I thought this went nicely with some of what we're reading in Benedict's "Jesus of Nazareth".
To interpret Scripture theologically means not only to listen to the historical authors whom it juxtaposes, even opposes, but to seek the one voice of the whole, to seek the inner identity that sustains the whole and binds it together. A purely historical method attempts to distill the historical moment of genesis, thereby setting it apart from all others and fixing it. Theological exegesis, while not displacing such a historical approach from its proper terrain, nonetheless does transcend it. The moment does not exist in isolation. It is part of a whole, and I do not really understand even this part until I understand it together with the whole... Scripture is interpreted by Scripture... The reading of Scripture as a unity thus logically entails a second principle. It means reading it as something present, not only in order to learn about what was once the case or what people once thought, but to learn what is true. This, too, is an aim that a strictly historical exegesis cannot directly pursue. Such an exegesis focuses, after all, on the past moment of the genesis of the text and therefore necessarily reads it in relation to its prior history... The question of truth is a naive, unscientific question. And yet, it is the real question of the Bible as such... The question is meaningful only if the Bible itself is something present, if a subject that is present speaks out of it, and if this subject stands apart from all other living historical subjects because it is bound up with the truth and, therefore, can convey knowledge of the truth in human speech. -- Pope Benedict XVI
Monday, October 31, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
How to Live the "Good Life"
What is the key to living the good life? Here is a quote to ponder:
"Precisely those who avoid anything unpleasant and hedonistically take advantage of every opportunity to enjoy some pleasure will seldom consciously feel their own life processes, which make themselves noticeable only to those who strive against difficulty." Vittorio Hosle, Morality and Politics, at 281.
It follows that to live life one must struggle against, rather than give in to, the possibilities that confront us. The cardinal virtues (Joseph Pieper names them Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance) are the archetypical expression and result of living this truth, for virtue, from the latin vir or strength, arises from exercise/practice for the good, and the habits or settled modes of acting and reacting that this exercise/practice brings about.
Courage or fortitude is related to temperance in a peculiar way, says Hosle. "On one hand, temperance and courage both involve an overcmoing of immediate vital instincts; on the other, the instincts that are overcome are very different: In the case of temperance it is a matter of pleasure, and in that of courage it is a matter of fear -- in its early forms, the fear of disadvantages in general and, in its most advanced form, fear of death; courage is the actual advancing toward death" (285).
"We should distinguish between several forms of courage, depending on whether they are directed against natural forces, enemies of the group, or one's own group. The battle against nature demands, given similar risks, less self-renunciation than does conflict with foreign conspecifics; but the most difficult thing is to oppose those to whom one is bound by collective identity, even when doing so is not connected with any risk to body and life, but only with social isolation. It is this form of courage that is called 'the courage of one's convictions. . ." (286).
I saw a very good depiction of this type of courage in the film Conspirator, directed by Robert Redford, which tells the story of Mary Surratt, the (Catholic) operator of the boarding house where the conspirators who killed President Lincoln gathered to plot their perfidy. The film is actually the story of her trial, and its outcome, and the growth in courage shown by the attorney who represented her. He definitely had to struggle against his own prejudices and emotions, and pay the price of fighting against the common prejudice that flamed up in our country with the assassination of our beloved Lincoln. I highly recommend it as a true story showing the vital importance of our civic freedoms and the indispensable need for citizens to stand up for them in the face of social pressure and emotion that would readily sacrifice them. You can learn about it here.
At lunch yesterday my mom related that she heard an excellent homily at mass last Sunday at St. Mary's, Downers Grove. She was impressed because the homilist exhorted the congregation to stand up for our Catholic convictions. The homily got a good reception; the congregation applauded when it was over. I can remember a few similar instances at St. Michael's where I was moved to applaud a homily. Invariably it raised up threatened principles or values that needed our active and courageous involvement to combat.
That is why I was happy to read that our bishops are trying to do the same. Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport urged Congress yesterday to act now to protect religious liberty in our country, where rights of conscience more and more are under active attack by politically correct elements who "know better" than "religious bigots."
How to live the good life? Not by hedonism, but by struggling against what our faith teaches is injustice, so that we can do our part to help ensure a just future for ourselves, our children and our children's children.
End of homily!
"Precisely those who avoid anything unpleasant and hedonistically take advantage of every opportunity to enjoy some pleasure will seldom consciously feel their own life processes, which make themselves noticeable only to those who strive against difficulty." Vittorio Hosle, Morality and Politics, at 281.
It follows that to live life one must struggle against, rather than give in to, the possibilities that confront us. The cardinal virtues (Joseph Pieper names them Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance) are the archetypical expression and result of living this truth, for virtue, from the latin vir or strength, arises from exercise/practice for the good, and the habits or settled modes of acting and reacting that this exercise/practice brings about.
Courage or fortitude is related to temperance in a peculiar way, says Hosle. "On one hand, temperance and courage both involve an overcmoing of immediate vital instincts; on the other, the instincts that are overcome are very different: In the case of temperance it is a matter of pleasure, and in that of courage it is a matter of fear -- in its early forms, the fear of disadvantages in general and, in its most advanced form, fear of death; courage is the actual advancing toward death" (285).
"We should distinguish between several forms of courage, depending on whether they are directed against natural forces, enemies of the group, or one's own group. The battle against nature demands, given similar risks, less self-renunciation than does conflict with foreign conspecifics; but the most difficult thing is to oppose those to whom one is bound by collective identity, even when doing so is not connected with any risk to body and life, but only with social isolation. It is this form of courage that is called 'the courage of one's convictions. . ." (286).
I saw a very good depiction of this type of courage in the film Conspirator, directed by Robert Redford, which tells the story of Mary Surratt, the (Catholic) operator of the boarding house where the conspirators who killed President Lincoln gathered to plot their perfidy. The film is actually the story of her trial, and its outcome, and the growth in courage shown by the attorney who represented her. He definitely had to struggle against his own prejudices and emotions, and pay the price of fighting against the common prejudice that flamed up in our country with the assassination of our beloved Lincoln. I highly recommend it as a true story showing the vital importance of our civic freedoms and the indispensable need for citizens to stand up for them in the face of social pressure and emotion that would readily sacrifice them. You can learn about it here.
At lunch yesterday my mom related that she heard an excellent homily at mass last Sunday at St. Mary's, Downers Grove. She was impressed because the homilist exhorted the congregation to stand up for our Catholic convictions. The homily got a good reception; the congregation applauded when it was over. I can remember a few similar instances at St. Michael's where I was moved to applaud a homily. Invariably it raised up threatened principles or values that needed our active and courageous involvement to combat.
That is why I was happy to read that our bishops are trying to do the same. Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport urged Congress yesterday to act now to protect religious liberty in our country, where rights of conscience more and more are under active attack by politically correct elements who "know better" than "religious bigots."
