The Hallways of Philosophy
When walking down the hallway of philosophy and religion, one can crack open various doors and peer in to see what people are doing.
Behind this one? You’ll find anarchists, communists, liberals, and Hegelians of many stripes: bunched in with Confucians and offshoots like monarchists fettering over the limits of political authority, the nature of the democratic will, and the source of justified legal action. Shut that door as loud as you like, they won’t hear it over their commotion. Creep a bit further down the hallway, push open the wooden barrier, and perhaps you’ll find yourself with the metaphysicians. You’ll find Zeno locked in heated dialogue with Quine and Russell, outnumbering him two to one, critiquing his mythic intuitions about paradoxes, attempting to teach him the benefits of set theory. You’ll find Spinoza and Kant in a deadlock: Spinoza content in the perfection of his monistic ontology; Kant, calmly, but with a ramping annoyance, trying to articulate why one cannot analyze the fundamental nature of things without interrogating the categories of thought itself.
And finally, turn down a dusty hallway to find a rather pristine and polished entryway with a cool, steel handlebar. Crack it open and you’ll find a room bustling with a multitude of attitudes, and fervent conversation that only sounds nasty from an outside observer. It is the debates of those who agree on all but one thing that fight the hardest and sound the harshest. Sliding oneself alongside the stone wall, you try to piece together what they are talking about. Well…it seems in this room…everyone is talking about…what cannot be talked about. And in a burst of colored irony the room moves anew to you. Surely the logic of this is understood, you think. If you’re talking about it, it can’t be said after that point that one cannot talk about it? But it seems they are far past that. They’re as serious as the political philosophers and the metaphysicians. You see Buddhist monks in orange robes paired with desert Christian saints in pale rags paired with analytic epistemologists in modern dress. What’s going on here?
Who’s in this room?
In this room, though in different corners, there is Dionysius (482-528), Luther (1483-1546), Kierkegaard (1813–1855), and Wittgenstein (1889-1951). Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard are sharing a pint and actually seem to be getting along well. Luther and Dionysius are at opposite ends of the room: it seems they’ve had a falling out.
The three sections of my last semester in college—my independent Study on Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Still the coolest name in the history of philosophy); my thesis on Martin Luther and Søren Kierkegaard (Okay…Søren is a runner-up); and my class on Wittgenstein (Shit. There’s actually really good competition for killer names out here)—converged, without my (full) intention, on one idea: Ineffability, that which cannot be spoken about.
I realized this pretty early on. Luther and Kierkegaard are both ardent defenders of the Christian God’s transcendence and try their best to explicate what that means for a robust theology, anthropology, philosophy, and a way of life; this means they notoriously and continuously emphasize God’s hiddenness and even alien-nature when approached with human rationality. Wittgenstein (a.k.a. Wicky), most prominently in his early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, presents his notion of the saying/showing distinction, and thereby also delimits what cannot be said. And Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite is taken by some commentators to primarily be working out a theology of a God who is so radically beyond language, thought, and intellectual grasping, that every proposition, idea, or attempt to approach God falls terribly short. (For the record, this is an incomplete reading of the big PDA. Muah! Muah! But we will get there.) Hiddenness, the limits of language, and the total “beyond-beingness” of God: these and other buddy-concepts floated around in my head all semester. Hell, even longer than that when you consider I had read Luther’s theology more than a year earlier and took a tutorial on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus the previous spring as well.
In this post, I will give a taster of each of these philosophers: some overview and insight into their projects and contexts. I will then explore each in more depth in further blog posts.
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite
Why the Pseudo? Good question.
The author claims to be Dionysius, an Athenian who heard Paul the Apostle preaching at the Areopagus and became his follower, as is written in Acts 17:34. But the writings are dated between 482/485 to 518/528. This is, needless to say, far, far after Paul and Dionysius’ time. And, he engages with Neoplatonic texts, like that of Proclus (412-485), which are also far after the time period of the Book of Acts.
We do not know who actually wrote it. He uses this name for many purposes. One purpose is to imbue the text with an aura of episcopal and apostolic authority. There were vicious debates over Christian orthodoxy at the same time he was writing, and Neoplatonism was beginning to be viewed with suspicion, and associated ideas were approaching full-blown heretical status. But, there are subtler reasons for his pseudepigraphal choice, one reason is to reinforce ideas about the arrangement of hierarchical and authoritative ecclesiastical and metaphysical structures. This is most clear in his letters, where he pretends to write to various members of the church of varying ranks: changing his tone and language depending on where they are on the ladder. And subtler reasons even still…
This wasn’t discovered until the time of Luther, actually. It was then that Erasmus and other humanists began translating works from their original manuscripts. It was activities like this that revealed that many texts that were considered genuine were in fact falsified or forgeries. (It was also this translation work of the original biblical manuscripts—bypassing the Vulgate translation—that led to Reformation-defining suspicions. For example, the bad translation of the Greek “mysterion” to “sacrament” in the Vulgate, when really it means something closer to “something hidden.” Therefore, some of the passages that were used to justify the institution of certain sacraments were proven to be partially based on a bad translation. Uh-oh!). And Erasmus, indeed, discovered that it wasn’t the actual Dionysius who authored the corpus.
