Warning: this post is intended only for philosophy geeks, or those who’d like to become philosophy geeks.
A dear friend, with whom I have been traveling the Christian journey of faith seeking understanding for two decades, asked me to explain how I understand what Kierkegaard means when he says that the human subject is infinitely negative. So here goes:
Hegel writes, “[t]his Substance is, as Subject, pure, simple negativity.” (Preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, § 18)
Twenty years ago in a course on Kierkegaard and Derrida, I was deeply struck by the phrase, in connection with Kierkegaard, “infinite, negative subjectivity.” Turns out, however, I had no idea, metaphysically speaking, what it actually meant.
But I think I’m getting it now.
It is helpful for me to start with a Parmenidean insight. Parmenides, in absolute denial of the meaningfulness or the value of sense experience, states that being must necessarily be one, since nonbeing is not able to be countenanced. That is, it is not the case that multiple object exists, since in this case a kind of nonbeing would obtain: the A is not B. The horse is not the giraffe, and so on.
The cup on my desk is not the same as the pen on my desk. As cup, it is not pen. That is to say, with respect to the (essence of the) pen, the cup is not. It is “negative” with respect to the pen.
But as Dr. Wood said in class recently, it is not of the cup’s essence that it be “negative” with respect to every other object. (That is, the cup has a definite, individuated determination.) However, for “human awareness” (Dr. Wood’s words), this negativity is of its essence. That is, subjective consciousness has no essence other than it is not this or that or the pen or the cup or Socrates. (Unlike the cup, it has no definite, individuated determination.) It has no essence in this sense. It is empty. And yet, we deny that it does not exist. It does exist, also that it has no essence other than infinite negation.
One last note: this is (the logical outworking of) Cartesian subjectivity; it is the subjectivity which Foucault (along with Nietzsche) rejects.
What is theology, and what is faith? We in the 21st century West live in an emotivistic culture which is worse than clueless about these things.
For most people in our culture, faith has to do with feelings or private, emotional preferences. “I believe in a God that would never get angry;” “I feel like I don’t really need to go to church;” etc.
But for our premodern forbears in the West, faith is a means to knowledge which compliments and is complemented by reason. Faith is what accepts and grasps the content of revelation, and thus serves as the basis for theology, which applies the tools of rational thought and discourse to the content of revelation, for example, the idea that God is three distinct Persons in one unified substance (or the doctrine of the Trinity).
For a premodern thinker such as St. Bonaventure, there is no sharp dichotomy between faith and reason as there is for us moderns who have ripped and rent the two apart. A good “case study” in this arena is the way Bonaventure allows theology to undermine the neoplatonist theory of divine emanation.
Now a good premodern neoplatonist would follow Plotinus in his view that the world is a necessary emanation from God. Only problem is, this view flies in the face of Christian orthodoxy which asserts an ontological distinction between God and God’s creation. Orthodox Christians are not pantheists, and yet pantheism is where neoplatonic emanationism straightaway leads.
As Peter Spotswood Dillard shows in his helpful _A Way into Scholasticism_, however, Bonaventure does not simply dismiss the idea of divine emanation. He is a good neoplatonist, and he thinks that the idea that God, as Being Itself and the Superexcellent Good, necessarily emanates his being, that God’s being and goodness are superabundantly effusive, is a tenant of proper reason.
And yet Bonaventure holds not only that the world’s being lacks goodness in comparison to God (a non sequitur for standard neoplatonic emanationism), but also that the existence of the world is not necessary. In light of his neoplatonist commitments, what, for the Seraphic Doctor, gives?
Not his commitment to divine emanation, but rather his determination of that in which the emanations consist. For they consist not first and foremost in the creation / world / universe, but rather in the in extra emanations of the Son and the Spirit:
Therefore, unless there were eternally in the highest good a production which is actual and consubstantial, and a hypothesis as noble as the producer–and this is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit–unless these were present, [God] would by no means be the highest good because [God] would not diffuse [God’s self] to the highest degree.
Lots of neoplatonist assumptions packed into that dense statement, but the upshot is that, if God does not produce an emanation which contains the fullness of being just as God does, then God is not the highest good … then God is not God. Hence, for Bonaventure, God must produce an emanation which is maximally existent (if I can use that word).
The upshot for my argument, then, is that what we are witnessing here is theology / revelation / faith “messing with” or altering or qualifying or positioning philosophy / universally-valid-premises / reason. Not only does the orthodox repudiation of pantheism motivate Bonaventure to deny the world as a necessary emanation of God’s very being, but so does the revelation of the Holy Trinity. Since the Father “necessarily” emanates the Son (i.e., the Father’s nature is to do this), we don’t need to regard the world as a necessary, divine emanation in order to honor what Bonaventure regards as the rational truths of neoplatonism.
Faith and reason, theology and philosophy, are here working in tandem. Both are subjected to rational discourse and rational procedures. Both work together in us to produce in us the fullness of knowledge.