How to live the good life? Not by hedonism, but by struggling against what our faith teaches is injustice, so that we can do our part to help ensure a just future for ourselves, our children and our children's children.
End of homily!
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Love's Silent Hello
In his article "From Utilitarianism to Ethics" (in Before Ethics), Adriaan Peperzak outlines a history of modern ethics from utilitarianism to our present post-modern thinking, represented by Heidegger. He views utilitarian ways of thinking as perfectly at home in a consumer-oriented world. "Money is the best expression and symbol for the postulated homogeneity of those goods, "values," pleasures, and properties, the sum of which is supposed to encapsulate the human striving for well-being." p.104. "[B]ut it uncritically accepts the banal convictions of those who see human existence as the universalization of consumption and good business." p. 105. "A thorough justification of human rights seems impossible within the utilitarian frameword." p. 106. "Facts cannot generate norms unless they themselves have a normative character." p.105.
Peperzak finds Kant's and Hegel's efforts to ground ethics unsuccessful, and points out that Heidegger's views seem to describe our condition of cultural nihilism or "rootlessness." This is the same term Cardinal Ratzinger used in his book Without Roots, which describes the malaise of modern western culture. In Peperzak's description, according to Heidegger "we are no longer at home in the world; we do not know what a homeland is. The sacred spaces have been ruined; the gods have been chased away by the ruthless domination of technology. We are estranged by Being, homelessly wandering in a desert. . ." p.113. "According to Heidegger it is the task of poets and thinkers to wake and wait for Being's gift by heeding language as its abode." p. 114. "Poets and thinkers are claimed and 'used' by Being as guardians and messengers of its approach." Ibid.
A rather depressing diagnosis, but in my more honest moments I can relate to the experience of homelessness in a world seemingly gone mad in ever more extreme attempts to find meaning.
Peperzak, however, views this "desert of our cultural nihilism" as not only an emergency but an opportunity. He views this "dark night" and desert in terms described by such Christian thinkers as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, John of the Cross, and Emmanuel Levinas, to wit, as presenting the possibility of purification, of finding out who we are. Rather than finding that home in language, a la Heidegger, he sees our rootless as being corrected in a relationship with an Other, a relationship that is ethical and grounded in silence rather than language. I would like to quote one paragraph:
"The language from which morally qualified relations and behavior start is not necessarily a rich, perceptive, poetic, or thoughtful one. A simple "hello!" for example, is enough to initiate a morally qualified event. Such an utterance has no content, or almost none. Essential to it is its being addressed by someone to someone, not its truth, or the meaning of the proposition, or the content of the performance it may or may not convey. In addressing myself to someone in speech or writing, or by a gesture of greeting, I answer a demand; I have already accepted my responsibility toward this other who, by the claim of simply being there, orients my space, brain, heart, and my entire body. If 'language' is synonymous with a meaningful literary heritage or with a semiotic system, its silence does not hinder but rather stresses the eloquence of the address from which an ethical relationship emerges. The anonymity of an aesthetic cosmos and an inherited language in which singular individuals only play the role of actors may form the context within which we meet, but it will never explain what it means to face, to address, to speak to, or to correspond with some other." p. 116.
Peperzak goes on to say, "No longer do we firmly belong to any one of the peoples, cultures, or beliefs that form the museum of our past." "[T]here is only one possibility of becoming humanly oriented: to greet or be greeted by another individual. This seems to be the saving nearness or proximity in a situation of cultural nihilism. The neighborhood of the one to the other transcends our problems of cultivation, housing, building, poetry, and thought. It precedes and survives them because its goodness does not belong to the wealthy subsistence or ousia of settled nations; it wipes them away, if it comes to the emergency of a face-to-face between homeless wanderers in the desert. " p. 117. "Morality is the presence of the eternal in history. . ." p. 115.
Notice the importance of silence in what Peperzak describes. The other's "call" to us essentially is a silent one, because it is a recognition of the transcendence, the "infinite" of the other, and that occurs in silence. A meeting eye to eye, a greeting, a raised hand, a "Hi!", can "connect" each other's transcendent being. Language is secondary.
To be greeted, to be recognized . . . in my own life, that has been the highest and most touching experience! Referring again to Mandestam's poem Silentia, love is found in the reverent silence of recognizing one another. There, according to Peperzak and the others he references, we find "home" in the rootless, wandering, desert of our lives. Our faith tells us that God recognizes each of us, giving us a "home." When we recognize one another we join in God's work of hospitality.
Peperzak finds Kant's and Hegel's efforts to ground ethics unsuccessful, and points out that Heidegger's views seem to describe our condition of cultural nihilism or "rootlessness." This is the same term Cardinal Ratzinger used in his book Without Roots, which describes the malaise of modern western culture. In Peperzak's description, according to Heidegger "we are no longer at home in the world; we do not know what a homeland is. The sacred spaces have been ruined; the gods have been chased away by the ruthless domination of technology. We are estranged by Being, homelessly wandering in a desert. . ." p.113. "According to Heidegger it is the task of poets and thinkers to wake and wait for Being's gift by heeding language as its abode." p. 114. "Poets and thinkers are claimed and 'used' by Being as guardians and messengers of its approach." Ibid.
A rather depressing diagnosis, but in my more honest moments I can relate to the experience of homelessness in a world seemingly gone mad in ever more extreme attempts to find meaning.
Peperzak, however, views this "desert of our cultural nihilism" as not only an emergency but an opportunity. He views this "dark night" and desert in terms described by such Christian thinkers as Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, John of the Cross, and Emmanuel Levinas, to wit, as presenting the possibility of purification, of finding out who we are. Rather than finding that home in language, a la Heidegger, he sees our rootless as being corrected in a relationship with an Other, a relationship that is ethical and grounded in silence rather than language. I would like to quote one paragraph:
"The language from which morally qualified relations and behavior start is not necessarily a rich, perceptive, poetic, or thoughtful one. A simple "hello!" for example, is enough to initiate a morally qualified event. Such an utterance has no content, or almost none. Essential to it is its being addressed by someone to someone, not its truth, or the meaning of the proposition, or the content of the performance it may or may not convey. In addressing myself to someone in speech or writing, or by a gesture of greeting, I answer a demand; I have already accepted my responsibility toward this other who, by the claim of simply being there, orients my space, brain, heart, and my entire body. If 'language' is synonymous with a meaningful literary heritage or with a semiotic system, its silence does not hinder but rather stresses the eloquence of the address from which an ethical relationship emerges. The anonymity of an aesthetic cosmos and an inherited language in which singular individuals only play the role of actors may form the context within which we meet, but it will never explain what it means to face, to address, to speak to, or to correspond with some other." p. 116.
