A Hermeneutics of Contemplative Silence: Paul Ricoeur and the Heart of Meaning Michele Therese Kueter Petersen University of Iowa

University of Iowa Iowa Research Online

Theses and Dissertations

2011 A hermeneutics of contemplative silence: Paul Ricoeur and the heart of meaning Michele Therese Kueter Petersen University of Iowa

This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1494

Recommended Citation Petersen, Michele Therese Kueter. "A hermeneutics of contemplative silence: Paul Ricoeur and the heart of meaning." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis, University of Iowa, 2011. http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1494.

Follow this and additional works at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/etd

Part of the Religion Commons

A HERMENEUTICS OF CONTEMPLATIVE SILENCE: PAUL RICOEUR AND THE HEART OF MEANING

by Michele Therese Kueter Petersen

An Abstract Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Religious Studies in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa

December 2011

Thesis Supervisor: Professor David E. Klemm

ABSTRACT

The practice of contemplative silence, in its manifestation as a mode of capable being, is a self-consciously spiritual and ethical activity that aims at a transformation of reflexive consciousness. I assert that contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being in which we have an awareness of the awareness of the awareness of being with being whereby we can constitute and create a shared world of meaning(s) through poetically presencing our being as being with others. The doubling and tripling of the term "awareness" refers to five contextual levels of awareness, which are analyzed, including immediate self-awareness, immediate objective awareness, reflective awareness, reflexive awareness, and contemplative awareness. The analysis culminates with the claim that contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being, one which creates the conditions of the possibility for contemplative awareness. A hermeneutics of contemplative silence manifests a deeper level of awareness--contemplative awareness-- as a poetics of presencing our human solidarity. Contemplative awareness includes both an experience and an understanding of the proper ordering of our relational realities. My claim is that contemplative awareness can and should accompany the practice of contemplative silence in order to appropriate the meaning of a silence embodied in the here and now, through the hermeneutical endeavor. Contemplative awareness elicits

movement in thinking, and involves the ongoing exercise of rethinking our relational 1

realities in and for the world. I join three moments in the hermeneutical process--description, explanation, and interpretation--with the three moments in the traditional religious journey to spiritual and ethical maturity--the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. I present a conceptual framework that opens to hermeneutics, and a way to think about ongoing appropriation of a mode of capable being as growth in the human capacity to make and carry meaning. The threefold way, as it is interpreted in this study, is a heuristic model of the invariant

2 elements of the tradition of contemplative silence. There is reflexivity to the structure, because a study of the practice is an exemplification of the practice, which produces the very practice that it is talking about.

Abstract Approved: ______Thesis Supervisor ______Title and Department ______Date

A HERMENEUTICS OF CONTEMPLATIVE SILENCE: PAUL RICOEUR AND THE HEART OF MEANING

by Michele Therese Kueter Petersen

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Religious Studies in the Graduate College of The University of Iowa

December 2011

Thesis Supervisor: Professor David E. Klemm

Graduate College The University of Iowa Iowa City, Iowa

CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL ______

PH.D. THESIS ______

This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of

Michele Therese Kueter Petersen has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Religious Studies at the December 2011 graduation.

Thesis Committee: ______David E. Klemm, Thesis Supervisor

______David Jasper

______Raymond A. Mentzer

______Christopher Merrill

______John Durham Peters To Daniel, Elizabeth, and Nicholas with love and gratitude

ii It is because Soulages or Mondrian did not imitate reality, in the restrictive sense of the word, because they did not make a replica of it, that their work has the power to make us discover, in our own experience, aspects up to then unknown. On a philosophical plane, this leads us to question the classical conception of truth as adequation to the real; for, if one can speak of truth in relation to the work of art, it is to the extent that this designates the capacity of the work of art to break a path in the real by renewing the real in accordance with the work itself, so to speak. Paul Ricoeur Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay

iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank the faculty and staff of the Department of Religious Studies for their support during my education here. I am grateful for their kindness and generosity. I am also grateful to the Graduate College at The University of Iowa for their generous support and the honor of the Ballard and Seashore Dissertation Year Fellowship. I extend my heartfelt thanks to all of the members of my dissertation committee: David E. Klemm, David Jasper, Raymond A. Mentzer, Christopher Merrill, and John

Durham Peters. I appreciate their graciousness and generosity, as well as their time. I especially want to thank my advisor, David E. Klemm, for his wisdom and devotion as a teacher. The clarity of his thinking and his relentless pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty are inspiring. Finally, I thank my mother and father, as well as my sisters for their love, support, and encouragement.

iv TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: A POETIC PRESENCE ...... 1

Thesis and Purpose ...... 1 Structure ...... 3 Chapter One: The Practice of Contemplative Silence as a Historical Phenomenon ...... 4 Chapter Two: Fallible Human ...... 4 Chapter Three: Fallenness and Fallibility Give Rise to Hermeneutics ...... 5 Chapter Four: Capable Human ...... 7 Chapter Five: The Practice of Contemplative Silence as a Transformative Spiritual and Ethical Activity ...... 11 Chapter Six: Understanding the Meaning of Capable Human ...... 19 Conclusion: A Ricoeurian Hymn to Humanity ...... 20

PART I: A DESCRIPTION ...... 23

INTRODUCTION TO PART I ...... 24

A Description of Contemplative Reality: The Cataphatic and Apophatic Ways ...... 25 CHAPTER ONE: THE PRACTICE OF CONTEMPLATIVE SILENCE AS A HISTORICAL PHENOMENON ...... 28

Origen (ca. 185-255) ...... 29 Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-395) ...... 34 Pseudo-Dionysius or Dionysius the Areopagite (ca. 500) ...... 38 Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) ...... 42 Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) ...... 46 John of the Cross (1542-1591) ...... 50 Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) ...... 55 Edith Stein (1891-1942) ...... 58 Thomas Merton (1915-1968) ...... 64

Conclusion ...... 67

PART II: AN EXPLANATION...... 69

INTRODUCTION TO PART II ...... 70

An Explanation of Human Reality: Intermedial Being ...... 72

CHAPTER TWO: FALLIBLE HUMAN ...... 76

The Philosophical Anthropology of Paul Ricoeur ...... 80 Theoretical Mediation ...... 86 Seeing ...... 87 Saying ...... 88 Imagination ...... 89 Practical Mediation ...... 95

v Character ...... 96 Happiness ...... 98 Respect ...... 100 Affective Mediation ...... 105 Pleasure ...... 107 Beatitude ...... 108 Conflict ...... 109 The Possibility of Human Being...... 117 Conclusion ...... 120 CHAPTER THREE: FALLENNESS AND FALLIBILITY GIVE RISE TO HERMENEUTICS ...... 122

From Reflective Philosophy to Hermeneutics ...... 125 Fallenness ...... 128 Fallibility...... 132 The Relationship Between Freedom and Evil ...... 135 A Hermeneutics of Symbol ...... 137

CHAPTER FOUR: CAPABLE HUMAN ...... 144

Ricoeur’s Hermeneutical Philosophy ...... 146 First Naiveté ...... 147 Critique ...... 149 Second Naiveté ...... 151 The Role of Expression and Discourse ...... 153 The Dialectic of Event and Meaning ...... 155 The Dialectic of Sense and Reference ...... 160 The Relation of Silence to Discourse ...... 161 Silence as a Phenomenon ...... 162 Discourse and Silence ...... 167 The Analysis of Silence ...... 169 Three Irreducible Moments of Silence ...... 175 Situating the Practice of Contemplative Silence ...... 177 The Ontological Significance of Silence ...... 178 The Hermeneutical Self ...... 181 Personal Identity ...... 181 Narrative Identity ...... 185

Moral Identity ...... 187 Aesthetic Identity ...... 190 Recognition ...... 191 Recognition as Identification ...... 192 Self-Recognition ...... 195 Mutual Recognition ...... 196

PART III: AN EXPLANATION, CONTINUED ...... 203

INTRODUCTION TO PART III ...... 204

An Explanation of Contemplative Reality: An Intermedial Way ...... 206 CHAPTER FIVE: THE PRACTICE OF CONTEMPLATIVE SILENCE AS A TRANSFORMATIVE SPIRITUAL AND ETHICAL ACTIVITY ...... 216

An Analysis of the Meaning of the Practice of Contemplative Silence ...... 217 The Dialectic of Silence and Language within the Word or Logos ...... 220 Two Ontic Examples of the Practice of Contemplative Silence ...... 222 Climbing the Mountain ...... 223 A Still Life Portrait ...... 226 Mediating Evil in Ricoeur’s Thought ...... 229 Immediate Self-Awareness ...... 235 Being as What Is in Understanding its Understanding ...... 235 Being as Non-Being in Understanding Being as Not ...... 242 Immediate Objective Awareness ...... 246 Mitsein ...... 247 Being-in ...... 251 Befindlichkeit ...... 253 Gelassenheit ...... 257 Serene Acquiescence and Attentiveness ...... 262 Reflective Awareness ...... 267 Reflexive Awareness ...... 270 Heidegger ...... 271 Ricoeur ...... 275 Schleiermacher ...... 278 Contemplative Awareness ...... 280 Scharlemann ...... 281 Chauvet ...... 285

PART IV: AN INTERPRETATION ...... 291

INTRODUCTION TO PART IV...... 292

An Interpretation of Contemplative Human Reality: An Intermedial Way of Being on the Way ...... 293 CHAPTER SIX: UNDERSTANDING THE MEANING OF CAPABLE HUMAN ...... 298

The Reflexive Transformation of Capable Human ...... 302 The Dynamics of Carmelite Spirituality: Blazing a Prophetic Path in the Fire of Love ...... 306

Contemplative Mediation in Carmelite Texts ...... 310 John of the Cross ...... 311 The Spiritual Canticle ...... 311 Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love ...... 321

CONCLUSION: A RICOEURIAN HYMN TO HUMANITY ...... 323

Contemplative Discourse: A Song of Hermeneutical Existence ...... 325

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 329

vii 1

INTRODUCTION: A POETIC PRESENCE

Thesis and Purpose In this study I propose to develop a hermeneutics of the religious phenomenon of contemplative silence, based on the philosophical hermeneutical theory of Paul Ricoeur. I shall approach the phenomenon of contemplative silence as a practice that produces the end that it seeks. Contemplative silence does not exist except as it is embodied in the activity of contemplating silence—an activity that is also the mode of being it intends to achieve. The practice of contemplative silence is not merely a theoretical phenomenon. It has also the nature of an ethical activity, since it is a practical mode of being. The practice of contemplative silence, in its manifestation as a mode of capable being, is a self-consciously spiritual and ethical activity that aims at a transformation of reflexive consciousness. In the dissertation, I engage in a constructive analysis and a creative interpretation of contemplative silence in which I assert that contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being in which we have an awareness of the awareness of the awareness of being with being whereby we can constitute and create a shared world of meaning(s) through poetically1 presencing our being as being with others. The doubling and tripling of the term “awareness” is not a typo. It refers to five contextual levels of contemplative awareness, which include immediate self-awareness, immediate objective awareness, reflective awareness, reflexive awareness, and contemplative

1 See Mark S. Burrows, “‟Raiding the Inarticulate‟: Mysticism, Poetics, and the Unlanguageable,” Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality, eds. Elizabeth A. Dreyer and Mark S. Burrows (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 342-343. Burrows explains that “Poetics points through language toward the inarticulate, toward a transcendence not beyond but within speech. The play of words and meanings and feelings—this „making‟ that is the meaning of poiesis—is the gift brought by the poetic imagination. Our speaking and our very being are shaped at these margins. Theological thinking oblivious to these edges, which lure us like an ocean‟s horizon where the immensities of sea and sky mingle and play, becomes little more than a thinking strategy without depth or draw.” 2 awareness. All five levels will be analyzed in the dissertation. The analysis culminates with the claim that contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being, one which creates the conditions of the possibility for contemplative awareness. Contemplative awareness includes both an experience and an understanding of the proper ordering of our relational realities. My claim is that contemplative awareness can and should accompany the practice of contemplative silence in order to appropriate the meaning of a silence embodied in the here and now, through the hermeneutical endeavor. Contemplative awareness elicits movement in thinking, and involves the ongoing exercise of rethinking our relational realities in and for the world. The continuous movement of rethinking our relational realities, including our relation to the idea of God, is itself integral to ethical action, insofar as we are thereby open to new motivations and intentions for acting in relation to others. In appropriating contemplative silence, we can recreate authentic human dwelling in and through our living. In considering the purpose of this study, on the one hand, a theoretical description of a phenomenological/hermeneutical mode of being bears upon how the practice of contemplative silence is possible. On the other hand, there is the history of texts that give witness to that practice. Thus, they can be considered primordial texts in giving a description of the practice. They are an image around which we can constellate the practice. They also give principles of the practice itself through the itinerary of the threefold path, or the three ways—the purgative, illuminative, and unitive. The three ways denotes the fundamental structure that religious writers through the ages have used to articulate the experience of contemplative silence in marking the passage of spiritual growth. The texts have a descriptive and an expressive quality to them that invites participation in their multi-leveled meanings. Ricoeur‟s philosophy enables reflection on the condition of the possibility of the practice. At times, his work is a reflexive consciousness in a theoretical mode. So, I will deal with both sides—how to talk about a 3 tradition with a practice, and textual instruction which allows the describable, together with the work of Ricoeur who allows us to explain the practice.

Structure I join three moments in the hermeneutical process—description, explanation, and interpretation—with the three moments in the traditional religious journey to spiritual and ethical maturity—the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. I want to present a conceptual framework that opens to hermeneutics, and a way to think about ongoing appropriation of a mode of capable being as growth in the human capacity to make and carry meaning.2 At this point, I simply want to note that capacity is Ricoeur‟s central concept. The threefold way, as it is interpreted in this study, is a heuristic model of the invariant elements of the tradition of contemplative silence. There is reflexivity to the structure, because a study of the practice is an exemplification of the practice, which produces the very practice that it is talking about. Part I, which consists of the first chapter, takes the form of a description and asks the question, What is the practice of contemplative silence? A historical description of the practice is presented by focusing on material about the practice dating from Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Pseudo-Dionysius, proceeding to Bernard of Clairvaux,

2 “Carry” is a transitive verb, but it is also a teleology that I am bringing forward. “Carry” in the hermeneutical tradition of Gadamer and Ricoeur is to transmit and carry meanings from one context to another, and is associated with a tradition. See Paul Ricoeur, “Religious Belief: The Difficult Path of the Religious,” A Passion for the Possible: Thinking with Paul Ricoeur, eds. Brian Treanor and Henry Isaac Venema (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 27-28. Ricoeur explains that “it is in my desire to be, in my capacity to exist, that the arrow of the religious comes to hit me. I have adopted in my works on philosophical anthropology a condensed expression that serves as a heading for detailed analyses, the expression capable man. Under this expression I gather all the figures of power and impotence, as indicated by linguistic constructions using the auxiliary verb can. Power is the whole of what I can do; impotence, the sum of what I cannot. In the broad sense of the word, it is about an approach to the human phenomenon in terms of acting and suffering, of praxis and pathos.” See also Richard Kearney, “Capable Man, Capable God,” A Passion for the Possible: Thinking with Paul Ricoeur, 49. Kearney remarks that Ricoeur, in what was to be one of his final communications to him, indicated his intent to write a work entitled Capable Man as a counterpart to Fallible Man. 4 continuing with the Carmelite reformers, John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila, and moving through to the late nineteenth century contemplative, Thérèse of Lisieux, and finally, the twentieth century contemplatives, Edith Stein and Thomas Merton.

Chapter One: The Practice of Contemplative Silence as a Historical Phenomenon This first chapter deals with the practice of contemplative silence as a historical phenomenon; therefore, the methodology in this chapter is description. I will cull out of texts an image of contemplative silence and its fundamental principles. I will specify this tradition as one of practice—that there is textual testimony or avowal to the practice which tells what the practice of contemplative silence is. Both Part II and Part III take the form of explanation. In Part II, I address the question, How is the practice possible? In order to respond to this question, I turn to the work of the philosopher, Paul Ricoeur. Everything contained in the second, third, and fourth chapters, or Steps 1-5 of the argument, lays the groundwork for providing a context within which to situate the practice of contemplative silence. The context is theoretically determined in terms of fallibility, fallenness, and capability within the basic capacity of fallible existence. The context is religiously determined in terms of the threefold path—the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive ways—which is addressed more fully in the opening of Part III.

Chapter Two: Fallible Human The thought of Ricoeur provides the structure and framework as well as the origin point for a hermeneutics of contemplative silence. The purpose of the second chapter is to lay out the philosophical anthropology of Ricoeur, taken primarily from his work, Fallible Man. Step 1, the presentation of the starting point of the argument, is that human being is originally endowed with finite freedom. Human being is a mediating being in the theoretical, practical, and affective domains between two elements of itself that are 5 necessarily unequal, the finite and the infinite—the source of a constitutive disproportion. These mediations are partial, and so, a fallible human being. Step 2 of the argument occurs in the mode of reflection. The finite creature is suspended between opposite poles of perceiving and conceiving. Language is the medium of the fragile mediations between these poles of receiving and acting in the world. This is the articulation of the possibility of human being.

Chapter Three: Fallenness and Fallibility Give Rise to Hermeneutics The third chapter presents Step 3 of the argument, which occurs in the mode of hermeneutics. Here, the move from reflective philosophy to hermeneutics, Ricoeur‟s change in method, is discussed. In addition, the concept of fallenness, further rumination on fallibility, the relationship between freedom and evil, and Ricoeur‟s work on a hermeneutics of symbol will serve as focal points of the chapter. The status of falling is addressed in that through a primordial evil decision and deed, human being “fell” into a state of existential self-contradiction. While Ricoeur discusses the concept of human being in terms of potentiality and possibility, he does not say anything about actuality, which is the world in which the actual human lives. “Falling” (Verfallen), or being- fallen-into-the-world, is not something that occurs in a distant moment, but rather is an existential structure characterized by motion, according to Heidegger. It is an inauthentic, everyday manner of Dasein being its “there.” Dasein is lost in the publicness of the “they.” This existential structure of disclosedness includes states-of-mind, understanding, and discourse, characterized by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. These last three characteristics illustrate the movement of falling, from temptation to tranquillizing, moving on to alienation, and finally, entanglement, as Heidegger is followed here. Through this falling, the potentiality-for-Being-in-world in the mode of inauthenticity is at issue. 6

For Ricoeur, it is in the movement from innocence to fault that is uncovered through the positing of evil, which gives profundity to the concept of fallibility. To consider human being fallible is to say that the noncoincidence of human being to itself is a primordial weakness that gives rise to evil. The evil arises in its being posited, which leads to a symbolics of evil. Ricoeur says that “The symbol gives rise to thought."3 Through the giving of the symbol, the circumstances arise to be able to engage in thought. Thought is confined, and yet free, as the immediacy of the symbol and thought are held together with hermeneutics. I will lay out Ricoeur‟s hermeneutics of symbol.

There is a narrative of an instant of the Fall, and also a narrative of the temptation which occurs over a period of time within the Adamic myth. There is a conflict of myths in a single myth. The serpent symbolizes the evil already present, so that human being does not initiate evil but discovers it. Adam, the primordial human being, is to be a tragic hero who is at once innocent and guilty. The mixture of original affirmation and existential difference increasingly appears as a “fault.” The fault affirms as well as negates in “the Joy of Yes in the sadness of the finite.”4 The activity of mediating outside reality brings about a fragile mediation for the human being her/himself.5 The actuality of human being comes with the fall and evil. It is through the exercise of human freedom that evil is made manifest. Yet the locus of the manifestation of evil becomes clear only if it is recognized as such.6 That we are fallible and capable of failing is due to our weakness—the limitation from which our capacity for evil derives;

3 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 348 (hereafter cited as SE).

4 Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, rev. trans. Charles A. Kelbley, intro. Walter J. Lowe (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), 140 (hereafter cited as FM).

5 Ibid.

6 Ricoeur, FM, xivi. 7 this is so only in positing it.7 Evil is the source of actualized self-awareness in language and confession of responsibility. Evil is the occasion for the human search for redemption. So far we have been focusing on the fallible human. With Ricoeur‟s move to hermeneutics as a transition point, I will shift emphasis to focus on the capable human.

Chapter Four: Capable Human The fourth chapter identifies four elements that contribute to what it is to be capable human for purposes of this study: 1) Ricoeur‟s move to hermeneutics, 2) the role of expression and discourse as developed by Ricoeur in his work, Interpretation Theory,

3) the relation of silence to discourse which builds on the work of Bernard P. Dauenhauer, and 4) an explanation of the hermeneutical self derived primarily from Ricoeur‟s work, Oneself as Another. This chapter includes Steps 4 and 5 of the argument. Step 4 holds that progress toward spiritual and ethical maturity is both positive and negative. That is, the basic capacity of fallible existence “needs the „how much more‟ of superabundance” in the ever present struggle with dysfunction and error, and fault and evil, so that constitutive goodness can be liberated.8 There is increasing awareness of fallibility as well as capability as growth in maturity occurs. This mediating work involves the reform of attitudes, motivations, intentions, and patterns of acting with regard to human being‟s life and world. This change occurs through language, and the way in which we relate to language. In changing our relationship to language we change our relationship to ourselves; in changing our relationship to ourselves we change our relationship to language, and integrally so. Ricoeur‟s second naiveté is a critical and

7 Ricoeur, FM, 146.

8 See Brian Treanor and Henry Isaac Venema, “Introduction: How Much More Than the Possible?” A Passion for the Possible: Thinking with Paul Ricoeur, 5. 8 interpreted immediacy, which includes his “hope for a re-creation of language.”9 His interest in hermeneutics is a qualitative one of depth that aims at transforming reflexive consciousness. He explains that the disclosure of a new mode of being gives the interpreter a new way of understanding herself.10 Acknowledging his debt to Kant‟s work, especially Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Ricoeur unequivocably affirms goodness as originary, a constitutive part of the ontological structure of the human person.11 He also says that “there is a hermeneutics of daily life that gives introspection the dimension of an interpersonal practice.”12 While admitting of interpersonal dimensions to this inner space, there is still the dialogue of the soul with itself articulated by Ricoeur using the phrase “for intérieur, one‟s heart of hearts— literally a „forum‟ in which one speaks to oneself.”13 This deep interiority or “heart of hearts” has its own particular standing that eludes scientific knowledge.14 A discussion of Ricoeur‟s hermeneutical theory is foundational here: Expression as the thought and experience of human being is at the center of this discussion. Furthermore, the nature of discourse as it appears in the mediating function of language, which includes the dialectic between both event and meaning, and sense and reference, is integral to the task at hand. However, a discussion of discourse is incomplete without an

9 Ricoeur, SE, 349.

10 Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), 94 (hereafter cited as IT).

11 Paul Ricoeur, “Ethics and Human Capability: A Response,” Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought, eds. John Wall, et al. (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), 284.

12 Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, What Makes Us Think?: A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue About Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain, trans. M.B. DeBevoise (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000), 68 (hereafter cited as What Makes Us Think).

13 Changeux and Ricoeur, What Makes Us Think, 69.

14 Ibid. 9 explanation of the relation of silence to discourse. Here, I turn to the work of Dauenhauer to elucidate this relation. Ultimately, in building upon his work, I insert contemplative silence into the discussion, and bring it to the fore. Ricoeur‟s move to hermeneutics, discussion of expression and discourse, and the relation of silence to discourse provide three of the four key elements that contribute to an explanation of what it is to be capable human. Step 5 adds the fourth key element, the hermeneutical self, to an explanation of capable human. The recognition of feeling lost and abandoned points to the nothingness of human being before the reality of the Word. And yet, old understandings yield to new and even truer understandings. It seems that human being has a propensity for spiritual and ethical growth through reflexively understanding itself; human being discovers a relation with itself as other. There are two aspects that comprise personal identity, idem- identity and ipse-identity, according to Ricoeur.15 It is possible both to create a moving, meditative image of reflexivity, in which one thinks about thinking, and to portray it as a moral space based on Ricoeur‟s writings.16 He presents a dynamic of thinking that is always already open to the ongoing reality of human becoming and that constitutively forms the self through the movement of reflexivity. The human person is thought through “composition,” rather than directly, as Ricoeur employs “the dialectic of original affirmation and existential difference.”17 In the dialectical reflexivity between self and self as other on the one hand, and between self and other on the other hand, interiority is cultivated as reflexivity creates depth. In

15 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 2-3 (hereafter cited as OA).

