - one's mind does not function at its best at all moments. This involves a whole new set of questions: when I can use it - what times of day, where I can use it, how to make it carry on when it wants to shut down, and when to give up and relax for a time before trying again. Little things can become critically important - fasting days in Lent by necessity turn into days of fasting from work as the day goes on, for as my body does not receive its proper nourishment my mind turns to water. Sleep is enormously important for keeping a sharp edge to my thought, to swim with the current instead of being buried under ideas. Diet probably is important too - but ask Lisa about that, that's not my expertise. To be at my peak requires discipline in the activities I do - I know that starting the day with a passive entertainment form like a TV show will ruin my concentration for perhaps the whole day; I know that dawdling on the internet divorces me from this deeper mode of thought and concentration - a certain quality in the environment that is the deepest wellspring of thoughts. Of course, this place of deepest thought involves a steady pace and a concentration unhindered by what needs are being pressed upon me from the outside - this is often unhelpful for times when I need to be writing papers, for I must adapt myself to the needs of the day, not simply what I wish to think about.
I use myself almost as a third person, but in a way graduate studies can make of it a commodity, a detached objectification of your being - it is not only me, but my livelihood. But you see my point - the MA level is in part to get a preliminary understanding of the subject of theology, but it is largely to learn about yourself, whether you are capable and willing to move on to a doctoral program and devote the rest of your life to studies, to brave the risk of failing and having to start your life completely over if you find you can't be hired. This is a very real possibility that graduate students must face in this market. Graduate school is a real challenge to one's very self - we find how sharp our mind is, how far we can push ourselves, how much discouragement we must weather, and what kind of reward at the end is necessary to keep us going - if it is something outside of the joy that comes through learning and discovering both inside and outside of class, it probably is not enough to get us through. We're all asking ourselves, "Do I have what it takes to make it?" We all look up at our famous professors with a mix of awe and envy at times, hear success stories and hope that ours will some day sound the same. It can almost become a slavery - to ideas, to work, to this box that we are expected to fit inside.
It is a system we must understand and cooperate with, and yet keep ourselves detached and untamed by its easy categorizations. For, like all human structures, it bears the deep wounds of the fall, and can become a force antithetical to the dignity of the human person - ourselves, our peers, or those "outside."
"It's all in the balance," they say - find that balance. We must learn to be excellent teachers, excellent researchers, excellent writers, and excellent networkers. We must have an excellent grasp of the generals, and a solid specialization in particulars. We must work hard, but keep our sanity. We must work with the system, but never let it dominate us. I cannot help wondering if "balance" means to them "absolute perfection in everything we do" - but this is only another balance - to resist the vain pull of the spectral scholar-you-wish-you-were against the under- or overrated scholar-you-are-now, to find the scholar you may truly hope become -- and yet to not be too attached to this notion either.
Above all else, there is one aspect, one balance of this system in particular that greatly concerns me, especially in the field of theology or philosophy. But I will have to save this for another post. My paper is calling.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Trinity and Creation
A sketch of thoughts touching upon earlier posts on mediation and multiplicity...
"It is not possible to overemphasize the positive value of the multiplicity of creatures: Thomas conceives of the plurality of creatures as a participation in the Trinity. Personal relation - the principle of distinction within the Trinity - is seen to be the ultimate source of creation and the principle of all plurality in our world."
-David Burrell
The multiplicity of existing things didn't make sense for Neo-Platonism. The One, the goodness beyond being, "the One in no way many," was perfectly self-sufficient, unchanging, and so perfectly simple that any proposition attached to it was nonsense - to say "The One is true" is to posit the One as both "The One" and "true", now two and not one, destroying its simplicity. Even to say "The One is One" is to posit similarity in the One, thus making it both "The One" and "similarity". (This is because for Plato, a thing participates in the forms to receive its nature - something is beautiful because it participates in Beauty, etc. saying the One is true is to say the One participates in the form of Truth. No, Plato does not put the forms as ideas in the mind of God - the One doesn't have a mind... as the One. Hold that thought.)