In Bonaventure’s _The Soul’s Journey into God_, the Seraphic Doctor offers a regimen for how the soul can come to mirror God, a suggested path for what this might look like.
In this context he says that such an achievement “is more a matter of affective experience [of the inner senses] than rational consideration.”
What might this affective experience of the inner senses mean? What is “inner sense,” anyway?
Without getting too bogged down in pre-modern faculty theory, recall that Aristotle and his medieval followers believed in a faculty of the soul called the “common sense.” This faculty or power is what allows a person to coordinate various sensory input. For example, consider an ice cube. If one holds the ice cube in her hand, she perceives by the sense of touch that it is cold, but she _also_ perceives by vision that it is grey in color, and cubical in shape. But how does she know that the cold thing and the cubical thing are one and the same thing? She knows this, thanks to the work of the inner sense power called the common sense.
Now, although for some early modern thinkers such as Descartes the common sense receives its input prior to the work of the memory and the imagination, for scholastic thinkers such as Thomas and Bonaventure, the common sense is situated _after_ the memory and the imagination. What this means is that the work of his faculty is not limited to the coordination of various sense stimuli, coming from diverse organs of the outer sense (e.g. eyes and skin). Rather, the common sense also imbues the object of thought with qualities supplied by memory and imagination. Surely it is here, in the memory and the imagination, where the “affections” which Bonaventure stresses, originate.
I thought of an example. Suppose you had a bit too much to drink last night. Suppose you drank a bit too much vodka, and you are a bit hung over. Suppose, further, that you just finished a 7 mile morning run, and you are very thirsty. You look up and you see two bottles, both containing clear liquid. For the purpose of this analogy assume that neither bottle has a label on it. You know that one bottle contains vodka, and the other one water.
Notice that the sensory input coming from you eyes as they gaze upon the different bottles is identical. That is, the eyes perceive no difference between the liquid contained in the two bottles: in both cases it is clear and colorless. Yet when you focus on the bottle of vodka you are repulsed, and when you focus on the bottle of water, you are so attracted to it that your mouth waters, impelling you finally to pick up the bottle, open the lid, and gulp down its contents.
What accounts for the difference between your different perceptions of the two bottles of clear, colorless liquid? It is not your vision or any other external sense power. The difference is “affective:” your perception is altered by the “inner sense power,” the “faculty” of “common sense,” which combines features of the two liquids, supplied by the memory and the imagination, with your visual perception of them.
As an Episcopal priest serving in Texas, I am well acquainted with something like political whiplash. Or perhaps it could be better described as ideological schizophrenia.
On the one hand, I minister in a national Church which tends to line up with the views expressed on salon.com or sometimes even gawker.com. On the other hand, I serve in a local context in which if one dare question the reigning assumptions of Fox News, his or her status as a good American is now deeply suspect.
This is the vantage point from which I observe the goings on at General Convention in Salt Lake City. I pray for my bishops, that they will somehow discern the mind of Christ, and for the clergy and lay delegates from our diocese, that they will have discernment and serve faithfully.
I read of the actions and results of General Convention: a march against gun violence, a canonical redefinition of Holy Matrimony, a likely move to divest allocations from certain ideologically offensive funds.
Whether I agree on these issues is totally irrelevant to this article, as is my admission that many in Texas need to hear aspects of the Episcopal Church’s views on these issues.
The question I’m asking is: “is anyone listening?” Yes, many of the major news outlets, traditional and online, will carry the stories. But does anyone in my local ministry context—the folks our community is reaching out to in evangelism—really care?
What is interesting is that, while most of these contacts—the people we believe God is calling to come and taste our Anglican way of being Christian—are quite happy to be living in a “red state,” many of them are not. A good percentage are for gay marriage, against the alleged “right” to bear arms. But both groups are attending our events at church and our evangelistic parties and venues out on the town and at people’s homes: crawfish boils, film nights, pub gatherings, bible studies, service projects.
These people—on the left and on the right—are nothing if not cynical about the church. Many of them walked away from the church, from “organized religion,” years ago. And yet, they are responding to our invitations. They are hanging out with a peculiar group of people (our church community) who love the Body of Christ. They are being drawn in, as if by a “good infection” (to quote CS Lewis).
And now for some more good news. You see, in my local ministry context, we have earned the trust of the community; we have been granted the “right” to minister in ways public (news interviews, interfaith efforts, initiatives for the poor, multi-church conferences) and private (counseling sessions, hospital visits, visits to incarcerated folks). People in our city trust us “on the ground.” They know that we love them, that we love Jesus, and that we are committed to serving our neighbors.
So the ones who would roll their eyes (at best) at the news coming out of Salt Lake City trust us and open themselves up to us anyway, and the ones who would give their Twitter feed a “high five” as the news rolls out of Utah, even if they were to pay attention … these people let us into to their lives, not because they agree with the developments of G.C. They do so, rather, because of something more local, more embodied, more important: a lived encounter with the love of Christ.
