[lit-ideas] Re: Kataphatic, Negative and Apophatic Theology

  • From: JulieReneB@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2004 21:32:30 EDT

I found it I found it I found it!!  I am ecstatic partially because I  
stumbled on to Gravity & Grace in College and so much of it resonanted  
profoundly.  
It is a volume I go back to over and over for inspiration and  guidance. I 
have it marked, underlined, highlighted.  I adored her  partly for her life 
story.  Partly for her enormously diverse knowledge --  philosophy, mystical 
texts, languages.  Partly for her insistence that what  mattered was Truth, not 
dogma.  Hence my defense of her  <g>.  Okay.  Finally.  I can make my case.  
You  
doubters, tell me what of the below excerpts are obscure, illogical,  
meaningless, or incomprehensible.  (And Phil, there are a couple notes  
directly to 
you <g>).  (I am thoroughly confounded by why this book  would have been 
included in a course on existentialism!).  I think, as I  type these quotes, 
that 
one draw to her is that she embraces paradox and  somehow makes paradox turn in 
on itself until two antithetical notions are  one.  I also think that she uses 
poetry to try to convey messages which are  not conveyable by algorithms.  
She is not trying to stay within Logic  101.  And her mind seems to me to be 
darting all over the place trying  to close in on a unified field -- trying to 
make algebra, sociology,  mysticism, philosophy, linguistics, all come together 
to say the same thing at  the same time, or rather, I think, she sees a Whole 
which she tries to describe  by means of all those things in tandem.  (Btw, at 
the end I post, to  satisfy her detractors, the most obscure of quotes which 
even I give up on --  they may have been written during one of her horrendous 
migraines.)  I  think I'll start with one of my fav's.
 
"We know by means of our intelligence that what the intelligence does not  
comprehend is more real than what it does comprehend."
 
"The demonstrable correlation of opposites is an image of the  transcendental 
correlation of contradictories."
 
"Simultaneous existence of incompatible things in the soul's bearing;  
balance which leans both ways at once:  That is saintliness, the actual  
realization 
of the microcosm, the imitation of the order of the world."  (a  very 
kabbalistic notion, btw)
 
re. negative theology -- 
 
"A case of contradictories which are true.  God exists.  God does  not.  
Where is the problem?  I am quite sure that there is a God in  the sense that I 
am 
quite sure my love is not illusory.  I am quite sure  that there is not a God 
in the sense that I am quite sure nothing real can be  anything like what I 
am able to conceive when I pronounce this word.  But  that which I cannot 
conceive is not an illusion."
 
"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking  on 
the wall.  The wall is the thing which separates them but it is also  their 
means of communication.  It is the same with us and God.  Every  separation is 
a link."
 
"Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with  
respect to nature.  But this collective humanity has itself taken on with  r
espect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by  nature. 
 
This is true even with material things:  fire, water,  etc.  The community has 
taken possession of all these natural forces.   Question:  Can this 
emancipation, won by society, be transferred to the  individual?"
 
"If someone does me harm I must want this harm not to degrade me -- this  out 
of love for him who inflicted it upon me and so that he shall not really  
have done harm."
 
"The meaning of the famous passage in the 'Georgias' about geometry.   No 
unlimited development is possible in the nature of things; the world is  
entirely 
based on measure and equilibrium, and it is the same with the  city.  All 
ambition is an absence of measure, absurdity.  gewmetrias gar ameleis.  What  
the 
ambitious man entirely forgets is the notion of relationship.  
    'Peuple stupide a qui ma puissance  m'enchaine,
    Hélas! mon orguiel meme a besoin de tes  bras.'
 
(Here is her explanation of how she uses the word "gravity") -- "All the  
*natural* movements of the soul are controlled by laws analagous to those of  
physical gravity.  Grace is the only exception."
 
 
"To lower oneself is to rise in the domain of moral gravity.  Moral  gravity 
makes us fall toward the heights."
 
"Queueing for food.  The same action is easier if the motive is base  than if 
it is noble.  Base motives have in them more energy than noble  ones.  
Problem:  In what way can the energy belonging to the base  motives be 
transferred 
to the noble ones?"
 