16 See David E. Klemm, The Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur: A Constructive Analysis (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1983), 103 (hereafter cited as HTPR). In connection with Ricoeur‟s hermeneutical theory, Klemm explains that “Reflexivity is a subjectivity that understands its own understanding and could just as easily be called the hermeneutical subject.”

17 See Ricoeur, FM, 140. 10 addition to idem-identity and ipse-identity, the hermeneutical self possesses a narrative identity that is expressed in the question, Who am I? The hermeneutical self has the capacity to speak, to act, to tell a story, and to be imputed.18 These capacities are moral powers. The hermeneutical self has, too, a moral identity that is expressed in the statement, Here I am.19 Finally, the hermeneutical self has an aesthetic identity insofar as the self understands the relation between silence and discourse. With these aspects of selfhood in place, the chapter closes with a discussion of the notion of recognition. Here, I introduce recognition and its different levels into the discussion. Recognition is critical to our understanding of the event of transformation, and first occurs as a bodily experience. Recognition also involves a conceptual appropriation of the bodily event of recognition, and happens in terms of our reflexive awareness. A discussion of recognition and its relation to the practice of contemplative silence will emerge. We now have in place the fourth element, the hermeneutical self, in considering the capable human. The purpose of Part III is, first of all, to open up a brief historical discussion of the threefold path to transformative spiritual and ethical maturity, according to the Christian historical tradition. A historical context is therefore established in addition to a hermeneutical and phenomenological context for the practice of contemplative silence. This highly selective exposition includes Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Bonaventure. I then proceed to an analysis of the practice of contemplative silence in Chapter Five in which Step 6 of the argument is presented.

18 See Ricoeur, OA.

19 Ricoeur, OA, 167. 11

Chapter Five: The Practice of Contemplative Silence as a Transformative Spiritual and Ethical Activity The fifth chapter includes a discussion of the practice of contemplative silence, as well as a discussion of the five levels of consciousness as potentialities ingredient in the phenomenon of the practice of contemplative silence. These two aspects round out and complete discussion of the capable human, which will enable us to proceed to the third and final part of the dissertation, in which the meaning of capable human is interpreted. With Step 6, I turn to the practice of contemplative silence to grasp it as the means and end of spiritual transformation. Human being fashioned this practice of contemplative silence as a transformative practice in order to open itself to, and understand more fully, the truth of redeeming grace in lived existence (that is, to always be able to look with ever fresh eyes to the world and see the world in a new way). Two ontic examples of the practice of contemplative silence illustrate how this is so. Human being discovers an infinite capacity to grow in spiritual and ethical maturity through attentive listening and responding to the Word. The practice of contemplative silence is one means or approach to redeeming fallen human being. It is undertaken in a reflexive space of consciousness that involves a dialectic between silence and language within the Word (or Logos). An important task of this chapter is to mediate evil in Ricoeur‟s thought so that it becomes possible to gain an understanding of how crucial the notion of the continuation of action is to Ricoeur. An example of rethinking a wrong will be presented for reflection as a way to illustrate how the practice of contemplative silence can be brought to bear on hermeneutical activity. In this exercise, hermeneutical activity assumes the quality of an ethical action, emerging beyond the confines of formal thinking. In order to more fully understand the transformation involved, we must have knowledge of the five levels of awareness ingredient in the phenomenon itself as potentialities. There are five contextual levels of awareness—immediate, objective, 12 reflective, reflexive, and finally, contemplative awareness, a transformation of reflexive consciousness, which culminates in the idea of the summoned subject with contemplative awareness. With the consideration of the practice of contemplative silence and the five contextual levels of awareness, we have all of the essential elements in place in order to understand the meaning of capable human. The first contextual level of awareness of a hermeneutics of contemplative silence is immediate self-awareness, the direct experience of the self. It is the awareness that I am here—the I to whom I ascribe actions. This level has to do with the immediate experience in feeling or mood of “how I am” or “how it goes with me.” Immediate awareness of my own being refers both to “what is,” to the manifest and present, and rather oddly to “what is” as unmanifest and absent as well. Concerning the “is” of “what is,” Robert P. Scharlemann says that being correlates with understanding insofar as “is” is connecting.20 “Is,” as manifestation of being, is the connecting activity between a concept and a percept, between the universal and the particular. “What is” is some kind of “image” or ontic entity that displays both being and connecting.21 The being could be a symbol, a schema, or an image of contemplation. Something has to occupy this role of a “temporal object” in Husserlian terms, in exactly his sense of object. Hence temporality, the combination of particularity and universality, and the combination of sensory givenness and abstract thought come together here.

In other words, when being comes to be apparent in the medium of language in terms of understanding the meaning of a sentence, Scharlemann says that being is then accessible to the mind. Under these circumstances, in the case of a proposition, for example, the question with regard to truth would be whether or not there is

20 See Robert P. Scharlemann, The Being of God: Theology and the Experience of Truth (New York: The Seabury Press, 1981) (hereafter cited as The Being of God). 21 Cf. Mark C. Taylor, After God (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007). 13 correspondence between its manifestation in meaning on the one hand, and reality, on the other hand. However, in the case of understanding, understanding is correlated with thought in that “we can understand what it is that we understand,” he explains.22 We should keep in mind here that understanding includes a sense of “how to….” It is out of this context that interpretation as a discipline and hermeneutics as a theory originate, according to him. The premise for this discipline and theory is that the possibility exists to articulate “what has been understood through an act that is different from the original understanding of what is said and what is so.”23 A way of illustrating this important idea would be that I can directly quote Scharlemann‟s interpretation of this notion as I just did, or I can interpret as I do so now in my own words, what Scharlemann is expressing and attempting to make manifest: We understand both the meaning of being and the manifestation of the reality of being when we engage in understanding through our personal act of linguistic interpretation. The reason for this two-sided interpretation is that the proposition has both sense (meaning) and reference. The ability to use language and to understand its usage by others points to the original situation of human beings in the Word. Although sense and reference have a universality to them in that anyone who learns the language participates in the Word, each act is nonetheless an original appropriation, insofar as we each occupy our own spatial-temporal position, and draw upon unique content consisting of our memory, feeling, creativity, and imagination in the very act itself. Scharlemann says that the truth of any given statement would then lie in interpreting what the statement means, and ascertaining that the meaning is so in reality. The second contextual level of awareness of a hermeneutics of contemplative silence is immediate objective awareness, the direct experience of the world. It is the awareness of a perceptual flow, and is a conversion of sense impressions into percepts or

22 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 48.

23 Ibid. 14 perceptions. This is the awareness of what is not I—although it can include awareness of the self‟s productions. Perceptual awareness includes the imagination as well as perceptions. The flow of sense impressions is stabilized by an image en route to perception. It is awareness of the world. Ricoeur says that it is to the world that we are first directed.24 He explains that whether it be things, or living beings, or persons, these are what are first displayed in the world through the body. In this regard, the body is read as an openness unto the world, so that through the body things or persons that are perceived appear. The world, and not bodily mediation, is what is first seen.25 The world is a correlate to existence and immediate self-awareness. “Being-with” (mitsein) is the mood dimension of immediate objective awareness. Being-with being has to do with the idea of attunement to being through mood, or Befindlichkeit (the first existential in Heidegger‟s Being and Time) as “being-with,” which is a disclosure of how being appears. This “being-with” joins the “I” with the temporal object. The notion of mood and “letting be” (Gelassenheit) from Heidegger, whereby “thinkers learn to serenely acquiese” according to Chauvet, will include discussion of the mood appropriate to contemplative silence and openness.26 The third contextual level of awareness of a hermeneutics of contemplative silence is reflective awareness. With reflection, we can say what that immediate awareness is—it is awareness of objects in the world. It has to do with the formulation of proper concepts that define percepts. The concept, when joined with a percept, and expressed in the linguistic form of subject-copula-object, produces a judgment. For example, “This tree is old.” The meaning of a judgment can be ascertained or denied.

24 Ricoeur, FM, 19.

25 Ricoeur, FM, 20.

26 Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Experience, trans. Patrick Madigan and Madeleine Beaumont (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1995), 53 (hereafter cited as Symbol and Sacrament). 15

Hence the possibility of reflection on truth appears at the reflective level. The important point is that being appears in the form of a judgment in language as well as in the world as reality, in the connectedness of the universal and the particular. The fourth contextual level of a hermeneutics of contemplative silence is reflexive awareness. This level of awareness has to do with the truth about truth, or reflection on the event of being in truth. The awareness of time is added to this level. The truth about truth brings out the temporality of being—that being is not just the awareness of being, but has a temporal structure in appearing. This is a temporal event, and not just an appearing of being; emphasis is on the event. At this level, there is consciousness of the identity and difference linking thinking and being-with, being with tended being, when we think about our acts of thinking. There is a distinction here between “being-with” (mitsein) as a mode of being, and “being with” as a gerund plus a preposition, which is awareness of time. There are strong interpretive possibilities concerning the meaning of this primary relation, in terms of both the givenness of the object and of the receptivity of the subject. The study involves an inquiry into what kind of being in the world there is at this level, and the shape and the givenness of being. In other words, we can inquire into what is manifest in the being of the temporal object; it is not just a placeholder but a “being-with” that has to be brought out. So the temporal object has a meaning—namely a meaning of being. Its meaning reciprocally determines the meaning of my being, and so it discloses a mode of being. Hermeneutics enters into discussion at this point. Ricoeur is drawn upon to fill out this chapter with regard to the activity of methodically grasping and responding to symbols, which is interpretation. In terms of temporal objects, discussion will be extended to objects not only grasped intellectually, but also to symbols, language (such as the word-event), and anything that appears with power and meaning. Edith Stein says that it is in the nature of artists to be highly receptive and responsive to impressions that are transformed into myriad images ranging from the visual arts to what is poetic and 16 musical. An artistic expression is, she states, “simultaneously image (Bild) in which something is presented and structure (Gebilde)….”27 The “genuine” work of art is also a symbol according to Stein in that

it comes from that infinite fullness of meaning (Sinn) into which every bit of human knowledge is projected to grasp something positive and speak of it. It does so in such a manner…that it mysteriously suggests the whole fullness of meaning, which for all human knowledge is inexhaustible. Understood this way, all genuine art is revelation and all artistic creation is sacred service.28 In terms of reflexivity and thinking about thinking, Schleiermacher draws a correlation between thinking and being in the finite person (“I”) whose identity is a unity of thinking and being. If we apply this correlation symbolically through the appearance of the “not” in our thinking, contemplative silence understands the identity of being in God. The justification for this statement is that (only?) through absolute identity can we understand the “not” as it appears in these different places.29 To postulate the original absolute identity of thinking and being or the “original knowing” (ein Urwissen), is for Schleiermacher to postulate the idea of God as the originary locus of the relationship between thinking and being. For Schleiermacher, as a consequence any individual act of thinking reflects the original act that is its ultimate ground. The finite mirrors the infinite. According to Schleiermacher, all finite thinking presupposes a first principle that cannot be adequately thought by the human mind; it is the infinite ground, Urdenken, the presupposed Absolute, or “God.”

Finally, the fifth contextual level of a hermeneutics of contemplative silence is contemplative awareness. What will be added to this level is awareness of the awareness

27 Edith Stein, The Science of the Cross, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 6, trans. Josephine Koeppel (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002), 12. 28 Ibid.

29 Robert P. Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections: Essays in Philosophical Theology (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1989), 30-65 (hereafter cited as Inscriptions and Reflections). 17 of the awareness. It is awareness of an instantiated mode of being—in this case it is awareness of the mode of capable being. It sees the mode of capable being as the manifestation of being itself, and would be the activity of actively grasping the mode of capable being. When this manifestation of being is also seen and comprehended as a symbol that is given to us, contemplative awareness may call it a symbol of God. At this fifth structural level the initiative is on the side of the mode of being that appropriates us into it, which Heidegger says is an “enowning.”30 This enowning is also what Schleiermacher means in terms of his philosophical theology, a second language which can be used to make Heidegger more understandable. Heidegger‟s notion of “the last passing God” is similar to Schleiermacher‟s forming an image of the living universe as an image of deity and the being of God. This openness of “the last passing God” is Heidegger‟s contribution to philosophy and he later drops it.31

30 See Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), trans. Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999). There is a helpful discussion of Heidegger‟s notion of “enowning” in the “Translators‟ Foreward,” xix-xxii. For Heidegger, it is the event of language (Ereignis) or his use of enowning whereby what is unarticulated or underarticulated is the notion of this event, because it is an event of being as well as of thinking that has an ontic reality. What is in the event is a connection between some particular words which involve silence, and the event of language which is ontological. The ontic opens to the ontological; the mind is open to being in the event (Ereignis). This language-event, as Heidegger explains, can be likened to what Schleiermacher means by the religious consciousness: A unity in self-determination shows itself in intuition and feeling as immediate consciousness of the self and world which is ontological (having to do with being) and opened by the ontic (existence). Cf. also Paul Tillich on symbols. See the introductory essay by David E. Klemm, “Introduction to Tillich‟s „Meaning and Justification of Symbols,‟” and Paul Tillich‟s essay, “The Meaning and Justification of Religious Symbols,” Hermeneutical Inquiry: Volume I: The Interpretation of Texts, ed. David E. Klemm (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1986), 157- 171. See also Tillich‟s discussion of symbols in Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. Robert C. Kimball (London, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1959), 53-67. Finally, see Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology I (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1951), 122-126.

31 For a provocative discussion of Heidegger‟s notion of “the last passing God” see Jeff Owen Prudhomme, “The Passing-By of the Ultimate God: The Theological Assessment of Modernity in Heidegger‟s Beiträge zur Philosophie,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61:3 (Autumn, 1993): 448-449. Prudhomme explains that “That which is as having been, das Gewesene, is not shut off from us in a measurable past, but comes to us ever anew out of our own future insofar as it determines our possibilities still today. The gods who have passed by are as having been around, that is, they are present in their having been there as the ones who have flown, and yet who in their absence still determine who we are.” He also explains that 18

In Part IV, I will ask and address the following questions: 1) What does the practice mean? The meaning is the intended transformation. And, are those transformations real? This is where texts will be brought in that exemplify those transformations. How so? First, we must consider Ricoeur‟s notion of the “semantic autonomy” of the text—that is, “the disconnection of the mental intention of the author from the verbal meaning of the text,”—the text transcends the author‟s finite horizon; and, the meaning of the text now is considered more important than what the author meant in the event of writing it.32 Second, discourse carries dual meaning: Meaning is objective in that in the textual sentence a noun-verb conjunction yields an utterance meaning; meaning can be considered subjective insofar as it has to do with what it is the speaker intends to utter, or an utterer‟s meaning.33 In contrast to spoken discourse, textual discourse is different, however, in that insofar as a reader responds to a text, the text can be regarded as a subjectivity that takes the place of the speaker‟s subjectivity.34 These texts are capable of uttering then, and are capable of the transformed consciousness that I have referred to in previous chapters. 2) Does it, i.e. the transformed consciousness exist? So far I have only said that it is possible. Work will be carried out both with Ricoeur and primary texts that articulate the transformation that is being discussed. Textual evidence for transformations will be brought to bear. A case will be made for the possibility of transformation, and the interpretive part will show how the transformations have been actualized from the language of the Carmelite historical tradition. The creative

Heidegger‟s use of “gods” does not refer to quantity, but rather designates an openness or an undecided quality associated with the divine which comes together in the phrase, “the ultimate God.”

32 See Paul Ricoeur, IT, 29-30.

33 See David E. Klemm, “Philosophy and Kerygma: Ricoeur as Reader of the Bible,” Reading Ricoeur, ed. David M. Kaplan (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008), 50. See also Ricoeur, IT, 12-13.

34 Ibid. 19 imagination will be brought to bear, but it will be unitive through and through. The transformation of reflexive consciousness, as well as what happens to the summoned subject, are interpreted in each of the final three steps of the argument (Steps 7, 8, and 9), which span Chapter Six and the Conclusion.

Chapter Six: Understanding the Meaning of Capable Human Transformation is interpreted in a two-fold way in the sixth chapter: First, I will reinterpret Ricoeur‟s four “I can‟s” in terms of the practice of contemplative silence as a transformative spiritual and ethical activity. Second, I will interpret texts of the Carmelite tradition in terms of transformation as contemplative action. In Step 7 of the argument, through the ongoing integrating activity of the practice of contemplative silence, there is a reflexive transformation of capable human in understanding the “I can‟s.” Now, “I” can speak silence, “I” can practice contemplative silence, “I” can tell stories of the practice of contemplative silence, and “I” can invoke personal responsibility by practicing contemplative silence. There are four different ways of discussing and explaining the practice of contemplative silence. First, in the case that “I” speak silence, I am actually giving voice to silence; therefore, it is not the negation of utterance. It is a silent speaking and not a retreat into a pre-linguistic space. It is a silence that is intentional and self-conscious. It gives voice to silence, but the silence is saying nothing, on the one hand, but yet is not a saying nothing, on the other hand. It is also saying not nothing. Second, with regard to the “practice,” it is a deliberate and a ritualized action. This is a concrete “thing” in the world, and not just a universal. The other two ways will be explored here as well. The point is to show how contemplative awareness leads to spiritual and ethical activity, and the manner in which a capable human being manifests spiritual and ethical values. The activities of contemplative awareness have to do with carrying out ordinary daily life with a higher degree of awareness. 20

The action element is examined in Step 8 of the argument. The works of one figure who represents the Carmelite tradition will be interpreted as a performance of the transformation of reflexive consciousness. The writings of John of the Cross will be used to elucidate spiritual transformation and contemplative ethical action. The action element leads to this: There is deep immersion in what is, which opens to uncovering the hidden beauty in life even in the midst of tragic circumstances. This is authentic life: seeing the unity of opposites which through the very seeing is to transcend them; this is the unitive way.

In the ongoing practice of contemplative silence, there is a further deepening and understanding of the meaning of capable human. There is an understanding of the capacity for movement/continuous action in mediating between fallibility and capability in hermeneutical existence. Consequently, expression becomes more dynamic.

Conclusion: A Ricoeurian Hymn to Humanity I conclude the study with a discussion of the notions of contemplative awareness in relation to the manifestation of the mode of capable being that is contemplative silence. The manifestation of this mode of capable being is considered a courageous and creative art of poetically presencing our human solidarity. The summoned self is the unitive way, and is the key to the transformation. The possibility of transformation of reflexive consciousness lies in the summoned self. Language and symbol give possibility to transformation. The theory of discourse couples with the capable self who is capable of being summoned and responding. A contemplative discourse of praise and celebration emerges. I explore the theological implications of the manifestation of this mode of capable being. In the fullness of time, a Word was spoken and the fallible human being was summoned into a new mode of capable being. This mode of capable being can be a symbol of God. This mode of capable being manifests through the practice of 21 contemplative silence. It is not just any mode of being, though. It is an opening onto a mode of capable being, which is summoned to ongoing response to the Word in silence. This mode of capable being is forever interpreting the meaning of what it is to be capable being through continuing to make and carry new meanings, and hold conflicting meanings in creative tension as in nondual thinking. Moreover, the levels of awareness are actualized, and more and more so, as ongoing reflexive transformation of consciousness transpires. There is awareness of absolute poverty and dependence along with intense desire, which together correspond to the awareness of the greatness of the Word and the inability of adequate response. On the one hand, suffering and painful preoccupation with fallibility are acknowledged. On the other hand, capable human opens to patient trust, and an awareness that is characterized by profound peace and justice, which take hold through understanding woundedness in the ongoing surrender to healing power in the silence of the Word. In humble acceptance of finitude, there is joy and gratitude for the grace of the silence of the Word.

The story is one of moving between an understanding of finite freedom and human fallibility, and infinite capacity and human capability, which ultimately gives way to a new mode of capable being. The story also involves a deepening awareness of both fallibility and capability, which is held in creative tension through the practice of contemplative silence. The summoned self continues to respond to the symbolic mode of capable being through ongoing mediation of fallibility (the acceptance thereof) and capability (openness to new meaning). Human being is finite freedom. However, through the practice of contemplative silence, it recognizes in understanding the relation between silence and language within the Word, that it has an infinite capacity to transcend itself through ongoing transformation of reflexive consciousness. There is mediation between human fallibility and human capability in lived hermeneutical existence. Capable human is what it is to live hermeneutical existence. Hermeneutical 22 existence is a form of spiritual and ethical maturity. One way to think about the nature of the practice of contemplative silence is as an ongoing mediating activity of understanding the relation between fallibility and capability. Truth claims are referred back to lived existence in the moral striving to live life with integrity and in greater depth.

PART I:

A DESCRIPTION 24

INTRODUCTION TO PART I

Part I of the dissertation is written in the form of a historical description in asking the question of what the practice of contemplative silence is. There is a long tradition of historical writing about the practice that gives witness to this tradition by telling what it is. It is in this sense that these writings can be regarded as primordial texts. The texts also provide an image of contemplative silence. This image allows us to form the practice around it. The tradition of historical writing also specifies the fundamental principles underlying the practice, something that will be explored in greater structural detail in Part II. While the term “contemplation” has been accorded a variety of meanings throughout history, in religious terms, it is consistently employed in a manner which has to do with a deeper awareness of a divine presence. This awareness can be thought of as unitive in that all of reality is regarded as being united. Accordingly, we are closest to this reality when we hold polarities or oppositions and paradoxes together, as in nondual thinking. While solitude and simplicity are hallmarks of the practice of contemplative silence, action and activity resonate in the practitioner, as well. Contemplation as understood in the Eastern and Western tradition of Christianity has its roots in the ancient Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle.35 Philo and Plotinus also exercise influence on the tradition. The tradition is too vast to include a comprehensive history. However, select frames of the tradition, in all of its depth, will be captured to convey what the practice of contemplative silence entails according to some of its leading exponents.

In Chapter One, I present historical material by focusing on particular authors who, through their written texts, articulate paradigmatic ways of understanding the

35 For a contemporary account of the practice of contemplative silence, which includes a rich account of the Eastern Orthodox tradition as practiced at Mount Athos in Greece, see Christopher Merrill, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain (New York: Random House, 2005). 25 practice of contemplative silence, and so are considered to be representative of the tradition. These authors are significant in that they exert enormous influence on succeeding generations of practitioners, who in epitomizing and appropriating the practice in their own right, nevertheless understand the core essence of their practice to be consonant with this tradition.

A Description of Contemplative Reality: The Cataphatic and Apophatic Ways

Before presenting this history, however, I want to address two different, but complementary ways of understanding the practice of contemplative silence that come down from the early tradition of Christianity. At the heart of the contemplative tradition lie two fundamental and diametrically opposed ways of viewing the relation with ultimate reality. They are most fruitfully and accurately depicted as being in correlation to each other. The cataphatic way is the way of light and affirmation in approaching the divine. The works of Origen and Pseudo-Dionysius are representative of this view, as is discussed in Chapter One. The apophatic way is the way of darkness, denial, and negation, or the via negativa in approaching the divine.36 The writings of Gregory of Nyssa and, once again, Pseudo-Dionysius are representative of this perspective, as is described in the first chapter, as well. According to the cataphatic way, also referred to as the affirmative way, there is a similarity between the divine and all of created reality, such that while this similarity is

36 See Christos Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, ed. and intro. Andrew Louth, trans. Haralambos Ventis (London and New York: T&T Clark International Ltd, 2005), 60. He explains that “The apophatic way or position presupposes the prior acceptance of the methods of philosophical epistemology—the acceptance, for instance, of both the way of affirmations and the way of denials—as potentialities for attaining knowledge. It is precisely the emphasis on the possibility of knowledge that sets apophaticism apart from any positivism about knowledge, that is to say, from any form of absolutizing of the rules or presuppositions needed for ascertaining the validity of any formulation of knowledge.” 26 emphasized, it must be understood within a greater dissimilarity existing between the two.37 The divine is affirmed by noting certain characteristics of experience to be considered as perfections of the divine in the human. Exercising compassion, loving tenderly, carrying out parenthood, living in humility, and promoting peace and justice through the faithful living out of these attributes are but a few of the ways in which human experience is thought to provide an opening or glimpse into ultimate reality. In terms of philosophical theology, the divine is made known in and through human life, specifically through the natural light of reason.38 In terms of speech about the divine, the divine is also made known among things in the world in the affirmation and predication of all attributes to the divine. With regard to contemplative ascent, the divine is considered to be all in all in that humans and all creatures are expressions of the divine fecundity.39 And, according to the biblical perspective, given the Creator/creature correlation, the divine immanence is made known through the creature. There can be no wholly cataphatic or affirmative way as there is always imperfection that has to be purified in the spiritual life.