This utterly simple One, therefore, could not have a will, so solely through the superabundant nature of goodness, it emanated forth in Nous, or Mind, which "unrolled" from the One "as if in a drunken stupor." But Nous did not create the world directly either - when Nous turns back to the One in thought, it thinks the multiplicity of ideas in the world (the Forms), which gives rise to the world soul (where our souls exist). The world soul, finally comes to rest and give order to the undifferentiated (pre-existing) matter. (Creation ex nihilo is an original Christian idea.) So I become me when the world soul gives a heap of undifferentiated matter the forms of Human and Woman and Nerd, etc. (More or less, this is the Neo-Platonic system.)
But the Trinity is not a "One in no way many": the Trinity is a One in Three Persons. Not only does this differentiation in God allow creation to be an act of free will, but it also is responsible for diffracting this triune-unity into the multiplicity of creation.
So MULTIPLICITY is a fundamentally Trinitarian phenomenon.
MEDIATION, however, is also Neo-Platonic. Hmm... I wonder what that means. But this is nothing new - Stoicism took up the idea of Nous, but named it Logos, and this is precisely what John had in mind when he wrote his gospel, and what tripped up Arius and many early Christian thinkers - isn't the Word just an inferior mediation of God? Etc. etc.
But in Neo-Platonism, in which every emanation is a further removed diffraction from its source - the farther removed you get, the more multiplicity you get. To return to the Nous you abandon all discursive reasoning, but to get to the One you have to "close the eye of the intellect" altogether - this is to abandon the mediation of things, of words, of reason, even intuitive knowledge - just to be utterly silent.
For Trinitarian theology, on the other hand, Christ as Logos means that he is not only the mediation, HE IS THE THING ITSELF.
When I say a word to you, you hear the word, and then process the idea to get the truth of my revelation of myself.
When God says a word to you, he GIVES HIMSELF.
The mediation of Christ is special.
In fact, I think we can talk about it in three, or maybe 4 ways, depending on whether you think the Incarnation is necessary to metaphysics (Bonaventure) or not (Aquinas).
1) Creation through the Logos.
2) Historical Encounter with the person who is Incarnation of the Logos.
3) the Incarnation's transformation of creation
4) our mediation with each other after deification (by which we come to union with the divine nathre)
(1 and 3 would be the same for Bonaventure - Creation was always through the Logos who would be Incarnate. It might be the same for Aquinas too... this gets into the different kinds of necessary actions of the Trinity - was Logos eternally going to become Incarnate since God is outside of time, even if he didn't necessarily HAVE to become Incarnate? That gets complicated. So maybe 1 and 3 are the same for Aquinas too in practice. In theory, though, they could be separated: what would creation be like if the Logos was not to-be-Incarnate? How does that change once the Logos was Incarnate?)
Next step of exploration, specifically through 1/3: Analogia entis - the analogy of being.
"It is not possible to overemphasize the positive value of the multiplicity of creatures: Thomas conceives of the plurality of creatures as a participation in the Trinity. Personal relation - the principle of distinction within the Trinity - is seen to be the ultimate source of creation and the principle of all plurality in our world."
-David Burrell
The multiplicity of existing things didn't make sense for Neo-Platonism. The One, the goodness beyond being, "the One in no way many," was perfectly self-sufficient, unchanging, and so perfectly simple that any proposition attached to it was nonsense - to say "The One is true" is to posit the One as both "The One" and "true", now two and not one, destroying its simplicity. Even to say "The One is One" is to posit similarity in the One, thus making it both "The One" and "similarity". (This is because for Plato, a thing participates in the forms to receive its nature - something is beautiful because it participates in Beauty, etc. saying the One is true is to say the One participates in the form of Truth. No, Plato does not put the forms as ideas in the mind of God - the One doesn't have a mind... as the One. Hold that thought.)
