Sin Autor Apophatic Theology as an Antidote to Nihilism

5/22/2018 Sin Autor Apophatic Theology as an Antidote to Nihilism

1/30

Apophatic Theology as Antidote to Nihilism

Paper presented in Teheran 20th October 1977 during a conference organized by theIranian Centre for the Study of Civilizations entitled:

Does the Impact of Western Thought Allow for the Possibility of Real Dialoguebetween Civilizations?

I. Where, how and when does dialogue occur?

To begin with we need to explain how our topic fits in with the generaltheme of this conference, that is, whether the global impact of westernthought allows for real dialogue between civilizations. This preliminaryexplanation calls for a threefold approach: where, how and when doesdialogue occur?

1. To begin with: have there been precedents to a dialogue betweencivilizations? In fact, civilization is an abstract term. Civilizations themselves (as universals ) cannot enter into dialogue. It is only themessengers, speaking in the name of their civilizations, who can be the realpartners in a dialogue. And it is in this sense that I understand the adjective real appended to the word dialogue in the stated topic of our conference.

Considering the question in this manner we must keep in mind, asprecedents, the great translation projects that have been undertaken overthe centuries. In particular we should retain the following, in chronological

order :

a) The translations from Sanskrit into Chinese (in the 2nd century twoArsacide princes translate the Sukhavati, the founding text of the PureLand school of Buddhism.)

b) The translations from Greek into Pehlevi towards the end of theSassanid period in Iran.

c) The translations from Arabic into Latin during the first centuries ofIslam, with the

interference of Hebrew and Arabic philosophical texts.

d) The translations from Sanskrit into Persian during the 16th centurystimulated by thegenerous reforms of Shah Akbar.

In light of these examples, we may find reason for optimism in the increasein translations being undertaken today. But to what extent would such


2/30

optimism be legitimate? Let us begin by properly acknowledging thepassionate interest that the Western world has shown for archeologicalexplorations ever since the 19th century, for the resurrection of dead cities,for the updating of manuscript collections containing the secrets ofphilosophical and religious systems. The Western mind has obeyed a certain

research oriented imperative which can by no means be considered anobstacle to dialogue, and which betrays the presence of entirely otherpreoccupations than those of the materialism with which it is somewhat toosummarily imputed.

This ongoing research, or quest, entails an aptitude for questioningaccepted fact upon contact with newly discovered modes of thought. But towhat extent has this activity been reciprocal? Has there been, in the Easternworld, a similar interest in the great spiritual traditions of the West? I cantclaim that there has, and that is why, in the absence of any real dialogue, we have remained at the stage of monologue.

Certainly, it is a question of shared responsibilities. But since a dialogue isan exchange between persons , for there to be dialogue the respectivestatus of the persons involved must have something in common. A dialoguetakes place between you and me . You and I both need tohave assumed a like responsibility, each for his or her own personal fate.Simply by putting the question of the person in this way, we have alreadytaken a great step towards understanding the subject that I am proposing.

2. For there to be real dialogue, everything depends upon the situation

of the partners concerned. What is implied by our conferences topicproposal is the practical fait-accompli of the disappearance of traditionalcivilizations under the impact of what we broadly refer to as nihilism. It isessentially a question of metaphysical nihilism, proceeding from radicalagnosticism, from the refusal to recognize any reality beyond the horizonof empiricism and rational certitudes. And so we are asking: can there be real dialogue between partners when one party has succumbed to thisnihilism, while the other party has effectively and efficiently resisted it?

There are frequent meetings these days among specialists in the appliedsciences, frequent conferences on technology. Immediately the question

arises: is technology sufficient in itself to fulfill and account for the conceptof civilization? Does this concept not imply a secret, invisible force whichmust be called spiritual, that determines the content and the finality of theconcept, and thus transcends the premises laid down by technology as such?If the concept does not imply such a driving force, then we may simplyadapt ourselves to the general leveling of persons and even to theirabsence; ultimately well-regulated computers would suffice. But, if theconcept implies something else, it is then the status of the partners persons


3/30

that is in question, meaning that which and that for which only the humanperson, in his or her inalienable spiritual individuality, may reply. In theabsence of this, in the absence of this, the very thing that renders primacypossible [the primacy of that One for whom one might speak or second, as amessenger], we find ourselves faced with agnostic nihilism: there is noone

left to speak of.

3. This is where my topic fits in. I am not the first to have made theobservation that the socio-political systems spilling out from the West acrossthe whole planet, are the secularization of earlier theological systems. Tosay as much already implies acknowledging that the plenary concept of theWest cannot be purely and simply identified with this secularization alone. Italso involves acknowledging that this process is not a particularly Westernphenomenon, for now the Eastern world has itself fallen prey to what we call Westernization . This is why, more than ever before, the contrastbetween East and West can have no real meaning elsewhere than atthe metaphysical level, the very same level at which it has been situated byIranian philosophers ever since Avicenna and Suhravardi.

At this level the contrast is no longer of the order of ethnicity nor is itgeographical, historical or juridical. The essential contrast appears as thatbetween sacralization and secularization. By sacralization we mean the[heraldic] sign, recognized by a subtle interior sense, announcing thepresence of a sacrosanct and transcendent world (lam al-qods) within thephenomena and appearances of this world. And so let us be on our guard:the secularization in question is a secularization aiming at the destruction of

the metaphysical plane. Its contrary, therefore, is in no way the sacralizationof social and political institutions, for, quite precisely, the sacralization ofthose institutions can involve the profanation of the sacred (itsmaterialization). Reciprocally, the secularization of institutions can lead quitesimply, as the result of a fatal mix-up, to their pseudo-sacralization.

I would hope that our young Eastern colleagues always remain perfectlyconscious of this paradox. There was, for example, the phenomenon thatcharacterizes the history of Western religion: the phenomenon of theChurch. The separation of Church and State, where it happens, clearlyconsummates the desacralization and the secularization of public life. But to

the very extent that this desacralization proceeds from the negation of anyand all metaphysical perspective -- of any other world -- to this sameextent the secularized human institutions can henceforth be reinvested witha new pseudo-sacrality. The successor to the Church phenomenon is quitesimply the Totalitarian State.

Sacralization and secularization are phenomena that take place and havetheir place not primarily in the world of external forms, but first and


4/30

foremost in the internal world of the human soul. The human being projectsthe modalities of its inner being outwards to constitute the phenomenalworld in which it works out its liberty or servitude. Nihilism arises whenhuman beings lose the conscious awareness of their personal responsibilityfor this bond [this connection between the modalities of the inner self and

the appearance of the outer world] and proclaim (be it with desperation orwith cynicism) those ways closed that they themselves have barred.

The crossing over from the theological to the sociological occurs when thesocial takes the place of the theos. Horrified of being qualified as catering totheology, philosophy has made itself the harried servant of sociology.Unfortunately, sociology is [a dead end] incapable of offering philosophy theoutcome reserved for it by the double modality of theology. By doublemodality of theology we mean apophatic or negative theology (tanzh inArabic and Persian) and affirmative or cataphatic theology. (We will comeback to an elucidation of these two concepts shortly.)

What is at issue with respect to the nihil of nihilism depends upon onesdecisions as to the relationship between these two [theological] modalities:what one decides in terms of the precedence of one or the other, andwhether one accepts the absence of one or the other. Cultural nihilism is nomore than the socialized aspect of an unfortunate or failed resolution of thisdialectic in which the primacy of apophatic theology is abolished. This leavesthe dogmas, purported absolute by positive or affirmative theology,vacillating as though deprived of both foundation and justification.

Whats more, this outcome drags along with it the fate of the person, adestiny that is postulated by the idea of the real existence of the humanperson, and thereby the destinies of persons in general, of the eventualpartners of a dialogue that is neither unreal nor unrealistic but true. It is forthis reason that I am here proposing negative theology as an antidote tonihilism.

Here, I believe, we are at the very heart of the question as I understand it.To properly come to grips with this question we must begin by examiningthe two notions of personalism and nihilism. I will do this in the margins,so to speak, of a recent article that was written by one of our eminent

French colleagues --an Indianist Philosoper-- denouncing Westernpersonalism as the very cause of nihilism.

Im afraid that the misunderstanding couldnt be more complete. Because,altogether on the contrary, we see in impersonalism, --in the failure, in thecancelling out, in the alienation of the person -- both the cause and endresult of nihilism. The question is all the more serious in that, ultimately, theconcept at stake is fundamental to all three of the Abrahamic religions.