With the apophatic way, there are no words, thoughts, ideas, or symbols that can attain the divine as the divine is in reality.40 This is the way of darkness in that the activity of thinking and all concepts have to be set aside, as unknown reality is entered into solely through love. While there are attestations in the tradition that provide evidence of knowledge that is imparted through this way, it is generally referred to as a knowing that one does not know, or an unknowing insofar as the typical ways of

37 See The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey, s.v. “Affirmative Way” (by Harvey D. Egan) (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1993).

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid.

40 See The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.v.v. “Contemplation, Contemplative Prayer” (by William H. Shannon). 27 cognition in which one comes to know something are abandoned for a knowing that is dissimilar, foreign, and unusual in every way. It is considered difficult, if impossible, to articulate what, if anything, is imparted in the apophatic way. Nevertheless, in the end, words are used in the tradition to talk of and about it. Pseudo-Dionysius refers to a brilliant darkness, while John of the Cross writes of silent music as they articulate darkness using oxymoronic expressions. In terms of philosophical theology, the divine is considered transcendent, wholly other, and cannot be known through human thought.41 In terms of speech about the divine, imperfections emerging as a result of human finitude are not of the divine, and so are denied with the negative way. Finally, with regard to a contemplative approach to the divine, with the negative way, all perceptions and understandings are abandoned, and attentiveness remains. In introducing and describing this basic dyadic framework against which the practice of contemplative silence can be described in the early tradition of Christianity, I have established a context for the presentation of a history of the tradition. We are now in a position to distill the heart of the practice according to its individual practitioners. I turn now to that history.

41 See The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.v. “Negative Way” (by Harvey D. Egan). 28

CHAPTER ONE:

THE PRACTICE OF CONTEMPLATIVE SILENCE AS A

HISTORICAL PHENOMENON

The history of the religious phenomenon of the practice of contemplative silence has to do with a loving awareness of a divine presence who is considered always present, and who accordingly can be apprehended in love. In etymological terms, contemplation derives from the Latin contemplatio and templum.42 Templum is a diminutive of tempus, meaning “time” or “a division or section of time.”43 Templum was a place in the heavens, or sky, partitioned off, and therefore, considered sacred space, for an augur, for example, to use devices to attempt to determine favorable or unfavorable times, or to watch the flight of birds, and read the omens or, for a soothsayer to discern what was “the design of the gods” on behalf of the client.44 Templum or the temple was a dwelling place for the gods, and the place in which one could be in the presence of the gods. Also, included in the word, contemplatio, is the word, “template” which means a blueprint or a pattern. Hence, contemplation can mean to gaze attentively and thoughtfully at, or to inspect this blueprint or pattern. The temple served as the location for persons who were considered sacred to examine the internal parts of these birds, the entrails, in order to ascertain divine meanings and the goals and aim of life. Contemplation delineates examining the inside of reality in order to see that in its depth, reality is nothing in and of itself. At the same time, however, a source is discovered at the heart of reality that is

42 See The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.v.v. “Contemplation, Contemplative Prayer” (by Willliam H. Shannon).

43 Ibid.

44 See The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality, ed. Philip Sheldrake, s.v. “Contemplation” (by Keith J. Egan) (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 211- 213. This entry is an excellent, succinct source that spans the history of the tradition of contemplation. 29 considered, in the tradition of Christianity, to be origin and ground. That source is identified as “God.” To gaze or look at this source is to look at God, according to the tradition. Some of the Greek patristic writers used the Greek word theōria which approximates the Latin, contemplatio, coming from the verb theōrein, meaning to scrutinize closely or to concentrate on something intently for a specific purpose, to describe a kind of natural concentration whereby traces of the divine could be found among created things.45 The Greek word theologia describes the highest form of contemplative awareness, which refers to a complete and immediate oneness with the divine.

Origen (ca. 185-255) The description begins with Origen of Alexandria who as a hermeneut is one of the most important of the early Greek patristic writers. He is a great scholar and theologian known for his biblical exegesis as well as for his philosophical training. He is thought to have been taught by the Platonist, Ammonius Saccas, who was also the teacher of Plotinus.46 The prior work of Clement, who is of the Alexandrian school as well, exerted significant influence on his writings. Origen‟s work entitled On First Principles, is considered to be an exercise in hermeneutics. However, the contemporary scholar, Bernard McGinn, has commented that he is less interested in determining the meaning of the biblical text, than in the spiritual education that accompanies this encounter in which the aim of life is to be achieved.47 Origen explains contemplation in terms of there being

45 The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.v.v. “Contemplation, Contemplative Prayer” (William H. Shannon).

46 Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Christian Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, Vol. I of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991), 108.

47 McGinn, The Foundations of Christian Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, 111. 30 a broken unity of intellects that were originally united with the divine. These intellects comprised a spiritual creation who were paradigmatically created equal in the image of the Logos, and whom he believes to be depicted in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. These intellects were connected to spiritual bodies. They lived in joyous contemplation of the divine, or with pure, perfect receptiveness of the divine. They were united in love with the Logos. These intellects were granted freedom by the divine, which made possible an original fall from that perfect contemplation. Origen places importance on the divine goodness and freedom. So while the divine is good and omnipotent, the division and evil that is characteristic of the world exists due to a fall, which made necessary the world itself. Material reality is not evil in and of itself. Material creation provides a means of education for humans to find their way back through their intellects to a perfect vision of the divine. Everything flows out from and returns to the divine. Origen likens the process of return to the metaphor of a journey or ascension toward the divine. As a great biblical exegete, he believes that the message contained in the biblical text is that of a descent and ascent of a Word incarnate to perform a rescue of those fallen intellects. In the process of interpretation, Origen sets out to comprehend the grammatical sense of the words, as well as to obtain knowledge of the historical reality of the particular biblical passage. Spiritual meaning is to be ascertained through an interpretation that furthers the ascension to the divine. What has been termed the “theological poiesis” of Origen has to do with an interpretive process whereby religious experience occurs in and through the assimilation of the biblical language, which is transformed at the deepest affective level into a kind of language of the soul.48 Through both this affective and intellectual exegetical appropriation of the biblical text, personal

48 McGinn, The Foundations of Christian Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, 116n147. Bernard McGinn uses and cites the phrase “theological poiesis” from the work of Patricia Cox. 31 religious experience is then able to be placed into the context of the life of the religious community. Origen understands biblical texts to have the same depth that a human being has with the inner meaning hidden yet revealed through the grace and gifts of the Spirit.49 More specifically, just as the human being possesses body, soul, and spirit, so too, is the biblical text comprised of body, soul, and spirit, so that the text is structured like a person. An example of structuring in his praxis is found in The Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs where he tiers three biblical texts into different levels that progressively lead to greater depth of understanding: First, morals are taught in the

Book of Proverbs. Second, natural things are discussed in the Book of Ecclesiastes. And finally, contemplation is the subject of the third book, the Song of Songs.50 The inner journey of the soul, whereby one may ascend to contemplation, begins when one perceives or intuits the beauty and majesty of the Word. Growth or progression occurs in stages by which the soul makes the pilgrimage from the earthly realm to the heavenly realm. The power of love propels one on this journey as one discovers that there is no limit to the possibility for growth in life. This theme of growth is repeated throughout Origen‟s works. More will be said about this theme with regard to the threefold path further on in the Introduction to the second section of Part II. He uses the Book of the Song of Songs as the text par excellence for teaching about contemplation and the way back to the divine. That is, we ascend to the divine by descending into the activity of reading the biblical text. For Origen, if one can become captivated by the rich language of the Song of Songs, then one can be captivated by the divine. The act of understanding is the very capacity for God, according to him. He says

49 Origen, On First Principles, Origen, The Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. and intro. Rowan A. Greer, preface by Hans Urs von Balthasar (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1979), 2.3.

50 Origen, The Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, Origen, The Classics of Western Spirituality, 232. 32 in The Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs that contemplation as a subject is passed down through the Book of the Song of Songs. In this work, Origen discusses “the contemplative discipline” as one of three disciplines, which also include the moral discipline and the natural disciplines or sciences, again about which more will be said later on. He defines the contemplative discipline as one in which visible things are transcended to “contemplate something of divine and heavenly things and gaze at them with the mind alone, since they transcend corporeal appearance.”51 Hence, the corporeal gives way to the spiritual, as growth in perfection occurs in a journey of ascent. He credits the learned Greek philosophers with having taken from Solomon certain ideas and teachings that they then included in their manuals of instruction. According to him, Solomon received these ideas, however, before the Greek sages through the divine wisdom that was imparted to him. For Origen, the Book of the Song of Songs is a wedding song, or an epithalamium in the form of a play illustrative of divine love for humanity at a personal level within the context of community. Love constitutes the pathway to the divine. In this manner or way of being, and in and through the exegetical work with the text, that is, interpretation, testimony/witness is given. The human love of the bridegroom and bride portrayed in the Song of Songs is a metaphor for divine/human love. The best way to describe divine love is to look to the erotic language and symbols of human sexual love which are thought to mirror divine love. The soul is encouraged to love the heavenly and divine through the evocative use of bridal imagery. Origen refers to the Holy Spirit and the Word of God as “the faithful bridegroom and husband of the well-trained soul” and the soul as “the Word‟s bride….”52 Perception of a beauty and glory associated with the Word of God causes the soul to fall in love with this Word, which is in “the image and

51 Origen, The Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, 231.

52 Origen, The Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, 223-224. 33 brightness of the invisible God….”53 The description of the body and its activities in the Song for Origen refers to an inner relation that a person carries on with the Word so that along with the bodily senses of hearing, sight, smell, taste, touch, are what he refers to as “spiritual senses” which correspond to them. He explains how homonyms are used in the biblical text as identical terms which depict different things, inasmuch as body parts are transferred to the faculties and powers of the soul. Meaning is gleaned from the spiritual senses. He says that “invisible and eternal teachings…are given to the spiritual senses in Song of Songs through certain veiled figures of love.”54 McGinn aptly describes this hermeneutical experience in that the search for the correct “understanding of the erotic language of the Song is the exemplary exercise by which these higher and finer „senses‟ of the fallen, dormant intellect are awakened and resensitized by the spirit” so that the hermeneut is capable of the inflow of transcendental experience, which is a presence of Word.55 Origen intertwines intellectual and affective experience through the spiritual education that accompanies the hermeneutical experience. His work will set the standard in the Christian West for understanding the intensification of the spiritual life through the Song of Songs tradition. For him, the experience of the divine is equated with divine wisdom and teaching, which is imparted to attentive learners in and through the practice of contemplative silence.

Origen also discusses this complex spiritual journey in his Homily XXVII on Numbers. In this work, there are forty-two stages or camps that mirror Israel‟s journey into the desert from Egypt, and by which growth or progression occurs as the journey proceeds from the earthly realm to the heavenly realm. Origen says that the rational

53 Origen, The Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, 223.

54 Origen, The Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, 234.

55 McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, 121. 34 nature is nourished by food that is its own and suitable to it. He states, “Now the true food of a rational nature is the Word of God.”56 The Word is received by those readers of the text, whether they be healthy or weak, according to their individual capacities.57 The purging of vices occurs along with the enlightenment of understanding those very things. A journey is to be made through the virtues. There must be found both “perfection of faith and knowledge, but also that of deeds and works.”58 In this way, Origen holds in union contemplation and action which together comprise a singular completion of perfection.

Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-395) Gregory is known as one of the three Cappadocian Fathers in Eastern Christianity, together with his older brother, Basil the Great, and a friend known as Gregory of Nazianzen. While Origen is regarded as a theologian of light, Gregory of Nyssa is considered a theologian of darkness. In The Life of Moses, Gregory two times over tells the story of the life of Moses whose life he regards as a pattern or template of beauty.

This work serves as a good example of how patristic writers read the biblical texts at different levels. The first part of the work is a history in the form of a narrative. The story is one of ongoing striving to live a virtuous life and thereby attain a life of perfection. Perfection is considered in terms of an ascent to the divine. The second part is a theōria or contemplation on the life of Moses in which there is a retelling of the story in order to contemplate its hidden meaning. The practitioner of contemplative silence passes through what the early ascetic tradition refers to as apatheia (passionlessness), or what comes to be known as purity of heart in the monastic tradition, and true knowledge

56 Origen, Homily XXVII on Numbers, Origen, The Classics of Western Spirituality, 27.1.

57 Origen, Homily XXVII on Numbers, 27.1.

58 Origen, Homily XXVII on Numbers, 27.6. 35 of the divine,59 which leads to freedom and the presence of the divine in love.60 There is movement from image to the imageless as the practitioner enters into what is considered a profound divine mystery. There is an intense passage from light to darkness. Accordingly, Gregory emphasizes three forms—light, cloud, and darkness—through which the divine reveals itself. The biblical text of the Book of Exodus wherein the story is told of seeing the burning bush is the first divine manifestation or theophany (Ex 3). Moses understands in this illumination that the divine “is true infinite being,” with the light considered a positive aspect of the spiritual journey.61 The second divine manifestation is an ascent of Sinai wherein Moses encounters the divine in a cloud and darkness (Ex 19). This is a passage from light to dark, and is considered a negative aspect of the spiritual journey. The third manifestation has to do with Moses being taken up and enveloped in a cloud as he is in conversation with the divine. He desires to see the divine face to face, that is, to see the glory of the divine (Ex 33). Gregory writes of how Moses moves close to a

59 See Jeremy Driscoll, “Apatheia and Purity of Heart in Evagrius Ponticus,” Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature, eds. Harriet A. Luckman and Linda Kulzer (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999), 156. Driscoll comments how the enlarged heart is frequently referred to by Evagrius Ponticus: In addition to being purified, the heart is enlarged and lifted up as a result of receiving knowledge of many kinds in contemplation.

60 See Columba Stewart, “Introduction,” Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature, 8. Stewart explains that there is “a textual archaeology of the traditions underlying [John] Cassian‟s choice of purity of heart as his premier definition of Christian and monastic perfection. Cassian borrows much of his teaching on this theme from his master, Evagrius Ponticus. Evagrius, however, had synthesized the theological, philosophical, and ascetical traditions under the Stoic label apatheia…, rather than the biblical „purity of heart.‟ Cassian‟s shift of terminology from apatheia to puritas cordis shows both a keen appreciation of biblically- based pedagogy and a recentering of Evagrius‟ understanding of Christian perfection. By using the phrase familiar from the Matthean beatitude, „Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God‟ (Matt 5:8), Cassian highlighted the interplay of moral worthiness, physical integrity, and psychological balance in the process of attaining Christian maturity.”

61 Bernard McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism (New York: Random House Publishing, Inc., 2006), 13. 36 darkness wherein the divine is to be found.62 He interprets Moses as being so transformed in glory that the human eye does not, indeed, cannot behold him. The divine is required to mend the brokenness of human nature, which is in need of healing so that humanity might be restored to an original beauty. What is of importance here is the notion of original beauty. Original beauty has to do with a way of seeing that is not carried out with mere mortal eyes. For it requires the favor of spiritual darkness, and thus, learning to see in a new way. And what is seen is that one cannot see. One has to humbly submit to human finitude. And yet, humans live deeper than this.

Gregory goes on to explain how it can be said that the divine is seen, however, in appearances of all things, even “face to face” in the manner of someone who is speaking with a friend.63 Movement and direction are essential for eternal progress, according to Gregory. He explains that Moses never ceases in his ascent nor sets a limit for his own growth. Rather, Moses continues to climb a ladder, always rising higher because he is always able to discover a higher step.64 In his thirst, he requests to attain not with respect to his capacity, but in accordance with true being. This experience, Gregory says, seems to belong to those who love that which is beautiful. There is a way in which “hope always draws the soul from the beauty which is seen to what is beyond, always kindles the desire for the hidden through what is constantly perceived.”65

62 See The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.vv. “Darkness, Dark Night” (by Keith J. Egan). This entry is an excellent source for an overview of the theme of darkness in the Western mystical tradition. See also Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, The Classics of Western Spirituality, trans., intro., and notes Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (New York, Ramsey, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1978), II.252-254.

63 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, II.219. See also II.219n298.

64 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, II.227. See also II.227n309. It is explained that the theme of the ladder comes from Plato and Plotinus.

65 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, II.231. See also II.231n312. 37

The request of desire is to enjoy Beauty not reflected, but rather, face to face. Gregory continues on to say that the voice of the divine granted the request precisely through the denial of it, displaying in just a few words a profound depth to thought. For the generosity of the divine agreed to fulfill the desire of Moses without promising that the satiety of desire would cease. Hence it is, according to Gregory, that the true sight of the divine consists in the fact that one who searches for the divine never gives up that desire. It is not the case that looking to attempt to see the face of the divine causes death. The divine has the nature of being life-giving. It is the characteristic of divine nature to transcend those characteristics. Therefore, if one thinks that the divine is something that can be known that person “does not have life because he has turned from true Being to what he considers by sense perception to have being.”66 Gregory explains, “True Being is true life. This Being is inaccessible to knowledge.”67 What Moses longs for is met by that which remains unsatisfied in terms of his desire. That is, there is an expansion of the desire of what is yet going to come in terms of the Good. Gregory describes how the most amazing thing is that the very same thing seems at once like one is standing still, and yet, it is a moving. That is, the ascending occurs by way of the standing, as “the firmer and more immovable one remains in the Good, the more he progresses in the course of virtue.”68 Finally, Moses learns that to follow the divine is to behold the divine wherever that might lead. That the divine passes by is a sign of guidance on the part of the divine. In terms of direction, one should not move or veer from the course or direction the guide shows. The good follows good rather than looking it in the face. Hence, Gregory teaches the notion of epektasis, which

66 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, II.234. See also II.234n317.

67 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, II.235. See also II.235n318.

68 Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, II.243. 38 is that through continuously pursuing the divine, that is what it is to delight in the divine presence.

Pseudo-Dionysius or Dionysius the Areopagite (ca. 500) The background of Pseudo-Dionysius is questionable; however, recent scholarship indicates that he was perhaps a Syrian monk. Dionysius grounds contemplation or theōria in the divine or God inasmuch as theos is a derivative of theasthai which means “to behold.”69 He wrote various theologies, some of which have been lost. His symbolic theology, such as his The Celestial Hierarchy and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, is dependent upon sensory knowledge.70 And his insights gleaned from liturgical actions, for example, move from materiality to a deep, inner meaning. His cataphatic theology is dependent upon the use of reason, while in terms of apophatic theology, he discusses different ways of apprehension that exceed reason. Hence, Dionysius embraces both cataphatic and apophatic theology, and places them in dialectical tension in his work entitled The Divine Names. He is, therefore, a theologian of light and of darkness. The divine is, however, beyond assertions and denials, or the positive and negative ways, which is how his work entitled The Mystical Theology comes to a close.71 In order to articulate this thought, he employs paired opposites which are sometimes negated and sometimes affirmed. McGinn notes that such a use of language is

69 McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, 179.

70 McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, 163.

71 See Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 44-45. Turner explains that the language of “similarity” and “dissimilarity” fails of the divine according to Dionysius, “and that means that our language fails and is known to fail to an unutterable degree. This, then, is what Denys means when he says that the Cause of all is „beyond assertion and denial.‟” Furthermore, he comments “that what falls away are both our affirmations and our negations, whose inadequacy is demonstrated in the necessity of affirming both, in what I have called the characteristically apophatic „self-subverting utterance‟, the „negation of the negation‟. It is on the other side of both our affirmations and our denials that the silence of the transcendent is glimpsed, seen through the fissures opened up in our language by the dialectical strategy of self-subversion.” 39 reminiscent of the first and second hypotheses of the Parmenides.72 Mark A. McIntosh describes the final stage for Dionysius to be a silence not void of all meaning, but a silence that can be characterized as embrace, or “unity with God who unspeakably comes forth from divine life in order to draw what is not divine into divinity.”73 Furthermore, he says that Dionysius understands this journey to be a corporate one that probes “the depths of meaning implicity in all the works of God‟s outgoing love.”74 Mystical theology accordingly becomes a matter of discerning a hidden presence, as the theological community proceeds beyond concepts and enters into a “supra-conceptual form of understanding, relationship with the other.”75 The Divine Names is primarily a cataphatic work as he looks to the biblical text for revealed names of the divine, which are positive attributes that have to do with the divine as creator. He inserts, however, a negative theology into the work making the apophatic way superior in which all names of God and symbols of God are denied through a process of “stripping away” so that, in the end, there is only left the darkness of

72 McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, 176n228; 176n229. See also Pseudo-Dionysius, The Mystical Theology, The Complete Works, The Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. Colm Luibbheid, with Paul Rorem (New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987), 5 (hereafter cited as MT), for examples of the negation of paired opposites in which he explains that “It is not…greatness or smallness, equality or inequality, similarity or dissimilarity….It falls neither within the predicate of nonbeing nor of being.” Finally, see Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, The Complete Works, 9.1 for examples of the affirmation of paired opposites, as he explains that “Greatness and smallness, sameness and difference, similarity and dissimilarity, rest and motion—these are all titles applied to the Cause of everything….His similarity is adverted to in the context of the fact that he is the subsistence of things similar and is responsible for this similarity of theirs. Yet he is also dissimilar to all in that „there is none quite like him….”

73 Mark A. McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc., 1998), 55.

74 McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology, 56.

75 McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology, 56. For a lively and provocative discussion of mystical theology, see also William Johnston, Mystical Theology: The Science of Love (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995). 40 unknowing wherein union with the divine is attained.76 An example of this bi-polarity or tension can be illustrated in his dialectical use of explanation and that which goes beyond the intellect, being, and knowledge in the second chapter of his The Divine Names. What Dionysius refers to as “true explanation” can be considered the work of cataphasis, as McGinn notes, as it had to do with a systematic explication “of the unions or differentiations in the divine nature as revealed by scripture,” while it was carried out “in a manner that went beyond the workings of intellect,” which can be considered the work of apophasis.77 The divine nature, source, or ground is in hiddenness, and the human can only take hold of definite activities that are obvious to the mind. Yet, he says, to consider this hiddenness, the human has to wrestle to be set free from the continuous workings of the mind. Dionysius, in the The Mystical Theology, discusses the mystery surrounding the divine word which lies in a simple and “brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.”78 Herein lies something mysterious: Moses, he says, is not able to meet up with the divine who is considered invisible, but rather, contemplates where it is that the divine dwells.

Dionysius says that Moses is able to be liberated “from what sees and is seen,” and plunges into a “mysterious darkness of unknowing.”79 There is a renouncing of anything that may be conceived by the mind. One is here “neither oneself nor someone else, one is supremely united to the completely unknown by an inactivity of all knowledge, and knows beyond the mind by knowing nothing.”80 In exercising humility before language,

76 See McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 283. See also McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, 159.

77 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names, 2.7. See also McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, 162.

