Abstract
We have already said that for “late philosophy,” the history of philosophy is not a mere illustration, a sort of complementary addition to the development of discourse: a method of enriching and specifying a meaning otherwise completely expressed in itself. History is the diachronic dimension of philosophical process, an essential aspect of positioning new meaning. “The history of philosophy,” G. Deleuze wrote in his dissertation, “in our opinion, has to play a role similar in many respects to the role of collage in painting.”1 The collage allows us to make a new meaning out of meanings already expressed and historically connected with a certain context; the new meaning then appears as a figure of meanings, an arrangement or rather a consonance of meanings. I think we are dealing here not so much with collage as with a polyphonic development of the perennial philosophical theme — what is a being as being?We shall begin with a graphical illustration, at first taking the term “textual collage” almost literally.
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He is called One since He is singly all in one pre-eminence of unity; for he is (without becoming multiple Himself) the cause of the unity of all ‘multiple beings!. There is nothing among beings that is without participation in this One. [Chwr(133)1 Whatever is a being is so by being one.“ The Greek text of the treatise On the Divine Names and the classical Scholia of John of Skythopolis and Maximus the Confessor (included in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca) are cited after the edition by G. M. Prochorov: Dionysius the Areopagite, The Divine Names and Mystical Theology (St. Petersburg: Glagol, 1994). The text reproduces the critical edition: Corpus Dionysiacum I. Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita: De divinis nominibus, B. R. Suchla, Patristische Texte and Studien 33 (Berlin—New York, 199(1). The fact that throughout this chapter I write ”Dionysius“ and not ”Pseudo-Dionysius“ does not mean that I believe (against all contemporary philological evidence) in the authenticity of the authorship of Dionysius the Areopagite mentioned in Acts 17, 34. I am not at all occupied here with the problem of authorship. It is enough forme that the CorpusAreopagiticum has become one of the most influential theological treatises in the Christian East (and in Russia in particular), as well as in the West. Already this ”external“ circumstance, to say nothing about the content of the Treatise, justifies one more attempt to understand it. The treatise of Dionysius is cited hereafter as DN.
DNV5.
t goes without saying that Dionysius in his speculations leans upon the text of the Septuagint. The answer of God to the second question of Moses (“]If] they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”) reads in Greek: è•w ei it 6 65v. 6 6ív is the participle of the masculine gender derived from the verb “to be.” In order to render the structure of this word in English I use sometimes the expression “]He] Who is,” and sometimes an artificial construction “be-ing.”
This is the definition of the verb in general, given by Aristotle in De interpretatione 3.
This is a sort of explanation that can be traced back to Plato’s Pannenides and can be found in an explicit form in connection with the problem under consideration in the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Cf. Francis Ruello, Les “noms divins ”et leur “raisons ”selon St. Albert le Grand, commentateur du “De divinis nominibus”(Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1963), p. 5l.
Oéµevoç rtpwtoç tie òvóµcxtce (436b).
úrzepoixstoç oúcsus. I avoid rendering the prefix úrzep-traditionally as “super-,” because by doing so we lose the negative, apophatic character of many of Dionysius’ terns. úttep-as “over” and “above” refer not only to excess, surplus, preeminence, superiority etc., but alludes also to “beyond,” “outside the limits.” In this case irrtep-has the same meaning as èrzéxetvcx (praep. cum. gen.). The relationship between the úaepoixstoç oúcsía of Dionysius and Plato’s èrtéxetva trig oixsiaç (Resp. VI, 509b) is rather obvious and perfectly explicable historically. Another morphological part of the adjective brzepoixstoç is derived from oirrria. The latter is not to be understood in a too technical Aristotelian sense as essence or substance. It signifies just being-ness of beings. That is why I refrain from translating úrupoúatoç as “superessential” or “supersubstantial.” Calling the divinity “superessental essence” would mean that the divinity transcends every finite being and is preeminently essential or substantial. In my opinion, this is not what Dionysius intends to say. The úrtepoúcstoç oixtia is rather “beingness beyond being,” “otherwise than being or beyond essence” (to reproduce the title of one of Levinas’ books). Of course, all these attempts to find English counterparts of the main teems in Dionysius can only provide a space where interpretation begins its work.