Peperzak goes on to say, "No longer do we firmly belong to any one of the peoples, cultures, or beliefs that form the museum of our past." "[T]here is only one possibility of becoming humanly oriented: to greet or be greeted by another individual. This seems to be the saving nearness or proximity in a situation of cultural nihilism. The neighborhood of the one to the other transcends our problems of cultivation, housing, building, poetry, and thought. It precedes and survives them because its goodness does not belong to the wealthy subsistence or ousia of settled nations; it wipes them away, if it comes to the emergency of a face-to-face between homeless wanderers in the desert. " p. 117. "Morality is the presence of the eternal in history. . ." p. 115.
Notice the importance of silence in what Peperzak describes. The other's "call" to us essentially is a silent one, because it is a recognition of the transcendence, the "infinite" of the other, and that occurs in silence. A meeting eye to eye, a greeting, a raised hand, a "Hi!", can "connect" each other's transcendent being. Language is secondary.
To be greeted, to be recognized . . . in my own life, that has been the highest and most touching experience! Referring again to Mandestam's poem Silentia, love is found in the reverent silence of recognizing one another. There, according to Peperzak and the others he references, we find "home" in the rootless, wandering, desert of our lives. Our faith tells us that God recognizes each of us, giving us a "home." When we recognize one another we join in God's work of hospitality.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
God's Handmaiden
In Plato's Symposium, love is viewed as a daimon, a go-between or mediator between humans and gods. (202e). That makes some sense, for we think of love as desire for something or someone, a yearning for union with a good. The daimons or spirits "fill up the space between heaven and earth and help bind the whole universe together, enabling gods and men to connect." (203a). Diotima, who explains this to Socrates, describes the daimon Love as "always barefoot and homeless, sleeping under a roof or sky or in the doorways of strangers." (203d). In fact, this is an image of Socrates, who performs this function in Athens.
As Adriaan Peperzak explains in "Erotics"at p. 209 of Platonic Transformations, "Plato thus places [Socrates] in the center of the cosmos. The demonic nature of Socrates (whose discourses would in a Christian context perhaps have been called angelic) is inspired, but its universal message is carried out in a conduct both everyday and extraordinary that holds together and holds apart the dimensions of the divine and the human. In the Gorgias, a text less ecstatic than that of the Symposium, it is expressed in this way: 'All the sages say, Callicles, that heaven and earth, gods and humans, are bound together by solidarity and friendship and decency and moderation and justice. Therefore they call the universe a kosmos, i.e., a well-ordered and splendid whole, not a chaos or mess" (507e-508a).'"
Who could claim that love is unimportant?! It is the glue that gathers the cosmos into one. Still, Peperzak stresses that love is not a god, and it is a mistake to confuse eros, desire, or love itself with what is desired or loved. In other words, the god of love is God, whereas love is God's handmaiden, His angel.
I read a poem by Osip Mandelstam in his book "Stone" (1913) called Silentium (no. 14) (Silence), which seems to address the same subject. Here it is (in English, not Russian) (quoted in Mandelstam, Clarence Brown, pp. 165-66):
It has not yet been born,
it is music and the word,
and thereby inviolably
bonds everything that lives.
The breast of the sea breathes tranquilly
but the day is brilliant, like a fool,
and the pale lilac of the foam
lies in a bowl of cloudy blue.
May my lips acquire this
primeval quietness
like a crystal note
congenitally pure.
Remain foam, Aphrodite;
and return to music, word,
and heart, be ashamed of heart
when blent with life's foundation!
Silence? Love? "It" in Russian (Oha) can be both "it" or "she." Ibid. Aphrodite, goddess of love, like silence, "bonds everything that lives," like the harmony of music, the dialogue of words. Love (and silence) fills the spaces, the interstices, of parts to make a whole. And it keeps the parts distinct, respectful of each other, even "ashamed" in the presence of life's foundation, the good (or God) who lies beyond all.
As Adriaan Peperzak explains in "Erotics"at p. 209 of Platonic Transformations, "Plato thus places [Socrates] in the center of the cosmos. The demonic nature of Socrates (whose discourses would in a Christian context perhaps have been called angelic) is inspired, but its universal message is carried out in a conduct both everyday and extraordinary that holds together and holds apart the dimensions of the divine and the human. In the Gorgias, a text less ecstatic than that of the Symposium, it is expressed in this way: 'All the sages say, Callicles, that heaven and earth, gods and humans, are bound together by solidarity and friendship and decency and moderation and justice. Therefore they call the universe a kosmos, i.e., a well-ordered and splendid whole, not a chaos or mess" (507e-508a).'"
Who could claim that love is unimportant?! It is the glue that gathers the cosmos into one. Still, Peperzak stresses that love is not a god, and it is a mistake to confuse eros, desire, or love itself with what is desired or loved. In other words, the god of love is God, whereas love is God's handmaiden, His angel.
I read a poem by Osip Mandelstam in his book "Stone" (1913) called Silentium (no. 14) (Silence), which seems to address the same subject. Here it is (in English, not Russian) (quoted in Mandelstam, Clarence Brown, pp. 165-66):
It has not yet been born,
it is music and the word,
and thereby inviolably
bonds everything that lives.
The breast of the sea breathes tranquilly
but the day is brilliant, like a fool,
and the pale lilac of the foam
lies in a bowl of cloudy blue.
May my lips acquire this
primeval quietness
like a crystal note
congenitally pure.
Remain foam, Aphrodite;
and return to music, word,
and heart, be ashamed of heart
when blent with life's foundation!
Silence? Love? "It" in Russian (Oha) can be both "it" or "she." Ibid. Aphrodite, goddess of love, like silence, "bonds everything that lives," like the harmony of music, the dialogue of words. Love (and silence) fills the spaces, the interstices, of parts to make a whole. And it keeps the parts distinct, respectful of each other, even "ashamed" in the presence of life's foundation, the good (or God) who lies beyond all.
Eucharist as Food for the Road
To understand who you are is the most important question in life, and I think it is an understanding that you receive, and then only as a result of a quest. That we receive it in the Eucharist is, of course, part of our Catholic belief, though how it occurs seems a mystery.
Here is an article that seems to build on Bob's quote from Augustine, because it pictures how the Eucharist can show us who we are:
"When the potential producer of a movie version of The Lord of the Rings showed Tolkien the script, Tolkien was aghast. In addition to too many oversimplifications and wrong-headed ideas, which ran contrary to the spirit of the tale, Tolkien discovered that the script writer had changed the “Lembas,” the food given by Galadriel to the Fellowship to sustain themselves for their journey, to a “food concentrate.” No chemical analysis, Tolkien wrote back, could uncover its properties. Instead, it “has a much larger significance, of what one might hesitatingly call a ‘religious’ kind.”[1] Properly translated, lembas means “way-bread” or “life-bread.”[2] In his “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien notes that fairy allows us to see everyday things as something more than everyday things. One of his examples is of “wine and bread.”[3] As Frodo struggles up Mount Doom to destroy the Ring, the lembas sustains him.
(The rest of the article is well worth reading as well.)