Dionysius (as I’ll call him) applies Neoplatonic metaphysics, specifically the thought of Proclus, to Christian revelation and scripture to make it systematic, intelligible, and consistent within the emerging hierarchical structures of the Church. Indeed, Dionysius is one big reason why we even use the term “hierarchy” the way that we do. Dionysius uses Proclus’ conception of causality to explain how all things emerge out of the unity of God in a process of remaining, procession, then reversion, yet while illustrating how God can be immanent and present at all levels of creation while remaining transcendent (34).1 Each procession of the unified God causes the existence of the beings that participate in it, and through this multiplicative, emanating process, God remains undiminished, full and transcendent (51, 66).
Think about it like this. There is a singular, unified entity. There are emanations out of this entity, creating a multiplicity. Then, all of these diverse manifestations of the original being, that remains simple and in itself, come back to the center. This is a bit easier to explain if you don’t have to explain this causal mechanism in terms of a transcendent Christian God. Transcendent means something like, “beyond the world” or “outside” or “prior,” and, in any sense, greater than and weirder than reality as typically conceived.
Dionysius does not want to make God exclusively transcendent for then one removes the possibility of connection between creator and created and God becomes functionally moot. He is also trying to fit in the incarnate God of Christ into his system, which cannot function seamlessly within a purely Neoplatonic, transcendent system. And Dionysius does not want to make God totally immanent, coextensive with being, for that collapses God fully into reality, thus one falls into the trap of pantheism. As Mark Edwards articulates it in his article “Christian Apophaticism Before Dionysius,” in “contrast to Neoplatonic reflection on the One and to the Gnostic proclamation of an ineffable Father, Christians held consistently to their inconsistent faith in a God who is at once being and more than being, revealed as the One who is unrevealable” (64).2
Dionysius is threading a…weird needle. But it is perhaps his apophatic theology for which he is best known. Apophatic theology, or negative theology, is typically contrasted with cataphatic theology, or positive theology. It is a means of theorizing and talking about God by utilizing denials. So, where a cataphatic theologian will say, “God is Good,” the apophatic theologian may exhibit some hesitance. God is so perfect, or transcendent, or mysterious or hidden, or what-have-you, that our human terms can never adequately express God’s nature.
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Think about a Rubin Vase. Whereas the positive theologian might focus on the ink of the vase, the apophatic theologian wants to focus on what reveals itself (and doesn’t reveal itself) when we consider the absence of positivity, the faces, the excess uncontained in our terminology. One can approach the face and person of God, as it were, by chipping away at our positive notions of God. Indeed, Dionysius actually compares the work of the apophatic theologian to that of a sculptor. Sculptors “remove every obstacle to the pure view of the hidden image, and simply by the act of clearing aside they show up the beauty which is hidden” (138).
Dionysius is developing a cataphatic-apophatic epistemological method wherein he asserts there is a revealed entity, but one that is “inaccessible to beings,” that is unknowable, beyond understanding, "beyond being, and “beyond every assertion and denial” (49-50; 53; 61).
I’ll leave our friend off here for now, and jump ahead to the Reformation, and to Kierkegaard, a little Danish fellow a few centuries ahead still.
Luther, Kierkegaard, and the Failure of Human Reason
Ahh. Martin Luther. Ahh. Søren Kierkegaard.
It seems, the more I try to pull away from some thinkers, the more they stick to me like the barnacle on the hull of a ship, like little booty parasites, stinging me every time I try to sit down to some deliciously dialectical Hegel or fiery Nietzsche.
I hated Nietzsche when I first read him. I could not find a positive thing to say about him. But, then, The Philosophy Club voted on Thus Spoke Zarathustra as the semester-long reading my junior year. Stuck. I voted for Phenomenology of Spirit, for the record. I liked (still like) Hegel so much darn more! But, eventually I warmed up to Nietzsche, and am honestly more known for my Nietzsche rants amongst my pals.