The Sophist, 244d.
It Plato imitates here the famous irecvta Pei ascribed to Herachtus and says: reivta — ixksaep xepaµta — pei, “everything leaks like cracked pottery.”
“Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter.” Andenken. See F. Hölderlin, Gedichte,hrsg. v. J. Schmidt (Frankfurt a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1992), pp. 360–362.
Aristotle refers to the verse: “the sun sows the god-given light.” The action of spreading the light and warmth has no proper name, but it bears the same relation to the sun as sowing to the sower, and thus acquires its poetical name (Poet. 1457b25–30).
Cf. chap. 4, sect. 4.
In DN XIII, q. 12 (Utrum Deus possit nominariChwr(133)), soiutio. Cited after: Francis Ruello, Les ’!toms divins “Chwr(133), p. 89, n. 48.
quod autem nullo modo finitum est, deftnitionem non habet, quare nec nomen. Deus autem nullo modo finitus est.“ (ibid.)
See our discussion of this topic in chap. 2, sect. 3.1.
I borrow this temi from Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of trans. R. Cherny (London: Routledge, 1994), Study 8, “Metaphor and philosophical discourse,” sections l-3.
We have already mentioned that the adjective “superessential” or “supersubstantial” is somehow misleading as the translation of the Dionysius’ term ùrzr:ptiúatoç. This circumstance had not escaped the attention of Scholastic thinkers. The problem here was actually ofa more general kind, viz. it was necessary to clarify to what extent the concept of substance is applicable to God. As we have seen in chap. 2, the Aristotelian term oùcsia is a cross-section of different ontological intentions. On the one hand, substance is defined as the ontological principle, as something independent in its being of anything else, ens a se et perse. On the other hand, substance is the “primal subject,” i. e., the name of a substance cannot be predicated of anything else, that is to say, substance is the ultimate subject of all possible determinations. The medieval writers insisted that in characterizing God as “substance” only the first meaning of the term must be retained. It is necessary to reject any complexity in God’s being. And that means that the divine substance cannot be the subject of manifold accidental determination, the difference of sub-stantia and accidentia is unthinkable in God, for it would imply His complexity. In other words, God cannot be “subordinated” to the category of substance.
Cf. P. Ricoeur, op. cit., Study 8, sect. 2, “Metaphor and analogia ends onto-theology,” pp. 171–28(1.
Ibid., p. 274
In this solution Thomas was to a considerable degree influenced by Albert the Great. The Master wrote, interpreting the same text of Peter Lombard: “non est aliquid univocum creaturae et creatori, sicut unius rationis existens in utroque, sed convenire potest aliquid secundum prius et posterius.” See Albertus Magnus in I Sent., d. 8, a. 7, ad 3; d. 46, a. 12, sol. Cited after F. Ruello, Les “noms divins”.., p. 82.
P. Ricoeur, op. cit., p. 280.
As we have seen, Dionysius insists on the identity of theology and celebration. I would like to mention here one more “function” of the Divine names which has hitherto escaped our attention. The name allows us to address God in prayer. This side of Divine naming has become a most important subject in Orthodox theology. And not only theology. Many Russian philosophers at the beginning of the XX century (A. Losev and V. Em among them) were influenced by the theological discussions of a mystical ontological bond between the name and the named, so called “onomatodoxia” (Greek) or “imyaslavie”(Russian).
ecokoyíte = 9ewvsNin.
