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Beyond the Negative: Appropriation and Surpassing of Negative Theology in Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Philosophie Première

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Abstract

In this article, we propose to question the accuracy of Jean Wahl’s definition of Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Philosophie Première (1953) as one of the “ultimate efflorescences of negative theology.” In fact, we maintain that—although conceiving the apophatic discourse as a necessary (but insufficient) stepping-stone to the absolute—the aforementioned work constitutes, if anything, an effort to overcome it by means of what we shall call a tesiphatic philosophy, i.e., one that identifies the first principle, not as the absolute negation of being, but as the absolute position of being. To defend our thesis, we shall start by discussing the meaning of the five divine names that Jankélévitch bestows upon his absolute, namely, (1) the “totally-other-order,” (2) the “super-truth,” (3) “the itself,” (4) the “I-know-not-what,” and (5) the “almost-nothing.” In this section of our paper, we will try to show how Jankélévitch’s discourse is, in fact, shaped by the whole negative theology tradition (from Plotinus to Nicholas of Cusa). Finally, in the last part of our paper, we will strive to reflect upon Jankélévitch’s interpretation of the limits of a apophatic metaphysical discourse, questioning whether his Philosophie Première effectively overcomes negative theology’s conception of the absolute.

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Notes

  1. Jean Wahl 1955: 216: “[…] ce livre [Philosophie Première] […] nous apparaît comme l’ultime efflorescence d’une très grande tradition, celle de la théologie négative […]“. See Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953

  2. Vladimir Jankélévitch 1942, 1947, 1949

  3. See Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1960-1961: 304.

  4. See Plotinus, Enneads, I, III, 5, III, IV, 9 and V, V, 6 (ἐπέχεινα τοῦ ὄντος), V, IV, 2 (ἐπέχεινα εἶναι τῆς οὐσίας) and V, XV, 9 (ἐπέχεινα ὅλως). See also Plato, Republic, VI, 507b-509c, where, although defining “the ideia of the good” (τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέαν) as a “beyond the essences” (ἐπέχεινα τῆς οὐσίας), Plato also defines “the good itself” (αὐτὸ ἀγαθόν) as “that which is” (ὃ εστιν)…

  5. There are, in fact, two more divine names in Philosophie Première: the super-truth (la survérité), which is only a corollary of the totally-other-order, and the almost-nothing (le presque-rien), which we will debate later on. Nota bene: from Philosophie Première onwards, Jankélévitch will use these five divine names to apophatically refer, not only to the absolute, but also to any entity that, either seems to be destitute of predicates (like time), or seems to transcend the total sum of its predicates (like music). See, for instance, Vladimir Jankélévitch 1960: 219 (time is an almost-nothing) and 1961: 129 (music is an I-know-not-what).

  6. See Vladimir Jankélévitch 1953: 118 and 127.

  7. See Parmenides, DK18b4-DK18b8 (“τὸ γὰρ αὐτὸ νοεῖν ἐστίν τε καὶ εἶναι “, DK18b5, 1); Plotinus, Enneads, I, IV, 10; Pseudo-Dionysius, De Divinus Nominibus, I, § 4 (PG 3, 593A).

  8. Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 110: “[…] rien n’est même commencé […] quand la théologie apophatique est achevée […]“

  9. See Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 114: “De là sans doute le caractère étrangement stationnaire des interminables litanies apophatiques: ces cumulations n’avancent pas; les négations successives ne nous rapprochent pas plus du terme que les versets d’un psaume ne développent, par raisonnement, une pensée “

  10. Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 114: “En philosophie apophatique la négation n’est pas un ‘moment’: et par suite nous ne sommes pas plus près du Superineffable après cent mille négations qu’après une seule “.

  11. Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 119: “état de grâce “.

  12. Jankélévitch is here renewing the distinction posited by Schelling (following the Greeks) between the nothing (οὐχ ὄν/nihil/nichtseiendes/rien) and the minimum-being (μὴ ὄν/nihilum/nichtseiendes/néant). See Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Von Schelling, 1856-1861a: 221–222, 1856-1861b: 235–236 and 282–285, and 1856-1861c: 288–289, 306–311, 403 and 411; Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1933: 101–103, 1953: 196 and 1980: 28; ARISTOTLE, Metaphysics Δ, 22, 1022b-23a.

