Raoul Mortley What is Negative Theology the Western Origin

8/12/2019 Raoul Mortley What is Negative Theology the Western Origin

1/8

WHAT IS NEGATIVE THEOLOGY?: THE WESTERN ORIGINSRaoul Mortley

Negative theology beg ins with the speculations of the Greek ph ilosophers. Itdenotes a method of know ing the transcendent essence of things, called theGood b y Plato, the One by the N eoplatonists, and Father by the Christians.It is a method which places its confidence not in affirming, but denying, andtherefore constitutes a use of language which is unique. The via negativauses language against itself, since it negates the positive claims made inlanguage a bout the nature of things. The ability to organise inform ation, tomake claims about things, to use verbs in a positive sense, is called intoquestion. The essence of the method lies in the negating of statementsintended to be of transcendent applicability: the One is not just, not noble,not existent. The ordinary capacity to reach elevated sentiments is subjectedto radical doubt, so that the manoeuvre to formulate the loftiest claims ofhuman experience is transformed into an anti-mano euvre. The first stages, "which strain to give linguistic expression to that which is perceived butwhich can scarcely be imagined, give way to the second, which simplynegate the first. The pride of linguistic achievem ent, and in the virtuosity ofthe highest deployments of language, gives way to a kind of scepticism. Thisscepticism, howev er, is of a specific kind, since th~ negation is p arasitic onthe affirmation: the latter is logically prior to the former..In any standardexposition of negative theology, the negations apply to a selected list ofestablished and conventional descriptive statements. There has to havealready been a determination of the attributes to be applied to the ultimateprinciple, and it is these, specifically, which yield to the via negativa: th sepithets are now said to be inapplicable. It is in this way that languagediscovers its own limits: it is capable of self-measurement and self-supersession.Clearly the way o f negation is a second phase ac tivity, coming after thefirst flush of enthusiasm for language and scientific discourse. The firstperiod of Greek philosophy, from the Presocratics to Aristotle, shows greatconfidence in the ability of language to convey the essential facts abouthuman and cosmic reality: the art of logos was the highest achievement ofthe human race thus far, and this early period of exuberance over itscapacities is not muddied by any sceptical doubt. Even Plato, with all hisinterest in the gift of the Muses and the extra-rationai capacities of thehuman mind, did not employ the negative as an epistemologicai tool, andneither did he emph asise silence as an important part of thought. Both thesethemes, together with a surge in the use of the alpha privative, characterise


2/8

R A O U L M O R T L E Ythe philosophy of the late Greek period. In fact the preoccupation of theearliest Greek philosophers was not so m uch w ith knowledge and its limits,as with the nature of reality. They asked ontological questions rather thanepistemological ones, and were always concerned with defining the natureof what is. Whether reality was to be resolved into numbers, flux, primaryelements or B eing, the Presocratics always focussed on that first question ofphilosophy: what is the nature of reality? The progress of philosophy musthave caused a certain amount of exhilaration, just as the progress of sciencein our own century has caused tremendous confidence in its stability andproblem-solving capacities. Classical Greek thought was dominated bywords: the average citizen was bombarded by them, in the form of poe try,drama, philosophy and above all, rhetoric. Travelling sophists declaimed tothose who could pay, dem ocratic assemblies were dominated by those whocould be heard, and who could persuade, and there was no escape even inthe market-place, where Socrates was lurking, eager for a dialecticalexchange. No wonder, as Socrates observes himself, that Athens spawned aclass of misologists, word-haters, who had had enough of the.age of logos.

Doubts about language also surfaced among the philosophers, andPlato s Parmenides develops this theme throughout its discussion of therelation of Being, Unity and Language. The Parmenides begins with adiscussion of the theory of forms, and one of Plato s concerns here isepistemologicaI: without the existence of some stable basis for things, itseems impo ssible, that thought should have a nything on w hich to rest. If allwere Heracleitean flux, then the power of discourse would be utterlydestroyed (135b). Then follows the series of eight hypotheses on unity,which are not only about unity and multiplicity, but also about the assess-ment of discourse in the light of th~ claims made about the O ne. The firsthypothesis, for example, has the One in its purest form, with no parts, noshape, no beginning or end, and no movement or rest. If the One is to bedefined like this, it is concluded that there can be no rational account givenof it, nor any perception, opinion or science of it made possible (142a).