“For concerning the beyond-beingness (which remains beyond logos, intellect and essence) only un-knowing (or ignorance) is possible, and to this un-knowing the knowledge-beyond-being is to be relegated.” (DN 11)
In DN XIII, q. 12 (Utrum Deus passif nominariChwr(133)), solutio; Francis Ruello, Les “noms divins ”Chwr(133), p. 89, n. 48. Reference in the passage is to 1 Cor. 13, 12.
Cf. EM 104.
In English translation this verse reads as follows: “Chwr(133)when He is revealed, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is.”
Which is all the more important for us in connection with our attempts in the next section to propose phenomenological variations in connection with our theme. The passage resembles very much a quotation from a modern treatise dedicated to the phenomenology of visual perception.
In DN I, q. 10: Utrum divina substaruia possit ab aliquo intellectu create videri. F. Ruello, op. cit., n. 64, p. 99.
See the lectures of Vladimir Lossky delivered at Sorbonne in 1945–46 and published under the title The Vision of God (St. Vladimir Seminary Press, 1983).
What is rendered here as “the essence of God” is oùaía toi) Ocob, and the Latin translation of this Greek expression is exactly substa tia Dei.
The writings of Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), one of the most influential Orthodox theologians, are cited after J. Meyendorff, Introduction d 1 ’étude de Grégoire Palamas (Paris, Du Seuil, 1953), part. II, chap. V. Translation from Greek is mine. Concerning the concept of the Divine energeiai and its role in the so-called hesychast controversies of the XIV century in Byzantium cf. J. Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology. Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (N.Y.: Fordham Univ. Press, 1979).
The expression, which I translate as “autonomous good beyond good,” reads in Greek aücoürtepaya9ónlç.
Cf. Plato, Republic VI, 509b: “So then you must also say that the known not only receives its being-known from the good, but also it has thence its being and its essence, in such a way indeed that the good is not itself an essence, but lies beyond the essence and outstrips being in dignity and power.”
The classical Scholia had been traditionally attributed to Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580–662). though in fact, as H. Urs von Balthasar has proved, they were, at least partly, the work of John of Scythopolis (tca. 540).
Cf. chap. 2, sect. 1.
Enn. V 3 (49), 12, 50–52. The One is without the “what,” for it were something (some “what”) it would cease to be the One itself, because it is “itself’ before the ”what.“
This verb means also “to unfold,” “to unroll.”
In chap. 1, sect. 2 we discussed another possible interpretation of this fragment.
This extremely authoritative and influential text is closely connected with the Corpus Areopagiticum.
Cf. L. Tunberg, Microcosm and Mediator. The Theological Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor, second edition (Chicago and La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1995); A. G. Chemyakov, “The consolation of philosophy today.” SYMPOSION. A Journal of Russian Thought, 1 (1996), pp. 19–34.
The expression “might become God” refers to the notion of Mart; (“deification”), one of the most important concepts of Orthodox theology, which I cannot discuss here.
E. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, 5. Aufl. (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer Verlag, 1993), p. 296.
The concept of the approximation of a transcendent subject in perception is developed by Husserl in the lectures of 1925–26 entitled “Grundprobleme der Logik.” See E. Husserl, Phänomenologie der Lebenswelt. Ausgewählte Texte II, hrsg. v. K. Held (Stuttgart, 1986), p. 75.
Ibid., p. 73. Cf. Ideen I, § 42.
Cf. the detailed discussion of Aristotle’s concept of the internal form of energeia in chap. 2, sect. 2.
W. Biemel collects important documents relevant to this polemic in his edition of Husserliana IX: Phänomenologische Psychologie. Vorlesungen Sommersemester 1925 (Den Haag: M. NijhofT, 1962). 50 Ibid., p. 296f.
“Chwr(133)das erweisbare Wesen, transzendental in sich und für sich konstituierte zu sein”(ibid., p. 297).