This utterly simple One, therefore, could not have a will, so solely through the superabundant nature of goodness, it emanated forth in Nous, or Mind, which "unrolled" from the One "as if in a drunken stupor." But Nous did not create the world directly either - when Nous turns back to the One in thought, it thinks the multiplicity of ideas in the world (the Forms), which gives rise to the world soul (where our souls exist). The world soul, finally comes to rest and give order to the undifferentiated (pre-existing) matter. (Creation ex nihilo is an original Christian idea.) So I become me when the world soul gives a heap of undifferentiated matter the forms of Human and Woman and Nerd, etc. (More or less, this is the Neo-Platonic system.)
But the Trinity is not a "One in no way many": the Trinity is a One in Three Persons. Not only does this differentiation in God allow creation to be an act of free will, but it also is responsible for diffracting this triune-unity into the multiplicity of creation.
So MULTIPLICITY is a fundamentally Trinitarian phenomenon.
MEDIATION, however, is also Neo-Platonic. Hmm... I wonder what that means. But this is nothing new - Stoicism took up the idea of Nous, but named it Logos, and this is precisely what John had in mind when he wrote his gospel, and what tripped up Arius and many early Christian thinkers - isn't the Word just an inferior mediation of God? Etc. etc.
But in Neo-Platonism, in which every emanation is a further removed diffraction from its source - the farther removed you get, the more multiplicity you get. To return to the Nous you abandon all discursive reasoning, but to get to the One you have to "close the eye of the intellect" altogether - this is to abandon the mediation of things, of words, of reason, even intuitive knowledge - just to be utterly silent.
For Trinitarian theology, on the other hand, Christ as Logos means that he is not only the mediation, HE IS THE THING ITSELF.
When I say a word to you, you hear the word, and then process the idea to get the truth of my revelation of myself.
When God says a word to you, he GIVES HIMSELF.
The mediation of Christ is special.
In fact, I think we can talk about it in three, or maybe 4 ways, depending on whether you think the Incarnation is necessary to metaphysics (Bonaventure) or not (Aquinas).
1) Creation through the Logos.
2) Historical Encounter with the person who is Incarnation of the Logos.
3) the Incarnation's transformation of creation
4) our mediation with each other after deification (by which we come to union with the divine nathre)
(1 and 3 would be the same for Bonaventure - Creation was always through the Logos who would be Incarnate. It might be the same for Aquinas too... this gets into the different kinds of necessary actions of the Trinity - was Logos eternally going to become Incarnate since God is outside of time, even if he didn't necessarily HAVE to become Incarnate? That gets complicated. So maybe 1 and 3 are the same for Aquinas too in practice. In theory, though, they could be separated: what would creation be like if the Logos was not to-be-Incarnate? How does that change once the Logos was Incarnate?)
Next step of exploration, specifically through 1/3: Analogia entis - the analogy of being.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Death, a Footnote
Central what I am trying to say is this, I think:
Truth cannot be separated from goodness and beauty. They are three faces of the same thing.
If I knew more von Balthasar I would be able to say more about this.
And now a brief patchwork of quotes:
In modern scholarship, "analytic philosophers had defined the central task of philosophy as that of deciphering the meaning of key expressions in both everyday and scientific language" -Alasdair MacIntyre
Compared to a more full understanding...
"In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us. We should never cease to marvel at these things."
-Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate
"The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.... It is the part played by joy in our studies that makes of them a preparation for spiritual life, for desire directed toward God is the only power capable of raising the soul. "
-Simone Weil, Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies to Love God
“Poetic knowledge does not in itself tend toward love, any more, for that matter, than scientific knowledge; but… all knowledge which is not finally turned toward loving is by that very fact a source of death.”
-Raïssa Maritain, The Situation of Poetry
No conclusions, just a few more thoughts.