It is because the issue of unity became so important in the Academictradition that these questions about the value of discourse persisted, andeventually rose to prominence. Speusippus carried on this discussionimmediately after Plato, and elevated the One to a position beyond theGood, Intellect, Being and the mathematical One. Though his pro-nouncements on the value of discourse do not survive, we m ay well assumewith M erlan,2 that he was the progenitor of negative theology. Even so, theclaim to this title may well have been laid by Plato already, since he mak es1 . Ph ae d o 89d.2. Ph. Merlan, From Pl a ton i sm to Neopl a ton i s m (The H ague 1960), p.128. See the fragmentsof Speusippus in P. Lang, De Speusippi Academ ici ScriptZs (Frankfurt 1964).


3/8

WHAT IS NEGATIVE THEOLO GY?the following observation on discourse:In my opinion all being conceived in discourse must be broke n up intotiny segments. For it wou ld always be apprehended as a mass devoid of

one. Parmenides 165b)This observation about the fragmenting power of discourse will be f6und tohave echoes right throughout the history of G reek philosophy, as it becomesclearer and clearer that intelligence is for the multiple, and that if applied toa unity, will inevitably shatter it. La nguage a nd unity are simp ly seen to beincompatible.A ristotle contributes to the development of negative theology in a com -pletely different, and entirely unconscious w ay. He offers a development ofthe term aphairesis (abstraction) wh ich he intends to be useful in the processof developing concepts of the mathematical kind, and which is quiteremoved from the unity/discourse debate of Plato and his successors.A bstractions, to Aristotle, were m uch the same as they are to us: he wasthinking of the kind of thought which grasps at something which w e knowto be present in things, but which can be isolated from its sphtio-temporalinstances. In order to consider such things we seem to need to separate themfrom their ma ny contexts, and it is this process of separation which con -stitutes the method of abstraction referred to. The method o f aphairesis isthe fundam ental concept of ne gative theology in the first generation of itsexponents, that is, the Middle Platonists and Plotinus, and Clement ofAlexandria on the Christian side. It is important to take note of these begin-nings, since they are not nearly so unfamiliar as one might expect. Negativetheology begins with the simp le technique of abstracting for the p urpose ofconsidering ideas rather than bodies.Aristotle s use of the term is as follows. Abstraction is the principlewhereby one denies an attribute to a thing in order to conceive more clearlyof another attribute which belongs to it it may also involve a systematicnetwork of d enials in order for the principle in question to emerge clearlyenough. Nevertheless aphaires i s is not a matter of negation, which isdiscussed by Aristotle in an entirely different way. In Plato negation apophasis) had been seen as a matter of oppositeness,~ and then ofotherness, and the legacy of this discussion surfaces in Aristotle. The

Interpretation (16a31 ft.) has a detailed discussion of negation in these veryterms, but the question of abstraction comes up in an entirely different con-text. It arises in discussion of ma thematical methods:... the method of mathematics makes statements by abstraction,whereas that of ph ysics proceeds by addition.3. See Sophist 257b ff.4. On th e He av e ns 299a14.