"Headaches.  At a certain moment:  The pain is lessened by  projecting it 
into the universe, but it is an impaired universe; the pain is  more intense 
when 
it comes home again, but something in one does not suffer and  remains in 
contact with a universe which is not impaired.  Act in the same  way with the 
passions.  Make them come down like a deposit, collect them  into a point and 
become detached from them.  Especially, treat all  sufferings in this way.  
Prevent them from having access to  *things*."
 
Here, Phil, re. intuition and whether if you intuit, it can mean anything  at 
all.
 
"Man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes.   
Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure  
intuitioin, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void.  It is through  
such 
instants that he is capable of the supernatural."
 
"The good seems to us as a nothingness, since there is no *thing* that is  
good.  But this nothingness is not unreal.  Compared with it  everything in 
existence is unreal."
 
"Electra weeping for the dead Orestes.  If we love God while thinking  that 
he does not exist, he will manifest his existence."
 
"To lose someone:  We suffer because the departed, the absent, has  become 
something imaginary and unreal.  But our desire for him is not  imaginary.  We 
have to go down into ourselves to the abode of the desire  which is not 
imaginary.  Hunger:  We imagine kinds of food, but the  hunger itself is real; 
we 
have to fasten onto the hunger.  The presence of  the dead person is imaginary, 
but his absence is very real; henceforeward it is  his way of appearing."
 
I love the imagery in the below.  No, it is not logically  positable.  But 
neither is the imagery in great art, great  literature.  That's why it's 
imagery.
 
"Redemptive suffering.  If a human being who is in a state of  perfection, 
and has through grace completely destroyed the "I" in himself, falls  into that 
degree of affliction which corresponds for him to the destruction of  the "I" 
from out-side, we have there the cross in its fullness.  Affliction  can no 
longer destroy the "I" in him, for the "I" in him no longer exists,  having 
completely disappeared and left the place to God.  But affliction  produces an 
effect which is equivalent, on the plane of perfection, to the  exterior 
destruction of the "I."  It produces the absence of God.  'My  God, why hast 
thou 
forsaken me?"
 
"Everything which is grasped by our natural faculties is  hypothetical.  It 
is only supernatural love that establishes  anything.  Thus we are co-creators. 
 We participate in the creation of  the world by decreating ourselves."
 
One of my fav's -- 
 
"Evil is limitless, but it is not infinite.  Only the infinite limits  the 
limitless."
 
"*Literature and morality.*  Imaginary evil is romantic and varied;  real 
evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.  Imaginary good is boring;  real 
good 
is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.  Therefore 'imaginative  literature' 
is either boring or immoral (or a mixture of both).  It only  escapes from 
this alternative if in some way it passes over to the side of  reality through 
the power of art -- and only genius can do that."
 
"The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human  
misery, it merely reveals it."
 
pure poetry -- 
 
"Time's violence rends the soul:  by the rent eternity enters."
 
"To be innocent is to bear the weight of the entire universe.  It is  to 
throw away the counterweight".
 
 
TOTALLY OBSCURE:
 
"The soul which has poked its head out of heaven devours the being.   The 
soul which has remained inside devours opinion."
 
(perhaps obscure to me because I do not know a mathematical or scientific  
notation)
"If 1 is God, (symbol I cannot re-create here -- it looks like an "8" on  
it's side with the left circle smaller than the right) is the devil."
 
Julie Krueger
loving Weil all over again

========Original Message========
Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Kataphatic, Negative and Apophatic  Theology  Date: 
8/6/2004 7:32:15 PM Central Daylight Time  From: _phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxxx 
(mailto:phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx)   To: _lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:    
I had written:

"Note, I am not trying to do  away with mysticism but rather to suggest
that it must be grounded in  theology of some form.  One can't
consistently engage in only negative  theology."

to which Peter Junger replies:

"Does this mean that  Buddhists and other persons who don't have a
theology, not having a god,  cannot be mystics?  There certainly are a
lot of Buddhists who would  deny that mysticism is compatable with
Buddhism.  On the other hand the  Buddhist emphasis on ``emptiness'' at
the core of all appearances certainly  sounds negative in the same way
that negative theology sounds  negative."

The issue is not one of having a god but rather an  articulated
understanding of the divine.  If most of Buddhism rejects  the idea of
the divine, then it makes sense that mysticism is incompatible  with
Buddhism.  There may be a negation that lies at the core of  Buddhism,
but is it a negation that orients one towards the  divine?

Sincerely,

Phil Enns
Toronto,  ON

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