A detailed analysis of the decisive C manuscripts from 1931 to 1933 devoted to this subject can be found in: K. Held, Lebendige Gegenwart, Phenomenologica 23 (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1966). Cf. also an extremely elucidating article by Ludwig Landgrebe “The Problem of Passive Constitution,” in Phenomenology of E. Husserl. Sir Essays, ed. D. Welton (Cornell Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 51–56.
MS C 7 II, p. 12 (1932) after Held, op. cit., p. 99.
Cf. Landgrebe, op. cit., pp. 53f.
MS C 17 IV, p. 1 (1930) after Held, p. 99.
MSC 17 IV, p. 5 (1932) after Held, p.101.
MS C 17 IV, p. 6 (1932) after Held, p.101.
L. Landgrebe, op. cit., pp. 51f.
“In Erfüllung erleben wir gleichsam ein ‘das ist es selbst’Chwr(133)” E. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen, Bd. 2, 2. Teil, hrsg. v. U. Panzer, Hua XIX/2 (Den Haag/Boston/London, 1984), p. 597.
According to a testimony of E. Tugendhat (cf. Der Wahrheitsbegrzjf bei Husserl and Heidegger. 2. Aufl., Berlin, 1970), Husserl’s distinction of the empty and the filled consciousness can be traced back to Leibniz’ article Meditationes de cognitione, ventate et ideis (1684) already cited in chap. 3. Franz Brentano highly estimated this work and recommended it to his students. M. Heidegger analysed and interpreted it in his Marburg lectures of 1928 published under the title Metaphysische AnJangsgriinde der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz (§ 4). In this small article Leibniz distinguishes between cognitio caeca vel symbolica, on the on hand, and cognitio intuitiva. Let us consider an important example. When we think of a chiliagon, a regular polygon with thousand (equal) sides, we are incapable not only of appropriately intuiting such a thing, but also we do not always simultaneously conceive along with the meaning of the term the exact definition or “nature” of side, of equality, of the number one thousand, etc. We use the words or some other “symbols” in order to refer to such an ideal object as chiliagon and to operate with it mentally. Nevertheless, we have the accompanying awareness that we know the essence of this object and can at any moment put it before us, that we can at any moment analyse the notions involved, up to their simplest constituents. This state of referring to an object by means of symbols plus the accompanying awareness — “I know that I know” — Leibniz calls cognitio caeca, and Husserl would call empty or “signitive” intention. But when it is possible forme to think simultaneously the meaning of all simple constituents (and for the simple, thinking amounts to immediate intuition) I have intuitive knowledge. Leibniz writes: “Et certe corn notio valde composita est, non possumus omnes ingredientes earn notions simul cogitare: ubi tarnen hoc licet, vel saltem in quantum licet, cognitionem voco intuitivam. Notionis distinctae primitivae non alia datur cognitio, quam intuitiva, ut compositarum plerumque cogitatio non nisi symbolica est.” See Die philosophische Schr(fien von G. W. F. Leibniz, hrsg. G. L. Gerhardt, Bd. 4 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1960), pp. 422–426.
LU, p. 597.
The extreme case of such an “incompleteness” is represented by the situation of disappointment (Enttäuschung): “Eine Intention enttäuscht sich in der Weise der Widerstreits nur dadurch, daB sie ein Teil einer umfassender Intention ist, deren ergänzender Teil sich erfüllt” (ibid., p. 576). The disappointment in this sense implies a fulfilled consciousness of the same (!) object that has been intended but proved to be a different thing, something unexpected or having betrayed my expectations.
Cf. K. Held, “Husserls Rückgang auf das parvONevov und die geschichtliche Stellung der Phänomenologie.” Phänomenologische Forschungen, 10 (1980), pp. 100–102.