78 Pseudo-Dionysius, MT 1.1.

79 Pseudo-Dionysius, MT 1.3.

80 Pseudo-Dionysius, MT 1.3. See also Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism, 46. Turner comments “that such an unbalanced emphasis on union at the expense of 41 a path is opened and followed in its coming-to-be in darkness. In this way, language is acceded to, granting it a power and force in giving over to the mystery of its coming-to- be. McGinn notes that “no one knew better the limits of words in the face of the true Mystery” than Dionysius himself.81 Dionysius says, furthermore, that the more we move upward and take flight in the spiritual life, it becomes more prevalent that our words are limited to the notions that we have the capacity to form. But as we plunge into the darkness that is beyond the intellect, we discover that beyond “running short of words” we are “speechless and unknowing.”82

He says that as his argument rises, language falters such that the argument turns silent in its oneness with the divine as indescribable.83 Dionysius, in depicting the movement and directionality of darkness, articulates the identity of word and silence about which more will be said further on in the study.

the distinct identity of the soul can claim no support whatever in the dialectics of Denys‟ apophaticism. On the contrary, what those dialectics specifically show is that in the description of the soul‟s oneness with God we have no language, because that union transcends it, in which it would be possible to contrast the union of the lovers with their distinctness of identity. For the achievement of that union is possible only at the point where the mind has surpassed all discourse in which to state the contrast. Hence, if our language of distinction fails, so too has our language of union. Denys himself says precisely that, for in that union, all that the mind may conceive „being renounced‟, Moses does indeed „belong completely to him who is beyond everything‟. But here, not only Moses, but any person who climbs the same mountain of negation, is „neither oneself nor someone else‟.”

81 McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, 182.

82 Pseudo-Dionysius, MT 3. See also Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism, 47. Turner explains that “Denys‟ „cloud of unknowing‟ [is not] a vehicle for an anti- intellectualism, for a displacement of the role of intellect, at least ultimately, in favour of that of love in the making of the ecstactic union of the soul with God. Rather, in Denys, it is the immanent dialectic of knowing and unknowing within intellect which governs the pattern and steps of its own self-transcendence to a union, principally, of vision. Denys‟ is a mysticism which, as the psalmist puts it, „seeks the face of God‟ (Ps. 24, 6), but under the condition imposed by Exodus: „no one may see me and live‟ (Exod., 33, 20). That „death‟ which is the condition of „seeing‟ is Denys‟ „cloud of unknowing‟: a death in an apophatic darkness which will rise in the knowing-unknowing vision of God.”

83 Pseudo-Dionysius, MT 3. 42

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) Bernard of Clairvaux, the twelfth century Cistercian abbot, ecclesiastical statesman and counselor of popes, develops what McGinn refers to as a “rhetorical richness and theological subtlety” in his contemplative discourse or spiritual exegesis, which takes the form of eighty-six sermons on the biblical text, the Book of the Song of Songs.84 For Bernard, the Song of Songs is a charter of love as he asserts through his writings that when we are dynamically attuned and open to our capacity to love and allow it to grow, it will lead to the divine. Bernard remarks in Sermon 27, “What a capacity this soul has, how privileged its merits, that it is found worthy not only to receive the divine presence, but to be able to make sufficient room!”85 He says that this capacity becomes enlarged through love. Authentic love is mutual love; and, this doctrine gives way to the notion of spiritual friendship and friendship with the divine. Through ordinary friendships, humans begin to learn to live in the presence of the divine in this life; human life is a continuum that extends from earthly love to the summit of divine love. As a monastic, Bernard follows The Rule of St. Benedict under which the community lives. He is suspicious of the desire to live an eremitic life, unless one has mastered living in community. To live what Bernard regards as a spiritual life is to live a life of humility. The seventh chapter of The Rule of St. Benedict discusses the notion of humility, which we can begin to attain in earthly life knowing that we “descend by exaltation and ascend by humility.”86 The love that emerges is gradual, and occurs in

84 Bernard McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 27. See also Bernard McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century, Vol. II of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1994), 164.

85 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs II, Volume Three, trans. Kilian Walsh, intro. Jean Leclercq (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1983), Sermon 27.10.

86 Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict in English, ed. Timothy Fry (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1982), 7.7. 43 steps through relation with the Word as incarnate. The relation is carried on by bringing human experience into dynamic relation with the biblical text. Hence cultivation of the intellect is just as important as love in order to reach the goal of the spiritual life. The soul progresses in contemplation through a love in which the divine becomes ever more present.87 There is a deep connection between love and contemplation in Bernard‟s writings. Being present to the divine occurs to the extent that the divine is loved. And, the experience of the divine in love is a foretaste of the heavenly realm. Bernard believes that we have a sensitivity for spiritual senses, which he employs as different modes of understanding the divine presence in human experience.88 He invokes an array of sense images and brings together different sensory perceptions. According to Bernard, we are capable of cultivating and living rich inner lives which elicits creativity. In Sermon 23, he discusses three locations wherein the Word as incarnate draws the soul as bride: the storeroom or cellars (Song of Songs, 1:3), the garden (Song of Songs, 5:1), and the bedroom (Song of Songs 3:4).89 In changing the order of the biblical text, McGinn explains that Bernard presents three ways of reading the text that serve as a progression for the soul: The garden serves as the historical meaning; the storerooms have to do with the moral teachings whereby through virtues humans remedy their faults in preparation for the encounter with the divine; and finally, the bedroom in which the lovers meet represents the place of divine contemplation and mystical union.90

87 McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century, 190.

88 McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century, 187.

89 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs II, Sermon 23.1-17. See also McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 27.

90 McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 27. 44

Bernard is able to write his sermons with a certain amount of freedom in drawing from the foundational work of Origen. Beginning in Sermon 1, Bernard grounds his work in Origen‟s writings. Like Origen, he refers to three deepening levels of the biblical text: Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the Song of Songs, the latter which he regards as contemplative discourse.91 Likewise, he desires, as Origen does, to “advance by degrees.”92 He refers to these three stages or levels of growth in love as penitential insofar as sins are forgiven, grace-filled as a result of the good deeds that are performed, and finally, the contemplative gift.93 Bernard follows, too, the tradition established by

Origen in the use of bridal language in referring to the text as a marriage song. The kiss, one of the deepest means of communication between two humans, takes on a life of its own in Bernard‟s text, as it becomes a symbol of deeper interiorization of the spiritual life. Just as the spiritual life is best characterized as dynamic, opening us to ever greater growth in the life of the divine, likewise, the kiss as the “living, active word” is dynamic, probing the hearts of all those who open to its power.94 The use of the bodily imagery and activity of the kiss in the text mirrors that of the Song of Songs, which is filled with references to the human body.95 The text of the Song of Songs as interpreted by Bernard, serves as an overwhelming affirmation of the human body as a vehicle, that is, having the capacity for the divine.

91 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs I, Volume Two, trans. Kilian Walsh, intro. M. Corneille Halflants (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1971), Sermon 1.2-3.

92 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs I, Sermon 3.4.

93 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs I, Sermon 4.1.

94 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs I, Sermon 2.2.

95 See the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Song of Solomon, 1:2,10,13,15; 2:6,14; 4:1,2,3,11; 5:2,3,5,14,15; 7:1,2,4. 45

The three types of kisses mentioned in Bernard‟s text that symbolize the human relationship with the divine are “kissing the feet,” the kiss on the hand,” and “the kiss of the mouth.”96 These three kisses correspond to the practices of confession, devotion, and contemplation, respectively. With the first kiss, the penitent asks for forgiveness of evil ways, which marks the turning around of one‟s life and is a sign that genuine conversion has occurred. With the second kiss, comes the gift of grace to live rightly, which is given generously and with fortitude, and in so doing, gives glory to the divine from whom all good things come. The third kiss, the kiss of the mouth or lips, signifies the gift of contemplation, and the deeper reality of the Word, which is a coming together of a kind of vision or heavenly light with the interior seeing, or the intellectual vision of the enlightened mind.97 The kiss is employed to signify deepening levels of participation in divine life in realizing deeper and deeper reality. Bernard depicts three stages of contemplation, whereby the divine becomes more present through love, although it is always imperfect in earthly existence. Souls can, through spiritual marriage, give birth both by preaching the word, and by birthing spiritual insights by meditation, which

Bernard regards as a kind of ecstasy in which the mind is enraptured by the Word.98 Bernard says that “Love exists in action [actus] and feeling [affectus].”99 Ordered love, or the proper relation between love and knowledge, brings about right

96 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs I, Sermon 3.3.

97 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs I, Sermon 3.1; Sermon 9.8. See also McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century, 208.

98 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs IV, trans. Irene Edmonds, intro. Jean Leclercq (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1980), Sermon 85.13.

99 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs III, trans. Kilian Walsh and Irene M. Edmonds, intro. Emero Stiegman (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, Inc. 1979), Sermon 50.2. 46 relation between contemplation and action, according to Bernard. One of the forms of ordered love is that between active love of others and contemplative love of the divine— the latter of which is always considered higher—yet it must give way to action.100 Contemplation, or what is primarily divine activity, and action, or what is primarily human activity, are correlated such that there is cooperation between them.101 Finally, contemplative love is always for the sake of loving activity, as Bernard explains in relation to the biblical figures of Mary and Martha: “as often as she falls away from contemplation she takes refuge in action, from which she will surely return to the former state as from an adjoining place, with greater intimacy, since these two…live together: for Martha is sister to Mary.”102

Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) Both Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross are important Carmelite figures of the Counter Reformation in Spain. While Teresa is the primary focus of this section, and John is the primary focus of the next section, where appropriate, they are both considered. Teresa enters the Monastery of the Incarnation in Avila in 1535, and eventually becomes its prioress in 1571. With great fervor and intensity, and a sense of humor, she lives a life of interior solitude even in the midst of the great activity of extensive travel and lively communication in forging ahead to reform religious communities and establish religious foundations. Along the way, she meets John and

100 See McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 525. McGinn explains that “Where Bernard advances beyond his sources is in rooting this teaching in his theology of charity, with its two forms of love of action and love of feeling based upon the Song of love….”

101 Bernard of Clairvaux, See The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs I, Sermon 18.1. Bernard employs the terms “infusion” and “effusion” to denote contemplation and action. See also McGinn, The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century, 221-222.

102 Bernard of Clairvaux, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux: On the Song of Songs III, Sermon 51.2. 47 convinces him to assist her in her endeavors. Eventually John becomes chaplain and confessor at the Incarnation. She is denounced to the Inquisition in 1575. In 1577, just five years before her death, she writes her masterpiece, The Interior Castle. Teresa contributes a legacy of rich writings to the contemplative tradition. She understands contemplative silence as a practice that enlarges the heart, leading to intimate union with the divine. She articulates contemplation in terms of the imagery of bridal mysticism. She builds upon the Song of Songs tradition passed down through Origen and Bernard of Clairvaux, whereby human sexual love is the paradigm for love of the divine.

That is, there is something in human sexual love that tells us about the divine and divine love, and who the divine is, according to them. The culmination of the interior life is one of spiritual betrothal, followed by spiritual marriage of the human soul with the divine. Human capacities are intensified through the activity of becoming fully aware of the spiritual, or depth dimension of human life. Teresa says that there is an unfathomable depth to the human soul, which is spirit.103 For Teresa, the practice of contemplative silence progresses through several levels, and is popularized through her descriptive work, The Interior Castle. This work is written using the imagery of the Song of Songs tradition. From beginning to end, she writes with expansiveness and a sheer exuberance that takes the reader along on the journey traveling to what she calls the center of the soul where the divine dwells, and describes what it looks like to love the divine. Teresa, in using the metaphor of a castle, likens the human soul to that which is “made entirely out of a diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms….”104 She describes the seven dwelling places. The first three dwelling places have to do with meditation. Then, beginning with the fourth dwelling place, there is a transition

103 See Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Volume Two, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1980), VII.2.3 (hereafter cited as IC).

104 Teresa of Avila, IC, I.1.1. 48 to contemplation as she distinguishes between spiritual consolations (contentos), which begin in the person and end in the divine (meditation), and spiritual delights (gustos), which originate in the divine, are freely given, and in which the person participates (contemplation).105 The fifth, sixth, and seventh dwelling places are a progressive journey into deeper loving union with the divine, followed by spiritual espousal, and culminating in transforming union or spiritual marriage wherein one lives the beatitudes. Teresa‟s writing is cataphatic in her exceedingly positive, uplifting perspective of the human. She enthusiastically and creatively depicts the interior life of one who has set out and traveled through all seven dwelling places. She speaks “to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity.”106 The human person is made in the image and likeness of God (imago Dei), and so, has a capacity for God (capax Dei). The divine has given human nature this “strength…in the beginning.”107 One should already be secure in that one already possesses that which one seeks. Teresa says that any darkness that is present is not due to a flaw, but is caused by attachments. The divine relation is characterized as one of sheer dependence whereby self-knowledge comes through knowledge of the divine.108 The soul must seek growth, not being comfortable to remain in any one corner. Growth in love is the essence of the journey. Love of the divine and love of the other belong together. In the transforming love of the seventh dwelling place, a person experiences a continual awareness of the presence of the divine.109 Out of this heart of hearts, whereby one loves, this “fire of love” will burn so intensely in one‟s life that one will enkindle and awaken in others a desire to grow in love of the divine as

105 Teresa of Avila, IC, IV.1.4; IV.2.3; IV.2.4.

106 Ibid.

107 Teresa of Avila, IC, I.2.12.

108 Teresa of Avila, IC, I.1.2; I.2.8; I.2.9; III.2.2; IV.1.14; V.3.1.

109 Teresa of Avila, IC, VII.2.4. 49 well.110 The growth in love that occurs has an exterior correlative in the growth in love for others. Teresa says, too, that the divine looks not so much at the greatness of the work that one does, but at the love with which the work is carried out. To Teresa, “nothing is more important than humility.”111 By centering on divine humility, one becomes aware of one‟s lack of this attribute in one‟s own life. The source of this humility is the divine, and not oneself. If one learns humility, one will experience healing and be moved to thanksgiving. Divine mercy is always present in the interior life of one who perseveres.112

The distinction between contemplation and action is considered by many to be a false dichotomy in the tradition. Both John and Teresa view the practice of contemplative silence in terms of the interpenetration of contemplation and action. Kieran Kavanaugh explains how in the writings of John and Teresa, “Action flows into contemplation and contemplation pours over into action.”113 In quoting from John‟s The Spiritual Canticle and Teresa‟s The Interior Castle, he says that for both of these writers, any such “troublesome disassociation” between the two notions is put to rest. John, whose principal source for The Spiritual Canticle is the “Song of Songs,” writes that “the cavalry at the sight of the waters descended.”114 Through the use of poetic metaphor, he depicts the merger of contemplation and action. And Teresa describes how the flowing

110 Teresa of Avila, IC, VII.4.14.

111 Teresa of Avila, IC, I.2.9.

112 Teresa of Avila, IC, I.2.12; II.1.2; II.1.9; III.1.1; III.1.3.

113 Kieran Kavanaugh, “Contemplation and the Stream of Consciousness,” Carmelite Prayer: A Tradition for the 21st Century, ed. Keith J. Egan (New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2003), 118.

114 See Kavanaugh, “Contemplation and the Stream of Consciousness,” 118. See also John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle B, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez and rev. and intro. Kieran Kavanaugh (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991), 40.5 (hereafter cited as SC). 50 that she refers to as a “spiritual marriage” “is like what we have when a little stream enters the sea, there is no means of separating the two.”115 Hence, the smaller entity has become part of the larger, all-encompassing entity, and moreover, participates in the life of the larger entity to such an extent that there is no longer any sorting out and distinguishing between the two. She makes explicit what the purpose of this “spiritual marriage” is in that it is for “the birth always of good works, good works.”116 Hence contemplation and action are united and deeply integrated for this engaged, worldly person, as well as for her companion, John, to whom we now turn.

John of the Cross (1542-1591) After making his profession to the Carmelite Order in 1564, John studies the philosophies and the arts, at a time when Italian art and poetry are being introduced into Spain. He enrolls in art courses for three years at the University of Salamanca. John becomes aware of the tradition whereby secular love poetry is taken and transformed into religious poetry. He thereupon studies theology for one year (1567-68), and is ordained a priest in 1568. It is during this time that he first meets Teresa. After serving for five years as confessor at the Incarnation, as previously mentioned, where Teresa is prioress, he is kidnapped and taken to Toledo where he is held in the monastery prison. After nine months, he escapes. It is while in prison that he composes some of his poems. Shortly before his death, he undergoes more harsh treatment as he is deprived of all offices, and dies a simple friar. Meanwhile, he leaves behind a breathtaking body of prose and poetry.

John is an apophatic theologian in his approach to the practice of contemplative silence, but the apophaticism should be described for the sake of cataphatic awareness of

115 See Kavanaugh, “Contemplation and the Stream of Consciousness,” 118. See also Teresa of Avila, IC VII.2.4.

116 Teresa of Avila, IC VII.2.4. 51 life and light and love. His poem, The Dark Night, and the two incomplete commentaries on the poem, entitled The Ascent of Mount Carmel and The Dark Night describe the work of the divine as the practitioner of contemplative silence moves from meditation to contemplation.117 Dark night is considered contemplation, or the flow of divine love into the recipient.118 Contemplation is knowledge in love.119 According to John, the critical movement is from human effort to divine work. John purports an asceticism of the heart wherein one reaches a place in which one is free simply to let the divine act in one‟s life. If one stays focused on the divine, then everything else in life will be in proper perspective. The entire journey is one of darkness, as humans do not see the way reality really is; and, it ends in darkness in the divine, which John portrays using the symbols of light and fire. John believes that there is a need for humans to learn a silent language of love. There is power in the dark night to unite human and divine love; he uses sexual union as a metaphor to describe this love.

117 See The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.v.v. “Darkness, Dark Night” (by Keith J. Egan). See also John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, 2.13.2-4 (hereafter cited as Ascent) and John of the Cross, The Dark Night, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, 1.9.2-8 (hereafter cited as DN).

118 See John of the Cross, Ascent, 1.2. See also Colin Thompson, St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University Press, 2003), 187. Thompson notes the sense-spirit polarity that John of the Cross establishes, and explains why he refers to the transition as “night.” Thompson explains, “First, it is called night because of its point of origin: the soul must abandon her pleasure in worldly things, and this negation is night to the senses. It is also night because of the road which must be followed, faith, which is dark as night to the intellect. It is night too by virtue of its goal, God himself, who is a dark night to the soul in this life. The symbol therefore covers the whole journey, its human and divine aspects, from start to finish; it is all-embracing, comprehensive, multivalent, dynamic, and will mean different things at different points along the way.” Hence “night” refers to the purification of the senses and spirit as well as to union with the divine. In the end, “night” in John of the Cross is always for the sake of greater life and light and love, as previously mentioned.

119 See John of the Cross, Ascent, 2.8.6. John refers to contemplation as that “by which the intellect has a higher knowledge of God.” In this passage he also says that contemplation “is called mystical theology, meaning the secret wisdom of God. For this wisdom is secret to the very intellect that receives it.” 52

John crafts a masterpiece as he employs lyrical poetry in his rendition of the Song of Songs entitled The Spiritual Canticle. Moreover, The Spiritual Canticle (poem and commentary), falls squarely within the Song of Songs tradition that has been under discussion. The text uses the bridal imagery of the Song of Songs tradition to describe the relationship with the divine, which culminates in this life with the spiritual marriage, wherein union in love with the divine, or transformation occurs.120 The transformation is total in that there is a surrender of possession, each to the other such that consummation occurs, according to John, with the soul becoming divine through participation inasmuch as is possible in this life. The text is filled with references to the soul as bride, and the Word as bridegroom. Spiritual betrothal to the Word describes the state of the soul in its advancement whereby the soul must undergo further liberation and learn to maintain attentiveness to the presence of the divine. That is, the soul must learn how to love in order to progress to the spiritual marriage.121 The text mentions three ways that divine presence becomes known: “The first is…presence by essence,” whereby the divine is the ground providing humans with “life and being.”122 The second type of presence is by grace, which signifies the pleasure that the divine takes in the soul. The third type of presence is through spiritual affection, whereby one is refreshed and even gladdened. John‟s work is filled with lyrical passages in which he describes the flow of divine presence.123 The “love-stirring breezes” signify the graces imparted to the one who is attentive to the presence of the divine.124 The attentive one is refreshed, even renewed by this breeze of love, which is described as a

120 John of the Cross, SC, 12.8; 1.1.; 20; 21.1.

121 John of the Cross, SC, 14, 15.2; 18.1-8; 19.6; 20, 21.1-3; 27.8; 28.10.

122 John of the Cross, SC, 11.3.

123 See John of the Cross, SC, 24.5; 24.7; 17.6; 26.7.

124 John of the Cross, SC, 14; 15.12. 53 flame that burns with intensity such that it enkindles and engenders more love. There is a mutuality of response back and forth to this love between the divine and the soul, as John describes how the divine inebriates the soul, causing it to direct back to the divine “the flowings of the movements and acts of love” that are caused by the divine.125 Finally, there is the possibility of unlimited growth for the soul, as whatever one knows of the divine can always be deepened because of the divine incomprehensibility. This theme of divine incomprehensibility can be traced back to Gregory of Nyssa‟s The Life of Moses, as well as to The Mystical Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius.

Near the end of The Spiritual Canticle, in the stunning poetic commentary on Stanza 36, wherein the poem reads, “Let us rejoice, Beloved, and let us go forth to behold ourselves in your beauty….” there is a rejoicing of the soul over divine love, a love that is expressed both in contemplation and in action.126 As indicated in the note, the soul rejoices over the love made manifest in contemplation and action, thus, indicating the intimate nature of the relation between the two.127 In John‟s Commentary on Stanza 36, he depicts an open, free flowing movement between the interior affective act of the will and exterior works performed in service of the Beloved, in what he calls a divine union. The love that is so rooted, John says, “makes one always desire to taste the joys and sweetnesses of love in the inward and outward exercise of love.”128 Hence in the intense activity of the continual movement between this internal and external exercise there is a likeness of the soul to the divine beauty of the Beloved; there is free flowing movement between contemplation and action. There is the flowing forth of action into contemplation and an outpouring of contemplation into action. Here in optimal form, we

125 John of the Cross, SC, 25.11.

126 John of the Cross, SC, 36.2-5.

127 John of the Cross, SC, 36.2-5. See also SC, 36.4n2.

128 John of the Cross, SC, 36.4. 54 have movement occur in the growing reciprocity between contemplation and action. Depending upon the point of reference, action becomes more contemplative and the practice of contemplative silence becomes an integral part of action. For John, the activity is a means for humans to envision themselves in the divine beauty of eternal life. With captivating lyricism, John expresses in his writing his experience and his hope of the continuity of living in eternal beauty in such a way:

That I be so transformed in your beauty that we may be alike in beauty, and both behold ourselves in your beauty, possessing then your very beauty; this, in such a way that each looking at the other may see in the other their own beauty, since both are your beauty alone, I being absorbed in your beauty; hence, I shall see you in your beauty, and you will see me in your beauty, and I shall see myself in you in your beauty, and you will see yourself in me in your beauty; that I may resemble you in your beauty, and you resemble me in your beauty, and my beauty be your beauty and your beauty my beauty; wherefore I shall be you in your beauty, and you will be me in your beauty, because your very beauty will be my beauty; and thus we shall behold each other in your beauty.129 This passage serves as a fine example of what Chauvet refers to as the power of language to take hold of and capture us. John is speaking of an original and fresh contemplative activity; or, in his language, a beauty that begets more beauty. He envisions a breathtaking beauty, which is bequeathed to him in a birthing of beauty born and brought forth out of his attentiveness and acquiescence to silence. There is an inordinate amount of activity that occurs in this portrayal of the likeness between divine and human love.

John attempts, too, to lead the reader into a deep engagement with and affective experience of the words through his writings. He achieves this affectivity, in part, by conveying movement. He uses nouns and reduces the use of adverbs and adjectives. He simplifies the syntax, and frequently uses alliteration. The result is an experience of reading profound poetry, which can result in an opening of new places within a person in

129 John of the Cross, SC, 36.5. 55 much the same way that the outstanding music of Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven, for example, opens one up.