4/8

RAOUL MORTLEYThere is a clear statement here of the view that whilst the other sciences dealwith an accumulation of data, mathematics proceeds by isolating the sub-ject of its interest. Its focus lies not in instances, but in principles w hich findtheir exemplification in such instances. Ontological inquiry is similar, saysAristotle since it takes only one thing out of many for considerationnamely being. Abstractions that is f ir i~ ~atO~o~w are concepts whichseparate things from the surroundings in which they reside. Can the pointbe separated from the l ine? The process of aphairesis is invoked here, inorder to determine whether a line is in fact a collection of points. If so thenit could be expected that the point could be abstracted from it as being itsessential building-block. The line was regarded as the instantiation of thepoint being the next stage in its proliferation into sensible reality. Therefollowed the generation of the plane surface and volume itself so thatmaterial reality is understood to be a process of growing out into steadilyincreasing bulk. This understanding of the composition of physical realityevidently dominated m athem atical thinking, and the result was the view ofabstraction as outlined above. It was clear that a method of progressiveremoval was necessary if one were to arrive at the basic ingredients in thisprocess. The Middle Platonists formulate their negative theology in the lightof this concept of abstract thinking built as it is on the idea that reality isincremental in i ts generation. Aristotle and h is colleagues provide the M id-dle Platonists with a technique w hich aim s at stripping awa y in,essentials, infavour of the essential. It is a way of dealing with incremental creep.Having noted these tw o ingredients in the formation of the via negativai t should also be noted that a change in language accom panied the M iddlePlatonists advocacy of the via negativa. Hermetic, Gnostic, Christian andMiddle Platonist systems of thought all show a sudden upsurge in the use ofthe alpha privative that is the alpha which negates adjectives similarly tothe En glish in , as invisible for exam ple. The ultima te essence had begunto be designated by a djectives in the negative form: the quest for the righttheological adjective yielded to the ne gating of such ad jectives. U sually themo st applicable adjectives only w ere negated; i t is not true that all sorts ofnegative adjectives w ere brought forward to describe the highest principle,or the divine. God had been thought to be knowable and existent, for exam-ple: now he w as said to be unknowable and inexistent. He w as also said tobe invisible though this seems hardly unexpected; in general it is truehowever that only those adjectives were negated which in their positiveform, had som e claim to be applicable to the divine. The negations are notindiscriminately piled on to each other in som e sort of ecstatic outpouring of5. Posterior A nalytics 81 b2.6 On Indivisible Lines 972a13.


5/8

WH AT IS NEGATIVE THEOLOGY?denials, but rather are carefully tailored to existing claims about the divineessence. The new effusion of alpha privatives is fairly precisely aimed atcontradicting older theological claims: the negations are parasitic on prioraffirmations, and they cannot invent themselves. W here God had b een saidto be good, he is now said to be no t good, and it seems that the dependen cyof the negation on the original affirmation constitutes a real limitation onits semantic range. W hen one say s that God is not-good, there seems to besomething about the word good which one wants to retain, in spite of thehotness added to it. The reversal of the traditional god-language is notentirely a departure from the original semantic field, which is on ymodified.It is worth pointing ou t this characteristic of the alpha privatives, namelythat they retain rather than annul the semantic field of traditionalkataphatic theology, since one might easily think the opposite to be thecase. Further, what does the negative expression not goo d imply? It couldsuggest an infinity of possibilities m inus one, that ev erything is applicableexcept goodness. Alternatively it could imply a specific opposite togoodness: common-sense often extends negation into opposition, though acoherent logical account would scarcely do so. Given these possibilities it is "here pointed o ut that the alpha privatives constitute neither a licence for arandom parading of thoug hts, nor a collection of opp osites: they are rathera means o f refining the terms to w hich they attach themselves.

Alpha privative words are ambiguous, and the alpha prefix falls intothree categories, o r~orlr~x6v, ~O ~OTIX6V and ~nt rar~x .6v . Shipp suggests~that some alpha prefixes had no semantic significance, and this category ofunmo tivated alphas may be added to the three distinguished by Liddelland S cott. The intensive use of the prefix functions in a precisely oppositemanner to its privative use, since in the former case the m eaning of the w ordis enhanced an d m ultiplied, and in the latter it is negated. This fascinatingpair of contradictory possibilities made it possible for Plato to play anelaborate joke on the meaning of the word Apollo, as I have arguedelsewhere: to counter the d ivine significance of the name which had beenalleged to mean the absence of many things through the invocation of thealpha privative, Plato by implication took the alpha of Apo llo to be inten-sive, claiming that the etymology of the word revealed its meaning to bemany poles? Apollo became the sym bol of negative theology because hisname allowed an etymological analysis which contained a hint of themetho d: it is my b elief that even a writer as early as Plato knew of the fan-7. G.P. Shipp, Modern G reek Evidence for the Ancient Greek Vocabulary (Sydney 1979),under A and hva--.8. Cratylus, 405b ff.