Through the phenomenological reduction and the discovery of the “sphere of pure subjectivity” all possible excuses are taken away from the ego and it now stands placed before the universality of its responsibility for everything that is certain for it. In the lectures of 1923/24 on the First philosophy (Erste Philosophie, Zweiter Teil: Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion, hrsg. v. R. Boehm, Hua VIII, Den Haag, 1959) Husserl discusses time and again the shift to phenomenological attitude in terms of a moral action or even religious conversion. He speaks of “escaping from a kinship with the world,” a “world denial,” etc. Husserl states later in the Crisis that the persistent phenomenological reflection can lead to a “complete personal transformation” of man. He is fully entitled to quote repeatedly St. Augustine’s “in te redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas.” Cf. L. Landgrebe, “Husserl’s Departure from Cartesianism,” in Phenomenology oil’. Husserl. Sir Essays.
Cf.. E. Tugendhat, Selbstbewußtsein und Selbstbestimmung. Sprachanalytische Interpretationen (Frankfurt a. M., 1979), pp. 17f.: “Die Art und Weise, wie uns alle diese Phänomene wie Bewußtsein, Bewußtsein von etwas, Selbstbewußtsein, Ich usw. zunächst gegeben sind, listi eben eine sprachliche, und das gilt eigentlich von allen Gegenständen der philosophischen Reflexion; letztlich bedeutet das nichts anderes als Trivialität, daß die Wörter’Bewusstsein,”Selbstbewusstsein,’ usw. eben Wörter sind und eine Klärung gar nicht anders beginnen kann, als indem wir nach ihrer Bedeutung fragen. Daß man nicht anders beginnen kann, daran kann eigentlich kein ernsthafter Mensch zweifeln. Die Wege gehen erst dort auseinander, wo man meint, daß wir die Bedeutung von Wörtern dadurch erkennen, dass wir etwas mit einem geistigen Auge erschauen.“
“Simplex dicitur indivisibile onutino divisione sui et alterius non componibile cum alio, non habens hoc et hoc: et hoc modo Deus dicitur simplex.”
In § 58 of Ideen I, entitled “Die Transzendenz Gottes ausgeschaltet,” we read: ‘Auf dieses ‘Absolute’ und ‘Transzendente’ erstrecken wir natürlich die phänomenologische Reduktion. Es soll aus dem neu zu schaffenden Forschungsfelde ausgeschaltet bleiben, sofern dieses ein Feld des reinen Bewußtseins selbst sein soll.“
It is necessary to bear in mind that this self-interpretation of phenomenology as egology was preceded by attempts to build a non-egologicalphenomenology (in particular, in the Logical Investigations). In the lectures delivered in 1907 under the heading “Thing and Space” Husserl says: “The ‘I’ is inevitably something thing-like which is constituted within the nexus of intentional interconnections, while the thinking as such is nobody’s thinkingChwr(133)” (Ding und Raum. Vorlesungen 1907, hrsg. v. U. Claesges, Hua XVI. Den Haag, 1973.) A detailed history of the development of Husserl’s concept of pure ego can be found in: Alexander Haardt, “Selbstbesinnung und Selbstbewußtsein in Edmund Husserls Cartesianische Meditationen,” in Cognitio humana — Dynamik des Wissens und der Werte, hrsg. v. Ch. Hubig (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), pp. 433–450.
Concerning the attempts to build a “non-subjective phenomenology” (i.e. to begin with more primordial phenomena than the subject-lintentionall-object distinction) cf..I. Patocka, “Der Subjektivismus der Husserlschen und die Möglichkeit einer ‘asubjektiven’ Phänomenologie,” in Philosophische Perspektiven, Bd. 2 (Frankfurt a. M., 1970); H.-U. Hoche, Handlung, BewuJ3tsein und Leib. Vorstudien Zu einer rein noematischen Phänomenologie (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber Verlag, 1973); K. Held, “Husserls Rückgang auf das patvóµevov und die geschichtliche Stellung der Phänomenologie,” in Phänomenologische Forschungen, 10 (1980) pp. 94f.