So, one way to think of the Eucharist is as spiritual food that gives us hope and strengthens our will, so that we can persevere in our quest, our struggle, to fulfill our role in the "Fellowship" of Christ -- and thereby to become who Christ destined us to be in His providence. This is who we are (already in a way) in the Body of Christ!
Here is an article that seems to build on Bob's quote from Augustine, because it pictures how the Eucharist can show us who we are:
"When the potential producer of a movie version of The Lord of the Rings showed Tolkien the script, Tolkien was aghast. In addition to too many oversimplifications and wrong-headed ideas, which ran contrary to the spirit of the tale, Tolkien discovered that the script writer had changed the “Lembas,” the food given by Galadriel to the Fellowship to sustain themselves for their journey, to a “food concentrate.” No chemical analysis, Tolkien wrote back, could uncover its properties. Instead, it “has a much larger significance, of what one might hesitatingly call a ‘religious’ kind.”[1] Properly translated, lembas means “way-bread” or “life-bread.”[2] In his “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien notes that fairy allows us to see everyday things as something more than everyday things. One of his examples is of “wine and bread.”[3] As Frodo struggles up Mount Doom to destroy the Ring, the lembas sustains him.
The lembas has a virtue without which they would long ago have lain down to die. It did not satisfy desire, and at times Sam’s mind was filled with the memories of food, and the longing for simple bread and meats. And yet this way bread of the Elves had a potency that increased as travellers relied on it alone and did not mingle it with other foods. It fed the will, and it gave strength to endure, and to master sinew and limb beyond the measure of mortal kind.[4]"The lembas plays a vital role throughout the entirety of The Lord of the Rings. Not only does it sustain Frodo and Sam as they complete their mission, but it also protects and feeds the wills of Merry and Pippen as captives of the orcs, and Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli as they search for the demonic enemies who have captured the two Hobbits.[5] Conversely, evil refuses to partake of it, and when some orcs find the lembas on Frodo’s person, they attempt to destroy it."
(The rest of the article is well worth reading as well.)
So, one way to think of the Eucharist is as spiritual food that gives us hope and strengthens our will, so that we can persevere in our quest, our struggle, to fulfill our role in the "Fellowship" of Christ -- and thereby to become who Christ destined us to be in His providence. This is who we are (already in a way) in the Body of Christ!
Friday, October 21, 2011
Being Eucharist
I was recently introduced to the following reflection on the Eucharist from Sermon 272 of St. Augustine.
"What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the Body of Christ and the chalice the Blood of Christ. ... How is the bread His Body? And the chalice, or what is in the chalice, how is it His Blood? Those elements, brethren, are called Sacraments, because in them one thing is seen, but another is understood. What is seen is the corporeal species, but what is understood is the spiritual fruit. ... `You, however, are the Body of Christ and His members.' If, therefore, you are the Body of Christ and His members, your mystery is presented at the table of the Lord, you receive your mystery. To that which you are, you answer: `Amen'; and by answering, you subscribe to it. For you hear: `The Body of Christ!' and you answer: `Amen!' Be a member of Christ's Body, so that your `Amen' may be the truth."
If we can approach the alter to receive with the idea that what we receive is the mystery of ourselves as the body of Christ and we have acted as the body of Christ, how much more could we appreciate the Gift?
The (divine) light that orients true love / the (divine) music that harmonizes true lovers
I read in Fr. Barron's article this month in "Christ is our Hope" ("The Acts We Perform; the People We Become", p.15), his reminder to young people (and all of us), that what we do in our lives makes us who we are. This Aristotelean/Thomistic idea of virtue is applied to sexual ethics, and in particular, the horrendous, practice of "hooking up" sexually, which is an ever greater part of our youth culture, says Barron. (I haven't seen statistics on this; I assume he is correct, but don't exactly know.)
This way of thinking of what we do in life is very valid. But I want to offer a complementary perspective drawing from Plato by way of Adriaan Peperzak. The two approaches are not in conflict, but reinforce one another.
In his book Platonic Transformations, at p. 10-11, Peperzak writes:
"Plato neither condems nor represses the life of desires, angers, hopes, fears, pleasures, and pains; on the contrary, he wants to save them . . . by having them concretize and express their dvine essence. Most often, this essence is hidden, underdeveloped, and more or less perverted. Well-guided askesis is needed to purify the emotions, to let them grow in association with other elements of a human life, and to cultivate them through appropriate modes of expression. When Aristotle appeals to 'that which has logos' (to logon echon) and states that no life can be good if it is not ruled by that element, he does not proclaim a new doctrine; but Plato was more outspoken about the nondiscursive 'light' that is necessary to give virtuous behavior its ultimate orientation.
"That Socrates' erotic strategy aimed at ultimate meaning shows how close he was to religion. Karl Albert has shown that Plato, notwithstanding his enlightened departure from popular mythology, continues a relgious tradition when he interprets the phenomenal world in the light of ideas, the Good, the One, admiration, immortality, etc. Since the modern secularization has taken hold of many minds, the protest against Platonic sublimation has not stopped. Ideas, immaterial principles, spiritual determinations, and reason as law have been indicted in the name of sensibility, the body, passions, Dionysos, and life itself. Plato's 'metaphysics' is said to be the source of oppression and alienation. According to Plato -- in company with Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel -- such accusations reveal an ungodly and unmusical mindset. Logos, reason, ideas, the Good, and essences are not hostile to the sensible, sensitive, and tasteful experience of material phenomena, emotions, world, and liberty. On the contrary, the corporeal world can and must be saved from chaos and wildness; it must be ennobled and made beautiful, but this will not succeed if we are unable to bring the different dimensions of our being into harmony.
"An illustration of Plato's approach can be found in the contrast between Aristophanes and Diotima in the Symposium. According to Aristophanes' tragicomedy, the erotic destiny of human individuals lies in their being only half of what they originally were and had to be. This fact condems them to a chase for the other half. Humans are not free for love and in loving; our true existence is realized only during short moments of sexual union. The rest of our lives is nostalgia and dissatisfaction.
"Diotima, however, teaches Socrates that an aristophanic love makes human lives unhappy. Fascination by one or many bodies cannot fulfill the desire that constitutes the human essence. A certain distance from infatuation -- a distance that is interior and does not exclude any erotic involvement -- is needed to be free in love. Freedom with regard to my own spontaneous eroticism can only be the effect of another, 'higher' or more profound dimension of eros. The most sublime eros, granting freedom, is a condition for freely loving another free and erotic person. While Aristophene's conception was presented as a poetic myth, Socrates' insight was the gift of a priestess. Philosophy refers to religion, but it tries to understand why and to what extent religion is right. Similar remarks can be made about the mania of the Phaedrus: only a flight toward the dimension of the divine can save us from the fascinations that make us crawl."