5/30

Consequently we need to examine the following :

1). Which concept of the person is one professing when one denouncesit as the cause of nihilism ? In other words, what do we mean when we

speak of personalism and of nihilism?

2). It seems to me that the reason for this accusation being levelledagainst personalism is the fact of ones having lost sight of what theAbrahamic tradition, in its ensemble (and therefore not only in theWest), has conceived of as negative or apophatic theology. In otherwords, what do we mean when we speak of apophatic theology andpersonalism? Having once sketched out this opposition we shall be ableto discern just where the nihilism truly lies.

3). Subsequently we will be able to oppose a rival reality principle tothe scientific conceptualism that is bound up with nihilism. On thissubject our traditional Iranian philosophers, and chiefly among theseMoll Sadr Shrz (1050/1640), will have a lot to tell us.

II. Personalism and Nihilism

The article to which we are referring --which is well written and offers agreat deal of food for thought, even and especially if we are regrettably indisagreement with its diagnostic-- was written by our colleague and friend,the eminent comparative philosopher Professor George Vallin. If he were to

find that I have missed his point, together we should have no troubleclearing up the misunderstanding. The articles title is "The Tragic and theWest Considered in the Light of Asian Non-Dualism." The paradox is asfollows: whereas for ourselves metaphysical nihilism and moral nihilism areconcomitant with the dissolution of the person, for our colleague the sourceof nihilism would, on the contrary, lie in the very notion of the person, andessentially therefore in the notion of spiritual individuality.

Our colleagues argument proceeds from anthropology to theology,establishing a connection between the idea of the personal self and the ideaof a personal God in order to denounce them both as the very rise of

nihilism. As stated a moment ago: the gravity of this position is that it putson trial the anthropology and theology of the three great Abrahamic religionsand along with them the Greek and Iranian spiritual worlds, each of thesebeing a citadel to the personhood of the gods and human beings. Thecontrast between East and West has largely become a thing of the past, butnot so the fate of those persons who are the partners of a dialogue. Thelatter problem remains and demands all the more urgently to be addressed.To this end, we propose the following analysis.


6/30

1. Anthropology. The leitmotiv which serves as starting point for the articlein question (and which is announced in its title) is an argument we findformulated in a book written some dozen years ago by J.M. Domenach: Thereturn of the Tragic. Therein we read: It is significant that the tragic, this

essential category of human existence, marks European culture and noneother (2). The author of our article sets to justifying this affirmation byshowing that wherever the fundamental presuppositions of Western cultureare lacking, the apparition of the tragic is properly inconceivable.

As far as we can see, however, this amounts to saying that one cannotproperly speak of the tragic as an essential category of human existence.We learn that, if the idea of the tragic is one of the defining traits of ourWestern philosophy this is because it is essentially a philosophy thatpostulates the individual. The following passages are both the most denseand the most trenchant. According to G. Vallin: That which appears toconstitute the permanent ideology of Western man, is the belief in the realityof the individual, or the identification of reality with individuality, inopposition to the fundamental ideology of traditional Asia, such as it may beobserved in the doctrines of the non-dualist Vedanta, Taoism or MahayannaBuddhism. (3)."

We are being asked to consider that for Oriental humanity the real isidentified with the Universal or the Supraformal. But we must then askourselves: how can human thought express itself with regards to aSupraformal other than in negative terms? We are given the well known

phrase tat tvam asi, as signifiying, the suprapersonal Absolute, you, (theego) you are this as well. Which leaves intact the question of just how theego referred to is still an ego when it is equated with the Suprapersonal. Inother words, how is it I who have the power to say I am identical to that,to the suprapersonal Absolute, when the idea of the real human being isgiven as opposed to that of the ego? Is it the real human being, or is it theillusory ego that declares: I am that? Does it suffice to say: I am that,for the ego to cease to be illusory?

Our colleague explains that, on this point, the negativity implied by ego inthe common or exoteric sense of ego is not original but derivative.

Derivative to the extent that this negativity has as its origin the [Selfs]belief in the reality of this ego, a belief which is the very obnubilation [orclouding over] of the essential identity of the Self and of the suprapersonalAbsolute. And for this, the Self is itself responsible. The text reads asfollows: The individual is in one sense responsible for his or her ownindividuation, for etched in the heart of his or her being is the permanentpossibility of rediscovering the universal or infinite dimension of Being,from which, in reality, he or she has never been separated(4).


7/30

In other words: the individual is guilty of existing, guilty of his or her ownexistence. This is, quite frankly, an extremely disturbing proposition and itallows one to foresee the moment when the individual will be forced to ridhim or herself of this guilt, but no longer with the aim of recuperating the

universal or infinite dimension. The torn state of separation of allexistence, culminating in the tearing asunder of death would, we are told,only be experienced as such if we [mistakenly] identify the real human beingwith the ego. In Buddhist terms, the existence of the ego is identical tosuffering, and the Being of the ego is identical to the void.

But a Westerner, without having to be a philosopher or a gnostic either,would ask him or herself: what if the opposite were true? What if the originof suffering was the mutilation of spiritual individuality? And what if it wasthis mutilation alone that justified considering the ego as an illusion? What ifthe most essential thing was not, in fact, the restoration of the ego to itsoriginal plenitude? Confronted by the tragedy of the mutilation of theperson, we would by no means respond by an acceptance of emptiness, butrather join in combat with the sons of Light against the powers of darkness,finding our answer in the entire Zoroastrian ethos of ancient Iran.

Clearly, we can now see that what is at issue here is what has traditionallybeen referred to in philosophy as the principle of individuation . Oncemore citing our article: We know that the dominant ontology andanthropology of Western humanity are centred quite precisely upon theinvincible affirmation of the reality of the ego (in all its forms) and of the

reality of individual forms in general. This belief seems to us to becorrelative to a mutilation of being because it has its origin and essence in negativity or the principle of individuation identified with the reality principle.

Here again, the adoption of such a position appears to us a very seriousmatter. Such a decision is marked, indeed stained, by the same confusiondenounced by our Iranian metaphysicians of the Avicennian tradition,(5) towhit, the confusing of the transcendental unity of Being or Existence(wahdat al wojud) with an impossible, contradictory and illusory unity ofexistents or existent being(s) (mawjud, latin ens). These Avicennian

metaphysicians vigorously denounced this same confusion committed by thepractitioners of a particular brand of Sufism, one that would occupy preciselythe position defined by Georges Vallin as belonging to Oriental humanity.

On the other hand, on this point our Iranian philosophers are in agreementwith the metaphysics of Being professed by the great neoplatonist, Proclus :[I am referring to] the connection or relationship between the Henad ofHenads and the Henads that lend their unicity to the multiplicity of singular


8/30

existents that they pose in the act of being by making each in its turn onebeing, [or, by investing each in turn with its own singularity]. For Being canonly be existent within the multiplicity of individual beings. To affirm thereality of individual forms is therefore in no way a mutilation of Being, but ison the contrary its revelation and fulfilment. To confound the order of Being

with the order of existents [or existent being(s)] is a fatal confusion. Theprinciple of individuation is a positioning and positing of the existent. If onesees in this nothing but negativity then one has set ones course towardsmetaphysical catastrophe.

I dont believe one may simply say that this principle of individuationdominates all of Western thought from Aristotle to Sartre (6), for thisprinciple has been interpreted in two manners so different from each otherthat each interpretation entails irreducible consequences. Formulated interms of heliomorphism, the question is as follows: is the principle ofindividuation matter, or is it form? If it is matter, then the spiritualindividuality, the form, the idea of a being, is perhaps merely illusory. If it isthe form, then the form is the spiritual individuality itself, and isimperishable and inalienable. It may be called Fravarti (Persian forhar) inthe Avesta, Neshama in the Jewish Kabala, ayn thbita (eternal hexeity) forIbn Arabi, and Perfect Nature (al-tib al-tmm) for both Suhravardi andthose in the Hermetic tradition of Islamic theosophy, etc.

Thus, when our colleague writes that for him nihilism seems to originate inthe enthroning of the principle of individuation or the metaphysicalsanctification of the ego . That the tragic fate of the West seems to us to

consist in the progressive discovery of the consequences of thissanctification coinciding with the fundamental Prometheanism of Westernhumanity. That the Westerner is essentially tragic because his or hernegativity is original and not derivative. (7) Then, truth be told, whatsprings spontaneously to mind is a radically antithetical position. The tragicis not particular to Western humanity, because the tragic, indeed tragedy, isthe human being itself.