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897) Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin, in what is a very brief life, practices contemplative silence (along with three of her birth sisters), in the Carmelite monastery at Lisieux. Story of a Soul is an autobiographical account of the contemplative life she lives there. The work eventually becomes a bestseller. She teaches the “little way” of spiritual childhood, or doing the ordinary daily tasks of life in love with absolute trust in the divine.130 She believes, above all, that her vocation is to love. And she loves up to her death of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-four in spite of what she experiences as a crisis, or a night of nothingness. Her last words are, “My God, I love you!”131 Thérèse loses her mother at the tender age of four, which casts a certain sadness over her young life. She has a heightened sensitivity and experiences psychological difficulties as a result of the loss. Eventually, at the age of fifteen, she joins the

Carmelites. She makes her profession of vows at the age of seventeen in 1890. It is at this time that she begins to study some of the writings of John of the Cross. John becomes an important figure in her life as she is shaped and formed by his writings. She remains largely unguided in this studious endeavor. She emerges, however, at the age of eighteen, with a mature spirituality in which she refers to the divine as friend, spouse, and lover.132 She is asked to assist in the formation of novices, and becomes their mentor.

130 Keith J. Egan, “Thérèse of Lisieux, St. 1873-1897,” Encyclopedia of Monasticism, vol. 2, ed. William Johnston. (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), 1268-1270.

131 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Third Edition, trans. John Clarke (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996), 271 (hereafter cited as Story of a Soul).

132 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 179. Therésè explains, “Ah! how many lights have I not drawn from the works of our holy Father, St. John of the Cross! At the ages of seventeen and eighteen I had no other spiritual nourishment;….” 56

She instructs them using the biblical text, as well as John‟s The Spiritual Canticle and The Living Flame of Love. It should be noted that she does not have access to his complete works. She is creative while in the convent, as she does painting in addition to writing poetry and plays.133 On the one hand, Thérèse takes a positive, cataphatic approach to relation with the divine, which she learns from John‟s writings. Like John, she believes that in order to love, one has to be free. The approach to the divine is through love. Her way of love is founded on trust and confidence. She describes in Story of a Soul how love consumes what is displeasing to the divine, and “leaves nothing but a humble and profound peace in the depths of the heart.”134 She says that the divine “has…need…only of our love,….”135 She also uses the metaphor of an elevator to convey the notion of being lifted up to the divine where she must, however, “remain little and become this more and more.”136 This passage is a good example of her apophatic approach to the divine, on the other hand, and is reminiscent once again of John as her notion of littleness can be compared to his notions of emptiness, nakedness, and spiritual poverty. When one is empty of self and humble, then one is best able to relate to others and pursue truth,

133 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 189. One example of the creativity with which she thinks emerges in her autobiography as she describes how “There are so many different horizons, so many nuances of infinite variety that only the palette of the Celestial Painter will be able to furnish me after the night of this life with the colors capable of depicting the marvels He reveals to the eye of my soul.”

134 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 179.

135 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 189. See also 194, as she exclaims “that LOVE COMPRISED ALL VOCATIONS, THAT LOVE WAS EVERYTHING, THAT IT EMBRACED ALL TIMES AND PLACES….IN A WORD, THAT IT WAS ETERNAL!” She then cries out to the divine, “MY VOCATION IS LOVE!” Finally, see 195, as she remarks in relation to the divine that “love is repaid by love alone, and so I searched and I found the way to solace my heart by giving you Love for Love.”

136 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 208. 57 according to both of them. In examining her life, Thérèse says, “Yes, it seems I never looked for anything but the truth; I have understood humility of heart.”137 When Thérèse enters the Carmel at Lisieux, she does so in order to live a life of solitude, and to fulfill what she believes to be her vocation of love. She uses the word “desert” to describe this place, as she says that “I felt that Carmel was the desert where God wanted me to go also to hide myself.”138 This term refers to the work of Cassian who writes his Conferences and Institutes for those living in the monastery cloister, in part, so that ascetic wisdom from the desert abbas could be passed on from master to disciple, as well as to impart wisdom concerning the practice of contemplative silence.139 Thérèse writes, too, of the aridity she experiences as she explains that “all books left me in aridity and I‟m still in that state.”140 This aridity and dryness is typically a sign of contemplation in the tradition, when the practitioner enters what John calls the dark night wherein one‟s own efforts of meditation cease, and divine love is received in the practice of contemplative silence. In Story of a Soul, Thérèse discusses the darkness and spiritual dereliction that she suffers during what is the last period of her life. Thérèse, by now, is well aware of John‟s description of the dark night wherein the divine is perceived to be absent when, in fact, the divine is hopefully doing the work of the divine. She depicts this state as “the thickest darkness” in what is struggle and torment for her. She describes how she is

137 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 270.

138 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 58.

139 See John Cassian, “Ninth Conference: The First Conference of Abba Isaac: On Prayer,” John Cassian: The Conferences, Ancient Christian Writers, No. 57, trans. and annotated, Boniface Ramsey (New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1997), 323-363. Certain contemporary theologians have turned to spirituality and the practice of contemplative silence as a theological resource for thinking. For one such excellent source, see David Jasper, Chapter 3, “The Desert Fathers: Wanderings and Miracles,” The Sacred Desert: Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 25-41.

140 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 179. 58 suddenly spiritually surrounded by dense fog that penetrates and envelops her such “that it is impossible to discover within it [her soul] the sweet image of my Fatherland….When I want to rest my heart fatigued by the darkness that surrounds it by the memory of the luminous country after which I aspire, my torment redoubles….”141 She finds it difficult to describe this state as she explains that the image she wants to present “of the darkness that obscures my soul is as imperfect as a sketch is to the model; however, I don‟t want to write any longer about it; I fear I might blaspheme;….”142 She is coming to grips with “a night still more profound, the night of nothingness.”143 Nevertheless, she discusses how she has continued to carry out good works, in spite of the intense darkness and feelings of abandonment and divine absence. Thérèse is a fascinating figure in that immediately upon her death, she attracts a great following. While many people are drawn to her descriptions of her contemplative piety and the sweetness of her “little way” (she is fondly and popularly known as the Little Flower in the wake of European Romanticism), some reduce or dismiss her spirituality as being too ordinary and commonplace. And yet, other twentieth century religious contemplatives who are deeply influenced by her writings, Thomas Merton among them, write enthusiastically about her. She is a giant among modern literary contemplative religious figures, in that she expresses to the very end of her life the darkness that engrosses her without losing steadfast hope.

Edith Stein (1891-1942) Edith Stein is the last of the figures to be examined who has Carmelite ties. It is a long journey before she enters the contemplative cloister, however. She is born into a

141 Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 213.

142 Ibid.

143 Ibid. 59

German Jewish family in Breslau. In her mid-teens she decisively declares that she no longer believes in the divine; she enters an atheistic period of her life. What commences is her intentional, committed search for truth and ultimate meaning; friendship and study are an integral part of this endeavor. While attending University, she experiences a severe depression that is connected to the question of the meaning of existence, or what could be called existential angst. During the First World War she volunteers as a Red Cross nurse. She earns her Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1917, while studying under and working as an assistant to the phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl; she is succeeded in this position by Martin Heidegger, whom she later meets in 1931 at Freiburg. Meanwhile, in 1921, while reading Teresa of Avila‟s Life, she decides to become Catholic, and to enter the Carmelite Order. She is initially dissuaded, however, from the latter desire, and is encouraged to lead a public intellectual life instead. She lectures throughout Germany. Erich Przywara eventually requests that she translate some of John Henry Newman‟s works into German. She also publishes a translation of Thomas Aquinas‟ Disputed Questions on Truth. She finally enters the Carmel at Cologne in 1933, and makes her final Profession of vows in 1938. It is during this period that she writes Finite and Eternal Being, in which she illustrates how the “I” of finite human existence discovers the ultimate ground in eternal divine being. She says that while her own being as she knows it and herself in it “is null and void [nichtig]; I am not by myself…, and by myself

I am nothing; at every moment I find myself face to face with nothingness, and from moment to moment I must be endowed and re-endowed with being.”144 However, there is a fullness of being that she claims to be in contact with; she says that she rests secure in this knowledge.

144 Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 9, trans. Kurt F. Reinhardt (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002), 55. 60

Because of her Jewish roots, and the growing threat in Germany, she transfers to the Carmel at Echt. It is here that she is able to finish a work on the Symbolic Theology of Pseudo-Dionysius. And, she begins work on an interpolation of the work of John of the Cross, entitled The Science of the Cross, as a Festschrift for the fourth centenary of John‟s birth. This work remains unfinished, as she is abruptly taken from the Carmel by SS troops in 1942, along with her sister, Rosa, and deported to Westerbork Concentration Camp, and then transferred to Auschwitz where she dies in the gas chamber shortly thereafter.

Edith is a philosopher, a philosophical theologian and a philosophical hermenuet through and through, as well as a practitioner of contemplative silence. Long before entering the convent, in 1919, in a treatise on sentient causality, she describes a state of resting in the divine, “of complete relaxation of all activity, in which you make no plans at all, reach no decision, much less take action, but rather leave everything that‟s future to the divine will, „consigning yourself entirely to fate.‟”145 The editor of her work notes here that because the deity and the divine are both mentioned, Edith is not necessarily adopting a religious (i.e. Jewish or Christian) stance in this passage, as she is familiar with the stoicisim of the ancient philosopher Epictetus, who regards fate as divine as well as impersonal.146 Later, in 1932, in a letter written to some working women who are living according to a religious rule, she offers some advice about how to practice contemplative silence. She says that “What we can and must do is open ourselves….”147 The practice has to do with rendering love, and enkindling love in others. She

145 Edith Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 7, ed. Marianne Sawacki, trans. Mary Catherine Baseheart and Marianne Sawacki (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2000), 84.

146 Stein, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, 84n115.

147 Edith Stein, Essays on Woman, Revised Second Edition, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 2, trans. Freda Mary Oben (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996), 143. 61 acknowledges, too, that in order to keep alive and enliven anew divine union, contemplation has to be practiced in different ways. What she means is that spiritual reading or liturgy can draw persons into the practice, in addition to the practice of emptying oneself of thoughts, and bringing oneself into a stillness and solitude. What she has to say about the practice of contemplative silence is also readily apparent in The Science of the Cross. In drawing from her variegated experience, she expands upon and explicates the spiritual teachings of John, and in so doing, outlines a theological anthropology of the human person who engages in contemplation. “Night,”

Edith says, “is the necessary cosmic expression of St. John of the Cross‟s mystical worldview” in the original mutuality as well as the objective correspondence between cosmic and mystic night, as sensory knowledge reveals spiritual knowledge.148 The “cosmic night” affects us in that what is harsh or glaring is now muted, and even soothed, with characteristic traits disclosed that do not appear in the light of day.149 John, Edith says, is sensitive to the tonalities of the cosmic night from without as he spends many nights either gazing at the landscape through a window or outside. The “mystical night” produces effects interiorly in terms of “loneliness, desolation, and emptiness,” hindering the functioning of faculties.150 There is also, however, a “nocturnal light” that discloses a fresh interior world of depth. It illumines the external world from deep within so that what is outer is returned to us as completely transformed. The dark night is the contemplative journey which prepares one for union with the divine. In dark contemplation, the soul does not possess knowledge of its object, and is humbled through

148 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 41-42.

149 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 40.

150 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 41. 62 the surrender of the spiritual faculties of intellect, will, and memory (she notes an agreement with Augustine here).151 In opening to the process of purification and renunciation, the old self dies and suffers in union with the divine. As this surrender continues, the divine infuses love and wisdom into the soul, or knowledge of the divine, as the will is conformed to the divine will. Eventually, there is a union in likeness, with the soul becoming divine through participation. According to Edith and John, this is an experience of both yearning and suffering for the divine—ascent and descent—the capacity for the divine grows so that the soul perceives “a superior and spiritual part separate from the lower, sensory part of it….”152 Edith describes the soul in contemplation as being structured as a spirit so that “within her lies an opposition between internal and external.”153 Rising movements known as “thoughts of the heart” (not thoughts in the usual sense), are interiorly perceived with the result being that spiritual faculties “split off” and form conceivable structures of “thoughts…movements of the mind and impulses of the will,” all of which are considered by her to be active spiritual energies such as knowing and loving.154 The inmost region of the soul is a place of freedom, an “I” where one “can collect…[one‟s] being and make decisions about it” without leaving one‟s place of rest.155 This place, filled with a great mystery that is also personal freedom, is only given over by the created spirit as a free gift of love in order that the divine may unite with one.

Of three types of union or indwelling discussed, Edith concerns herself primarily with the deepest indwelling which is “personal life…[which] can only flow in where one

151 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 114; 115; 121; 122; 128.

152 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 143; 145; 151.

153 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 153.

154 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 158.

155 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 160. 63 personally and freely admits” the divine; John refers to this as “transforming union through perfect love that divinizes the soul.”156 This “being-within-each-other” can only transpire in the interior being of one who is genuine. In this indwelling, she says that “both sides must have an inner being, that is, a being that contains itself interiorly and can receive another being within itself” so that while “ceasing to be independent, a unity of being comes into existence.”157 A spiritual being is penetrated inasmuch as the capacity of the recipient allows. The divine meets the personal life of the other in this inmost region of the soul. When the mystical marriage is consummated, there is a complete interpenetration of the divine life. One “sees” light rather than darkness now, as the divine continually renews one, as one is able to return both love and light. The soul in loving union judges no thing as bad, according to Edith. To love and serve the divine are the terms for this equality in friendship. Suffering is divine wisdom, as it purifies and gives more depth to the interior being, which results in a deeper knowing.158 To derive benefit from everything that happens in life, one must come to realize that all persons are instruments. Certain objects carry both knowledge of the divine and an energy of encountering the other; however, one must learn how to listen in order to have a sense of the other. In this experience of relationship motivated by love, the capacity to receive and give love freely—the highest action one comes to—grows in human experience, and is related to the search for truth as knowledge of reality grows.

This act of knowing, according to Edith, involves human freedom in the realm of the spirit, and is a gift of the contemplative life. Finally, it should be noted that Edith describes the practice of contemplative silence, according to the stages or levels Teresa

156 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 168-169.

157 Ibid.

158 Stein, The Science of the Cross, 267-268. 64 sets out in The Interior Castle, in an essay she writes on the life of Teresa, entitled “Love for Love.”159

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) Thomas Merton, the prolific writer and famous monk of the twentieth-century, is the final figure to be considered as part of the line of religious practitioners of contemplative silence. He is born in Prades, France, and moves to America where his mother dies when he is still a young child. His father takes him back to France, and then to England for schooling. His father soon thereafter dies. After one year at Cambridge University, Merton returns to the United States and is educated at Columbia University. He receives his M.A. after writing a thesis on William Blake. In 1938 he becomes Catholic, enters the novitiate at Gethsemani in 1942, and takes solemn vows in 1947. His autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, is his story of entering the Trappist Cistercian monastery of Gethsemani. Merton, throughout the vast corpus of his work, addresses the nature of the practice of contemplative silence, and the relation between contemplation and action. His seminal work on contemplation entitled New Seeds of Contemplation, begins with the question, “What Is Contemplation?”160 He asserts that contemplation is the very highest expression of the intellectual and spiritual life. In other words, cognition and affectivity are brought together into a higher awareness of reality that he considers to be the source of life. Awareness of this reality gives one the awareness of all reality— including other human beings as unique and individual persons. Contemplation goes beyond everything that a human being is, even beyond natural understanding. It is not

159 See Edith Stein, “Love for Love: The Life and Works of St. Teresa of Jesus” The Hidden Life: Essays, Meditations, Spiritual Texts, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 4, eds. L. Gelber and Michael Linssen, trans. Waltraut Stein (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1992), 29-66.

160 Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions Books, 1961), 1. 65 something that can be achieved. It is the sole meaning of, and fullness of human existence, according to Merton. He says, too, that contemplation is a search for the truth, and for the divine.161 The practice of contemplation “demands silence, solitude, poverty, detachment,” he says.162 In 1967, Merton is asked to draft a letter on behalf of religious contemplatives to be shared with the world in conjunction with a bishops‟ synod in Rome that autumn. In the letter, he remarks that contemplation has to do with penetrating one‟s own silence and advancing “into the solitude of your own heart, and risk[ing] the sharing of that solitude with the lonely other…then you will truly recover the light and the capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanations because it is too close to be explained….”163 Merton says, too, that contemplation is knowing by an unknowing, or even better, one knows “beyond all knowing or “unknowing.”164 He also describes the practice of contemplative silence as being compatible with, the fulfillment of, and yet transcends aesthetic intuition, art, poetry, philosophy, and speculative theology; it seems to supplant as well as deny all of them.

Merton compares contemplation to waking up from a dream state of consciousness.165 He explains that in order to realize that one has been dreaming and

161 Thomas Merton, The Road to Joy: Letters to New and Old Friends, ed. Robert E. Daggy (San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), 89.

162 Thomas Merton, Cistercian Contemplatives: Our Lady of Gethsemani: 1848-1948 (New York: Marbridge Printing Company, Inc., 1948), 10.

163 Thomas Merton, Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings, ed. Lawrence S. Cunningham, foreward, Patrick Hart, preface, Anne E. Carr (New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1992), 426-427.

164 Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 2.

165 See The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia, eds. William H. Shannon, Christine M. Bochen, Patrick F. O‟Connell, s.v. “Contemplation” (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002). The editors cite the essay Merton wrote entitled “The Gift of Understanding,” the source of which they have been unable to locate. 66 that the objects of the dream are not real, one has to pass over to waking consciousness. In this sense, contemplation is an awakening to a deeper state of consciousness. Just as objects of dream consciousness are no longer present once the dream has ended, objects that are present in waking consciousness are limited to the mortal phase of existence. Contemplation, described as a mortal existence in which one gains awareness of what is truly Real, anticipates a complete and ultimate transformation of consciousness that occurs when mortal existence has ended, explains Merton. The practice of contemplative silence brings one to an awareness of infinite Being that is at the ground of limited human being, as well as to an awareness of the contingent reality of human being as received. Merton also describes contemplation as a response to a call from the divine who does not have a voice, yet who speaks in everything including the depths of human being. Human being is a response through words which answer, echo, and signify the divine. There is a deep resonance and a re-sounding with “the Hidden and Living One,” and this is divine life and creativity.166 In the final essay entitled “Is the Contemplative Life Finished?” of the collection,

Contemplation in a World of Action, Merton discusses how it is important in conjunction with the practice of contemplative silence to rethink aims, motives, as well as ends. However, he says “If our rethinking is valid it is also a re-living.”167 He says that one cannot simply think now and live later. There has to be an integrated approach to one‟s thinking in that thinking involves living in the present moment. Furthermore, he says that new life emerges from it being authentically lived now. In another essay in this collection entitled “Is the World a Problem?” Merton speaks poignantly of the dichotomous nature of his humanness in being a citizen of the

166 Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 3.

167 Thomas Merton, “Is the Contemplative Life Finished?” Contemplation in a World of Action (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), 223. 67 world. He says, “That I should have been born in 1915, that I should be the contemporary of Auschwitz, Hiroshima, Viet Nam and the Watts riots are things about which I was not first consulted.”168 He continues, “Yet they are also events in which, whether I like it or not, I am deeply and personally involved.”169 He goes on to explain that the world is not an abstraction but is made up of a myriad of oppositional dyads including loves and hates, fears and joys, hopes and greed, cruelty and kindness, and trust and suspicion. In the end, he says that if war results because of the lack of trust that people have, it is partly because of his own defensiveness, suspicion, and lack of trust.

Hence his participation in the problem that the world is is an actuality inasmuch as everyone is a problem to their very own selves.170 Merton captures the essence of the relational struggle that plays out between self, other, and world, and which he works out in his life in terms of right relation between contemplation and action.

Conclusion I want to conclude this historical section by emphasizing three points that serve to reinforce the image of the practice of contemplative silence which I hope to convey in this study. First, there is an exceedingly rich textual tradition, comprised of biblical exegesis, commentary, prose, poetry, and autobiography through which the practice is passed down. The Song of Songs tradition lies at the heart of the textual tradition. The Song of Songs tradition is uniquely suited to accompany this practice, as it combines intellectual pursuit and the eliciting of affectivity, which are brought together through hermeneutical activity. In other words, language and the creative art of being are brought together. Second, while the history presented occurs through a line of men and women

168 Thomas Merton, “Is the World a Problem?” Contemplation in a World of Action, 143.

169 Ibid.

170 Ibid. 68 who live out their lives in the confines of the religious cloister, it becomes evident from what they have to say about the practice that cultivation of depth and meaning in human life is a capacity that human beings possess—that all humans have the capacity to receive new life. Finally, they strive, albeit within the confines of the cloister, to integrate contemplation and action. They are aware that the practice is for the sake of the work of living an increasingly properly ordered life in right relation with others, however wide or narrow that circle of others may be. That is, there is an ordinariness about this practice, which is not meant to be esoteric, whereby consequently, daily life with its tasks, interactions, and communications can be lived with deeper value and meaning. How is it possible that humans can live lives of deeper value and meaning? We turn now to consider the question of how the practice of contemplative silence is possible. 69

PART II:

AN EXPLANATION 70

INTRODUCTION TO PART II

Part II and Part III are written as an explanation in order to address the question, How is the practice of contemplative silence possible? I formulate a response to this question by explaining two distinct and different ways that make it possible—one that is philosophically determined and one that is religiously determined. In Part II, I approach the question from a theoretical and philosophical perspective, primarily, by appropriating the philosophical anthropology of Ricoeur. I show how his philosophical anthropology, a structure of human being, makes possible the practice. Moreover, I will lay out an ontological structure that is the condition of the possibility for the practice of contemplative silence. Showing how the practice is possible in philosophical terms will take us through Chapters Two, Three, and Four. In the end, the goal is to show how the practice of contemplative silence is not just a possibility, but an actuality that has to be explained and interpreted. As a philosopher, Ricoeur is extraordinarily patient and meticulous. He is exceedingly adept at mining the philosophical tradition and unearthing previous lines of inquiry in following this or that line of thought, or perhaps picking up on a long-forgotten insight and appropriating it for himself, so that when reading his texts, one has the uncanny feeling that one is discovering anew a lost and ancient treasure. And after having just forged ahead in following the provocative lines of thought that he lays bare, when one hopes that he will adjudicate between the two contrasting lines of thought or poles that have been presented, he mediates between them instead, as he does in Fallible

Man, by introducing a third term as a limit idea, and then he moves on, only to introduce and probe yet another line of inquiry.171 It is by proceeding in this fashion that he refrains from ever reaching a conclusion; he is too humble in his thinking for that. This

171 See Ricoeur, FM, xxviiin35. 71 procedure is also how he maintains openness in his thinking, and makes room for others to enter the conversation. So it can be said that it is in painstaking detail and with extraordinary attentiveness, Ricoeur writes a portrait of the acting and suffering human person in the world.172 He presents a philosophical anthropology that is rich in content. He continually makes detours through new subject areas to test the model and refine and rethink it in this ongoing process of self-criticism. He takes a detour from pure reflection, which focuses on the universal and infinite constitutive element of human thinking, to hermeneutical philosophy, which focuses on the particular and finite constitutive element of human thinking. Any finality to this expressive portrait continually eludes us as we move throughout Ricoeur‟s vast corpus. The original intent and conception of his central project is to articulate a Philosophy of the will in three volumes including the first installment, which he entitles Freedom and Nature. The second installment, entitled Finitude and Guilt, consists of the first part, Fallible Man, followed by the second part, The Symbolism of Evil. Interestingly, the third volume never appears. This is the point of entry for us: The interpreter of his texts, who has a lifeworld and relational realities, must enter into the dynamic to authenticate and bring to reality through hermeneutics the life and thought that he so deeply investigates and characterizes. But this is to get ahead of our story.