Truth cannot be separated from goodness and beauty. They are three faces of the same thing.
If I knew more von Balthasar I would be able to say more about this.
And now a brief patchwork of quotes:
In modern scholarship, "analytic philosophers had defined the central task of philosophy as that of deciphering the meaning of key expressions in both everyday and scientific language" -Alasdair MacIntyre
Compared to a more full understanding...
"In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us. We should never cease to marvel at these things."
-Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate
"The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.... It is the part played by joy in our studies that makes of them a preparation for spiritual life, for desire directed toward God is the only power capable of raising the soul. "
-Simone Weil, Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies to Love God
“Poetic knowledge does not in itself tend toward love, any more, for that matter, than scientific knowledge; but… all knowledge which is not finally turned toward loving is by that very fact a source of death.”
-Raïssa Maritain, The Situation of Poetry
No conclusions, just a few more thoughts.
Death
I haven't been blogging. I have for too long been suffering from a kind of "theological aphasia" (to quote a thinker more clever than I). Well, not suffering, exactly - having an overabundance of ideas is a good thing, right? Thoughts upon thoughts, which, when grasped, lead to even more thoughts and more - never ending tangles of vines with no clear beginning, and through my studies I have learned just enough to see that I have not learned nearly enough - I have neither the tools, the time, nor the energy to harvest any fruit. (And thus I apologize in advance that I am here writing to find my problems rather to answer anything.)
But more recently, dense vegetation of thoughts upon thoughts has given way to strange expanses of a much sparser, scrubbier underbrush. I don't see any signs of disease or plague, exactly, no violence or force - yet the creativity of dense thoughts seem to be dying out, weakening, becoming thin and scrawny.
I think I know the cause - it is a very strange thing, something I never saw coming. Philosophy, it seems, is a source of death.
Strange, I know. And strange that I of all people should say such a thing. But somehow, it stands true - philosophy, among its relations to many things, stands within a strange, dark shadow.
Where do I begin to unpack this strange impression? Perhaps right from our common definitions.
Death is the separation of soul from body.
Philosophy is a separation, an abstraction (from the latin ab-straho, to cut away) of form from matter, universal from particular, an intelligible from sensible.
Other epistemologies would alter this definition, of course, but I do not wish to question how we know, but the fact of what does happen when we know, or reason very carefully - that essential principle which remains the same. There is a certain separation that goes on whereby we take an sense experience and drain its vibrant color away into an abstract ghost of its former self.
In a way, once again, this all returns to mediation vs. immediacy - to be a human being, to live a rational life, we must operate through mediation - we must distance ourselves from the world in order to make sense of it. (and what is that, anyway? sense? Really, what does meaning mean? But I will never find my way out of that labyrinth). If we didn't, we would all be infants, as Lonergan observes, unable to distinguish ourselves from any other object in the world.
But philosophy is not just an "ordinary" level of mediation - it is a reflection on a reflection on a reflection, removing itself from reality in fractal spirals. (I said reality. I don't really mean that. Reality is too ill-defined of a concept when speaking generally - perhaps I mean here experience.) This is more than a normal exercise of human reason, which stands apart from the world just enough to appreciate and understand it. Philosophy removes the intellect from the sensible experience; the soul operates as far apart from matter as it can. A gradation of death.
I have stated my case strongly, but now I must qualify: "as far apart from matter as it can." The anthropology of Aquinas is the one my mind most often slips into - the one I understand best. So according to Aquinas, an intelligible is something immaterial, and therefore must be grasped by an immaterial faculty. This is none other than human intellect, although it cannot operate except through the use of the senses to gather this information, and helps knowledge with imagination and memory. (Tangent: the soul needs the body to form images - even memories, yes? I always thought we would have only our memories when we die, even if no way to gain more knowledge until we have our bodies back. Hm. This is a problem.) We might not want to take this all the way, but at the very least, we would say that the soul is farthest removed from the body when it is focused on very abstract ideas that make little or no use of images or memories.