There is a Promethean tragic, but there is also an Ohrmazdean tragic (theinvasion of Ahrimn), each one differing from the other in both their[underlying] nature and in the signs [they reveal].(8) The tragic does not

consist in an individuation professed as initial to, and thereafter thegoverning principle of, all existents -- whether in the spiritual or in thematerial world -- but in the fall or the catastrophe that drew the spiritualindividualities pre-existent to this world into the mle of its dramaticconsequences. And it is this that is described by the dramatic cosmogoniescommon to all the Abrahamic gnoses as well as to Iranian gnosis(Zoroastrianism, Manicheanism) and to the Platonic mysteries.


9/30

Individuation in this case is therefore not a secondary derivation. It iseffectively initial or primary, arising with the ontogenesis of Being. It is notthe principle of individuation that is the tragic. The tragic is that whichmutilates this principle: that which paralyses it, betrays it, caricatures it. If itis the principle of individuation that differentiates Western from traditional

Asiatic humanity, we must say that we do not quite understand how ourcolleague Georges Vallin can denounce the Far-East of today as participatingin the cultural arena of our now globalized Western civilization. For, as far aswe can tell, the cultural milieu of the Far-East today does not particularlydistinguish itself by the recognition of the rights of the individual ego (9).

Or perhaps this same recognition is not the characteristic sign of Westernhumanity, nor of the Western culture that has come to have a worldwideimpact. If this worldwide Western influence is accompanied by the downfallof the rights of the individual, how can one characterize the West assanctifying the individual? Or perhaps, it is a question of something else inaddition to the Western influence. Or perhaps, Western thought is not whatwe have been told that it is. We are thus placed at the heart of the theme ofour conference. For how can we conceive of a dialogue without first being inagreement upon its fundamental premises? In such a case, there would onlybe confrontation or a dialogue between deaf parties. I am trying to bring ustowards the requisite conditions of a dialogue between partners who arepartners of a dialogue because partners of a like destiny.

The principle of individuation is so essential that, supposing this principleconstitutive of the tragic itself, the tragic would not only be a marking

characteristic of the West, but of all the spiritual universes whose fiery-eyedgnoses have attempted to penetrate the mystery preceding the descent ofhumanity into this world. In fact, the meaning of the principle ofindividuation is such that our philosopher colleague --pursuing the thrust ofthe argument that led him to denounce the identification of the real with theindividual as being the source of nihilism-- by passing from anthropology totheology, will equally denounce the Judeo-Christian conception of a personalGod as responsible for the theological nihilism that has proclaimed thedeath of God. But again, --and above all given that the earlierdenunciation of the principle of individuation seemed to entail losing sight ofthat which the narrative gnoseological cosmogonies have described -- it

seems to us in this instance that that which in the ensemble of gnoses andAbrahamic theosophies is called negative theology, is being deliberatelypassed by in silence. It would, however, be grave in the extreme to losesight of it.

2. Theology Here in fact we detect the tacit presupposition which allowsone to affirm the essential connection between the idea of the personal Godand the negativity of the self conceived of as original. Conceived of as


10/30

inherent to the very idea of the self which would be the ultimate form of theactivity of negation. Therefore, this negativity would be the primordialsource of primordial nihilism (to a certain extent an Urnihilismus). Altogetheron the contrary, we hold that this negativity is in no way original, in no wayinherent to the self. We hold that the tragic is such that is should be

understood in connection with the advent of a negativity which is thepresent condition of the ego: the condition that is that of the egos existencein this world and the result of a catastrophe. This has been expressed by allgnoseological narrative anthropogonies and psychogonies. It is not the egothat is the tragedy, but its mutilation compensated by a sickly inflation, inbrief by its descent into this world.

We see the same idea expressed in the sentiment of exile so strongly felt inJewish and Muslim theosophy. The disproportion lies between what thesoul, or ego, is at present, and that which, intimating its own pre-existentialorigin, it feels itself called to be. This protestation, this sense ofdisproportion, comes through the mystical epics even better than throughthe philosophical systems. (For there is no common measure when it comesto comparing ones actual state to that which one is called to be.) It isalways the same tragedy that the mystical epics and theosophies have told.But this adventure, this tragedy of the soul, that takes place in the world ofthe Soul, would be inconceivable if it was not also a divine adventure, orrather intra-divine, one that takes place and has its place in divinity. It isprecisely this that is the aim and theatre of operations of apophatictheology, and the reason for which the personal God still holds us in regard,which is to say still concerns us, now and forever.

What this means is that the divine person, the personal form of the personalGod, is not itself the original Absolute; it is rather the eternal result of aneternal process within the divine. But as it results eternally from an eternalprocess, it is both derivative and original. If one meditates upon this secret,one may come to understand that personalism is in no way the source ofnihilism. It is on the contrary the loss of this personalism, the failure andaborting of the person that nihilates the persons ontogenesis. Eo ipso, thetranspersonal cannot be conceived of by human thought as beingontologically superior to the personal form of the divinity and the humanself.

If such were the case, however, then when confronted by the question of theorigin of Evil, it would appear sufficient to reduce the problem to a simplechoice: either the myth of Greek tragedy inclined towards exonerating aninnocent humanity; or Judeo-Christian monotheism inclined towardsexonerating an innocent God --to the extent that it would be the free will ofhumanity alone, created by God, that would be at the origin of Evil. (10)Perhaps things present themselves in this manner in a purely exoteric


11/30

monotheism. But it is precisely apophatic theology, developing intotheosophy, which outstrips and displaces the problem posed in such exotericterms. It all seems, unfortunately, as though the representative [that G.Villon offers us] speaking on behalf of traditional Asiatic humanity hadenvisaged confronting nothing more than the position held by affirmative

exoteric theology.

Such a theology, because deprived of the safeguard of negative or apophatictheology, is incapable of even an inkling of the fundamental idea that makesof the personal God and his/her follower partners in battle; heroesconfronting one and the same tragedy together, a tragedy of which theorigin and the stakes involved do not consist in their respective person beingnegativities to resolve and resorb, but on the contrary constitute a positivityto be conquered.

It seems therefore that to the thesis of the culpability of the ego as such,that the ego is guilty of existing and that individuation appears as awrong to the extent that we are referred to the suprapersonal dimension ofthe Self of which the ego would ultimately be distinct only in an illusorymode (11)--we have no choice but to oppose a double antithesis: theculpability does not lie in the existence of the ego ; it is in the failure thatmutilates and paralyses it.

The culpability lies therefore in that which is in reality the loss of the ego,loss that translates itself most often by an avid and monstrous inflation. Theillusion is not in the illusory differentiation of the ego with respect to the

transpersonal Absolute, but in the egos being canceled out by being equatedwith this Absolute.

And to the argument suggesting that the tragic is only possible for thehuman being who remains faithful to the famous Greek "measure" --that isto say the vision of the human being locked within his or her finitude, thehuman who identifies him or herself with the limits that constitute theirhumanity, which is to say [who identifies] with the ego (12)-- we must, tothe contrary, declare that it is the crossing of this threshold which appears,in the gnoseological epics, to have unleashed the anterior catastrophe thatdetermined the existence of this world. A catastrophe resulting in the limits

of a self mutilated and paralysed in, and by its existence in, this world.

These limits are those of its captivity and its exile, and not the limits thateternally determine its being in itself, its monadic unity. The fall and[subsequent] liberation are the grand acts of this tragedy. But liberationdoes not mean abolition. To free the individual being, is to restore his or herindividuality to its full and authentic monadicity. It is to restore its truth, notat all to denounce this individuality as illusory.


12/30

We are now in a position to be [re]oriented in a direction altogether differentfrom that which, envisaging the person and personalism from the point ofview of an Asiatic non-dualism, denounced them as entailing a form ofnihilism. We are stating, on the contrary, that it is incumbent upon the very

concept of the person to counter nihilism, so that the partners of adialogue may be real persons, and not the shadows of a suprapersonal Self,whose individuality would be no more than an illusion.

The little that we have just said should put us on the road to developing anddeepening our understanding of apophatic theology. It should also allow usto reject the argument that would make of Abrahamic monotheism --that isto say Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheism-- another form of the tragicinherent in the culture of the West that sanctifies the ego and theindividual. We have just countered certain nihilizing arguments that havetheir prolongation in another [of Villons] theses, to the effect that theultimate stage of this tragedy is the enthroning of a personal Absolute inplace of the suprapersonal Absolute.