There is another important point that should be made in introducing the writings of Ricoeur and his open system, the dynamic of thinking, which he presents. He strives to craft, and insists on maintaining, a creative tension between philosophy and religion at a certain level, or to use his terms, critique and conviction. It is with a passionate singularity of devotion that he relentlessly insists on the poles of critique and conviction,

172 See, for example, Paul Ricoeur, “Intellectual Autobiography,” The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, The Library of Living Philosophers, Vol XXII (Peru, Illinois: Open Court Trade and Academic Books, 1995), 12; 38; 49; 50. 72 of being and of God, of the idea of reason and the aesthetic idea. In maintaining these delineations, he is able to perform mediations between opposing poles. Hence I mirror this practice of Ricoeur in my dual approach to the question of how the practice is possible. Both contexts, that is, the theoretical and philosophical, on the one hand, and the religious and theological, on the other hand, have to be determined in order to adequately explain what makes the practice of contemplative silence possible. So it is, that the next three chapters, respectively, will consider the theoretical aspects of the context in terms of fallibility, fallenness, and capability, which all lie within the fundamental human capacity of finite existence. This philosophical groundwork also comprises the first five steps of the argument that I am assembling in this study. The opening of Part III considers the religious determination of the practice, whereby the threefold way of progression to the divine, which is also known in the tradition as a spiritual itinerary—the so-called path to God—is explained in historical terms. The aim is to present a multivalent condition of the possibility for the practice, both in philosophical and religious terms. In the final analysis, by showing the possibility, we can talk, then, of what ought to be. That is, there is an actualizable possibility for the transformation of reflexive consciousness; and, this task is ethical and spiritual to the core.

An Explanation of Human Reality: Intermedial Being

There are two interconnected aspects of Ricoeur‟s thinking that deserve and warrant explanation, and which serve as a prelude to launching the argument. First, I briefly mentioned above that in his thinking, he mediates between conflicting aspects of a philosophical question or debate, which one scholar has referred to as a “dialectic of „kinship through conflict.‟”173 Here, there is no arbitrariness in terms of what Ricoeur

173 See Ricoeur, FM, ixn6. 73 chooses to discuss. From his earliest writings to his final handwritten fragments, he is concerned with the mystery of human being and meaning. He leads us into a rumination on the mystery that is human being grounded in the experience of human existence. Moreover, everything he discusses has to have a relation to human action—the human is an acting being; human activity is of paramount concern to him. But his philosophy is decidedly not self-centered; he fervidly and continually disciplines himself in his writings to decenter the self-consciousness of the human person.174 The human is, after all, in relation to the whole of reality. The human is also, therefore, as mentioned above, a suffering being. Activity and receptivity, and particularity and universality, constitute an integrated dynamic in Ricoeur‟s work. But where then, one might ask, does he begin discussion? Ricoeur always begins with a perspectival situatedness that is in the midst of the totality of reality, a reality that continuously transcends human experience, wherein myriad dimensions of the whole unfold, in many ways like a phenomenological study in the tradition of one of Ricoeur‟s philosophical mentors, Edmund Husserl.175 Ricoeur borrows from his other mentor, Gabriel Marcel, the modest aspiration of not attempting to arrive at the truth, but rather, the more realistic hope that he can simply “be in the truth.”176 He strives to avoid reducing and objectifying reality by engaging in second- order reflection, a hermeneutics of symbols, which is addressed in Chapter Three. He accomplishes this goal by continuously recentering consciousness around the other, whoever and whatever the other might be. The whole, in its entirety, comprises the horizon of reality for Ricoeur. Second, and closely related to what I have set out above, is the notion that human being is, according to Ricoeur, a being who performs theoretical, practical, and affective

174 Ricoeur, FM, x.

175 Ricoeur, FM, xiii; 4.

176 Ricoeur, FM, xiiin14. 74 mediations, in thinking, acting, and feeling. In Chapter Two, we see just how crucial and central this idea is in terms of his thinking in relation to the structure of human being. The human being is intermediate in terms of being a mixture. The human being is mediatory, situated in-between as a “disproportion” within itself and within its selves as it performs these mediations; he says that for the human “being-intermediate is mediating.”177 In and through the very act of existing, mediations are performed between and among the modalities and different levels of reality within and outside human being.178 Human reality can be thought in terms of being a locus of, and intermediate between the infinite and the finite. Human reality can also be thought of as intermedial being in terms of mediating between and being within two different aspects of human reality—the universal and the particular. The human, in his or her thinking, mediates between universality and particularity—between pure reflection and hermeneutical philosophy, according to Ricoeur, in order to reach new understandings and make new meaning, and therefore, to arrive at fresh insight about human life in the pursuit of truth.

We also can think in terms of the mediation that occurs between conflicting interpretations. In the Introduction to Fallible Man, Walter Lowe comments that by mediating between the conflict of interpretations, Ricoeur in holding oppositions in creative tension, is performing another mediation which points to a reality that can come to be known “only in and through the oppositions.”179 He explains that Ricoeur‟s later philosophy would seem to point in two related directions with regard to the nature of that reality. On the one hand, he says that for Ricoeur, hermeneutics can be explained in terms of a mediation of self to self in that through reflection we appropriate “our effort to

177 Ricoeur, FM, 3.

178 Ibid.

179 Ricoeur, FM, xviii. 75 exist and our desire to be” through works which give testimony to both the effort and the desire.180 On the other hand, hermeneutics has the task of expressing what Ricoeur calls “the world of the text,” in terms of discovering “a power beyond that of first-order reference, „another power of speaking the world…at another level of reality.‟”181 Lowe says that Ricoeur here would like to envision the self who engages in the task of hermeneutics (using Ricoeur‟s words) as “a non-egoistic, non-narcissistic, non- imperialistic mode of subjectivity which responds and corresponds to the power of a work to display a world.”182 Such a self cannot be grasped through introspective self- awareness, as Lowe points out. Rather, such a self can only come to be known through acting and suffering with and for others, while holding oppositions in creative tension, in the reality that is the world. We shall refrain from drawing any conclusions with regard to the human reality of intermedial being at this point, however, and humbly immerse ourselves in the world of the text in order to learn from and explain the philosophical anthropology and structure of such a self as that which Ricoeur reflects upon—in all of its grandeur and with all of its limits. For it is both the grandeur and the limit that together constitute fallible human, the knowledge of which can lead not only to richer understanding, but to a spiritual and ethical vision that is capable of ennobling our every action.

180 Ricoeur, FM, xxixn36. Lowe quotes here from Ricoeur‟s Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970), 46 (hereafter cited as FP). It is italicized in the original. This quote also appears in Ricoeur‟s essay, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection: II,” The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, I, ed. Don Ihde and trans. Charles Freilich (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 329 (hereafter cited as “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: II”).

181 Ricoeur, FM, xxixn38.

182 Ricoeur, FM, xxixn39. 76

CHAPTER TWO:

FALLIBLE HUMAN

Precisely what is the reality of human being (here I place emphasis on the act), and being human (here I place emphasis on the state of existing)?183 The starting point, and the first step of the argument is that human being is originally endowed with finite freedom and life. That is, Ricoeur refers to human reality as “willed existence and existence undergone,” which constitutes a totality in that I exist as the one that I am.184

Here, act and state are joined in this one that I am. This structure can be referred to as two-in-one, in that while we can conceive of the act as well as the actual state of existing as two, they are lived, in human reality, as one.185 Human being as embodied constitutes freedom that is in reciprocal relatedness with nature; freedom and nature can be understood to be in a dialogue. As Ricoeur explains, “I need first of all to learn to think of my body as myself, that is to say, as reciprocal with the willing which I am.”186 We understand ourselves initially as he or she “who says „I will.‟”187 Thus, embodied freedom can be thought of as being equivalent to the structure of the will. “Incarnate” or embodied freedom governs our motivations, intentions, and powers. Necessity is at the core of human freedom. Human being, as embodied freedom, assumes responsibility for

183 See Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. and intro. Erazim V. Kohák (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), 484 (hereafter cited as FN). The act should not be understood as “pure act” since freedom, according to Ricoeur, has moments of activity as well as receptivity in that “It constitutes itself in receiving what it does not produce: values, capacities, and sheer nature.” See also Kearney, “Capable Man, Capable God,” 49 and 51n9. Kearney comments that Ricoeur does, however, see continuity between potency and act, (or between “possibilizing and actualizing” in the “I can”), in that this phenomenology—the aim of which is a concrete event—is a mix of the two.

184 Ricoeur, FN, 412.

185 Ricoeur, FN, 414.

186 See Ricoeur, FN, 31.

187 Ricoeur, FN, 5. 77 the decisions, actions, as well as the consent that issue forth and that constitute living experience. Ricoeur thinks about embodied freedom in terms of its being both mystery and paradox. The mystery has to do with there being some sort of concealed unifying consciousness insofar as it is willed, and yet endured as well.188 The acts that I perform are joined to a “state of living” in being the one that I am.189 The necessity that is a part of life is felt as “the non-willed positing of myself,” Ricoeur says. The brute fact is, that “I find that I exist.”190 He explains that “This inability of consciousness to bestow being on itself and to persevere in it is sometimes suffered as an original wound, at other times experienced as a joyous complicity with a thrust which comes from without….”191 Freedom and necessity assume the paradox in that freedom, in addition to being bound to finite manner and indefinite matter, is bound “to the pure fact of existing „in life.‟”192 Freedom is dependent not only upon the finite and limited nature of the body, but on consciousness and the elusive “I” as well. In order to complete the determination of human freedom in his work, Freedom and Nature, Ricoeur mediates, and in so doing, contextualizes human freedom through the use of a limit concept, which he also regards as a presence—that of genuine transcendence.193 It is through the introduction of “presence” that he presents and brings into view a poetic dimension of reality. He refers to this new dimension as being an innovation in the theory of subjectivity. Yet, to be sure, human freedom is not divine

188 Ricoeur, FN, 414.

189 Ibid.

190 Ricoeur, FN, 413.

191 Ibid.

192 Ricoeur, FN, 414.

193 Ricoeur, FN, 486. 78 freedom in that it is not an absolute positing; to will is not the same thing as to create, he explains. Ricoeur‟s meditation on a mythics of bad will prompts him to think about the “locus” in human, the point at which evil is inserted into human reality.194 He ponders how it is that evil is possible and how it could enter into the world. The movement from innocence to fault, and from original goodness to human evil in experience, cannot be approached by description. Myths of the fall and exile, for example, cannot be directly introduced into philosophical discourse. Rather, they have to be placed into their own proper world of discourse—that of pre-philosophical expression—where they are understood as being secondary elaborations of a quite basic language that Ricoeur refers to as “the language of avowal.”195 It is this language, a symbolic language, that can speak indirectly to a philosopher of what human fault and human evil are. Ricoeur therefore has to broaden his anthropological perspective from a study of the structure of the will to a study of the conditions of its possibility in the constitutional structure of human being. Through reflection on pre-philosophical expressions, and the reduction of discourse to the ontological structure that provides for their possibility, his presupposition is that he can make intelligible where it is that the possibility of evil becomes visible in the inherent structure of human being. He engages in transcendental reflection that begins with an object (i.e. the expression) and proceeds back to the conditions of its possibility in order to ascertain the fundamental elements that comprise the theory and structure of fallibility.196 In analyzing three levels of the structure of human being—knowing (or thinking), doing (acting or willing), and feeling—he explains how the inherent structure of human being is “fallible.” Fallibility refers to “the

194 Ricoeur, FM, xliii.

195 Ricoeur, FM, xlii.

196 Ricoeur, FM, 5. 79 constitutional weakness that makes evil possible.”197 Ricoeur devises a series of approaches that while partial, reveal a global disposition of the reality of being human in which fallibility as an ontological characteristic is inscribed in human being. Ricoeur‟s goal is to give conceptual clarity to the pre-philosphical discourse by way of an explanation. The goal is not fully realizable, however, in that no amount of conceptual analysis and explanation can articulate in full what it is that primary expressions are capable of saying. Ricoeur shows how human being expresses in a primordial way more than what it knows, in such a way that metaphorical and philosophical language arises from these primordial expressions. We shall come to see how this is so. Through pre-philosophical expressions, we reflect on expressions of acknowledgment of our self-awareness as “miserable,” reducing this articulation or utterance, this avowal, down to the theoretical principles having to do with the nature of being. Hence, with this dual beginning in both the prephilosophical and the philosophical, the pathetic (the “pathétique”)—constituted and characterized by avowals of misery—and the transcendental—Ricoeur establishes the elements for the conceptual elucidation of his philosophical anthropology.198 Humans are subject to imperfections, and so, are prone to “err.” The possibility of moral failing resides in a disproportion, which is the non-coincidence of human being with itself. He explains the disproportion in Fallible Man as the “pathétique of

„misery,‟” in that human being lives a paradox as he or she is situated in the middle of two poles—the infinite and the finite: Human being is infinitude insofar as it can conceive concepts, engage in rational thinking, and participate in ideas, and thus make things intelligible in universal terms. Human being is finitude insofar as it can perceive percepts and intuit the sensible in a limited and particular way given its restricted

197 Ibid.

198 Ibid. 80 perspective on reality. Human being is infinitude, while finitude, as a sign, indicates the limited nature of infinitude.199 The opposite holds as well: infinitude, as a sign, indicates a transcending of that finitude. Understanding this finite/infinite polarity is crucial. The instability of the ontological condition consists in the human being who is both greater than and lesser than itself. Let us examine more closely the constitutive structure of human being.

The Philosophical Anthropology of Paul Ricoeur

Human capability is at the center of Ricoeur‟s philosophical anthropology. Humans have a capacity for fallible existence. Ricoeur analyzes three levels at which human reality fails to coincide with itself—at the levels of knowing (or thinking), doing (acting or willing), and feeling. Each of the three levels is explained below in terms of theoretical, practical, and affective mediation. The three levels that are considered as a single structure, and articulated in triadic terms in the “Preface” of Fallible Man as the infinite, the finite, and mediation, are expressed as originating affirmation, existential difference, and human mediation in the “Conclusion” of the study.200 He thereby acknowledges the task of transposing and incorporating the Kantian categories of quality—reality, negation, limitation—into his philosophical anthropology. Through employing the dialectic of knowing, acting, and feeling, his goal is to make a more concrete determination of feeling as that which truly represents our humanness and humanity.201 Hence, in beginning the analysis with knowing, and moving downward through acting and feeling, originating affirmation grows increasingly richer and more inward in the progression. Through the pole of the infinite, I am assured that my

199 Ricoeur, FM, 3.

200 Ricoeur, FM, xliv; 135.

201 Ricoeur, FM, 136. 81 existence can be continued in an openness that includes thinking and acting; “the originating affirmation is felt here as the Joy of „existing in‟ the very thing that allows me to think and to act; then reason is no longer an other: I am it, you are it, because we are what it is,” he explains.202 While the power of originating affirmation, (the “effort to exist” or the “power to posit”) constitutes human being, we are intelligible only by participating in a particular negative notion of nothingness, which is in true relation with that affirmation.203 This existential negation serves to negate our perspective, our character, and our felt love for life through denial; it limits our originating affirmation and appears as a difference. For example, let us suppose that I can play the french horn, and was once accomplished at it. I have been motivated to audition for the local symphony orchestra. An opportunity presents itself in the form of an upcoming opening. I will audition out of love and the desire to play, as well as to hear great music; I have longed to be a part of the camaraderie that exists in such a group, and here is my opportunity. Moreover, when I have occasion to attend and listen to performances of the orchestra, I am drawn to the lovely and beautiful music, and hear in it the call of what is desirable and loveable. Further, when I desire to play in the orchestra, I also experience a feeling of myself as desiring to participate; this is a form of self-love. This is the affective perspective. I visit with my friend, who is an amateur musician herself, about this desire; she is familiar with the group. I know that my friend tends to be a naysayer who more often than not has a negative perspective on life, and can sometimes be nihilistic in her thinking; she is realistic, however. I am hoping for her support. She tells me, however, that I will not succeed in the audition, and that it is a pointless waste of time to try, as there are other musicians much more accomplished than I who have been professionally

202 Ricoeur, FM, 137.

203 Ibid. Ricoeur follows Spinoza here. 82 trained, and who are deserving of the coveted position. I begin to doubt myself and my abilities, to the point that I am tormented by the thought of the possibility of the audition. I know that there is truth in what my friend says. I am torn by the thought of what I so desire and would love to have the opportunity to do—to participate in beauty. And yet, I also know that I would be overextending myself with the commitment if I was actually chosen. My body has been both an opening in willing something, and a closing in resisting the desire. I have persevered. This is the practical perspective. My self-doubt turns to interiorized anguish as I think of the exciting new possibility, and yet I am aware of the limited amount of time that I would have to practice if I was to succeed. I know I am correct in having come to the realization of the constraints on my time because of the other professional and personal goals that I have set. I now become accustomed to the reality that indeed, I chose not to audition for the orchestra. A feeling of my finitude closes in and envelops me, pressing in on me; I feel sadness about this lost opportunity to expand my horizons, and feel and know that I am human and finite. My character is a combination of both the affective and the practical perspectives, and is the finite openness I have demonstrated above. Hence existential difference manifests “as a difference between me and the other, then as a differing of myself from myself, and finally interiorizes itself in the sadness of the finite.”204 Ricoeur further explains that “The feeling of difference left the otherness outside of me, but the feeling of contingency interiorizes it;….”205 The recognition of my contingency insofar as it is not necessary that I exist as I am, nor that I even exist, that there was both a possibility that I could have been some other, or not existed at all, entails this ground that is sadness: “I am the living non-necessity of existing.”206

204 Ricoeur, FM, 138.

205 Ricoeur, FM, 139.

206 Ibid. 83

In the dialectic between originating affirmation and existential negation or difference, the Kantian term, “limitation,” synonymous with our human fragility is, in Ricoeurian terms, human mediation. Indeed, the limitation is the human itself as a mediating being. Finite freedom and mediating being come together. The human being is thought through composition rather than directly in this mixture of originating affirmation and existential negation. The human “is the Joy of Yes in the sadness of the finite.”207 This sadness is regarded as “a primitive affection” or “sufferance” that focuses on the negative through a constricting of consciousness.208 This joy is the exhilarating, felt knowledge and exuberance of simply being aware that we are alive, of being in love with life, which results in an expansiveness of consciousness. Feeling discloses the fissure, the split that we are as primordial conflict, which appears as a fault resulting in human fragility. Fragility can be thought of in increasingly complex ways— as the “occasion” to fail, the “origin” of failure, and the “capacity” to fail.209 With regard to occasion, fallibility delineates the possibility of evil, or “the point of least resistance” at which evil enters into human being.210 But there is a gap between the possibility of evil and evil as a reality; this gap is the fault. We appear, then, as a synthesis—fragile mediators of reality in the “becoming of an opposition: the opposition of originating affirmation [thinking, doing, acting, or willing, and feeling as thought in terms of finitude] and existential difference [thinking, doing, acting, or willing, and feeling as thought in terms of infinitude].”211 The becoming of an opposition is

207 Ricoeur, FM, 140.

208 Ibid.

209 Ricoeur, FM, 141.

210 Ibid.

211 Ibid. 84 existential self-contradiction. Discontinuity and conflict are inscribed into the structural constitution of human being. As a way to begin discussion of the three levels and the mediations that occur, what follows is a highly condensed and succinct presentation of Ricoeur‟s abstract model of human being.212 The focus is primarily on thinking and acting, both of which occur through the medium of language. The human being is a thinking being who brings about mediations. There is a vertical and a horizontal pole which establish the limits of critical thinking. The arché or ground of the vertical pole out of which thinking emerges is the lower threshold. At this lower limit, the mode of discourse it signals is “original affirmation.” It is the unity of opposites of the polarities which remain altogether undifferentiated at this point. The opposite end of the pole, the telos, the goal or end toward which thinking strives is the upper threshold. At this upper limit, the mode of discourse it signals is “eschatological hope.” It is the unity of opposites that are now differentiated through human mediation. “Original affirmation” and “eschatological hope” are terms Ricoeur employs to signify that thinking at either limit is nonconceptual; at the limit, thinking is negated and gives way to immediacy. The horizontal pole can be thought of in terms of the notion of critique on the infinite pole, and conviction on the finite pole, and of “Being” on the infinite pole in opposition to “God” on the finite pole. In Kantian terms, the idea of pure reason, which is the concept with no intuition (percept) on the infinite pole can be opposed to the aesthetic idea, which is intuition (percept) with no concept on the finite pole. Ricoeur affixes limits to thinking on the horizontal plane as well. If we abstract one side of the mediating activity from the other when regarding them in reciprocal terms, a limit is reached in thinking. Both elements in the oppositional pair have to appear, according to

212 See Klemm, “Philosophy and Kerygma: Ricoeur as Reader of the Bible,” 53-56. This paragraph and the three that follow are based on this work. 85 the rule of active synthesis. For example, in the theoretical synthesis, the thinking self that “I” am composes an object of knowing through the activity of mediating between seeing or perceiving which as bodily receptivity is finite, and saying, which holds infinite capacity by conceptually determining the meaning of what is perceived through the transcendental imagination, which casts an image that serves as a mediator of the percept (a particular element) and the concept (a universal element). The “I” synthesizes percepts with the appropriate conceptual determination in language by following the system or relations and rules governing words, and the lexicon of word-meanings.

With the practical synthesis, the thinking and acting self or the “I” composes an image of the person that “I” aspire to be by combining the established traits of selfhood with a mental image generated by the imagination of how it is that “I” can accomplish happiness. The thinking that occurs is a mediation between my finite state of character, and my infinite intention to lead a life of happiness, to live a good life by following the moral law, which is fueled, that is, stimulated and supported by the feeling of respect for a person. The synthesis that is projected is the intention to follow a plan of action so that that happiness is achieved. This synthesis is weaker in that there is a rift in a moral agent who “can will a moral act and still not do it; one cannot signify a perceived object without seeing it.”213 It is at the level of the affective synthesis that the deepest conflict, the inner conflict of the heart takes place. Intention and affection come together in feeling as the self not only ascertains the worth of something, but discovers itself to be interiorly affected by something as well, whether it be another person or the world. Mediation occurs between the sensible desire of pleasure, or self-love without beatitude on the finite pole, and rational desire, or spiritual beatitude on the infinite pole through the life of spirit. Essential feelings such as having, power, and worth, come into conflict with the

213 Klemm, “Philosophy and Kerygma: Ricouer as Reader of the Bible,” 53. 86 characteristically spiritual feelings of joy and sadness, anxiety and courage, hope and fear at the heart of human reality.

Theoretical Mediation Ricoeur has to proceed from mythos to logos, from mélange (myth) and misery (rhetoric) that human being avows, and which provides the substance of philosophy, and then to philosophical discourse. He starts out with a transcendental reflection that examines the power of knowing. That is, the first level of human being is an investigation into the power of knowing. The other two levels of human being, that of action and feeling, will have to undergo transcendental reflection as well in order to be considered categories of anthropological investigation. First, in terms of a transcendental reflection, it is through the power of knowing that the first disproportion is presented. The terms “mélange” and “misery” are reduced and called synthesis. That is, the myths and avowals of misery are transposed into fallibility. Second, the reflection begins with knowing from the thing or object known, through the process of discerning “the power of knowing, upon the thing,” to discover a specific disproportion in knowing “between receiving it and determining it. Upon the thing it apprehends the power of synthesis.”214 It is an exercise in reflection as distinct from introspection because this exercise begins with reflection on the object. It is transcendental reflection because it makes appear on the object precisely what it is in the subject that enables the synthesis to be possible. This power of synthesis is called “consciousness,” i.e. consciousness of the object that is not yet for itself as in self-consciousness; it is represented in an objective correlate.215

We shall now move into the mediations. At each stage—the theoretical, practical, and affective levels—the mediation unites an element that is universal with one that is

214 Ricoeur, FM, 18. My emphasis.

215 Ibid. 87 particular. The middle (final) term must combine something universal with something particular. The mediating figure that defines human as finite and fallible is composed of a transcending element that opens to infinity and a self-constricting that closes us in.