I will also add: emotion. The soul is farthest removed from the body when there is no emotion acting, since all emotion has a physical component.
Why do I say all emotion has a physical component but that thought does not? Really, I am cheating now, and using modern science for one thing and medieval metaphysics for the other. Maybe scientifically all thoughts need a physical platform too. But no - we must have some kind of thought, with emotion or not, that is possible without a body. Or at least such a thing is possible in angelic reason. However I am disturbed if I have just made angels to be products of pure thought. This sounds way too Kantian and Reason-worshipping to be true. Angels MUST be moved by beauty somehow - e-motion, ex-motus - "having been moved out" - love cannot be complete without this. Love is not pure agape - it is agape and eros. They don't need to have bodily emotions in the same way - but they need to have some irresistible draw to the Beautiful, whose other name is the True or the Good.
Or could it be that the farthest apart a soul can be from matter is not abstract thought, but contemplative prayer. Can I say that? I might be wrong. But many saints do have ecstatic appearances, no longer notice the passage of time, fail to notice or have control over their body, they have infused knowledge or grace (like the angels immediately intuit truth I might add), etc - it seems that God is directly touching the spirit. (This would seem to find a rough harmony with Neo-Platonism and its two flights of contemplation, of philosophy and mysticism: the goal of first being to free the soul as far as possible from the concerns of the body and even all discursive reasoning to a level of pure concept in communion with the Nous, the Intellect; the goal of the second to rise beyond this to commune in a truly apophatic and mystical way with the One Beyond All Being.)
This leads to a problem: why would God, if he intends the resurrection of the dead, only touch only the spirit and leave the body out of glorification? I am not an expert in contemplative prayer - but now I remember something else. St. Teresa of Avila does assure some of her spiritual directees that they should not be disturbed if they experience sexual pleasure during contemplation - whether this is common or rare I do not know, but the fact that such a thing exists means that the body can also participate in the pure joy that comes through contemplation, so it is, in the end, a HUMAN, EMBODIED, and not angelic experience (and therefore no longer Neo-Platonic dualism). So perhaps contemplative prayer is not, after all, a death.
Then again: it is an enormous sign of death to self. It is participation on earth in union with God - it is a death to the old self and a rising again in Christ. Is the death of crucifixion a death as well? Separation of soul and body? Certainly, our bodies are fallen, and we must separate from the sinful passions. (With Paul we often cry "Who will rescue me from this body of death?") But our souls are fallen as well - pride, the root of all sins, is primarily a spiritual evil, more grave than imprudently obeying the pull of a natural instinct. So let's not become Manichean. Perhaps then we need to alter our definition of death. We need to die to ourselves, not our bodies - we need to be separated from all that is not God.
So what have I gotten myself into?
Death: the ultimate separation of soul from body.
Death: the ultimate separation of our whole selves, soul+body, from all that is sinful in us; also, the ultimate union with God and only God though and in all things.
Death: abstraction of intelligible thought from sensible data? removing the self from experience? Philosophy?
Aphasia. Too much to say. I don't know how to express it except in these stuttering tangential pieces that do not cohere and I know they don't cohere - there must be a coherence somewhere. Perhaps the more pieces I stutter out, the more things will slowly unfold. Or perhaps not.
I will say this: I used to think that it was a coincidence that very cold, rationalistic people became philosophers (Immanuael Kant). Now I think that philosophy can make one to become that way.
This seems harsh. But when Pilate's question, rings out, so human, so disillusioned, yet so childlike, "What is truth?" philosophy would hand him a snake: "And this, then is three True: the being-for-consciousness of this in-itself," says Hegel. (A far cry from Plato and his analogy of the cave - but that will be for another post - that philosophy used to be a way of life, and trying to make it into a scientific, academic discipline seems to have neutered it and cut out its heart.)