Apophatic theology has precisely the virtue of preserving us from any and allconfusion between the Absolute and the personal God, between theindetermination of the former and the necessity of the latter. Consequently,there where our colleague --presenting himself as spokesperson for Asiaticnon-dualism-- denounced the living personal God of Judeo-Christian-Islamicmonotheism as the first step in the death of God (13), one must invert thesense of this nihilitude, putting it right side up. We are being told that this

first death of God would have been brought about by the confusionconsisting of the equation of the Absolute and the Personal God. Granted,this closely resembles the work of an affirmative dogmatic theology of theChurch, entirely exoteric, deprived of --or depriving itself of-- the safeguardof apophatic theology.

Perhaps it is precisely this aspect of the official theology that our friendGeorges Vallin is envisaging. In that case, we would agree with him.However, what about that theosophical theology that is founded by anapophatic theology establishing precisely the differentiation between theAbsolute and the Personal God? In fact, it is a theology deprived of

theosophy that deliberates upon an absent God, the object of a sort ofimpotent nostalgia belonging to a troubled conscience, as our philosophercolleague rightly says (14) referring specifically to Pascal, Kierkegaard, KarlBarth. But we would have liked him to have envisaged and it seemsimpossible to us that, secretly at least, he did not so envisage that whichwe are envisaging here, and which would have permitted him to refer, alongwith us, to a Jean Scot Erigne, a Jacob Boehme, an Ibn Arab, an IsaacLouria, etc.


13/30

In fact, the absolute is not the primary and primordial aspect we habituallyrefer to by that term. It is a past participle that presupposes a nomenagentis, the absolvens that absolves it and makes of it the absolutum. If theabsolvens absolves the absolute of all determination, there still remains to

absolve the absolute of this very same indetermination. This remark couldwell prevent many a misunderstanding. Contrary to the thesis that theadvent of the personal God of the religions of the Book --of the threeAbrahamic groups-- constitutes the first death of God, I would declare thatthe act of exorcising this death of God does not consist in erasing thepersonal God before the suprapersonal Absolute. It consists rather inunderstanding that the auto-generation of the personal God --engenderingitself from the Absolute, absolving itself of the indetermination of thisAbsolute-- is not the death but the eternal birth of God. A reversal, withoutany doubt, of the phenomenological analysis. For Georges Vallin modernitywould be the second death of God or at least the event following upon thesecond death of God. It would consist in the human ego, having forever lostsight of its own fundamental negativity, entering into an active process oftotalization, a totalization that would lead to the hegemony of the principleof individuation. And so, he says, history is divinised and the human beingcollectivised.

We are sure that our friend Georges Vallin will understand when we admit tohaving a certain amount of difficulty in following his proposed analysis. Itseems to us that for humanity to be collectivized, this must necessarilyinvolve a crumbling at all levels of the ramparts of the person and of the

individual monad. It is precisely when the ego as such is denounced as anillusion, that we have difficulty seeing how it might resist collectivization,even if this illusion is defined for us in reference to a suprapersonal Self! Andfor history to be divinized, the agents that make this history and theevents that compose this history must be seen within a unique dimension.They must be seen within a uni-dimensionality, passing by way of thenihilism that rejects the transcendental dimension of the person (of each andevery respective person), because this nihilism perceives this transcendentdimension as the manifestation of a rival reality principle.

In what respect is apophatic theology the safeguard of the person against

nihilism? How does it safeguard both the human person and the divineperson? Corollary to this point, how does apophatic theology make of thesafeguarded person the very safeguard against nihilism? What difference isthere, henceforth, between the epiphany of the person eternally born fromthe Urgrund, and the dogmatic affirmation of the divine person, anaffirmation that has not undergone its apophatic trial and/or verification?

III. Apophatic Theology and Personalism


14/30

When we speak of affirmative or cataphatic theology we mean thereby atheology that, deliberating upon the concept of God, affirms all the attributes(of essence, operation and of perfection) that seem appropriate to theconcept of divinity. Any and all human attributes are sublimated to the

utmost limit. This is what we call the via eminentiae. This path, however,does no more than sublimate creatural attributes in order to confer themupon the divinity. Monotheism is in danger of succumbing to the veryidolatry that it elsewhere denounces. Negative or apophatic theology, inorder to radically avoid this danger of assimilation (tashbh) of the divine tothe creatural, denies any attribute to the divinity and expresses itself withrespect to the latter only in negative terms: this is the tanzh, the vianegationis. It is, par excellence the path chosen in Shiite Islam, as much bythe Ismailis (15) as by the Duodeciman Shiites. I am thinking of the pronepronounced in Merv by the eighth Imam, Al-Reza, and admirablycommented by Qz Sad Qomm, I am thinking of the School of Rajab AliTabrz, of the Shaykhi school of Shaykh Ahmad Ahs (16) etc. In ourWestern tradition, it is Jacob Boehme who, it seems to me, is mostrepresentative. I will therefore refer essentially to Boehme in order tosimplify the explanation of just what this is all about.

Any metaphysical doctrine that attempts a total explanation of the universe,will find itself confronted by the necessity of making something out ofnothing, or rather of making everything come out of nothing (17). The initialprinciple from which the world emerges --a principle that must also explainthis world-- cannot be anything contained within the world. Yet it must

simultaneously possess everything needed to explain both the essence andexistence of the world and that which it contains. This principle, therefore,cannot be identical to Being nor a part of Being, since it is Being that it mustexplain. In this light, it is the negation of Being; in relation to the things ofthis world and to thought, therefore, it is absolutely indeterminate. ThisAbsolute is a nihility. But on the other hand it must possess a relation to thethings that flow forth from it, it must possess a certain similitude with thosethings for which it is the source. This initial principle, as Alexander Koyrwell analyzed, must therefore be, at the same time, everything andnothing. It is with this stage as their starting point that the two theologiesconstitute themselves: the negative (apophatic) and the affirmative

(cataphatic), the via negationis (tanzh) and the via emnientiae.

There is thus initially a double nihility, a double nihil, and subsequently adouble aspect of nihilism: the one being to a certain extent positive, theother pure negativity. There is a nihil a quo omnia fiunt, a nihility from whichall things come. This is the nihility of the divine Absolute, superior to beingand to thought. And there is a nihil a quo nihil fit, a nihility from whichnothing comes and into which everything tends to fall back in abysm, a


15/30

nihility therefore inferior to being and to thought. I am afraid that when wespeak of nihilism we too often lose sight of the difference between the twonihil

The Neo-Platonist tradition in the three branches of the Abrahamic tradition,

as well as in the Greek world, would tend to give priority to the apophaticpath, subordinating the affirmative cataphatic path to the latter: just asBeing finds itself subordinated to the Absolute. We alluded to this very fact amoment ago. Without this priority being accorded to the apophatic (to thatnihil from which everything proceeds) one does nothing but pile creaturalattributes upon the divinity (and this is nihil from which nothing proceeds).

And so monotheism perishes in its triumph, degenerates into the idolatrythat it fiercely wished to avoid. This was the fate of affirmative theologieswhen they cut themselves off and isolated themselves from the strong-holdof apophatic theology, and it is their fate which seemed to us legitimatelytargeted by George Vallins critique.

But negative theology is not instating an Absolute into which everythingmust be made to go and be swallowed up (that is nihilism), but an Absolutefrom which, on the contrary, one must make everything emerge and whichmaintains in being all that it makes exist. In short, exoteric monotheismunderstands this constitutivity of the Being that is unique as though it werethe unity of existents; we have already drawn attention to this fatalconfusion.

But the relation between existence and existents [between Being andexistent beings], between the undetermined Absolute and the personal God,is not to be characterized by a nihility to be resorbed into the Absolute, of amultiplicity of beings to be confounded with and lost in the unity of being,but rather by the very positivity of which the Absolute is the principle andthe source (18).

It is in this sense that the esoteric theosophies in Islam, and particularly thatof Ibn Arabi, have understood the famous hadith I was a hidden Treasure. Iloved to be known. I created the world in order to become known. Thenihilism that degrades the positive value of the personal God amounts to

forbidding that the Hidden Treasure (the undetermined Absolute) manifestitself through [a process of] self-determination, to forbidding that being existin the plurality of existents.

