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

  • From: Scribe1865@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 14:58:27 EDT

In a message dated 8/7/2004 9:06:37 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Instead of escaping the laws of this world, I would suggest that intuition 
is, borrowing from Heidegger, an openness or hearkening to the world.
_____
Michael Polanyi's observation that "we know more than we can say" is relevant 
here. How do we beat our hearts? How do we know that someone is lying to us? 
How do we move our left hand in that difficult passage of Ravel's "Ondine," 
and why isn't it as difficult for X to play? How exactly did we climb that rock 
face?

We know more than we can say. Living in our word world, we are often unaware 
that we know it, or that it cannot be reduced to words. 

Part of this tacit knowledge (as Polanyi calls it) is body knowledge. Another 
part is the lightning flash of connections already present, as Phil called 
it. 

To put that lightning flash another way, why do we often admire art 
photographs of shadowy doorways, gravel on a road, odd combinations of objects? 

Because they are their own meaning. There's no need to extend what they are 
into metaphor, symbolism, politics. As John Ashbery wrote in "Some Trees," 
their simply being there is enough. The completeness of meaning was an early 
insight of Oriental art and haiku, rediscovered by the West in the 20th century.

"Theology" on the other hand is a collection of words. As such, there's a 
built-in tension between saying what we know and knowing more than we can say.


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