I thought Luther was just…an idiot? A loud idiot. A loud, very (horribly) consequential idiot. I thought Kierkegaard wasn’t very smart, but he was at least a better writer. And then I wrote a thesis on the two of them.
Professor Anna Jones’ introduced me to Luther in her European Reformations class, and I found him to be a pestering little barbarian who came at a most uncomely juncture in history that transmogrified his fits into a vital historical, philosophical, and religious calamity. He reeks of digging deeper graves, revenge against reason, and appears the apotheosis of being in over your head. I have never known any other thinker who, with utter inconsistent consistency, makes claims, realizes the entailment of those claims, and tries so desperately to backpedal.3 The study of Luther has made me—raised in the conservative Catholic schoolhouses of Kansas (it didn’t stick)—more sympathetic to Catholic theology than any priest ever could have made me.
Kierkegaard entered my mind through the tough but rewarding Hegel to Nietzsche course taught by Dr. Daw-Nay Evans. Kierkegaard is a thief and a conniving preacher’s boy desperately trying to win his Christ from the clutches of that thunderous goliath modernity: a beast complete with the dense bone-structure of Hegelian Geist; the scaly, earthy eye of Darwin; and the club of the tepid, spiritless masses. I am sympathetic to anyone who sides with subjectivity and realizes that modernity’s mindless move towards pushing everything to the surface like dead fish in the runoff of a river is, hey, maybe not always a good idea. But when one emphasizes interiority enough, it begins to look less like the defense of the dignity of persons and more like a retreat from life.
To add to the irony, my thesis used to be about Martin Luther’s influence on Hegel, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. That’s right. Hegel swept to the wayside again. And by that point I’d done a ton of research on the relation between Nietzsche’s funky determinism and Luther’s quasi-determinism. Alas.
I know why I do this. I do not feel the ease of overcoming other people do with thinkers. When I find myself repulsed by some thought, the dominating force that follows the repulsion is a suspicion of my own revulsion and a certainty that I do not know enough about them. Call it intellectual humility. Call it a hermeneutic of self-suspicion. Call it something even more pretentious! Whatever it is, it’s the feeling that I need to know more before I pass a total judgement. Even when I think I’m more-or-less done with a thinker or idea, like the analysis of dukkha or suffering in Buddhism, I don’t have any pretension that I’ve overcome that thinker or idea, that I’ve overcome Buddhism. Just that, for now, I’m setting it aside.
Luther is not the reformer we think he is. But I am not going to lay out all of those cards here. Luther caused a political and theological ruckus. I will say a bit about that ruckus.
Allow me to quote a large section from the ninth chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament, 9:10-22:
Not only that, but Rebekah’s children were conceived at the same time by our father Isaac. Yet, before the twins were born or had done anything good or bad—in order that God’s purpose in election might stand: not by works but by him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”
And then a bit further down, wondering about the justice of such an action, Paul continues,
It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. [This is a reference to Exodus, where God hardens the Pharoah’s heart, thus preventing him from releasing Moses and his people from slavery.]
One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?4
It is hard to underestimate the power that a passage like this holds over Luther. Here we have Paul wondering about some suspect instances in the Bible, where it appears that God is being capricious, cruel, and arbitrary. He hates Esau for seemingly no reason. He hardens the Pharaoh’s heart. He demands that Abraham sacrifice Isaac, and then, on a whim, decides against it at the last moment. What are we to make of this?
Well, apparently what we are to make of it is that no matter what God does, that is justice, that is mercy, that is love. This a problem that goes back to Plato’s dialogue, Euthyphro, aptly called the Euthyphro dilemma. In Plato’s dialogue, Socrates asks Euthyphro, “Is that which is holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?”5 In other words, is an action moral because it is moral, or is it moral because God commands it? Yet again rephrased, is moral goodness something God loves because it is morally good, or does God’s loving it make it morally good?
Luther is hard on this side of the line: It is moral because God commands it. And I mean hard. If it seems otherwise, that is because our human rationality and human ethical intuitions are kneecapped by sin, and we drag our blind eyes in the dirt of ourselves. Our repulsion to some of God’s commands are evidence of our rebellion, evidence of Satan’s influence over us. If our ethical ideas churn out this as a result of the equations therein, “God is bad,” then don’t throw out God, throw out the ethical system.