Cf. F. F. LtlneT, “Co3natnte u ero co6cTeerüaix” e: Feopzuro Heanoeuuy 9ennauoey om ykacmnnKOe ezo certunapuee (G. G. Spet, “Consciousness and its Owner”), Moscow, 1916. And yet I can direct [the glance of reflection] towards myself. And then my object (das Gegenüber) gets split again, and in it the ego comes to the fore alongside of that which was its object (was ihm gegenüber war), i.e., the ego and its [former] object [become a new object]. Here I, the subject, am anonymous with regard to this new object. That this is how the matter stands concerning this subject, I see precisely by means of this same reflection, for having accomplished it I can at the same time find as an object the ego that was anonymous as well as its object a moment ago. Reflecting in this manner and reflecting in this manner again and again, I find again and again a being (Seiendes) [as the object] and the ego, I fmd in this reflection the same ego [identical to itself], I find also this “again and again” (das Immerwieder) of the act of reflection [itself] and of the possibility of going on with my reflection (Rellektierenkinnen)Chwr(133) I find, in this permanent self-splitting of the ego and in its constant subsequent self-identification, [on the one hand], a kind of primal ego (ein Ur-ich), which I call the primal pole (Ur-pot), the primordially functioning ego, [and on the other hand], the ego which has become an object for the primal ego, which has become a being for it (das zum Seienden gewordene Ich), and [besides I find] an area of what is present as a non-ego for this [objectified ego] as well as for me as for the anonymous egoChwr(133)
Cf. E. Husserl, Erste Philosophie. 2. Teil, Theorie der phänomenologischen Reduktion, hrsg. v. R. Boehm, Hua VIII (Den Haag, 1959), pp. 89ff.
Manuscripts C 2 I/3 a. Cited after K. Mertens, Zwischen Letztbegründung und Skepsis. Kritische Untersuchungen zum Selbstverständnis der Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Freiburg/München: Verlag Karl Alber, 1996), p. 155.
am not inclined to underestimate Husserl’s achievements in his rigorous and subtle elaboration of the paradoxes of reflection. On the other hand, I am not inclined to overestimate them either. It seems to me that the problem encountered here by phenomenology and especially the method of its analysis is essentially the same as in the passage of Plotinus’ Enneads quoted above (see sect. 1.1.6 of this chapter). The solution proposed by Husserl in its structural skeleton repeats (is homologous to) the preliminary solution outlined and subsequently rejected by Plotinus. The final solution, as we have seen, is based upon the identity of energeia and form in the intellect. The same paradoxes and the same (homo-logical) movement of thought are also found in Fichte’s lecturesssenschaftslehre nova melhodo; see Kollegnachschrifty. K. Chr. Fr. Krause (Hamburg: E. Meiner Verlag. 1982). The culmination of this movement is the following thesis: “there is such a consciousness in which it is in principle impossible to take apart the subjective and the objective sides, because both are absolutely identical.” Fichte writes elsewhere: “The activity of contemplation turning back towards itself and taken as stable and invariable (i. e., pure noetic energeia — A. Ch.)Chwr(133) is nothing but the concept of the L”
Cf. E.Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegrrebei Husserl and Heidegger, 2. Auflage (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1970), § 3.
Cf. E. Husserl, Formate and transzendentale Logik (Halle, 1929), p.139; Cartesianische Meditationen and Pariser Vorträge, Hua I, hrsg. v. S. Strasser (Den Haag, 1950). p. 96.
“Die Anschauung von welcher hier die Rede ist, ist ein Sich-Setzen als setzend 1Chwr(133)1, keineswegs aber etwa ein bloßes SetzenChwr(133)” (J. G.Fichte, Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftsiehre 1797.)
MS C 5/3a -3 b. Cited after K. Mertens, Zwischen Ler<:rhegründuig und SkepsisChwr(133), p. 155.
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Chernyakov, A. (2002). God without Being and Thought without Thinker. In: The Ontology of Time. Phaenomenologica, vol 163. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3407-3_6
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