I have just quoted Ibn Arabi whose mystical theosophy is centred upon thisdifferentiation between the undetermined and unknowable Absolute, theAbsconditum, and the Rabb, the personal Lord, the Deus revelatus, the onlyGod of whom the human being can speak, because he or she is the latters


16/30

correlative term. It is the same in Ismaili theosophy, for which the name Al-Lah is ascribed to the First Intellect of the pleroma. We are reminded here ofthe relation between En-Sof and the ten Sephiroth, of Metatron and of theCherubim on the Throne of Jewish gnosis, as well as of all the greatprotestant mystics: Sebastian Franck, Valentin Weigel (19), etc. since for

one and all it is only in relation to us, to the creature, that the deity appearsas force, power, will, action, etc.

The Absolutely undetermined does not become the determined Deusrevelatus, demanded by the via positionis, except in relation to the creature:except in that this Deus revelatus is its creator. The Absolute must thereforeemerge from its absoluity [or state of absolute absolvency], to instate acreature for whom it is the personal God, such that the personal God is notat all the original [and originating] negativity which we heard denouncedearlier as the first death of God. It is, altogether on the contrary, thedivine birth, arising in this passage from the Absolute to the person. If oneasks: why this emergence? Why the choice of this correlation of the Creatorwith the created-being? The best answer is still to be found in the exemplarywork of Jacob Boehme: because it contains the secret of his Quest, hisimmense oeuvre is the personal response to this question -- and there canbe nothing other than a personal answer.

In effect, Boehmes entire theology is an analysis of the conditions of thepossibility of the absolute person , which is to say absolved of theindetermination of the original Absolute, of the Absconditum. As we saidabove: the Absolute, being absolved of all determination, there remains

ultimately to absolve it of this indetermination. Koyrs great merit was inbeing one of the rare individuals to understand the aspect that differentiatesBoehme from so many of his forerunners whose pitfalls he spares us anessential quality, because his exemplary case helps us to perceive what is atissue in the theme that I have proposed [ie. apophatic theology as antidoteto nihilism], and through this theme the conditions of a [true] dialogue.

What Boehme believes before all doctrine, what he is searching for, thatwhich all his [own] doctrine is meant to justify, is that God is a personalBeing, and much more, that he is a person, a living person, conscious ofhimself, a person possessing agency, a perfect person (20). Let us take

proper note of the words: what he is searching for. The personal God isnot [simply] given to begin with. He is met at the end of a Quest (like that ofthe Quest for the Holy Grail). There is therefore no confusion between theAbsolute and the personal God, a confusion that [it was suggested] wouldhave been committed by Western personalism and which was denounced aswe have seen, as the source of nihilism and abettor of the death of God.This Quest is in contrast with two symmetrical nihilisms: that of anaffirmative (cataphatic) theology immediately erecting its dogma as absolute


17/30

in itself, beyond which there would be nothing to search for; and that ofnegative apophatic theology that would aspire only to the indetermination ofthe Absolute thereby losing sight of the fact that the latter is the nihil a quoomnia procedunt (the Hidden Treasure of the hadith cited above). In bothinstances we have theology without theophany.

And it is from this very point that we can discern two permanent attitudes --present over the centuries and right up to our days-- that are typifiedrespectively in the mystical doctrine of Meister Eckhardt (14th century) andin the mystical theosophy of Jacob Boehme (1575-1624) (21) To observethese two exemplary cases is to put ourselves in a position to overcome thepitfalls of nihilism.

With the one as with the other, there is, certainly, the profound sense of themystical Divinity as undetermined Absolute, immobile and unchanging in itseternity. But, from that point on, the two masters diverge. For a MeisterEckhardt, the Deitas (Gottheit) transcends the personal God and it is thelatter that one must pass beyond, because it is correlative to the human soulof the world, to the creature. The personal God is thus but a step upon themystical path, because this personal God is affected by limitation and bynegativity, by non-being and by becoming. It becomes and un-becomes(22). (Er wird und entwird) The Eckhardtian soul thus attempts to liberateitself in order to escape from the very limits of being, from the nihil offinitude, from everything and anything that could fix it in place or time. Itneeds therefore, to escape from itself in order to plunge into the abyss ofdivinity, an Abgrund of which, by definition, it could never attain [or sound]

the bottom (Grund). The conception and attitude of Jacob Boehme aresomething else entirely. Boehme searches for liberation within theaffirmation of the self, in the realization of the true Self of his eternal idea.It is this that is designated by the very concept of ayn thbita by Ibn Arabiand all those that he inspired in the domain of Islamic theosophy.

So, we find that everything is inverted: it is not the personal God who is astep towards the Deitas, that is, towards the undetermined Absolute. It is onthe contrary this Absolute that is a step towards the generation, the eternalbirth [and birthing] of the personal God. Jacob Boehme also declares: Erwird und entwird, but by this he does not mean the nihilating nihil, voiding

the personal God. On the contrary, he is designating the nihil of the Absolutedifferentiating itself in its aspiration to reveal itself, to determine itself (thehidden Treasure!) in a single Nunc aeternitatis (ewiges Nu). There is thus anintra-divine history --not a History in the ordinary sense of the word, but ana-temporal History-- eternally accomplished and eternally beginning, thussimultaneously and eternally whole (simul tota) in all forms and at all stagesof its auto-generation as personal God. The latter contains in itself alldifference () He is in movement and movement is in him. The


18/30

determination that the person entails is thus not original in this instance;[the person] is no longer struck with nihilitude, but is a conquest of and bythe nihil of the original indetermination. It was this original indeterminationthat, as we have seen, was the initially fundamental yet paradoxicaldetermination of the Absolute.

What we must understand and take advantage of is as follows. In describingthe conditions that make it possible for the absolute person to be thetriumph and conquest of the primordial nihil (conditions that form the entirestructure of the divine organism), Boehme describes eo ipso the route bywhich God has passed and passes eternally in order to engender himself andconstitute himself[A movement of] eternally successive phases sinceeternally simultaneous with the divine life: stages of his interiordevelopment (23). This eternal intra-divine history of the eternal generationof the personal God is then the archetype that the human soul exemplifies inorder to accede to the rank of person. For the personal form of being is thehighest, because it accomplishes the realization that is self revelation.Indeed, being does not realize [or discover] itself nor manifest [or appearto] itself except by determining itself and by manifesting itself [which is tosay, by accepting the limitation constitutive of aspects or qualities throughwhich to appear and be known] (24). And it is these same relations that areexpressed within the vocabulary of our Iranian philosophers by terms suchas zohr (manifestation), tajall elh (theophany), mazhar (theophanicform), tashakhkhos (individuation). We are setting forth an entire programof comparative philosophy simply by pronouncing these terms.

[This program of comparative philosophy] also provides us with the strategynecessary to confront the nihil a quo nihil fit --which is to say nihilism plainand simple-- which presents itself these days under the laicized form ofagnosticism or totalitarian collectivism. Personalism is not only the vocationof the West; it is not only the Greek world, it is also the Iranian world, and itis the entire spiritual universe of the religions of the Book. It is the rampartagainst all negative and nihilating forces. To search for the origins and thecauses of the failures and the shortcomings of this personalism, however,would take us too far afield in the present context.

To sum up, I cited the example of our Jacob Boehme as exemplary of those

for whom the supreme goal of the human Quest in this world is not the Ensnullo modo determinatum (even if this entirely undetermined being ispresented as the ideal of traditional Asia). On the contrary, it is the Ensdeterminatum omni modo (the entirely determined being) that is the goal ofthis Quest. Outside of this there is noone left to speak of. Dialogue willonly take place between shadows. That is the very meaning of the topic Ihave proposed here: of negative theology as antidote to nihilism, becausethis negative theology authenticates the eternal birth of the person. The


19/30

essential for the human being does not lie in self-annihilation through fusionin the divine, or in the collectivity that is its illusory laicization, it does not liein abandoning that which defines one as a person and instates one in being.On the contrary, it is in the realization of that which is the most profoundand the most personal that the human being fulfils his or her essential

function, a theophanic function: to express God, to be the theophore, theGod-bearer.

The contrast that puts us in the position to choose may be expressed by thetwo Latin formulas that we owe to Boehmes great interpreter, Franz vonBaader: To the thesis: Omnis determination est negatio (all determinationis negation, this is the thesis that sees personalism as the source ofnihilism), Boehme implicitly opposes the belief: Omnis determinatio estpositio (all determination is position that is, simultaneously positing andsituating (25). Everything that we have tried to show here today isrecapitulated in the contrast between these two perspectives. So, whetherwe assume responsibility for the past or for the future, either way we arecapable of confronting the question: where is nihilism?