Kierkegaard follows suit and under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio wrote the book Fear and Trembling, a book-length dialectical and lyrical meditation on the akedah, the Binding of Isaac. In this story, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, so Abraham rides to Mount Moriah, binds Isaac, and right before he slays Isaac an angel pleads to Abraham, telling him to stop. Abraham finds a ram stuck in the brush and offers it as a sacrifice instead. Kierkegaard uses this story to demonstrate the pride of place faith has when pitted against ethics, and the preemptive quality faith (an absolute duty to God) has over other duties: if it is faith to God or “faith” to something else, you pick God. He calls this quality of faith the “teleological suspension of the ethical” (46).6
What is mysterious about God, what is ineffable, what cannot be talked about, is his mind. His rationality is so thoroughly above ours that it seems alien and distorted. As Paul puts this hiddenness in the Epistle to the Romans, 11:33-36,
Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
‘For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?’
‘Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?’For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.7
You heard the man. The fact that God’s wisdom and actions are unsearchable and inscrutable is evidence of his glory. One obeys and lays back in awe, accepting, and basking in one’s unworthiness, hoping that grace might fill your broken body.
Wittgenstein and his Tractatus
Let me give you a feel for this work.
It contains a short introduction by Bertrand Russell, a titanic philosopher in the analytic tradition and Wittgenstein’s acquaintance and teacher. I do not care about the introduction.
There is then much pithier, punchier, and curious Preface by Wittgenstein himself. In it, he says that the book will “perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already thought the thoughts which are expressed in it—or similar thoughts” (27).8 Not exactly inviting, and he signals right at the start that he his not all that interested in extended argumentation, correspondence with other thinkers (further noted by the fact that he “makes no claim to novelty,” gives no sources, and says he doesn’t even care if anyone else has made the same points), or dialectical inquiry. If the book is for you, it is because you are of the same mind. If you aren’t that guy, oh well.
He claims that the book is about the problems of philosophy, of which we are supposed to be acquainted (though he cites no sources, of course). Things like “What is the nature of the Good?”, “What is Justice?”, “What is the nature of reality?”, “Who or what is God?”, “If an arrow can only ever halve its distance, how can it reach its target?”, “When do a bunch of grains on the ground become a heap?”, “Are Batman and Bruce Wayne the same person?” Problems, you see.
Adding onto this, he claims to have “solved” all of these problems (28). How? Well. The entire history of philosophy, in generating problem after problem, only does so because the people philosophizing did so based on a “misunderstanding of the logic of our language.” (27). How do we remedy this misunderstanding? Well, by drawing a “limit to the expression of thoughts,” of course! To do this we have to “think both sides of this limit (we should therefore have to be able to think what cannot be thought” (27). Yeah…think what cannot be thought…sure Wittgenstein. Sounds like you are really closing the door on those pesky pre-Socratic metaphysical speculations…the Heraclitians and Paramedians among us. Clear as bell! Not stirring up any further questions.
He offers the meaning of the work: “What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must silent” (27). Once we have drawn the limit to language, we will know that anything on the other side of the limit will be nonsense. And if one only produces nonsense when one tries to speak outside the limit, it is best to shut up. Hm!
The whole work takes the form of 7 propositions. Each proposition is then commentated on. So, first there is 1. Then, 1.1. The “.1” meaning, “This is a comment on 1.” Then 1.11. The “.11” meaning, “This is a comment on 1.1.” And so on. Do not attach a high logical importance to this ordering: some of the most important statements are made rather deep into some sections, despite his pretensions to the idea that the ordering matters a great deal…
Here they are:
The world is everything that is the case.
What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
The thought is the significant proposition.
Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions.
The general form of the truth-function is: [p̄, ξ, N(ξ)].
Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
Do not worry. I still do not know what 6 means. I did not even bother to find out how to get the line over the fucked-up squiggly symbol.
My next post will dive much deeper into this, so I’m just here to stoke some curiosity. First, notice that the world is not objects, or particles, or sub-microscopic fields, or consciousness, or whatever tickles most folks metaphysical fancy. No: the world is made up of facts. Notice that he thinks a logical dissection of language teaches us a lot about the way the world is. And really do give this some thought: how much of philosophy, in its beautiful argumentation and elaborate reasoning and story-telling, is reliant on a misuse of language?
“What is hot—well, what is hot cannot be cold? Wouldn’t you say so, Empedocles?”
“By Zeus, of course, Socrates, you are definitely right.”
“Well, the soul, since it is movement, is not cold. Would not you hold this is reasonable?”
“Naturally, Socrates.”
“So, the soul, in its heat, cannot become cold? And cold is death. Therefore, the soul is immortal, for it cannot pass into what it is not, just as heat can never be cold.”
“By Jove! You righteous beast, Daddy-O! Ooo kill ‘em! Slay!!”