Not philosophy alone, either - linguistics is also a death - we strip away the meanings, strip away the words, strip away the endings, all to a bare abstract skeleton of the living language - we gut it, neatly arrange its intestines, drain the excess fluid - although we never are able to view its beating heart. And the more linguists study, the less they are able to see language alive - they kill it, analyze it, whenever they come across it. (There are always so many former linguistics majors - they want to learn because they love the language alive, but they find that they cannot bear the science of its constant death.) Some of my old professors confess they no longer enjoy novels because they can't stop themselves from dissecting every sentence.
Is there an escape? Is this the way it must be? Linguistics is one thing - it is just a human science after all. But ought this to be the case in philosophy? Perhaps if your philosophy is firmly rooted in the WHOLE human person - body and soul, reason and emotion. But can philosophy, as a science, deal with emotion? Or does reason necessarily have an emotional component? Of what kind of relation? Perhaps the same relation as concepts are supported by words?
This is the huge problem in Lonergan. This is a huge problem in Kant. This is a huge problem in very many philosophers, and it is a very huge problem for me. My thoughts are dying when I try to become too philosophical - when I want to become precise and exact and pin things down in reason that is precisely when they all slip away from me and become shadows and ghosts of the reality I want to describe. I think part of it has to do with the isolation of reason from emotion - this distinction is not really human, and doesn't really describe life. Ought we really to be training ourselves to think in a way that does not confront our real experience, but only a ghost of it?
But what else ought philosophy to be? Thomas Aquinas says "Philosophers and poets are alike in being big with wonder" - well, if one thinks coldly rational, abstract thoughts all day, this kills wonder. So there are two options: either a scholar must be careful to supplement this in his life with poetry or this is not philosophy.
Is it that philosophy deals with the whole human person, as a being of body and matter, reason and emotion while using ONLY reason as a tool?
Or is it that we really can't do human philosophy if we fully separate reason from emotion, just like we can't really be human and fully separate soul from body?
The implications of this could cause major problems, I know. Classical philosophy wants to escape from the body. Phenomenology might or might not have the equipment to deal with it. Analytic philosophy assuredly does not.
I don't know if I succeeded in expressing my point, and with the continual shifting of my underlying assumptions, I'm sure I've gestured at many wrong many paths in the above… I do not mean to say that scientific thinking is evil or that we should return to a naive simplicity; philosophy is hard work, not bouquets of roses, and even if tainted with death I do not see death as the ultimate evil. I am merely trying to capture, in broad impressionistic strokes, something I think is very real, and, whatever its real name or ultimate solution may be, it is a great danger for those thinkers whose minds do not come with an "off" switch.
But more recently, dense vegetation of thoughts upon thoughts has given way to strange expanses of a much sparser, scrubbier underbrush. I don't see any signs of disease or plague, exactly, no violence or force - yet the creativity of dense thoughts seem to be dying out, weakening, becoming thin and scrawny.
I think I know the cause - it is a very strange thing, something I never saw coming. Philosophy, it seems, is a source of death.
Strange, I know. And strange that I of all people should say such a thing. But somehow, it stands true - philosophy, among its relations to many things, stands within a strange, dark shadow.
Where do I begin to unpack this strange impression? Perhaps right from our common definitions.
Death is the separation of soul from body.
Philosophy is a separation, an abstraction (from the latin ab-straho, to cut away) of form from matter, universal from particular, an intelligible from sensible.
Other epistemologies would alter this definition, of course, but I do not wish to question how we know, but the fact of what does happen when we know, or reason very carefully - that essential principle which remains the same. There is a certain separation that goes on whereby we take an sense experience and drain its vibrant color away into an abstract ghost of its former self.
In a way, once again, this all returns to mediation vs. immediacy - to be a human being, to live a rational life, we must operate through mediation - we must distance ourselves from the world in order to make sense of it. (and what is that, anyway? sense? Really, what does meaning mean? But I will never find my way out of that labyrinth). If we didn't, we would all be infants, as Lonergan observes, unable to distinguish ourselves from any other object in the world.