Seeing Seeing is the particular element in the first mediation. What first appears to us, what we see, Ricoeur says, is not our own bodies, but rather, other living persons or things in this world, toward which we are directed. It is only when we question what appears that we shift our attention “from what appears” to the person “to whom it appears.”216 We can think, therefore, of the body as a mediation of, and originating mediator between, whatever it is that appears in the world and ourselves. The body serves to open us out to the world, and, at the same time, to isolate us in our suffering. When one receives, one entrusts insofar as one intuitively surrenders to the existence of that presence. The openness of the body is self-constricting, however, and is, therefore, finite in terms of its receptivity and perspective. This finitude is composed of a “perspectival limitation of perception,” which has the effect of making each view “a point of view on….” as things appear.217 The perception is what initially appears. Given the perspectival limitation of perception, it is only possible to perceive one side of an object at any given point in time. That it is possible that there are other views of the object, makes me develop an awareness of new aspects of my bodily mediation, such as the “here” or situatedness of the body, or the point from which the thing or object is viewed. If I change the “here,” then the perception changes as well. The body as the

“here” point or center of orientation is the origin point in terms of time and space of “all that I can see.”218 Primal finitude has to do with perspective, or the point of view insofar

216 Ibid.

217 Ricoeur, FM, 20.

218 Ricoeur, FM, 21. 88 as we receive objects rather than create them. Openness and perspective, in relation, are characteristic of perceptual receptivity with regard to primal finitude.219 When one determines, however, one has to think, which involves exerting mastery over that presence; this is the opposite side, the infinite pole, of the theoretical mediation. Upon the thing, there is a scission between a receiving, i.e. seeing, and a determining, i.e. saying. Reflection involves combining and sundering. This reflection on knowing distinguishes receiving “the presence of things” from determining “the meaning of things.”220 We shall now move to the infinite pole of the mediation, or saying.

Saying Saying is the universal element in the mediation. To speak of one‟s finitude is to transcend that finitude, so that there must be a moment of surpassing being finite that is the condition for the possibility of expressing that finitude. There is a basic connection in “an experience of finitude and a movement transgressing this finitude.”221 A depiction of finitude is deficient if it fails to account for what it is that enables a discourse on finitude to be possible. It follows that in order for there to be a complete discourse on finitude, there has to be a discourse on finitude and infinitude. It is in this way that we can account for the transgression that occurs through discourse. While perception is perspectival, as mentioned above, we could not recognize a perception as just that, perspectival, if we did not somehow go beyond our own perspective. The transgression of our single point of view, that is, our perspective on some thing, is a transgression with an intention toward signifying what it is. To go

219 Ricoeur, FM, 24.

220 Ricoeur, FM, 18.

221 Ricoeur, FM, 26. 89 beyond a single perspective of the thing is to move into a thing itself—to express the thing in its entirety by naming it. The being who speaks is one who, through intending and expressing, transcends the perspectivally limited character of the perception in the capacity to determine some thing in its entirety in terms of the non-perceived sides of the thing. When I say “this is a house,” I intend not only the seen but also the unseen sides of the house. I pick up on this discussion in the final section of this chapter with the second step of the argument of this study. Here, the point is that in explaining Ricoeur‟s philosophical anthropology the discussion is incomplete without attending to the infinite as well as the finite. To sum up, we have now established seeing as the finite pole, and saying as the infinite pole of the theoretical mediation. We are now in a position to consider the third and final term of the theoretical mediation—the imagination—which is the middle term in that it mediates between seeing as particular, and saying as universal.

Imagination The imagination as the middle term must combine something universal with something particular. The finding of a disproportion between seeing and saying, which is a rupture between finite perceiving and infinite signifying, or between the look and the expression, gives rise to a problem with the third or intermediate term, the “pure imagination.”222 The pure imagination is “inscrutable,” and resists direct observation in its impenetrability; it is simply impossible to understand. The pure imagination does, however, appear in the “thing,” which is the “unity” that is already realized between point of view and speech, or between the percept and the concept. Ricoeur names this unity

“objectivity,” which indicates the “ontological dimension of things.”223 The ontological dimension of things combines appearance and meaning and is, therefore a synthesis; this is the “being” of the thing.

222 Ricoeur, FM, 37.

223 Ricoeur, FM, 38. 90

The “being” of things is not in consciousness; it stands over against it as that to which it relates.224 However, consciousness takes an active role in determining what is the being of things. Consciousness becomes an intermediary in “projecting itself into the thing‟s mode of being.”225 In this way, consciousness is the midpoint of the infinite and the finite in depicting what is the ontological dimension of things—specifically as the synthesis of appearance (or presence) and meaning. Ricoeur explains that “here consciousness is nothing else than that which stipulates that a thing is a thing only if it is in accordance with this synthetic constitution.”226 Hence a thing is a thing (a unity or synthesis) in that it appears and is expressed (it has meaning); it is objectivity. He says that it is indeed a thing “if it can affect me in my finitude and lend itself to the discourse of any rational being.”227 Hence appearance (or presence), or the finite pole, and meaning, or the infinite pole, are the terms of the synthesis, which together constitute the “being” of the thing, or “the ontological dimension of things.”228 The synthesis of meaning and appearance is “the thing‟s mode of being”—this is objectivity.229 I want to note as a brief aside, as Ricoeur does, that this is a transcendental reflection and not a psychological reflection. A psychological reflection is description at an empirical level. The transcendental and the empirical are two different standpoints that we can occupy. The empirical standpoint is the everyday: we dodge and catch buses, for example. The transcendental standpoint is the philosophical standpoint that we

224 Ibid.

225 Ibid. Ricoeur says that the consciousness as synthesis is not “self-consciousnes,” and therefore, not yet human.

226 Ibid.

227 Ibid.

228 Ibid.

229 Ricoeur, FM, 39 91 occupy when we stand back from the empirical standpoint to reflect on how what happens at the empirical standpoint is possible. A transcendental reflection is what is used to justify the necessary use of concepts that have no empirical correlates, for example, concepts like substance and causality. So from that standpoint, we deduce necessary conditions that do not appear at the empirical level. All objects of experience appear to us in time as an a priori or pure condition of experience in time. We can imagine the emptiness or fullness of time, as possible experiences, but we cannot imagine the absence of time as a possible experience. For example, time is a condition of the possibility of empirical experience. We can come close to intuiting time in the everyday empirical standpoint, but not quite, according to Kant. Time and space are pure intuitions which make other intuitions possible. The synthesis on the thing is made possible “by projecting in advance the objectivity of the object, i.e. the mode of being proper to it and in virtue of which it can appear and be expressed.”230 The secret contained here is to a primal connection, or “reference” of “the soul” or “I” to the objectival synthesis.231 Ricoeur says that “I myself become [am] a synthesis of speech and perspective in this projection of objectivity” in being capable of connecting meaning and appearance in the thing.232 According to Ricoeur, we cannot conceive the “I” of synthesizing activity, because “I” is not a concept. Concepts are universal, and the “I” is singular. Neither can we perceive the “I,” because “I” is not a percept. Percepts are empirical, and the “I” is the origin- point of percepts that can never appear empirically to itself. The “I” is transcendental, as a necessary condition of experience. “I” am the one who has an experience.233 We

230 Ricoeur, FM, 39.

231 Ricoeur, FM, 40.

232 Ibid.

233 In other words, that is the necessary condition for the “I” as transcendental. 92 think the “I” transcendentally (as the necessary condition of experience), therefore, and not directly. Ricoeur does propose, however, what Schelling and Fichte propose, and called the “intellectual intuition”—in place of thinking. Frederick C. Beiser explains that the general meaning of this term, in following Fichte, “is self-knowledge as a spontaneous, acting subject.”234 He says that Fichte defines it as follows: “Intellectual intuition is the immediate consciousness that I act, and of what I do when I act. It is because of this that it is possible for me to know something because I do it….”235 In terms of reflexivity, we could say that intellectual intuition is “the self-awareness of myself acting, the immediate consciousness of acting, and what I do when I act.” And, further, the self-awareness could be ad infinitum. Ricoeur uses two images so that we may be guided in thinking the pure activity of synthesizing: First, the image of openness suggests a combination of perspective and the transgression of it, in that each perspective does not enclose me because I hold access to a space of expressibility by virtue of the thing‟s very appearance under its successive aspects.236 Second, is the image of light or clarity, in that light is a space of appearance and intelligibility. If I consider light to be an openness, then it becomes the medium of both appearance as well as expressibility.237 The transcendental “I” schematizes and

234 See Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 297-298. Beiser says that for Fichte “the first principle of the Wissenschaftslehre is a postulate that demands that the subject intuit itself, that it think of itself and in doing so construct itself in intuition.” Beiser explains, too, that “The transcendental ego, [or the “I”] is not a thing-in-itself, Fichte contends, but a transcendental idea because it can be „realized in intellectual intuition‟….By appealing to intellectual intuition, then, Fichte could keep transcendental philosophy within its own self- imposed limits of possible experience.” Beiser comments that this context illustrates how Fichte did not develop the theory by an abstract reflection on self-consciousness, or from a general examination of “the conditions of consciousness. Rather, he formed it in reflecting on the conditions of transcendental self-knowledge, and in attempting to build a strictly immanent transcendental philosophy.”

235 Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801, 298.

236 Ricoeur, FM, 40.

237 Ibid. 93 forms an image in the mind in order to synthesize the universal concept with the particular appearance. The (transcendental) image is capable of mediating between concept and percept because it meets Kant‟s “homogeneity” requirement: the image is particular like the percept, yet it is also universal, like the concept. Kant‟s example is that of a dog. I see something and call it a dog. The transcendental imagination mediates by forming an image of a dog in general. Kant thus demonstrates that what is taken as the self-evident givenness of some thing (e.g., the dog in its dogness) to thought, actually conceals a prior unreflected connection between a human concept that is fallible (e.g., the concept “dog”), and an experience of some sort (the intuition of the thing). The connection is revealed in language in the copula (e.g., “is”) in the form of a judgment (e.g., “This is a dog.”). When we dislodge the self-evident givenness of a thing, we disconnect the connection between the thought and experience in its immediacy, in order to examine the concept that we have applied, as well as the perceived intuition (percept). That is, we question the truth of our judgment by seeking satisfactory reason for the positing of the identity-indifference between the concept and intuition (percept). As the being of the thing (e.g., the “immediacy”) is the actual connection between the concept and the intuition (percept), then critical consciousness is questioning what is the truth of being, insofar as it is self-evidently given in appearance. Knowledge is the result of the correspondence between the concept as intellectually derived, and intuition as sensibly derived. Ricoeur explains how “in determining time each category makes itself intuitive and receives a dimension full of imagery.”238 A schematized category is a category plus time. When we schematize a category so that it has a time-determination, then it is intuitively available and accessible to us, whereas a category is not. We have to think a category. The pure image is, in Kantian terms, a “transcendental time determination,” so

238 Ricoeur, FM, 42. 94 that in apprehending a percept, time is generated.239 The important thing behind the doctrine of schematism is the Kantian claim that time itself is a particular, and we therefore intuit time. Time is not, therefore, a universal that we can think as a concept; we intuit something in time (and space), and, again, we can imagine empty time and space—but we cannot imagine the absence of time and space.240 In the attempt to do so, however, we seem to intuit time and space intellectually as a priori or pure forms of intuition. This is the result of the Transcendental Aesthetic of Kant‟s Critique of Pure Reason.241 Moreover, Ricoeur says that time is diversity and allows itself to be understood; it scatters and orders. Time is particular and universal; time is the finite pole of the particular and sensible, and the infinite pole of the universal and intelligible. Through time-determinations, it also unites the finite pole of appearance, in the percept, with the infinite pole of meaning, in the concept. Time is essentially distended, and it is this disconnection that makes time “homogenous with the phenomenon.”242 Time is also determinable by our understanding because the categories are embedded in our understanding in the structure of a schemata, which is to say that I can temporalize these categories. That is how time is determinable by the understanding. Ricoeur explains that

239 Ibid.

240 See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 175 or A 24/B 39 and 178-179 or A 31/B 47 respectively. With regard to the absence of space, Kant explains that “One can never represent that there is no space, though one can very well think that there are no objects to be encountered in it.” With regard to the absence of time, Kant explains that “Time is a necessary representation that grounds all intuitions. In regard to appearances in general one cannot remove time, though one can very well take the appearances away from time. Time is given a priori. In it alone is all actuality of appearances possible. The latter could all disappear, but time itself (as the universal condition of their possibility) cannot be removed.”

241 See Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 172-192 or A 19/B 33-A 49/B 73.

242 Ricoeur, FM, 42. Ricoeur uses Kantian terms here. 95

Time is therefore that mediating order, homogenous both with the sensible whose very style of dispersion and distension it is, and with the intelligible for which it is the condition of intuition since it lends itself to that intelligible determination that we call „series.‟ The marvel of time is the coincidence of „manifold‟ and „series.‟243 Time can come, then, in different determinations such as permanence (substance), necessary succession as in “first this, then that” (causality), and fullness of time, as opposed to emptiness of time; it is the filling of time (quality). Ricoeur goes on to say that because we cannot think time, we cannot construct a philosophical order on its basis. He explains that to know being (to have an ontology) is not only to allow it to appear, but

“to determine it intellectually,” to order and express it, as well.244 But if being is time, in some way we cannot do it; we do not have it. We can let it appear, but we cannot say what it is that we are pointing out. Time is inscrutable.

Practical Mediation As we descend into Ricoeur‟s philosophical anthropology, we proceed to the second of three levels, which is the move from “I think” to “I will.”245 Thus, we proceed from a theory of knowledge to a theory of the will in this anthropology of disproportion, which is a reflection on fallibility. Transcendental reflection alone is not enough to account for the human person. We must include a world of persons who express themselves in human works. The totality is approached in degrees.246 Hence, our reflection progresses from the “thing” that is known to the “person” in the practical world of finitude. In terms of the finite pole, what is “perspective” at the first level, can be summarized in the concept of “character” at the second level.247 In terms of the infinite

243 Ibid.

244 Ricoeur, FM, 43.

245 Ricoeur, FM, 47.

246 Ricoeur, FM, 48.

247 Ricoeur, FM, 49-50. 96 pole, whatever Ricoeur considers to contribute to aspects of “practical infinitude” can be comprehended and summarized in the concept of “happiness” at the second level. Hence character and happiness respectively, constitute the finite and infinite poles of this mediation. “Respect” is the third term and mediates these notions of character and happiness. At the second level, the practical mediation is the composition of the human in terms of “respect.” The practical mediation enlarges the first level of mediation by the transcendental imagination, which is directed into an object. At this second level, the disproportion is between character and happiness.248

Character Character is the particular element in the second mediation. There are three steps in composing a concept of character—affective perspective, practical perspective, and character.249 Whereas perspective is disinterested at the first level of knowing in the theoretical mediation, here Ricoeur restores the affectivity of perspective. The will is fed with motives, which in turn, project its desires outside of consciousness onto the world.

This is how affective life is made known. I go outside of myself in giving myself over entirely to a project. Human freedom advances in terms of motivated projects for which I have reasons in constituting my actions. Sensory receptivity is analogous to motivation. That is, I see exactly why it is that I act in a given way; “I hear” a call of what is desirable and loveable.250 There is both confusion and clarity with desire. “Desire is a lack of….,” but attains clarity in bringing to imagination an image, the goal of what is desired.251 Confusion, however, is precisely what does not proceed into an image; it is

248 Ibid.

249 Ricoeur, FM, 51.

250 Ricoeur, FM, 52.

251 Ricoeur, FM, 54. 97

“that in the aim which does not aim and that in choice which does not choose.”252 It is the way one feels, or the mood one is in; Ricoeur uses Heidegger‟s notion of Befindlichkeit here, which is discussed in Chapter Five of this study. The feeling of oneself that Ricoeur discusses here can be considered a form of self-love. When one desires something, one also experiences a feeling of oneself as desiring that thing. Recall the example above in the desire to play in the symphony orchestra. We saw the way in which the body is both an opening and a closing of self; in addition to being mediatory, there is an immediacy to the body as well.253 There is an element of opening of the body to the world insofar as the will is thrust outward to the world.254 The body can also be considered to possess an element of closing in resisting desire, which is an inertia; practical finitude can be considered such a kind of perseverance. The predisposition to persevere in an act that composes being is a contracted form of power. Character combines affective and practical perspective. Ricoeur says that “Character is the finite openness of my existence taken as a whole.”255 Character has to do with the totality of our field of motivation, which is considered in its entirety. This totality is given in adumbrations of expression in the way, for example, that we love, which reflects on our entire personality. What is a “depth” of feeling is the power of our whole expression. Character is expressed in the quiet gesture or the thoughtful and telling comment, which gives us occasion to recognize who the person is through these inimitable expressions. Character is “the radically non-chosen origin of all my choices”

252 Ibid.

253 Ricoeur, FM, 55.

254 Ricoeur, FM, 58.

255 Ibid. 98 in that I cannot choose “who” I am.256 Character is also “the primal orientation of my total field of motivation,” which is an openness to humanity and to the possibilities of being human as part of “who” I am.257 We shall proceed, now, to the infinite pole of the practical mediation.

Happiness Happiness is the universal element in the second mediation. The disproportion between happiness as universal, and character as particular, in practical reason, is what denotes finitude in the practical mediation. Ricoeur is attempting to express at this second level of his anthropology the global nature of disproportion. He says that Aristotle thinks of happiness in terms of “the Good [which] has rightly been said to be that at which all things aim;” happiness has to do with discriminating the goal of desire in the human.258 Let us examine carefully this notion of happiness: We begin by considering what a naïve sense of happiness is. A naïve sense of happiness has to do with acting in a way that produces pleasure and, at the same time, avoids pain, with the emphasis placed on result in consciousness. A good example of finite happiness would be luxuriating over the purchase of a very expensive and extravagant house. What is achieved is temporary peace or repose. The naïve sense makes of happiness a finite term. The proper sense of happiness is one that reflects a totality of projects. If we think in terms of the example above, in considering whether to spend resources on the purchase of the larger house, what would be held in mind is the totality of projects in discerning the decision. That is, there would be consideration of socio-economic factors such as perhaps the diminished ability to continue to contribute economically to social projects

256 Ricoeur, FM, 62.

257 Ricoeur, FM, 63-64.

258 Ricoeur, FM, 64n10. 99 involving transformative justice, which promote peace through the many different levels of participation. There would also be the consideration of personal factors that contribute to realizing a greater meaning to life. The important point that Ricoeur makes here is that Aristotle‟s idea of happiness as “merely sum of pleasure” is insufficient; articulating this point in Kantian terms, he says that this finite kind of happiness is “a material principle of the faculty of desiring.”259 The problem with Aristotle is that he lacks a transcendental level of reflection. Ricoeur proceeds from a sum to a whole in connecting the will to Kantian reason. The project of reason demands totality. Ricoeur says that “the totality „demanded‟ by „reason‟ is also the one that the human act „pursues.‟”260 Adding the demand of the totality of reason to the totality of contentment brings to view a deeper meaning in the work Aristotle engaged in: practical reason demands a totality of meaning, or as Kant says, “the entire object of a pure practical reason.”261 The supreme destination, the supreme Good, now becomes the worthiness to be happy. Here, Ricoeur joins happiness and virtue, which is demanded by reason, so that the good is complete as well as perfect. The idea of totality resides in the will, and is the source of an extreme “disproportion” between character, which is of finite origin, insofar as it is the point from which I can open to something, and happiness as the opposite, insofar as it is an infinite end. At times, we receive a sign or premonition of the happiness that is our destiny in moments when we are assured of being on the correct path. There is a sense of unlimited possibilities as the path opens; the feeling of the immensity of reality is in dialectical relationship to the feeling of constriction and narrowness, however. There are

259 Ricoeur, FM, 65.

260 Ricoeur, FM, 66.

261 Ricoeur, FM, 67n16. 100 indications, according to Ricoeur, of our perceptual narrowness, as the field of our attention is limited. We ascertain that narrowness when we experience being at odds with others. However, Ricoeur explains that “The excess of meaning, the overflow, the immense: that is the sign that we are „directed toward‟ happiness.”262 While it is reason that demands totality, the sense of direction that is experienced in our feeling of happiness as mentioned above, is assurance that this reason, indeed, is interior to our destiny. In summary, we have established character as the finite pole of the practical mediation, and happiness as the infinite pole of the mediation. We are positioned now to to proceed to the third term—respect—which mediates between character as particular and happiness as universal.

Respect Respect as the mediating term has to combine the universal term of happiness with the particular term of character in the practical mediation. The synthesis of happiness and character is discovered in a person, the self of the Kantian “I think.” The person is a project which I place before myself and represent as an intention and ideal in the moral striving to become. In this personal process of moral striving, self- consciousness arises out of consciousness. This irreducible synthesis is the project called humanity—not in collective terms; rather, it is the humanness of human beings. Humanness is the individual person that strives to be. In the self that I represent to myself, there is a synthesis between an idea of the human as “an end in itself,” as “absolute worth,” and an existence that is apprehended as a presence so as to be able to enter into relations characterized by mutual understanding.263

262 Ricoeur, FM, 68.

263 Ricoeur, FM, 71. Ricoeur follows Kant here. 101

This synthesis of reason and existence, of end and presence, “is constituted in a specific moral feeling,” which Kant calls respect.264 Respect, as the third term in the practical mediation, and “the condition of the synthesis in the person,” is like the transcendental imagination, as the third term in the theoretical mediation, and “the condition of the synthesis in the object.”265 Whereas the transcendental imagination is homogenous with both understanding and sensibility, so, too, is respect homogenous with sensibility in the power of desiring, and (practical) reason, in the power of obligation. Respect can mediate between character and happiness, because it is the rational feeling— it is both felt in the body and is the embodiment of rationality. It inscribes genuine happiness, based on the Good, onto the individuality of character. Respect is felt in terms of myself as well as others, and constitutes right human relationship in Kant‟s imperative to act in such a way that I am treating humanity—whether it be myself or another person—as an end, and not solely as a means. Respect is proper to the faculty of desire, as it operates to provide incentive for the will to act. Respect is considered reason that is of a sensible form in the incentive to surrender our maxims of action to the moral law; it is duty as a felt obligation in striving for the highest good. Respect is proper to practical reason inasmuch as it is a feeling that is elicited by reason. Respect is considered a felt appearance, an empirical feeling with an a priori ground in the rational nature; it is the givenness of feeling.266 Self-esteem becomes a kind of attestation of the genuineness with which the moral law has been appropriated into the mind.267 Respect, in mediating between the “practical” polarity of character and happiness, is the source of a disproportion insofar as a person is “an obeying subject and a

264 Ricoeur, FM, 72.

265 Ricoeur, FM, 73.

266 Ricoeur, FM, 74.

267 Ricoeur, FM, 74. See also FM, 74n28. 102 commanding sovereign.”268 That is, there is a reflexive structure of the will in which “I” am a commanding sovereign, and “this one here” as obeying subject. Also, respect for others and self-respect have to work together. When I treat others with respect, then I am coming to be myself as I ought to be. If I treat others with disrespect or somehow violate them, I am disrespecting and violating myself, as well. Respect, insofar as it mediates between character and happiness, is the center of the disproportion, and the possibility of discord, or what Ricoeur calls “the existential „fault‟” (meant in a geological sense), that is the cause of human fragility.269 Respect is weakened, for example, through competing principles of self-love wherein a person is divided against itself. Human fallibility becomes more broad in the practical synthesis. There is a fault line in the structure of the will. Ricoeur follows Kant‟s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason here. According to Kant, while humans have an original predisposition to the good, human nature contains an original propensity to evil.270 Propensity is understood by Kant as a subjective ground of a possibility of an inclination, or a habitual desire, insofar as this possibility holds for all of humanity. A propensity arises when an experience of what is desired has occurred, and a concrete inclination arises as a result. An inclination can be thought of as a habitual desire. The will has the ability (or inability) proceeding from this propensity to assent (or not) to the moral law through the maxims which are considered to constitute either a “good” heart or an “evil” heart. “Frailty” or “impurity” of heart are part of this propensity, which has to do with moral character insofar as one has choice. The will, then, in its freedom is the

268 Ricoeur, FM, 75.

269 See Ricoeur, FM, 75n32.

270 See Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, trans. and ed. Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, intro. Robert Merrihew Adams (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 103 locus of a moral wrestling as it makes either an evil choice, in which duty is subordinated to happiness, or it makes the good choice, in which happiness is subordinated to duty. The human being is evil because one so reverses the moral order of the incentives, law and sense impulse, or law and self-love. That is, one freely determines to subordinate the claims of the moral law to the claims of one‟s sensible nature. Or, one is good insofar as one freely determines to subordinate the claims of one‟s sensible nature to the claims of the moral law. The intentions of sensible nature and the intentions of practical reason are, in fact, good; however, one has to choose the appropriate relationship between the two goods. There is, therefore, an ordering involved. As for the “origin” of evil in human nature, (in that an effect descends from a first cause), origin can be considered with regard to reason (i.e. noumenally), or with regard to time (i.e. phenomenally). Cause and effect pertain to freedom, and moral evil is the effect of this freedom; thus, the origin of moral evil is in reason rather than time. Human nature can be regarded as reason. Kant says that there is no cause in the world which results in free agency being taken away from humans in each and every moment. Hence actions are always considered an original exercise of the power that one has to exercise choice in one‟s life. The origin of evil can be located in this power to exercise choice with regard to maxims governing our actions. There is, in human being, a propensity to evil that is inexplicable and “inscrutable.” To speak of no comprehensible ground from which moral evil in human nature originally derives, is to ascribe evil to human beings. Evil originates in the improper use of freedom, and is ever present as a possibility for freedom.