IV. Where is Nihilism?

To this question we can now answer that nihilism is not to be found in theprinciple of individuation denounced earlier. This principle is, on thecontrary, the rampart against nihilism, on condition that it directs itselftowards the integral ego, not the ego that our bad habits qualify asnormal. In other words: nihilism appears to us in the very alienation of the

principle of individuation. This, because all determination, far from beingnegativity, is positive; because the personal form of Being is the latterssupreme determination, and because it is the latters supreme revelation.Thus everything that tends to abolish this [personal form of Being],constitutes either a threat of or a symptom of nihilism. And this menace canconceal itself behind forms that seem different while being fundamentallyidentical. I mean to say that the character that Dostoevsky named theGrand Inquisitor disposes of a great number of uniforms to choose from.On the other hand, we are warned to be on our guard, for example, in thefollowing lines of a psychologist cited by Theodore Roszack, telling us thatintegrity or real mental health entails, one way or another, the dissolution

of the normal ego, of the false self cunningly adapted to our sociallyalienated reality; the emergence of internal archetypes, [that are the]mediators of divine power, the end or full term of this death consisting in arebirth and a recreation of a new functioning of the ego, wherein the self nolonger betrays but rather serves the divine.(26).

Let us accord their proper weight to each of these very dense lines. Theyhave the character of an initiatic instruction, inviting us first of all to die with


20/30

respect to an ego mutilated by an alienated social reality, and thenconducting us to the new birth of a regenerated self, invested with a divinefunction that henceforth it has the power to withstand and fulfil. From thispoint on we are justified in posing the capital question: What is theperson? This question is implicit these days in much research that appears

disordinate, because desperate, but which is in fact ordinated upon [or builtupon and organized around] the presentiment that the decisive secret, whichis the hidden value of personal consciousness, is not to be found, forexample, in some kind of class consciousness, but in a consciousness of theconsciousness revealing the latters secret. [Or, put in more visual andtraditional terms, the hidden value of personal consciousness is to be foundin the Hidden Treasures relationship to and knowledge of the creature that ithas created and by whom it is known.]

I had the privilege, last May, of participating in a conference at the Instituteof Philosophy at the University of Tours, which had as its theme The Humanand the Angel. Simply pronouncing such a theme these days sounds like achallenge directed towards common opinion and received ideas. Indeed, it isbecause it is a challenge that such a theme contains and conceals preciselythat secret path upon which one may find the answer to the question I amnow posing: What is the person? On this path, it is to our Iranianphilosophers --to whom I have long owed a great deal-- that I will appeal inshowing how the answer to this question appears to me, and finally how Isee the message of Iranian philosophy as it applies to our presentconference.

I find this answer by referring to a concept that is fundamental to theanthropology of pre-Islamic Zoroastrian Iran, that of the Fravarti (thecorrect pronunciation of that which is written fravashi ; and in Persianforhar). In Zoroastrianism the word designates the celestial archetype ofeach being of light --their superior Self, their guardian Angel. This celestialarchetype belongs to their very being because it is each ones singularcelestial counter-part. The concept is so fundamental to Zoroastrianpersonalism --as the very law of being-- that Ohrmazd himself, hisArchangels (Amahraspandn) and all the Angel-Gods (Izad, cf. the Dii-Angelithat we find in Proclus) also have their respective fravartis (27). It is thisfravarti that gives the person his or her true dimension. A human person is a

person only by virtue of this celestial, archetypal, angelic dimension. Thisangelic dimension is the celestial pole without which the terrestrial pole of itshuman dimension is completely depolarised, reduced to vagabondage andperdition. The drama then, would be the loss of this pole, the loss of thiscelestial dimension, because the entire fate or destiny of the person isengaged in this drama.

And it is precisely there that we must strike at the Western drama of our


21/30

day, a West that encompasses vast Oriental regions, precisely at the pointmarked by the theme of our conference.

We must call an assembly and rally around this ancient concept fromZoroastrian Iran, for, under different names, we find the equivalent just

about everywhere, as much in the Abrahamic world as in the Greek world. Ican only supply a few simple indicative reminders in the present context(28) We find the functional equivalent in the Hermetic Perfect Nature (al-tibal-tmm) so essential in the philosophy of Suhravard and admirablyexplained by Abl Barakt Baghdd. It is also the notion of the Witness inthe Heavens, of the Shaykh al-ghayb, secret personal guide, that we findin Najmoddn Kobr, Semmnn, Aziz Nasaf. It is the form of light that,during initiation, conjoins itself to the adept in Ismailism, a precisereminiscence of Manicheanism (cf. the Paraclete or Angel of the prophetMani).

The idea may also be represented by the image of the subtle body, or theaetherial spiritual body, or by the image of the celestial garment (the songof the Pearl from the Acts of Thomas), or by that of the Tselem (form) inthe Jewish Kabalah that recapitulates the rest. It is the celestial Self that isimplied in the formula to see ones self, to know ones self. Because theform is the primordial Form of the human being, the supreme archetypalImage according to which the human being was created. It is the mirror inwhich God or rather the Angel of God, the Angel of the Face (29) appearsto visionaries. The answer given to the prophet of Islam was: you will notsee me, lan tarn (Quran 7/139), and yet we have his testimony: I saw

my lord (raito rabbi) in the most beautiful of forms (30).

The integral Ego, the integral person, is this unusambo, is this dualitude.The monadological conception of each human monad as mundusconcentratus presupposes this double accommodation of the Angel and theHuman, for in order to be integral it must contain both a pole in thecelestial world and a pole in the terrestrial world. This is what, still to thisday, the Iranian philosophers of the Avicennian tradition designate by theterm alam aqli, a term that was translated into latin as saeculumintelligibile. With spiritual individuality at its summit, the saeculumintelligibile is a spiritual world in itself, an Ain, the Avicennian term

significantly reviving the Gnostic designation of Eons (Ains), [that are the]spiritual entities of gnosis (31). Thus then, the integral Ego tendsprogressively towards being an Ens omni modo determinatum, a radicalinversion of the step-by-step process seeking identification with theundetermined Absolute. This simple reminder of Boehmes position sufficesto indicate where the threat of nihilism may be seen to arise.

Clearly, this menace arises precisely there where the spiritual, transcendent,


22/30

angelic dimension of the person disappears. With the disappearance of theFravarti who gives the person, without any institutional intermediary, his orher dimension beyond the confines of this world. It is when this dimension,which is the supreme principle of individuation, disappears, that the invasionof nihilism begins. Now is not the time nor is this the place to embark on a

history of this situation. It started a long time ago. It is the history of thehuman being deprived of fravarti. And without any doubt --because theZoroastrians are the ones who had the force to look the principle of activenihilitude, the horrible Ahrman right in the face-- it is of this same menaceof that they had had the intimation while meditating upon the invasion of theluminous Ohrmazdian creation by the negativity of Ahrman. Ohrmazdsummoned all the fravartis to his aid; without their help he could not havedefended the ramparts of the Heavens. This is a significant and tellingcharacteristic of ancient Zoroastrian Iranian thought: the menace is soterrifying that the God of Light needs the help of all of his own. Henceforth apact of chivalric solidarity binds together the Lord of Wisdom (Mazda) and allthe celestial chivalry. They are partners in one and the same battle. We findthe idea of this same chivalric pact in the mystical solidarity of the Rabb andthe marbb, of the Lord and his vassal, in Ibn Arabi, and wherever else theidea of the fotovvat, in Persian javnmard (spiritual chivalry), appears.

So then, what happens when the celestial dimension of the person --thatdimension that constitutes the very being and supreme individuation of theperson-- disappears?

What happens is the rupture of the pact of reciprocal engagement.

Subsequently, the entire relation between God and the human being isaltered. Their solidarity is broken. They no longer answer for one another, inthe same battle. They draw themselves up in confrontation as master andslave. One of the two must disappear. Prometheanism would have stolen thesacred Fire by force, whereas in Mazdeism humans were the guardians ofthis sacred Fire that the celestial powers had given into their keeping. Andthis Prometheanism, to so long as it serves its ends, this Prometheanism willadopt every form possible of the Grand Inquisitor.

To think by ones self, to work properly ones self according to ones owninitiative, to freely dare the Promethean adventure, is a task that many

humans would prefer to avoid. And so the Grand Inquisitor takes it in chargein their stead, on condition that they renounce being themselves. It shall notbe allowed to the human being to comport anything innate. Everything thatit is, it would have received and acquired from its environment, from the all-powerful pedagogy that takes it in charge (32). How to be ones self whenthe self is annihilated (33)? And so it is that nihilitude swallows itself up in adesacralized world. How can the human being, in the absence of his or herown proper [singular] --and henceforth annihilated-- person, possibly


23/30

encounter [and countenance] a God personalizing itself for him or for her?Nothing is left but to pray to this God of the [undetermined unmodulated]exister to exist.