But philosophy is not just an "ordinary" level of mediation - it is a reflection on a reflection on a reflection, removing itself from reality in fractal spirals. (I said reality. I don't really mean that. Reality is too ill-defined of a concept when speaking generally - perhaps I mean here experience.) This is more than a normal exercise of human reason, which stands apart from the world just enough to appreciate and understand it. Philosophy removes the intellect from the sensible experience; the soul operates as far apart from matter as it can. A gradation of death.
I have stated my case strongly, but now I must qualify: "as far apart from matter as it can." The anthropology of Aquinas is the one my mind most often slips into - the one I understand best. So according to Aquinas, an intelligible is something immaterial, and therefore must be grasped by an immaterial faculty. This is none other than human intellect, although it cannot operate except through the use of the senses to gather this information, and helps knowledge with imagination and memory. (Tangent: the soul needs the body to form images - even memories, yes? I always thought we would have only our memories when we die, even if no way to gain more knowledge until we have our bodies back. Hm. This is a problem.) We might not want to take this all the way, but at the very least, we would say that the soul is farthest removed from the body when it is focused on very abstract ideas that make little or no use of images or memories.
I will also add: emotion. The soul is farthest removed from the body when there is no emotion acting, since all emotion has a physical component.
Why do I say all emotion has a physical component but that thought does not? Really, I am cheating now, and using modern science for one thing and medieval metaphysics for the other. Maybe scientifically all thoughts need a physical platform too. But no - we must have some kind of thought, with emotion or not, that is possible without a body. Or at least such a thing is possible in angelic reason. However I am disturbed if I have just made angels to be products of pure thought. This sounds way too Kantian and Reason-worshipping to be true. Angels MUST be moved by beauty somehow - e-motion, ex-motus - "having been moved out" - love cannot be complete without this. Love is not pure agape - it is agape and eros. They don't need to have bodily emotions in the same way - but they need to have some irresistible draw to the Beautiful, whose other name is the True or the Good.
Or could it be that the farthest apart a soul can be from matter is not abstract thought, but contemplative prayer. Can I say that? I might be wrong. But many saints do have ecstatic appearances, no longer notice the passage of time, fail to notice or have control over their body, they have infused knowledge or grace (like the angels immediately intuit truth I might add), etc - it seems that God is directly touching the spirit. (This would seem to find a rough harmony with Neo-Platonism and its two flights of contemplation, of philosophy and mysticism: the goal of first being to free the soul as far as possible from the concerns of the body and even all discursive reasoning to a level of pure concept in communion with the Nous, the Intellect; the goal of the second to rise beyond this to commune in a truly apophatic and mystical way with the One Beyond All Being.)
This leads to a problem: why would God, if he intends the resurrection of the dead, only touch only the spirit and leave the body out of glorification? I am not an expert in contemplative prayer - but now I remember something else. St. Teresa of Avila does assure some of her spiritual directees that they should not be disturbed if they experience sexual pleasure during contemplation - whether this is common or rare I do not know, but the fact that such a thing exists means that the body can also participate in the pure joy that comes through contemplation, so it is, in the end, a HUMAN, EMBODIED, and not angelic experience (and therefore no longer Neo-Platonic dualism). So perhaps contemplative prayer is not, after all, a death.
Then again: it is an enormous sign of death to self. It is participation on earth in union with God - it is a death to the old self and a rising again in Christ. Is the death of crucifixion a death as well? Separation of soul and body? Certainly, our bodies are fallen, and we must separate from the sinful passions. (With Paul we often cry "Who will rescue me from this body of death?") But our souls are fallen as well - pride, the root of all sins, is primarily a spiritual evil, more grave than imprudently obeying the pull of a natural instinct. So let's not become Manichean. Perhaps then we need to alter our definition of death. We need to die to ourselves, not our bodies - we need to be separated from all that is not God.