In my own experiences of love and my reflections on them, I acknowledge how essential it is to struggle to escape my lower desires, which I know, if followed, will inexorably result not in freedom but in "chaos and wilderness." I appreciate Peperzak's (and originally Plato's) insight that our thinking and doing (i.e. our lives) must be guided by something higher, a divine element. Levinas' thought similarly emphasizes our need to be servants to this higher Other. And I especially appreciate Peperzak's validation of the religious (the "light" that guides reason) as the end of our reflections on life's meaning (and, of course, of life itself). This is an essential counter-remedy for so much current thinking that sees our world as bereft of God. That illness, I believe, is ultimately behind the "hook up" mentality, a form of "despair" in which the inspiration, the light, the music, of the divine has left us.
How can we help our loved ones see that this is the opposite of "the way things are"?
This way of thinking of what we do in life is very valid. But I want to offer a complementary perspective drawing from Plato by way of Adriaan Peperzak. The two approaches are not in conflict, but reinforce one another.
In his book Platonic Transformations, at p. 10-11, Peperzak writes:
"Plato neither condems nor represses the life of desires, angers, hopes, fears, pleasures, and pains; on the contrary, he wants to save them . . . by having them concretize and express their dvine essence. Most often, this essence is hidden, underdeveloped, and more or less perverted. Well-guided askesis is needed to purify the emotions, to let them grow in association with other elements of a human life, and to cultivate them through appropriate modes of expression. When Aristotle appeals to 'that which has logos' (to logon echon) and states that no life can be good if it is not ruled by that element, he does not proclaim a new doctrine; but Plato was more outspoken about the nondiscursive 'light' that is necessary to give virtuous behavior its ultimate orientation.
"That Socrates' erotic strategy aimed at ultimate meaning shows how close he was to religion. Karl Albert has shown that Plato, notwithstanding his enlightened departure from popular mythology, continues a relgious tradition when he interprets the phenomenal world in the light of ideas, the Good, the One, admiration, immortality, etc. Since the modern secularization has taken hold of many minds, the protest against Platonic sublimation has not stopped. Ideas, immaterial principles, spiritual determinations, and reason as law have been indicted in the name of sensibility, the body, passions, Dionysos, and life itself. Plato's 'metaphysics' is said to be the source of oppression and alienation. According to Plato -- in company with Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel -- such accusations reveal an ungodly and unmusical mindset. Logos, reason, ideas, the Good, and essences are not hostile to the sensible, sensitive, and tasteful experience of material phenomena, emotions, world, and liberty. On the contrary, the corporeal world can and must be saved from chaos and wildness; it must be ennobled and made beautiful, but this will not succeed if we are unable to bring the different dimensions of our being into harmony.
"An illustration of Plato's approach can be found in the contrast between Aristophanes and Diotima in the Symposium. According to Aristophanes' tragicomedy, the erotic destiny of human individuals lies in their being only half of what they originally were and had to be. This fact condems them to a chase for the other half. Humans are not free for love and in loving; our true existence is realized only during short moments of sexual union. The rest of our lives is nostalgia and dissatisfaction.
"Diotima, however, teaches Socrates that an aristophanic love makes human lives unhappy. Fascination by one or many bodies cannot fulfill the desire that constitutes the human essence. A certain distance from infatuation -- a distance that is interior and does not exclude any erotic involvement -- is needed to be free in love. Freedom with regard to my own spontaneous eroticism can only be the effect of another, 'higher' or more profound dimension of eros. The most sublime eros, granting freedom, is a condition for freely loving another free and erotic person. While Aristophene's conception was presented as a poetic myth, Socrates' insight was the gift of a priestess. Philosophy refers to religion, but it tries to understand why and to what extent religion is right. Similar remarks can be made about the mania of the Phaedrus: only a flight toward the dimension of the divine can save us from the fascinations that make us crawl."
In my own experiences of love and my reflections on them, I acknowledge how essential it is to struggle to escape my lower desires, which I know, if followed, will inexorably result not in freedom but in "chaos and wilderness." I appreciate Peperzak's (and originally Plato's) insight that our thinking and doing (i.e. our lives) must be guided by something higher, a divine element. Levinas' thought similarly emphasizes our need to be servants to this higher Other. And I especially appreciate Peperzak's validation of the religious (the "light" that guides reason) as the end of our reflections on life's meaning (and, of course, of life itself). This is an essential counter-remedy for so much current thinking that sees our world as bereft of God. That illness, I believe, is ultimately behind the "hook up" mentality, a form of "despair" in which the inspiration, the light, the music, of the divine has left us.
How can we help our loved ones see that this is the opposite of "the way things are"?
Emmanuel Levinas
I had never heard of Emmanuel Levinas so I went to Wikipedia to find out. Some information from that site follows.
Emmanuel Levinas 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a Lithuanian-born French Jewish philosopher and Talmudic commentator.
A sample of his thought follows, also from Wikipedia.
Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). In his view, responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth".
Much food for thought.
Emmanuel Levinas 12 January 1906 – 25 December 1995) was a Lithuanian-born French Jewish philosopher and Talmudic commentator.
A sample of his thought follows, also from Wikipedia.
Lévinas prefers to think of philosophy as the "wisdom of love" rather than the love of wisdom (the literal Greek meaning of the word "philosophy"). In his view, responsibility precedes any "objective searching after truth".
Much food for thought.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Ethics as the Call of the Holy
It's hard to describe Levinas' thinking in a few phrases, because he wrote hundreds (apparently almost 500) books and articles! But he was fond of saying that the entirety of his philosophy could be summarized in the simple words, "Apres vous, Monsieur". His reflection on the horrors of the 20th Century, including the loss of several of his family members in the Shoa, led him to appreciate how impersonal and deadening was what he called a "totalizing" viewpoint, in which other persons were captured in knowledge but not acknowledged for what they really are, beings who transcend our knowledge, and place a claim on me. He said, our first word as a person is not Decartes' "ego cogito" (I am, I think), but "me voici!" (here I am!). The first word of the subject arises in the response to the other's call, the word with which the prophet testifies to the presence of God. Another person, in his or her transcendence, exerts a similar call on me.
For Levinas, the ethical, not the ontological, is primary. Others are not to be corralled into our cognitive categories. "Ethics is not a spectator sport. Rather, it is my experience of a demand that I both cannot fully meet and cannot avoid." Simon Critchley's "Introduction" in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, p. 22.
Levinas goes even further. In his funeral oration for Levinas in 1995, Jacques Derrida recalled a conversation with Levinas in his Paris apartment. "You know," Levinas said, "they often speak of ethics to describe what I do, but what interests me when all is said and done is not ethics, not only ethics, it's the holy, the holiness of the holy (le saint, la saintete du saint)." Ibid at p. 27).
I think not only of the prophet's call/response ("Here I am, Lord"), but Jesus' call ("Come follow me"), and the mother's calling of her baby into being through the mother's loving gaze (as described in von Balthasar). In all these cases, another person is a sign of the transcendent, an image of God (as we heard in last Sunday's gospel about the Roman coin [man is God's coin]), a being that places a holy call upon us, and enables us to be somebody in holiness by responding. "Levinas prefers this word [holiness] to the Greek word 'ethics' for describing the highest human destiny, holiness meaning a life wholly for the other." Catherine Chalier, "Levinas and the Hebraic Tradition," in Ethics as First Philosophy, ed. Adriaan Peperzak, at p.6.