All the forms of imperious agnosticism and of the agnostic imperative will

then mark the triumph of nihilism: the reality of being limited uniquely tothe empirical world, the truth of knowledge limited to sense perception andto the abstract laws of the understanding. In short, all that the notion of theworld entails reduced to the so-called scientific and objective plane, andconsequently the reality of events limited to the events of empirical History,in such a way that there is no longer any way out of the myth or history dilemma, because we are no longer capable of intimating the existence ofevents in the Heavens. We were saying earlier that all our reigningideologies are the laicizing of theological systems having perished in theirtriumph.

We mean thereby that the divine Incarnation has transformed itself intosocial or socio-political Incarnation. Subsequently, it is the very idea of thisIncarnation that manifests the gravity of its consequences. The officialdogma could not stabilize the paradoxical equilibrium between human anddivine nature. There needed, either for the human element to abolish thedivine, or for the divine to volatilize the human. Monophysitismaccomplished the latter and we may say that the phenomenon ofsocialization and the totalitarianism that it leads to are naught butMonophysitism running against the grain (34).

These are all consequences of the failure or the disappearance ofpersonalism of that personalism that we have heard denounced asfomenter of nihilism. Quite the opposite. Indeed, we must reestablish orreactivateAnd so we must draw up, or simply set back upon its feet, which isto say reactivate, a rival reality principle to this nihilizing reality, which isto say a rival to nihilism plain and simple.

V. Towards a Reality Principle Rival to Nihilism

We will find this principle precisely by starting from the dialogue that thedouble dimension of the integral person both presupposes and instates

between its celestial and terrestrial poles, or, in Iranian terms, between theFravarti (or Angel) and the Soul. Since it is the rupture of this bipolarity thatallows the nihilitude of the nihil to return on the offensive, we must instateor restore a reality principle that renders this reversal impossible, a reversalthat is just as fatal when the personal God is confounded with and lost in theundetermined Absolute, as when the latter is secularized at the level ofsocial Incarnation.


24/30

The mystery of mysteries (ghayb al-ghoyb in Ismailism and in Islamicgnosis) is manifestativum sui. As we have already seen (in the writings ofBoehme and Ibn Arabi) by its very essence the latter tends towards its ownauto-manifestation. The idea of this manifestation presupposes eo ipso thesecond term: the one to whom it manifests itself. There is therefore eo ipso

correlation between this auto-generation leading the divine Absolute tomanifest itself as personal God, this intra-divine History and the History ofthe soul tearing itself away from exterior oppression and pressures so thatits eternal Idea --which is the very secret of its unique personhood-- mayfinally emerge.

There is correlation between divine birth and the birth of the soul for whomthe divine birth occurs. This correlation thus connects the two terms in aninterdependence, a reciprocal solidarity, such that neither one can continueto exist without the other For one of the terms to disappear entails theother falling prey to the nihil. There is correlation between the death ofGod and the death of the human person. We have spoken of a pact ofchivalric solidarity, the original idea of which comes from the celestialchivalry of ancient Zoroastrian Iran. But then what order of truth and whatorder of reality, that is to say what form of knowledge, does the perceptionof this bipolarity presuppose, and in which region of the world of Being doesit take place and have its place?

The propositions dictated by a cataphatic theology that have not passedthrough the trial of apophatic theology, as well as those dictated bysociology having substituted itself for theology, (philosophy remaining the

servant of sociology after having passed as the servant of theology) havethe form we designate as dogmas. This means that they are provenpropositions, that are established once and for all and that, consequently,impose themselves with authority uniformly upon each and every one. Thedogmatists leave no place for real dialogue, but only for confrontation.

On the other hand, because the truths perceived as constitutive of thisconnection (between the God manifesting itself as a person (biblically : theAngel of the Face) and the person that the personal God promotes to therank of a person by virtue of this revelation) are unique in each instance,this connection is in no way dogmatic but fundamentally existential. It

cannot express itself as a dogma , but only as a dokma. The two termsderive from the same Greek verb doko, signifiying both to appear, or toshow as, and to believe, to admit. The dokma marks the link ofinterdependence between the form of that which manifests itself and the onefor whom it manifests. It is this correlation that is the very meaning of theterm doksis.

Unfortunately, it is from this term that the routine accumulated by centuries


25/30

of the history of Western dogmas has drawn the term docetism, synonym ofphantasmatic, unreal, appearance. Consequently, the original primarymeaning must be restored: what we mean by docetism is in fact thetheological critique, or rather theosophical critique, of religious knowledge. Acritique which, reflecting upon that which is visible for the believer but

invisible for the non-believer, examines and investigates the very nature andcauses of this visibility. Nature and causes that necessarily entail the[revelatory] event taking place neither in the world of sense perception norin the abstract world of the understanding. This event occurs within andconsists of the correlation between the form and the experience ofmanifestation. We are therefore in need of another world to safeguard theontological standing of this relation which is neither a logical, nor aconceptual, nor a dogmatic relation. It is a theophanic relation thatconstitutes a visionary realism wherein appearance becomes apparition.

It is this same intermediary world that has, for centuries now, preoccupiedso many of our Iranian philosophers, from Suhravardi (who died in 1191) toMoll Sadr Shrz (who died in 1640) and right up to the present days(Sayyed Jalloddn Ashtyn). It is the intermediary world between theworld of the Aql (the world of the pure Intelligences) and the world of senseperception, and which is designated as alm al-mithl, the world of theImage --not the image perceived by the senses, but the metaphysicalimage.

This is why, in my books, I have translated this term, alm al-mithl, afterthe Latin mundus imaginalis, by the term imaginal world, in order to

properly differentiate it from the imaginary that we identify with the unreal.Without such a differentiation we would fall back into the abyss ofagnosticism from which the imaginal world, on the contrary, must preserveus. This world where bodies become spiritualized and where the Spirits takebody is essentially the world of subtle bodies, a spiritually aetherial world,freed from the laws of corruptible matter that apply to this world, but notfrom those of the spatial dimension (that of mathematical solids). For [theimaginal world is] in eminent possession of all the qualitative richness of thesensible world, but in an incorruptible state.

This intermediary world is where visionary events, the visions of the

prophets and the mystics (the eschatological events) take place. Withoutthis intermediary world, these events no longer have their place. Themundus imaginalis is the path by which we may free ourselves from theliteralism to which the religions of the Book have always been inclined tosuccumb. It is the ontological level at which the spiritual meaning of therevelations becomes the literal meaning, because it is at this level that weattain a sacramental perception or a sacramental consciousness of beingsand of things.


26/30

By this I mean a consciousness of their theophanic function, because [themundus imaginalis] preserves us from confusing an icon, precisely ametaphysical image, with an idol. In the absence of this intermediary worldwe remain sentenced to incarceration in the uni-dimensional history of

empirical events. The events in the Heavens (divine birth and birth of thesoul, for example) no longer regard us, for we have turned our [inner]eyes away from them.

Thus, I would tend to see all the regions of thought and of conscience thathave succumbed to a Cartesian dualism (opposing the world of thought tothe world of quantifiable space) from which they can no longer freethemselves as the most glaring symptoms of the nihilism to which we havefallen prey in this day and age. The hold that this perspective may take onus renders the conception of a spiritual body, of spiritual matter, so difficult,if not impossible, that the timid attempts made some time ago by WilliamJames, and more vigorously later by Bergson, provoked in their time aconsiderable degree of agitation (35). At the very most the ethnologistsspoke of such conceptions as primitive. In fact it is not a question of aconception that is primitive in the ethnological sense, but ratherontologically primordial. I believe that much has changed since then. Inaddition to the increase in research in this frontier science that we call thepsy domain, philosophy has for its part increased its attempts to escapefrom the Cartesian dilemma.

The hour has thus come when, better than simply comparing, we can

combine the convergent efforts of a Jacob Boehme and a Moll SadrShrz, by instoring a metaphysics of the active Imagination as organ of theintermediary world of subtle bodies and spiritual matter, quarta dimensio.The intensification of the acts of the exister, as professed in the metaphysicof Sadr Shrz, raises the status of the body to the state of a spiritualbody, or even a divine body (jism ilh). The organ of this transmutation, ofthis generation of the spiritual body is, in the writings of Boehme as in thoseof Moll Sadr, the power of the imaginatrix [or the power of the creativeimagination], which is the magical faculty par excellence (Imago-Magia)because it is the soul itself animated by its Perfect Nature, its celestialpole. And so, while the disenchantment (Entzauberung) of a world reduced

to a utilitarian positivity, without an end term in the beyond, appears to usas one of the destructive aspects of nihilism, we can still see where theramparts may be raised to counter this nihilism.