So what have I gotten myself into?
Death: the ultimate separation of soul from body.
Death: the ultimate separation of our whole selves, soul+body, from all that is sinful in us; also, the ultimate union with God and only God though and in all things.
Death: abstraction of intelligible thought from sensible data? removing the self from experience? Philosophy?
Aphasia. Too much to say. I don't know how to express it except in these stuttering tangential pieces that do not cohere and I know they don't cohere - there must be a coherence somewhere. Perhaps the more pieces I stutter out, the more things will slowly unfold. Or perhaps not.
I will say this: I used to think that it was a coincidence that very cold, rationalistic people became philosophers (Immanuael Kant). Now I think that philosophy can make one to become that way.
This seems harsh. But when Pilate's question, rings out, so human, so disillusioned, yet so childlike, "What is truth?" philosophy would hand him a snake: "And this, then is three True: the being-for-consciousness of this in-itself," says Hegel. (A far cry from Plato and his analogy of the cave - but that will be for another post - that philosophy used to be a way of life, and trying to make it into a scientific, academic discipline seems to have neutered it and cut out its heart.)
Not philosophy alone, either - linguistics is also a death - we strip away the meanings, strip away the words, strip away the endings, all to a bare abstract skeleton of the living language - we gut it, neatly arrange its intestines, drain the excess fluid - although we never are able to view its beating heart. And the more linguists study, the less they are able to see language alive - they kill it, analyze it, whenever they come across it. (There are always so many former linguistics majors - they want to learn because they love the language alive, but they find that they cannot bear the science of its constant death.) Some of my old professors confess they no longer enjoy novels because they can't stop themselves from dissecting every sentence.
Is there an escape? Is this the way it must be? Linguistics is one thing - it is just a human science after all. But ought this to be the case in philosophy? Perhaps if your philosophy is firmly rooted in the WHOLE human person - body and soul, reason and emotion. But can philosophy, as a science, deal with emotion? Or does reason necessarily have an emotional component? Of what kind of relation? Perhaps the same relation as concepts are supported by words?
This is the huge problem in Lonergan. This is a huge problem in Kant. This is a huge problem in very many philosophers, and it is a very huge problem for me. My thoughts are dying when I try to become too philosophical - when I want to become precise and exact and pin things down in reason that is precisely when they all slip away from me and become shadows and ghosts of the reality I want to describe. I think part of it has to do with the isolation of reason from emotion - this distinction is not really human, and doesn't really describe life. Ought we really to be training ourselves to think in a way that does not confront our real experience, but only a ghost of it?
But what else ought philosophy to be? Thomas Aquinas says "Philosophers and poets are alike in being big with wonder" - well, if one thinks coldly rational, abstract thoughts all day, this kills wonder. So there are two options: either a scholar must be careful to supplement this in his life with poetry or this is not philosophy.
Is it that philosophy deals with the whole human person, as a being of body and matter, reason and emotion while using ONLY reason as a tool?
Or is it that we really can't do human philosophy if we fully separate reason from emotion, just like we can't really be human and fully separate soul from body?
The implications of this could cause major problems, I know. Classical philosophy wants to escape from the body. Phenomenology might or might not have the equipment to deal with it. Analytic philosophy assuredly does not.
I don't know if I succeeded in expressing my point, and with the continual shifting of my underlying assumptions, I'm sure I've gestured at many wrong many paths in the above… I do not mean to say that scientific thinking is evil or that we should return to a naive simplicity; philosophy is hard work, not bouquets of roses, and even if tainted with death I do not see death as the ultimate evil. I am merely trying to capture, in broad impressionistic strokes, something I think is very real, and, whatever its real name or ultimate solution may be, it is a great danger for those thinkers whose minds do not come with an "off" switch.
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