For Levinas, the ethical, not the ontological, is primary. Others are not to be corralled into our cognitive categories. "Ethics is not a spectator sport. Rather, it is my experience of a demand that I both cannot fully meet and cannot avoid." Simon Critchley's "Introduction" in The Cambridge Companion to Levinas, p. 22.
Levinas goes even further. In his funeral oration for Levinas in 1995, Jacques Derrida recalled a conversation with Levinas in his Paris apartment. "You know," Levinas said, "they often speak of ethics to describe what I do, but what interests me when all is said and done is not ethics, not only ethics, it's the holy, the holiness of the holy (le saint, la saintete du saint)." Ibid at p. 27).
I think not only of the prophet's call/response ("Here I am, Lord"), but Jesus' call ("Come follow me"), and the mother's calling of her baby into being through the mother's loving gaze (as described in von Balthasar). In all these cases, another person is a sign of the transcendent, an image of God (as we heard in last Sunday's gospel about the Roman coin [man is God's coin]), a being that places a holy call upon us, and enables us to be somebody in holiness by responding. "Levinas prefers this word [holiness] to the Greek word 'ethics' for describing the highest human destiny, holiness meaning a life wholly for the other." Catherine Chalier, "Levinas and the Hebraic Tradition," in Ethics as First Philosophy, ed. Adriaan Peperzak, at p.6.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Not Seeing Facts that Stare Us in the Face
The "hidden dimension" is only accessible to eyes that see. Alasdair MacIntyre in a recent article (his address to the Am. Cath. Phil. Assn. "On Being a Theistic Philosopher in a Secularized Culture") commented on the absence of such eyes in secular culture:
"The [secular] philosopher might say that if there is indeed such a thing as genuine awareness of the presence of God, then the question of whether or not God exists should have been settled to everyone's satisfaction long ago. To which the only possible response is that of C.S. Pierce, in his reply to the objection posed to his own personalist theism, that 'if there is a personal God, we must . . . be in personal communication with him. Now, if that be the case, the question arises how it is possible that the existence of this being should ever have been doubted by anybody.'
"To which Pierce replied that 'facts that stand before our face and eyes and stare us in the face are far from being, in all cases, the most easily discerned.' ('The Law of Mind' in Philosophical Writings of Pierce, ed. Justus Buchler, New York: Dover Publications, 1955, 352). To discern them we need not argument, but to be open to those facts as Newman was open, when he perceived his own existence and that of God as 'luminously self-evident.'"
"The [secular] philosopher might say that if there is indeed such a thing as genuine awareness of the presence of God, then the question of whether or not God exists should have been settled to everyone's satisfaction long ago. To which the only possible response is that of C.S. Pierce, in his reply to the objection posed to his own personalist theism, that 'if there is a personal God, we must . . . be in personal communication with him. Now, if that be the case, the question arises how it is possible that the existence of this being should ever have been doubted by anybody.'
"To which Pierce replied that 'facts that stand before our face and eyes and stare us in the face are far from being, in all cases, the most easily discerned.' ('The Law of Mind' in Philosophical Writings of Pierce, ed. Justus Buchler, New York: Dover Publications, 1955, 352). To discern them we need not argument, but to be open to those facts as Newman was open, when he perceived his own existence and that of God as 'luminously self-evident.'"
Friday, October 7, 2011
Incarnation's "Hidden Dimension" Is Seen "Without the Grid of a System"
A member of the School of Community, Giorgio, reflected on the recent session by commenting:
"Today, while thinking about last SoC, which I enjoyed a lot, this thought came to my mind:
We are made for the infinite,
but we are stuck in our finitude.
Thanks God, the Word (the infinite) became flesh,
so ... we have a chance! "
To me that means that when we, who are finite, awaken in our life to the infinite, we meet Christ, that infinite being, who has become finite (emptied himself) in order to be with us.
The nature of incarnation (the spirit in flesh) is at the heart of religion, for that is how we experience our faith. Here is what the translator of Emmanuel Levinas' Nine Talmudic Readings (her name is Annette Aronowicz) says about Levinas' understanding of religion:
"What strikes me as central to Levinas's perception about the nature of religion is his insistence upon the utter ordinariness of what we are accustomed to call the transcendent. We have just seen this in Levinas's translation of the word "God," which always derives its meaning from ordinary human activity, as, for instance, in his statement in "Judaism and Revolution" that the love of God reveals itself in the employer's negotiation about the wages and working hours of his employees. [Levinas says:]
'As little as I have ever understood the exact meaning of the expression 'the opening up of the soul in its love of God,' I ask myself, nonetheless, whether there isn't a certain connection between the establishment of working hours and the love of God, with or without the opening up of the soul. I am even inclined to believe that there are not many other ways to love God than to establish these working hours correctly, no way that is more urgent.'
Aronowicz goes on:
"This statement should certainly not be taken to mean that one's love of God results in moral or ethical behavior. Rather something else is going on. 'The ethical is not merely the corollary of the religious but is, in itself, the element in which religious transcendence receives it original sense.' [cite omitted] In other words, it is in our interactions with our fellow human beings as such, quite independently of any love of God these individuals may or may not profess, that the love of God may appear or lie hidden. The remark 'Man would be the place through which transcendent passes' should remind us that the ordinariness ot which Levinas draws our attention, the ordinariness of saying 'after you' as we sit at the dinner table or walk through a door, is, in the end, not that ordinary, for it is the potential passageway of that which is most extraordinary.
"Unlike Rudolf Otto, the famous theologian and historian of religions, whose Idea of the Holy has had tremendous impact on our perception of religion in this century, Levinas refuses to situate the transcendent, what Otto called the 'Wholly Other' in some realm apart from our daily interactions, in a privileged experience accessible only to a few. For Levinas, the transcendent is part and parcel of our most taken-for-granted activities. It is not something 'extra' that occasionally intrudes upon our world. Levinas quotes Franz Rosenzweig (whose view of religion is reflected in all Levinas's Talmudic commentaries, as well as in his philosophical words) as saying that 'the division of men into those who are religious and those who are not does not go far. It is not at all a question of a special disposition that some have and others do not. . . .' Rather, for Rosenzweig, as indeed for Levinas, religion is a matter of the living relations that all human beings engage in.
"I have italicized the world 'living' because Levinas here and in his second essay on Rosenzweig associates life with the moment in which the specific person overcomes 'the immobility of concepts and frontiers' to come into relation with what is other, infinite, and transcendent. This happens when he interacts with other human beings in their specificity, without the grid of a system. Thus, 'life in this precise sense, living -- is religion.' The realm of religion, then, is 'neither belief, nor dogmatics, but event, passion, and intense activity.'