6/8

l RAOUL MORTLEYciful etymology and its significance, and that he deliberately made fun of itby exploiting the opposite sense of the alpha prefix.Yet even the alpha privative was ambiguous. This most important pointhas not often been grasped : Aristotle comments on it and indicates that hisunderstanding of the Greek language allows quite a range of meanings tothe alpha privative. The wo rd uncuttable (~rr~r/rov) may m ean impossibleto cut, or simply hard to cut: Aristotle does not say much here, apartfrom the examples of usage he cites, but clearly enough the latter case wouldresult from the use of hyperbo le.9 If he is right about the Greek language,and it is reasonable to assume that he is, then a considerable range of m ean-ings migh t attach to the alpha privatives of the see rs of late antiquity. ThatGod sh ould be said to be limitless might m erely mean that he is relativelyunlimited, rather than that he is absolutely without limit; similarly forinvisible, unknowable and so on.For these reasons the use of the alpha p rivative is rather slippery to assess.It lacks conceptual precision, and one might suspect its users of aiming at acertain feeling about the transcendent, rather than at intellectually water-tight claims about it. I believe that this is so, and that the glut of alphaprivatives in the late Greek period is the sign of a new transcendentaltheology, but nothing much more than a sign. It may nevertheless be pos-sible to work out w hat the different schools of alpha privative were, therebydiscerning some intellectual pattern. Those of Basilides, for, example,clearly reflect a Parmenidean tradition against which he is negatively identi-fying himself: this revisionism often characterises the Gnostic systems, andthe alpha privatives may well be a key to the background against which thevarious reactions emerge.Aristotle regards the alpha p rivative as a form of negation, ~ and on nega-tion itself has some observations which are well worth keeping in mindwhen reading the Neoplatonists and the Christian philosophers. He clas-sifies the term n ot-man as an indefinite noun ," considering that a genuinenegation should result from the negativing of the verb in a sentence. Thefield of meaning is in no way tied down by either negative adjectives, ornegated nouns, and it m ay be for this reason that Aristotle rejects apophasisas a useful route to higher forms of thought.2 He prefers abstract thinking,aphairesis.

The chief problem confronting those who wished to identify the divinewas the fact that thought and languag e have a m ultiplying effect, made asthey were for the realm of the many. A bstraction was used as a means of9. Metap hysics 1023al.10. Met 1023633.11. On Interpretat ion 16a31.12. Met. I029a25.


7/8


8/8

RAOULMORT LEYEnn. V.8(13).9, 1 ff. there is an example o f the negative imagination at w ork:we are invited to imagine the material world as if it were one, with all itselements, including living creatures, the sun and the stars, wrapped upaltogether in a transparent sphere, in w hich everything is totally clear. Next,we are to take this imag e, and abstract its bulk; then w e abstract its extentand its substance; then we invoke the god w ho made the sphe re itself.He co mes bringing his own world with all the gods that are in it: he is oneand he is all; he is each and all, coming together into one, and be ing otherby the various pow ers, but all being one b y virtue of that one and man ypowe r. (loc.cit.)One m ay note here that we be gin by seeing things in a totality of parts, asencased in a sphere. This in fact corresponds to Plotinus view of thespherical encasem ent of the real: he is concerned h ere that we see thingsrightly to begin with, that is, holistically. Then the method of uphairesistakes over, and we remo ve various elements of this familiar and compositepicture. But then there com es a halt to the abstraction process, and to thethought process in general: we must invoke the god .The first Christian expo nent of negative theology has a sim ilar passage.In Strom. V.11.71.2, Clement uses the word analysis, but he means abstrac-tion, and says that contemplation involves abstracting depth from bodies,then breadth and length. Arriving at the point, we abstract its position andso are left with unity itself. Thig is said to be equivalent to casting ourselvesinto the greatness of Christ, but there remains a further stage, that of mov-ing up to the u nknow able First Cause. This takes place after the abstractionprocess has bee n exha usted, and constitutes another, extra-rational step. Aswith Plotinus, after the abstraction process we invoke the god: the firststage involves the unity which is a complex of parts, and the second thepure, unparticipated One. These are th~ two unities of Platos Parmenides,preserved as such by Plotinus, and called the Father and the Son byClement. In both cases the method of abstraction, the negative method,stops at the lower manifestations of the One.

Documents

Raoul Mortley What is Negative Theology the Western Origin