Exaggeration aside—and, putting aside the fact that Plato, ever the subtle ironist, was deeply aware of some of the faults of his character’s arguments (and that the one I’m parodying is much better than this); a point missed by many, many commentators far after him, since Aristotle—there are many examples of arguments where one cocks one’s head, and though one cannot quite articulate the equivocation, or the exact moment of meaning slipping, one wonders: Is this person using these words right?
Alongside this logical analysis of language, Wittgenstein throws out wild propositions like, “Ethics is transcendental. (Ethics and aesthetics are one.)” (105). Huh? And this: “Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is.” (107). And most mysteriously of all, he casts a doubtfulness over his whole work just before the last proposition, closing the work that commands us to be silent. He claims that the work elucidates in the sense that, the person who understands it recognizes all of the propositions are “senseless” (108). Once we “climb up” the ladder of the propositions, gain understanding of the logic of language, then we “throw away the ladder” (108).
I’ll leave us here.
Exiting the room…for now
We’ve wandered around the room. We’ve eavesdropped and shared a few quick words with our three guests. We’ve gained some insight into their motivations and reasonings, but we are left with more questions.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll do some posts diving deeper into how each of these thinkers approaches the idea of the ineffable and how these thinkers talk about what cannot be talked about.
I highly encourage you to think about areas of life that are impossible to fully communicate, some experience that is deeply private, or some point where the information just runs out, but one has an inkling that there is something beyond what we know, past what we are talking about. Think about other minds. Think about areas of science, or history, or relationships where there is that inch past the perceivable, the fully comprehensible, but that reeks of seductive value. How might we deal with this?
The inexpressible is best approached in wise silence, but perhaps we can approach the limits of ineffable realities growing ever quieter, until one reaches a wall: quiet as a desert mouse, one may be able to press one’s ear against that wall, and hear.
Thanks for reading,
Nicholas
P.S.
After a good month of doing this, the mental trial period coming to an end, I’ve decided to make a small adjustment. Instead of posting once every week, I will post once every two weeks, or twice a month. That means no post (or a smaller, less robust sort of post) next Saturday. I could keep up with the weekly posting schedule, but I’ve picked up some work as a server and I do catering events on the weekends. In between that and grad school stuff and continuing job searching, I’d like to give myself some more time to craft these lil’ articles for you guys. I do not want this to become too stressful for me: I’d much prefer to stay healthy while making pretty philosophy for you all.
This schedule will likely remain in place for the foreseeable future, but I will—in the presence of a burst of creation—occasionally post more than twice in a month. I am, for example, working on an incredibly silly post, to be released soon. And, I still have plans to do some stuff for the paid subscribers among you. I also think I’ll try my hand at other short-form posts: like just sharing two or three new poems I’ve written, or writing small reviews for books I’ve read. Let me know if that sounds good with you all.
A central scriptural foothold that I conjecture inspires how seriously Dionysius takes the process of self-subsisting and remaining whole in God’s self, to emanatory procession, to reversion back to God’s unity is Romans 11:36: “For from him and through him and for him are all things.” (Pseudo-Dionysius 145).
Also, I’m using this for citations: Pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite. Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem, Paulist Press, 1987, New York.
Edwards, Mark. “Christian Apophaticism before Dionysius.” The Oxford Handbook of Dionysius the Areopagite, edited by Mark Edwards, Dimitrios Pallis, and Georgios Steiris, Oxford University Press, 2022.
See here: Freedom of a Christian, published 1520, Against the Murderous, Robbing Hordes of the Peasants in 1525; or perhaps his joyous embrace of God’s total providence and the rejection of free will turning into consternate surprise when people call him a determinist? Or better yet, the love affair with sola scriptura—that deviously attractive lady—becoming utter indignation when people other than him interpret scripture to different ends.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%209&version=NIV
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes: Vol. 1, trans. by Harold North Fowler (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 10a.
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. by Sylvia Walsh and ed. by C. Stephen Evans and Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2006), 27.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2011:33-36&version=ESV
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, translated by C. K. Ogden, Dover Publications, 1999.
Hi Samatha!!! Love you girl!
Hi Nicholas! I said i would post so look at me. I am posting🙂 I raised this crazy human we all call Nicholas. I take all the blame and all the honor. Although I don't really get all the blame or all the honor. Many great people have helped to form Nicholas into the fabulous humans he is!I am honored to be a part of you! I wish I could post something Simply Fabulous but I am not the writer! Nicholas is. I love that you have a platform to share your ideas and writings I love so very much reading the comments from your friends. I'm super honored that there's a world out there that loves you. Just FYI everyone he loves comments. They do not have to be as fabulous comments as Cara's because she is the ultimate writer also. So good job Cara! I hope to meet you someday. All you great humans keep supporting each other out there . Have the most amazing spectacular weekend.