I have spoken at such great length, in my books, about the metaphysics ofthe Imaginal and of the intermediary world, which appears to me to be anessential element of the current message of Iranian philosophy, that Icannot add anything here. (36). I would have to give a whole other lecture.


27/30

In summing up then, I do not wish to recapitulate my entire presentation,but simply to recall the following points.

The theme of our conference called into question the consequences of theimpact of the West upon the possibility of dialogue with the so-called

traditional civilizations. In my analysis I attempted to draw out the primaryphenomenon, such that it would permit us to displace the culpability that isimputed to the West: accused of being responsible for a materialism towhich the spiritualism of the East would be opposed. I meant to suggestthat this culpability does not spring forth from the very essence of theWestern identity, but from a betrayal with respect to precisely that whichconstitutes this essence. Today the opposition between East and West, inthe geographical or ethnic sense of the words has been left behind. Forneither that which we call spiritualism nor that which we call materialismis an inalienable monopoly.

Otherwise, how would what we call the westernization of the East even bepossible? Is it a certainty that the West is responsible for thiswesternization? Or is it not rather the East itself that is responsible? Inbrief, here we are, Easterners and Westerners, faced with the sameproblems. Henceforth the words East and West will have to take on awhole other meaning than their geographical, political or ethnic meanings for if a pamphleteer of our day and age could write Rome is no longer inRome, it may well be that the East is no longer in the East. We arespeaking here of the East or Orient in the metaphysical sense of theword, as it is understood by the Iranian philosophers in the tradition of

Avicenna and Suhravard. Their Orient is the spiritual world (alam-qods)the celestial pole upon which, as we said, the integrality of the humanperson depends. Those who lose [and lose track of] this pole are thevagabonds of a [Western or] Occidental world which is the very opposite ofthe metaphysical Orient, regardless of whether, geographically, they areOriental or Occidental.

It is the question of the very possibility of dialogue that is at issue here: dowe want to make our way together to the rediscovery of that celestial polethat gives the human person his or her integral dimension? A dialogue, inthe real sense of the word, is only possible between persons having the

same aspiration towards the same spiritual dimension (which is altogetherdifferent from belonging to the same generation, for example). Teachingslike those of Jacob Boehme show us this integral dimension of the humanperson. The same aspiration, because, in fact, this integral dimension ofthe human being does not yet exist. It can only come to term at the end of along process which, far from redirecting us towards an illusory identificationwith a suprapersonal Absolute, accomplishes in itself the process by whichthe Absolute, the Absconditum, engendered itself as divine Person. For the


28/30

Absolute has no Face; only the Person has a Face permitting the face toface encounter, and it is in this face to face that the pact of chivalricsolidarity is made.

It is an aberration to drag that which we call the Absolute into the

vicissitudes of human destiny. On the other hand, the personal God and hisdevoted follower have appeared to us as partners in one and the samedestiny. Thus, the personal God, that could not die except through thebetrayal of its (co-)respondant, gives its true meaning to the humanadventure. And this is the profound truth contained in a notion that iscommon currency amongst those (the adherents of an intrepid spiritualismfound in the West) known as the Mormons: That which you are, God was.That which God is, you will be. In this sense, we would not only be thepartners of a dialogue. We would be the dialogue itself.

__________

1) Article written by Georges Vallin (Professor at the University of Nancy) in Revue philosophique , 277-288, Paris, July-September 1975, as well ashis more recent article : Pourquoi le non dualisme asiatique ? (Elmentspour une thorie de la philosophie compare) Ibid. n.2, pp. 157-175, 1978.

3)Ibid, p. 276. The italics are the authors own.

5)Notably Sayyed Ahmad Alav Ispahn and Hosayn Tonkbon. See S.J.Ashtyn and H. Corbin, Anthologie des philosophes iranienne depuis leXVIIe sicle jusqu nos jours, tome II (Bibliothque Iranienne, vol. 19).Teheran-Paris, 1975, p. 7-31 and 77-90 of the French language section seealso our study of [the paradox of monotheism] Le paradoxe dumonothisme, in Eranos-Jahrbuch 45-1976.

8)For the believer who profoundly lives the Iranian conception of Light, thePrometheus myth is felt to be a grotesque perversion of the reality of things.See our study: Ralisme et symbolisme des couleurs en cosmologie shite,

in Eranos-Jahrbuch , p. 170 sq, 41-1972. See also Jean Brun, Sisyphe,enfant de Promthe, in Eranos-Jahrbuch 46-1977.

15)See in particular the (Persian) treaty by Ab Yaqb Sejestn, Kashf al-Mahjb (Le Dvoilement des choses caches) an Ismaili text of the IVthcentury Hegire. Edited by Henry Corbin (Bibliothque Iranienne, vol. 1)Teheran-Paris, 1949. The author pursues a rigorous dialectic of doublenegativity: non-being and non non-being. God is not-in-time and not-not-in-


29/30

time; not-in-space and not-not-in-space, etc. See also, by the same authorLe Livre des Sources (Kitb al Yanb), Arabic text edited and translated inour Trilogie Ismalienne (Bibliothque Iranienne, vol.9), Teheran-Paris 1961.See the index s.v. tawhd.

16)See H. Corbin, En Islam iranien: aspects spirituals et philosophiques,Paris, Gallimard, 1971-1972, tome IV index on Qz Sad Qomm, severalchapters deal with the the Shaykhie School in this same volume. On RajabAl Tabrzi, see our Anthologie des philosophes iraniens (supra note 5) tomeI, p.98-116 of the French section, as well as our Philosophie iranienne etphilosophie compare, Teheran, Iranian Academy of Philosophy, 1977, Paris,Buchet/Chastel.

17) Cf. Alexandre Koyr, La philosophie de Jacob Boehme, Paris 1929, amonumental study as valuable today as when it was first written and whichwe follow closely here. See pages 303-305 sq.

18)See our study of [the paradox of monotheism] Le paradoxe dumonothisme, previously cited (note 5) a more ample development of whichis to be found in our study of the [necessity of angelology] Ncessit delanglologie (Conference at the Tours Institute of Philosophy, May 1977), inLes Cahiers de lhermtisme.

21)Koyr distinctly highlights the contrast in a brief analysis, ibid., p.316,note 2.

22)After Koyrs apt translation.

25)It is to Koyr that we owe this welcome interposition of the Latinformulas of Fr. Von Baader which recapitulate the entire question.

27)See our two studies previously cited in note 18.

28)See the index at the back of our Avicenne et le Rcit visionnaire, Terrecleste et corps de resurrection, En Islam iranien, LArchange empourpr,etc. See also Gershom Scholem, Von der mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit,Frankfurt am M., 1973, p. 249

29)On the Angel of the Face , see the final section of our study Ncssitde langlologie (previously cited note 18).

30)See our LImagination cratrice dans le soufisme dIbn Arab, 2nd ed.,Paris, Flammarion, 1977, the entire chapter (together with the texts that areto be found translated in the footnotes) on the Form of God (srat al-Haqq) [the Sourat of Truth].


30/30

31)See our Philosophie iranienne et philosophie compare (previously cited,note 16) index s.v. lam aql.

32)Have certain people not already gone so far as to claim that

chromosomes are a fascist invention!

33)See Alexandre Zinoviev, Les hauteurs bantes, Lausanne, LAgedhomme, 1977.

34)See our Ncessit de langlologie (previously cited, note 18), the entirechapter on the Christos Angelos.

35)Of which A. Koyr reminds us. Op. cit., p.113, note 3.

36) See En Islam iranien... tome IV index s.v. ; LArchange empourpr,recueil de quinze traits et rcits mystiques de Sohravard, traduits dupersan et de larabe et comments par H. Corbin, [The Crimson Archangel, acollection of fifteen treaties and mystical tales translated from Persian andArabic and with commentary by H. Corbin] Paris, Fayard, 1976, index s.v.,as well as the index of our work on Ibn Arabi (previously cited, note 30).

Sin Autor Apophatic Theology as an Antidote to Nihilism

Documents

Transcript of Sin Autor Apophatic Theology as an Antidote to Nihilism