  13. Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 210: “[…] le rien ne devient pas quelque chose à force d’engraisser; car un rien qu’on gonfle indéfiniment continuera de n’être rien jusqu’à la fin des siècles “

  14. “γένεσις εἰς οὐσιαν “: Plato, Philebus, 26d, Parmenides, 156c-7a and Sophist, 257b-c; Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 197.

  15. Gn, 1:1–3: “In principio creavit Deus cælum et terram. Terra autem erat inanis et vacua, et tenebræ erant super faciem abyssi: et spiritus Dei ferebatur super aquas. Dixitque Deus: Fiat lux. Et facta est lux “/ “ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν οὺρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν / ἡ δὲ γῆ ἦν ἀόρατος καὶ ἀκατασκεύαστος καὶ σκότος ἐπάνω τῆς ἀβύσσου καὶ πνεῦμα θεοῦ ἐπεφέρετο ἐπάνω τοῦ ὕδατος / καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός γενηθήτω φῶς καὶ ἐγένετο φῶς“

  16. Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 182 (“L’absolu n’est pas, mais il fait “) and 193 (“Dieu n’est pas, mais il fait “).

  17. Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 184: “[…] Dieu fait, et, en faisant, se fait; Dieu se pose lui-même ‘comme Dieu’ en posant l’être. Dieu […] se crée en créant […]“

  18. Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 193: “Ce Lui-même en lui-même que la théologie négative recherche comme Sujet absolu par-delà tous adjectifs, il est bien plutôt Verbe absolu par-delà tous adverbes “

  19. We are here coining the adjective “thesiphatic”—which we are composing from the Greek substantives “θέσις” (= thesis) and “φάσις” (= exposition) —in order to refer, in rhyme with the Greek termination of the adjectives “cataphatic” and “apophatic,” to the thetic or drastic language by means of which Jankélévitch is expressing the absolute position of being.

  20. Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 164–5: “Tant qu’il ne s’agit que de logos, […] une seule science sérieuse peut traiter de cet absolu qui est sans épaisseur pensable […], et c’est une science négative […]. Vice versa une seule ‘gnose’ dit oui à la suripséité, et cette gnose n’est pas tant affirmative que positive, ou mieux ‘positionnelle’: c’est-à-dire qu’elle n’’affirme’ pas, par le moyen de la copule, l’inhérence d’un certain attribut à un certain sujet, mais elle ‘pose’ purement et simplement […] la ‘thèse’, qui est positivité non pas cataphatique, mais […] thétique […]“

  21. Vladimir Jankélévitch, 1953: 165: “Ainsi donc le lui-même est ce qui ‘logiquement’ ne peut être que nié, ou, à l’inverse, ne peut être posé que ‘drastiquement’’.

  22. This metaphysical opposition between act and being – or, rather, the affirmation of the metaphysical superiority of act over being – represents the main discovery of Jankélévitch’s Philosophie Première, and one that would deeply influence his subsequent works on aesthetics and ethics. See, for instance, VLADIMIR JANKÉLÉVITCH, 1961: 38–41, 99–101, 108 and 148 (music is an act); 1981: 70, 89–90, 117 and 123 (being is an obstacle to the act of loving). But particularly on metaphysics. In fact, as Jean Wahl clearly noted, the aforementioned opposition has the disadvantage of identifying being as a form of negativity, i.e., as that which negates the act from which it derives. See JEAN WAHL, 1955: 209, 212 and 214–215. Well, after Philosophie Première, Jankélévitch’s metaphysics mainly tried to close the gap created between a relative being that is destitute of action and an absolute action that is destitute of being, especially by conceiving time as a concrete and effective combination of the two. See VLADIMIR JANKÉLÉVITCH, 1957: 16–34; BAPTISTA MARQUES, Vasco, 2017: 211–218.

  23. See, for instance, Plotinus, Enneads, VI, VII, 38.

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  1. Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa, Alameda da Universidade, 1600-214, Lisboa, Portugal

    Vasco Baptista Marques

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Marques, V.B. Beyond the Negative: Appropriation and Surpassing of Negative Theology in Vladimir Jankélévitch’s Philosophie Première. SOPHIA 62, 265–273 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-021-00863-3

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