"Levinas's formulation of the religious dimension may seem to many to be irreligiousness itself, for here, as elsewhere, his approach is thoroughly secular. There is no 'other' world besides the one we all live in, and there is no eternity outside time. Yet one cannot emphasize enough that this secularization is not a claim that, in the end, there is 'merely' the world and 'merely' history. For this world and these times contain, in Levinas's view, a hidden dimension, something infinitely more than we might expect, which remains hidden even when it reveals itself, and the relation to which makes human life what it is. It is this play between the ordinary and the extraordinary -- or, perhaps better put, this ability to extract the extraordinary from the ordinary and to point to the ordinariness of the extraordinary -- that the reader can expect to see in the Talmudic commentaries."
"In this redefinition of religion, Levinas is, of course, not alone. Various thinkers of the last centuries -- Pascal, Kierkegaard, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Buber, and Rosenzweig himself, to mention just a few well-known names -- have, each in his own way, sought to convey the full scope of the religious dimension. Levinas resembles some in this list more than others, but all, I think, share in the effort to redraw the lines separating sacred from secular and, thus, to point to the relation with that which is transcendent in the midst of our most banal activities, even if this relation is not immediately visible to an eye interested in surfaces or, as Levinas often says, in the letter."
Levinas, a Jew, and Christians, I think, are close in thinking of incarnation as an experience of the sacred in the singularity of each moment of the secular. Jewish faith sees the infinite, the transcendent, in the secular as its hidden dimension, observable to eyes that see. We agree, seeing in our day to day world our meeting place with Christ. This is Christ's perennial incarnation, in our ordinary, finite, secular/sacred lives.
"Today, while thinking about last SoC, which I enjoyed a lot, this thought came to my mind:
We are made for the infinite,
but we are stuck in our finitude.
Thanks God, the Word (the infinite) became flesh,
so ... we have a chance! "
To me that means that when we, who are finite, awaken in our life to the infinite, we meet Christ, that infinite being, who has become finite (emptied himself) in order to be with us.
The nature of incarnation (the spirit in flesh) is at the heart of religion, for that is how we experience our faith. Here is what the translator of Emmanuel Levinas' Nine Talmudic Readings (her name is Annette Aronowicz) says about Levinas' understanding of religion:
"What strikes me as central to Levinas's perception about the nature of religion is his insistence upon the utter ordinariness of what we are accustomed to call the transcendent. We have just seen this in Levinas's translation of the word "God," which always derives its meaning from ordinary human activity, as, for instance, in his statement in "Judaism and Revolution" that the love of God reveals itself in the employer's negotiation about the wages and working hours of his employees. [Levinas says:]
'As little as I have ever understood the exact meaning of the expression 'the opening up of the soul in its love of God,' I ask myself, nonetheless, whether there isn't a certain connection between the establishment of working hours and the love of God, with or without the opening up of the soul. I am even inclined to believe that there are not many other ways to love God than to establish these working hours correctly, no way that is more urgent.'
Aronowicz goes on:
"This statement should certainly not be taken to mean that one's love of God results in moral or ethical behavior. Rather something else is going on. 'The ethical is not merely the corollary of the religious but is, in itself, the element in which religious transcendence receives it original sense.' [cite omitted] In other words, it is in our interactions with our fellow human beings as such, quite independently of any love of God these individuals may or may not profess, that the love of God may appear or lie hidden. The remark 'Man would be the place through which transcendent passes' should remind us that the ordinariness ot which Levinas draws our attention, the ordinariness of saying 'after you' as we sit at the dinner table or walk through a door, is, in the end, not that ordinary, for it is the potential passageway of that which is most extraordinary.
"Unlike Rudolf Otto, the famous theologian and historian of religions, whose Idea of the Holy has had tremendous impact on our perception of religion in this century, Levinas refuses to situate the transcendent, what Otto called the 'Wholly Other' in some realm apart from our daily interactions, in a privileged experience accessible only to a few. For Levinas, the transcendent is part and parcel of our most taken-for-granted activities. It is not something 'extra' that occasionally intrudes upon our world. Levinas quotes Franz Rosenzweig (whose view of religion is reflected in all Levinas's Talmudic commentaries, as well as in his philosophical words) as saying that 'the division of men into those who are religious and those who are not does not go far. It is not at all a question of a special disposition that some have and others do not. . . .' Rather, for Rosenzweig, as indeed for Levinas, religion is a matter of the living relations that all human beings engage in.
"I have italicized the world 'living' because Levinas here and in his second essay on Rosenzweig associates life with the moment in which the specific person overcomes 'the immobility of concepts and frontiers' to come into relation with what is other, infinite, and transcendent. This happens when he interacts with other human beings in their specificity, without the grid of a system. Thus, 'life in this precise sense, living -- is religion.' The realm of religion, then, is 'neither belief, nor dogmatics, but event, passion, and intense activity.'
"Levinas's formulation of the religious dimension may seem to many to be irreligiousness itself, for here, as elsewhere, his approach is thoroughly secular. There is no 'other' world besides the one we all live in, and there is no eternity outside time. Yet one cannot emphasize enough that this secularization is not a claim that, in the end, there is 'merely' the world and 'merely' history. For this world and these times contain, in Levinas's view, a hidden dimension, something infinitely more than we might expect, which remains hidden even when it reveals itself, and the relation to which makes human life what it is. It is this play between the ordinary and the extraordinary -- or, perhaps better put, this ability to extract the extraordinary from the ordinary and to point to the ordinariness of the extraordinary -- that the reader can expect to see in the Talmudic commentaries."
"In this redefinition of religion, Levinas is, of course, not alone. Various thinkers of the last centuries -- Pascal, Kierkegaard, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Buber, and Rosenzweig himself, to mention just a few well-known names -- have, each in his own way, sought to convey the full scope of the religious dimension. Levinas resembles some in this list more than others, but all, I think, share in the effort to redraw the lines separating sacred from secular and, thus, to point to the relation with that which is transcendent in the midst of our most banal activities, even if this relation is not immediately visible to an eye interested in surfaces or, as Levinas often says, in the letter."
Levinas, a Jew, and Christians, I think, are close in thinking of incarnation as an experience of the sacred in the singularity of each moment of the secular. Jewish faith sees the infinite, the transcendent, in the secular as its hidden dimension, observable to eyes that see. We agree, seeing in our day to day world our meeting place with Christ. This is Christ's perennial incarnation, in our ordinary, finite, secular/sacred lives.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Daughter Zion, Daughter Truth
One more comment on how we experience truth (referencing previous post).
From Lamentations 1:
That was full of people!
She has become like a widow
Who was once great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the [a]provinces
Has become a forced laborer!
. . .
6 All her majesty
Has departed from the daughter of Zion;
Her princes have become like deer
That have found no pasture;
And they have [j]fled without strength
Before the pursuer.
From Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, Stephen J. Bennett. at p. 205, 209:
"Bergant has noted the significance of the personification of Jerusalem as a woman (widow, queen). The city walls enclose the population as a mother's womb encloses a child. But the city-mother is no longer full of children, bereft like a widow."
"The translation "daughter of Zion" is misleading because it gives the impression that a subset of Jerusalem is in view, when in fact it is a term of endearment signifying the population of Jerusalem as a whole. The phrase is used 20 times in the book, sixteen times in Jeremiah, and about 10 times elsewhere."
From the Levinas quote in earlier post: "Truth, the daughter of experience . . ."
Comment: "Daughter Truth." Can we say the same thing about an experience of truth as we say about Daughter Zion? Certainly our faith tells us that our truth embraces us as a mother her child. So ultimately (i.e. when we are close at hand) our experience of truth should settle us in God's (truth's) embrace, not keep us off-balance?
From Lamentations 1:
The Sorrows of Zion
1 How lonely sits the cityThat was full of people!
She has become like a widow
Who was once great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the [a]provinces
Has become a forced laborer!
. . .
6 All her majesty
Has departed from the daughter of Zion;
Her princes have become like deer
That have found no pasture;
And they have [j]fled without strength
Before the pursuer.
From Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, Stephen J. Bennett. at p. 205, 209:
"Bergant has noted the significance of the personification of Jerusalem as a woman (widow, queen). The city walls enclose the population as a mother's womb encloses a child. But the city-mother is no longer full of children, bereft like a widow."
"The translation "daughter of Zion" is misleading because it gives the impression that a subset of Jerusalem is in view, when in fact it is a term of endearment signifying the population of Jerusalem as a whole. The phrase is used 20 times in the book, sixteen times in Jeremiah, and about 10 times elsewhere."
From the Levinas quote in earlier post: "Truth, the daughter of experience . . ."
Comment: "Daughter Truth." Can we say the same thing about an experience of truth as we say about Daughter Zion? Certainly our faith tells us that our truth embraces us as a mother her child. So ultimately (i.e. when we are close at hand) our experience of truth should settle us in God's (truth's) embrace, not keep us off-balance?
Experience
Seeing Emily Dickinson's poem prompted me to try to pull together some ideas on what constitutes "experience." Certainly it is much more profound than we usually consider it to be. Ultimately it is about truth, which is religious, our finiteness knocked off-balance by the infinite.
Levinas:
Truth implies experience. . . . For experience deserves its name only if it transports us beyond what constitutes our nature. Genuine experience must even lead us beyond the Nature that surrounds us, which is not jealous of the marvelous secrets it harbors, and, in complicity with men, submits to their reason and inventions; in it men also feel themselves to be at home. Truth would thus designate the outcome of a movement that leaves a world that is intimate and familiar . . . and goes toward another region, toward a beyond, as Plato puts it. . . . Truth, the daughter of experience, has very lofty pretensions; it opens upon the very dimension of the ideal. In this way, philosophy means metaphysics, and metaphysics inquires about the divine.
"Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite," from To The Other, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, at pp. 88-90.
[In Totality and Infinity, Levinas prefers to call "the beyond" the infinite. Id. at fn.9]
Gadamer:
"[E]xperience . . . inevitably involves many disappointments of one's expectations and only thus is experience acquired. . . . Every experience worthy of the name thwarts an expectation.
[Aeschylus found in experience "learning through suffering" (pathei mathos).] "What man has to learn through suffering is not this or that particular thing, but insight into the limitations of humanity, into the absoluteness of the barrier that separates man from the divine. It is ultimately a religious insight -- the kind of insight that gave birth to Greek tragedy. Thus experience is experience of human finitude. The truly experienced person is one who has taken this to heart, who knows that he is master neither of time nor the future. . . . In it all dogmatism, which proceeds from the soaring desires of the human heart, reaches an absolute barrier. Experience teaches us to acknowledge the real. The genuine result of experience, then -- as of all desire to know -- is to know what is. But "what is," here, is not this or that thing, but 'what cannot be destroyed.' (Ranke)." Truth or Method, pp. 356-57.
Guissani:
If it is human nature to indomitably search for an answer, if the structure of a human being is, then, this irrepressible and inexhaustable question, plea - then one suppresses the question if one does not admit to the existence of an answer. But this answer cannot be anything but unfathomable. Only the existence of the mystery suits the structure of the human person, which is mendacity, insatiable begging, and what corresponds to him is neither himself nor something he gives to himself, measures, or possesses." The Religious Sense, p. 57.
Emily Dickinson:
I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.
I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch --
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.
Levinas:
Truth implies experience. . . . For experience deserves its name only if it transports us beyond what constitutes our nature. Genuine experience must even lead us beyond the Nature that surrounds us, which is not jealous of the marvelous secrets it harbors, and, in complicity with men, submits to their reason and inventions; in it men also feel themselves to be at home. Truth would thus designate the outcome of a movement that leaves a world that is intimate and familiar . . . and goes toward another region, toward a beyond, as Plato puts it. . . . Truth, the daughter of experience, has very lofty pretensions; it opens upon the very dimension of the ideal. In this way, philosophy means metaphysics, and metaphysics inquires about the divine.
"Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite," from To The Other, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, at pp. 88-90.
[In Totality and Infinity, Levinas prefers to call "the beyond" the infinite. Id. at fn.9]
Gadamer:
"[E]xperience . . . inevitably involves many disappointments of one's expectations and only thus is experience acquired. . . . Every experience worthy of the name thwarts an expectation.
[Aeschylus found in experience "learning through suffering" (pathei mathos).] "What man has to learn through suffering is not this or that particular thing, but insight into the limitations of humanity, into the absoluteness of the barrier that separates man from the divine. It is ultimately a religious insight -- the kind of insight that gave birth to Greek tragedy. Thus experience is experience of human finitude. The truly experienced person is one who has taken this to heart, who knows that he is master neither of time nor the future. . . . In it all dogmatism, which proceeds from the soaring desires of the human heart, reaches an absolute barrier. Experience teaches us to acknowledge the real. The genuine result of experience, then -- as of all desire to know -- is to know what is. But "what is," here, is not this or that thing, but 'what cannot be destroyed.' (Ranke)." Truth or Method, pp. 356-57.
Guissani:
If it is human nature to indomitably search for an answer, if the structure of a human being is, then, this irrepressible and inexhaustable question, plea - then one suppresses the question if one does not admit to the existence of an answer. But this answer cannot be anything but unfathomable. Only the existence of the mystery suits the structure of the human person, which is mendacity, insatiable begging, and what corresponds to him is neither himself nor something he gives to himself, measures, or possesses." The Religious Sense, p. 57.
Emily Dickinson:
I stepped from Plank to Plank
A slow and cautious way
The Stars about my Head I felt
About my Feet the Sea.
I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch --
This gave me that precarious Gait
Some call Experience.
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