There is not a presupposition of downfall in the practical mediation, with the polarity of character and happiness. The mediating term of respect, Ricoeur says, “is rooted in something like a disposition of desire for rationality…that is at once…action of 104 the free will and emotion in the depths of the body.”271 He refers to an anthropology that is symbolized in the term, Gemüt, a region whereby reason, as a representation of duty, “has an immediate „force‟ and is capable by itself of taking „preference.‟”272 The important property of feeling (Gemüt) is receptivity (Empfändlichkeit), which is the capacity to experience and endure the force of a moral incentive.273 In explaining this region of mindful interiority, Ricoeur looks to Kant‟s oft-expressed words for inspiration: “Two things fill the mind [Gemüth] with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily they are reflected on: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”274 Ricoeur says that “Admiration and awe are beyond and before a violated sensibility of subdued presumption.”275 Admiration and awe are not merely sought but are seen, and are accordingly connected with consciousness of our existence. Herein lies a positive relation between desire and the moral law. Admiration and awe testify to the affinity that sensibility has for rationality. In following Kant, he says that this positive relation is the human destination, which in turn raises human worth, and infinitely so. The locus of respect is in the faculty or disposition of desire to be rational; the activity of the free will and passion come together. Feeling is the area in which reason has “force” and can take “preference.”276 The characteristic attribute of feeling is the receptivity to the moral interest. To conclude this section on the practical mediation, the aspects of finitude can be reorganized under the notion of finite perspective. The aspects of infinitude can be

271 Ricoeur, FM, 77.

272 Ibid.

273 Ibid.

274 Ibid.

275 Ricoeur, FM, 78.

276 Ricoeur, FM, 77. 105 reorganized under the notion of meaning. Respect, the third mediating term, is a fragile synthesis whereby a person‟s form is constituted. It is respect as an affective moment that gives itself to making known this “texture”277 of feeling.

Affective Mediation We descend now to the third level of Ricoeur‟s anthropology, to the very heart of human reality, with the third mediation. Ricoeur sets out to fill in what is missing in his reflective analysis of the structure of human being—the dimension of feeling. If it is possible to construct such a philosophy, then it has to be capable of expressing the fragility that characterizes human reality as intermedial being. In other words, what Ricoeur is questioning is the gap between a transcendental exegesis concerning disproportion, and a lived experience that can be characterized as misery. Ricoeur probes, in universal terms, feeling in relationship to knowing. There is a mutuality between them in that each explains the other; they arise together. It is through the powers of knowing that degrees of feeling can be ascertained. Feeling gives rise to the intentionality associated with knowing; we have a feeling about “something”— whether we characterize it as the loveable or the hateful, for example. This relation is a mutual genesis. Feeling can be considered an intentional act, then, in that we feel qualities of love and hate, on something; however, they do not hold the distinctive subsistence of things, which in terms of observation could never be finished. And yet, feeling discloses the way in which we are inwardly affected by such acts. Ricoeur refers to this situation as a perplexing paradox in that “an intention and an affection coincide in the same experience, a transcending aim and the revelation of an inwardness.”278 The qualities that we feel do not hold objective status, and so are not things in that they have

277 Texture denotes both appearance and feel.

278 Ricoeur, FM, 84. My emphasis. 106 to be “founded” on something or object so that they can appear in our world. Ricoeur says that they are intentional correlates that qualify the object of perception and knowledge, but that they do not carry autonomy. Also, feeling cannot posit being. The paradox of feeling is that it indicates a “thing-quality” and expresses an inwardness of the “I.”279 While knowing establishes a fissure between subject and object and divides, feeling precedes duality and manifests our relation to, and restores our involvement in and belonging to the world, and is, therefore, unitive—this is profound. This relation has to be accessed indirectly because of the subject/object duality that is constitutive of language. Feeling can be considered a paradoxical unity of intention (directed toward the world) and affection (of the self). This paradox is a sign of the mystery that is associated with feeling—“the undivided connection of my existence with beings and being through desire and love.”280 Feeling adds another dimension to a transcendental understanding of our human reality. Whereas knowing is an objectification as it divides, as we saw in the transcendental or theoretical synthesis between meaning and appearance, i.e., saying and seeing, feeling interiorizes a division at the heart of human reality. When abstractly and indeterminately considering, for example, a relation between love and what is loveable, up to now, there has been no necessity to specify whether we are referring to a thing, a person, an idea, a community, or the idea of God. Now, Ricoeur says, “the relation to the object is…going to set up rank among tendencies and differentiate feeling in its very inwardness.”281 In moving from a horizontal and general discussion to a vertical discussion of degrees associated with feeling that are in accord with degree of the objects,

279 Ricoeur, FM, 85.

280 Ricoeur, FM, 89.

281 Ricoeur, FM, 91. 107 the disproportion emerges. The disproportion of knowing is reflected in, and reaches a completion in feeling, in terms of what is “an inner conflict,” which remains unresolved.282 The humanity of the human being is “that divergence of affective tension between the extremities of which is placed the „heart.‟”283 There are two types of terminations that feeling takes the form of: 1) pleasure, which can be referred to as self-love and is characterized by a constricted view of reality with the focus on bios as “a way of living,”284 and 2) happiness or beatitude, which is characterized as an openness to the whole of reality with the focus on logos as thinking.285 It is between the two, bios and logos, living and thinking, this intermediate region between natural beings and other selves, that the self is constituted. The first type of termination above, pleasure, is the affective movement “of vital desire and intellectual love,” that completes and perfects finite acts.286 The second termination, a fullness of happiness or beatitude, is the affective movement of perfection that is the work of the human in its totality, or its destiny. Hence there exists a duality of ends in feeling. Pleasure and beatitude, respectively, constitute the finite and infinite poles of this mediation.

Pleasure Pleasure is the particular element in the third mediation. Sensuous desire or epithumia is a felt intention which brings together separate finite acts. It is in this way that pleasure is a perfection of life; however, it is a finite perfection. Pleasure shows how

282 Ibid.

283 Ricoeur, FM, 92.

284 See Ricoeur, FM, 95; 97; 107.

285 See Ricoeur, FM, 107.

286 See Ricoeur, FM, 92. 108 living is not merely one such isolated act, but is the condition on which all other activities are based. Pleasure has a totality about it that mirrors happiness in that it is representative of happiness in the moment; however, this compression threatens to stop or hinder the dynamism of the acting that celebrates “Living.”287 That is, taking pleasure in the moment is a short-sighted view of reality. There is a lack of higher purpose in one‟s actions. One should instead consider the longer view of reality, in terms of what would be a just activity that could be engaged in over time that contributes to, and is a rejoicing in life lived with a view to the fullness of spiritual joy that is beatitude.

Pleasure is not in and of itself evil; pleasure as a spontaneous, purposeful attachment to life should not be confused with an actual or prior downfall. Pleasure has many varieties in that it can become aesthetic in the enjoyment of works of art, it takes on an interiority in a remembrance of the past, it can dynamize itself in the joy of learning, and open itself through friendship.288 Pleasures are grounded in sensuous, bodily pleasure. Ricoeur follows Aristotle in noting that pleasure in taking the form of one activity can limit us or hinder us from engaging in other activities. When pleasure is engaged in for its own sake, it is deficient in terms of a higher aim.

Beatitude Beatitude is the universal element in the mediation. Beatitude is rational desire, the desire for and love of the good, or the eros of logos in the fullness of happiness. This kind of desire is not desire for the sake of bodily pleasure, but rather, desire for the sake of desire, or spiritual happiness. One can characterize it, too, as the desire for God—love of God. Once again, Ricoeur follows Aristotle here.289 Any final intentionality that

287 Ricoeur, FM, 94.

288 Ricoeur, FM, 95-96.

289 See Ricoeur, FM, 96n9. Ricoeur quotes Aristotle in stating that “Happiness is the „desirable in itself‟ and not „for the sake of something else.‟” 109 happiness may hold has to do with the activity itself, and not with any pleasure derived from that activity. The Good surpasses what is pleasurable. Happiness can be considered the highest form that pleasure assumes. Eros is regarded as the fundamental feeling, according to Ricoeur, and “is particularized in a diversity of feelings of belonging that are, as it were, the schematization of it.”290 These are termed “spiritual feelings,” and as such cannot be conformed to finite satisfaction; they constitute “the pole of infinitude” of the affective life.291 The spiritual feelings split, developing in two different directions: 1) in the “We”

(or the individual who transcends itself together with other individuals who transcend themselves) through interhuman participation in all of its variety, and 2) in “Ideas” through participation in the tasks that transcend the individual work.292 Ricoeur says that “loving participation in ideas is the noetic or spiritual feeling par excellence.”293 It is in and through this feeling that we gain the certainty that reason, rather than being something alien, is who we are. Finally, there are formless moods which have ontological bearing in that they denote human openness to being, such as joy, peace, anxiety, and courage. These affective moods are directed at the unconditioned, which can be thought but is not known through objective determinations.

Conflict The heart—thumos or spirit, serves as the mediating principle between pleasure and beatitude. Ricoeur considers the heart to be the schema of ontological feeling: “Being-with,” is considered an interpersonal schema, “being-for” is a supra-personal

290 Ricoeur, FM, 103.

291 Ibid.

292 Ibid.

293 Ricoeur, FM, 103-104. 110 schema, and ”being-in” is the fundamental intention.294 Heart is a fundamental openness to and availability of being. It is no small task for the heart to synthesize two desires, and herein lies conflict: the desire for pleasure and the desire for beatitude or spiritual love. The disproportion between the principle of pleasure and the principle of happiness arises in this affective tension. Ricoeur follows Kant‟s discussion of the human passions of possession (Habsucht) or having, domination (Herrschsucht) or power, and honor (Ehrsucht) or worth.295 He relates this trilogy of affective human passions to the appropriate dimensions of objective life in order to show how distortions as well as realization of ideals are possible within life. First, having has to do with desires in connection with the economic dimension of life, or human relations as “an available good.”296 Availability creates a cycle of feelings with regard to “acquisition, appropriation, possession, and preservation.”297 There is an interiorization of the human relation with the economic “thing” whatever it may be in the feeling of having in the exercise of control over making something “mine,” and the feeling of dependence on the object that I own. There is a rift between the “I” and the having that is “mine.” The temptation is to equate “having” with happiness. The feeling of having protects against loss that is experienced in finitude, but having cannot succeed as a bulwark against finitude, and it cannot substitute for genuine happiness. There can be an innocent relation of the human self with having “in a utopia of personal and communal appropriation.”298 For example, we can imagine a form of

294 Ricoeur, FM, 104.

295 Ricoeur, FM, 111.

296 Ricoeur, FM, 114.

297 Ibid.

298 Ricoeur, FM, 115. 111 having in which goods are justly distributed and persons possess only what they cultivate and create themselves. Second, power has to do with desires in connection with political and social situations in life, which is how humans are connected to communities comprised of communicative networks of relationships. Work has to be dominated and mastered so that control is maintained. There must be a political order within the community, whereby a guiding influence can be provided to accomplish the work. Those who exercise control hold power over other people, which creates dominance that carries over into the political sphere. The desire for political power can infect human beings who mistakenly believe that power is happiness or fulfillment. Again, the error is in thinking that possession of power can ward off the losses of finitude. There is also an ideal in which that power is exercised in an altruistic way, without personal gain or reward in order to improve other human lives, as well as all forms of life. Before we take up discussion of the third passion of possession, honor, it should be noted that Ricoeur presupposes a three-fold structure of recognition. I present these three steps as a mini-phenomenology that is derived from Hegel. These three moments, as they appear in Hegel, and are inherited from Fichte, are the following: 1) immediate self-consciousness, 2) intersubjective self-consciousness, and 3) universal self- consciousness. In the process of recognition whereby “oneself” recognizes “another,” the other negates me, and yet, at the same time negates the negation so that I am seen by the other, just as the other is seen by me. Below, we shall see the way in which there exists the desiring to be seen by the other, and vice versa; this process sets up the Kantian notion of worth, that is, it is a value to be recognized by the other. The first moment is an immediate self-consciousness that is appetitive self- consciousness, in that desire is a part of this. The desire can be characterized as primitive desire. It is recognition of the other that redounds on the self, but just as conscious agents, or beings, or persons in general. It is immediate, particular self-consciousness, 112 which means simple self-identity. This self-identity is what Ricoeur refers to as idem- identity, i.e. or “self-same identity” which is discussed in Chapter Four; but then this identity is related to an other so that we have the certainty of self-consciousness that appears for the first time in the encounter with some other that is not “I,” but is an other. Each self-consciousness is itself by a refusal of what is the other self-consciousness.299 The self-certainty in this moment cannot yet be characterized as truth; it is the mere presumption of truth. Private certainty, and not truth, is expressed. The truth is going to demand the inclusion of the other who is suppressed. Each self-consciousness is certain only of itself; there is no certainty with regard to the other. The uncertainty that exists with regard to the other is not skepticism in a solipsistic sense, but the uncertainty of epistemological distance.300 In other words, there is depth contained in this uncertainty. The second moment, intersubjective self-consciousness, is the relation of one self- consciousness to another self-consciousness, with the process of recognizing occurring between the two. This is intersubjectivity in that a “we” breaks into self-consciousness in that “I” am part of this intersubjective “we.” There is the emergence of “my” freedom as limited and mirrored by “yours;” and, freedom is mutually self-limiting. Here, encounter means that each one no longer has control of a situation.301 A struggle ensues that must be undergone in order that the private certainty of each one, respectively, might be raised to the level of truth. Each one sees the other as an elusive presence who must be eliminated, because the other has called that one into question. In this case, each risks their own life, which is critical so that freedom can be demonstrated. In this way, facticity is transcended in showing that it is possible to reduce everything in

299 Robert R. Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992), 173. For this discussion, see also, Georg W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (The Phenomenoloy of Mind), trans. J.B. Baillie (La Vergne, TN: Digireads.com, 2009).

300 Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, 172n11.

301 Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, 173. 113 consciousness to a moment that quickly vanishes, therefore illustrating “being-for-self” in its purity.302 The point of the second moment is not to rid one of the other, however. The point is to secure the recognition, and legitimate in intersubjectivity the certainty of one‟s own self-consciousness.303 It is not only master/slave relations but love relations that constitute intersubjective self-consciousness, as the Hegelian commentator, Robert R. Williams notes. Ethical and spiritual life emerge when there is reciprocal self- recognition, and the other is recognized as constituting a freedom characterized by respect. It is fair to say that an enduring ethical relationship of reciprocal recognition, so characterized by “mutual intersubjective comprehension” is one of love. In this relation, a private personality is yielded over to, and in its yielding gives itself over to universality, which is friendship, according to Hegel. Love has to do with a mutual releasement in which there is a “letting the other be.”304 When the freedom of the other is acknowledged, and the other is freely recognized, then intersubjective mediation does not collapse into self-mediation, and the other is not reduced to the same. With love, one surrenders consciousness of self, and therefore, forgets oneself in the other person, only to find, as well as have, oneself again. The third moment is the universal self-consciousness in the movement from the intersubjective “we” consciousness to universal self-consciousness, where now the “we” is sublated. The sublation occurs by seeing the difference between “I” and “you,” but also, and most importantly, the identity of “I” and “you,” which points towards some universal structure. Reason, our processs of recognition, stands within the universal structure of recognizing us. Universal recognition, or Geist, is recognition itself through our recognizing it. Recognition is essential to reason so that it can acquire a genuine

302 Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, 173n14.

303 Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, 174.

304 Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, 184. 114 universality.305 The passage to reason, that is, rational self-consciousness, is representative of the achievement of universal self-consciousness. Williams explains that for Hegel, “Self-recognition in other is the universal, relational structure that pervades all aspects of reason in its concrete actuality.”306 Moreover, reason is already there in the world before, as well as independent of, any human subjectivity. The movement that has been traced through these three moments of recognition proceeds from an exclusive particularity to an inclusive universality, or the “We,” through the process of reciprocal recognition. Intersubjective mediation is crucial to reason, otherwise reason is just subjective assurance. Having established the groundwork for recognition, we shall now return to discussion of the third possession of passion, or honor. Honor has to do with desires in connection with the quest for worth and esteem in the view of the other. Here it is difficult to ascertain erroneous intentions from the constituting intentions of esteem because, as Ricoeur says, the desire to exist is “not through a vital affirmation of oneself, but through the favor of another‟s recognition.”307 The range here is between “mere desire” and “desire of desire.” It is in the struggle for recognition in the sphere of interpersonal relations, which extends beyond the economic and political spheres, that the self is constituted. Subjects become constituted in and through the process of self-recognition by another subject. The “moment” of self-esteem involves a search for one‟s own self-esteem by way of the esteem of the other, and has the identical nature of the esteem that one experiences for the other. Ricoeur explains that “If humanity is what I esteem in another and in myself, I esteem myself as a thou for another,” which is to say “I esteem myself in the second person.”308 In this regard, self-

305 Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, 197.

306 Williams, Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other, 196.

307 Ricoeur, FM, 120.

308 Ricoeur, FM, 124. 115 love cannot be distinguished from sympathy; there is no differing between reflective feelings and intentional feelings. One can say, then, that one loves oneself as if one was loving an other. This kind of otherness is connected to a feeling of value, and differentiates between self-esteem in itself and life-threatening situations whereby the bond of love of life wells up. Whereas the latter attachment is direct from one to oneself, self-esteem is the indirect relation of mediating oneself to oneself while passing through “the valorizing regard” of the other.309 This relation to oneself is the interiorized relation to the other, with opinion as well as belief at the heart of it.310 Worth is believed rather than seen or known. Ricoeur says that “this belief, this credence, this trust constitutes the very feeling of my worth.”311 In the case that the “other” is considered as myself, an extreme case to be sure, the feeling of worth is an “appreciative affection” or “affective appreciation,” and is the summit of self-consciousness.312 The disproportion in knowing, acting, and feeling can be considered in feeling as fragility. Here there is human duality. The first sign of the duality can be discovered between the finite goals of pleasure, and the infinite goal of happiness, or beatitude. The heart is restless so that no amount of having, power, or worth is enough. “Desire” has no endpoint. The desire of desire is unending, which results in the human activities of endeavoring, struggling, and striving. The fragility of feeling is taken up into the indefiniteness of the spirit or thumos. That is, the heart is restless in asking, When will I be satisfied in having enough? When will I receive in sufficient measure appreciation and recognition? Ricoeur says that between pleasure as finitude, which surrounds a

309 Ibid.

310 Ibid.

311 Ibid.

312 Ibid. 116 distinctive act and gives it its repose, and happiness as infinitude, there is a sign of indefiniteness, and with it, a threat that holds on to endless pursuit. He says that there must be a transcending intention that dwells in the great ventures of human existence. Passion receives from eros a power of abandon and devotion. Through the interiorization of relation of the self to the world, feeling displays a new rift, “of the self from the self,” which is a disproportion of feeling.313 Out of the disproportion of feeling, emerges a mediation that is parallel to the silent mediation in the transcendental imagination in knowledge. That is, the devoted and passional life lived is one of

“passivity” that is of a more primordial nature than “passional captivity and sufferance;” other modalities of this passion are “grafted” onto that first “passion.”314 Yet, the human places the “whole capacity for happiness on the „objects‟ in which a Self is constituted.”315 This is a shifting of totality onto “objects” that characterize the cycle of having, power, and worth; this is the schematization of happiness, according to Ricoeur. This schematization is an extension of the schematization of the transcendental imagination into the third mediation of feeling. Hence the person who wants to have it all, so to speak, mistakes whatever is the object for an “absolute,” and thereby forgets that what is existing between happiness and the desired object is of a symbolic character; the symbol is made an idol. Ricoeur comments that “the impassioned life becomes a passional existence.”316 The locus of fallibility resides in a relation between the impassioned and the passional.

313 Ricoeur, FM, 131.

314 Ibid.

315 Ibid.

316 Ibid. 117

Conflict serves to function as part of the primordial constitution of human being. Ricoeur says, “the self is conflict.”317 No conflict “could be introjected if we were not already this disproportion of bios and logos, of living and thinking, of which our heart suffers the primordial discord.”318 This is the human struggle. The very humanness of humanity emerges out of this struggle that is a moral and an aesthetic striving. There will be both distorted forms of having, power, and worth, and undistorted forms of having, power, and worth. Concepts such as justice (distribution of power), and truth (in recognition whereby people are seen for who they are) come into play here. This is the weak point where evil enters the world; people displace genuine mediation for one-sided mediation in that “having” a big house will give me happiness, or thinking that there is power in being liked, and if I am not, then I do not have power. At this third level, the disproportion is between a feeling of pleasure and a feeling of beatitude. This is how the possibility of evil comes in.

The Possibility of Human Being

We have seen how for Ricoeur human being is fallible, that fallibility is the ontological structural weakness of human being. Human being is that non-coincidence of self within itself and between its selves that feeling reveals—the disproportion of being intermediate in bringing about mediations between an element of the finite and an element of the infinite. It is this intermedial being who mediates at each of the three levels, the theoretical, the practical, and the affective levels. In Ricoeur‟s presentation of his reflective model, human being has the capacity to think, to act, and to feel. The second step of the argument is that the finite creature is suspended between opposite poles of perceiving and conceiving. These capacities of finite existence are brought

317 Ricoeur, FM, 132.

318 Ibid. 118 about through language. Language is the medium of the fragile mediations between these poles of receiving and acting in the world. This is the articulation of the possibility of human being. In the more extensive initial presentation of Ricoeur‟s model above, the role of language appeared briefly, and was contextualized in order to provide a general and complete explanation of his philosophical anthropology. In Chapter Four, expression as the thought and experience of human being, and the nature of discourse as it appears in the mediating function of language is introduced and discussed in greater detail. For our purposes here, it is the function of language as a medium that warrants attention. The nature of this short presentation is to meet the purpose of providing a formal introduction to the role of language in this study. Language means a system of relations and rules governing words, in addition to a lexicon of word-meanings. To think in language requires joining and separating words in sentences with meaning. The sentence is the primary unit of meaning. Because of this joining and separating of word-meanings in sentences, we will come to see later in the study how language is always punctuated by silence. Language is the medium of being, because the activity of being is the joining/separating, and the being of a thing is what is joined and separated in the thing by language. Furthermore, we speak the being of things by connecting the particular subject-term with the universal predicate-term in a sentence.

Being is the connection and separation of universal and particular. In speaking the being of things, we also bespeak our own being as the connecting process. We are the connecting of meaning—the disclosure of meaning—within a historical language with a particular worldview. The being of a person is connection and separation of the “I” and “this one here.” In speaking the being of things, we also combine and differentiate the “I” and “this body,” because “I” appears as “here” in “this one” in speaking, yet the “I” announces itself as always in principle more than and transcendent to “this one here.” 119

In Fallible Man, Ricoeur explains that “This dialectic of signifying and perceiving, of saying and seeing,” is absolutely primordial.319 In terms of the first of Husserl‟s Logical Investigations, Ricoeur says that “Expression…is a significative indication in the sense that I announce to others what I mean.”320 Expression as a sign indicates a sense that is the represented content, which accordingly signifies the referent. Hence, through signification, language conveys the sense that transgresses my own unique and finite perspective. Everyone else to whom the same sense has been conveyed “fulfills” it in reference and relation to their own perception, or imagination, or it may not be fulfilled at all. Ricoeur states, “To achieve meaning is not to bestow it directly;….”321 In terms of transcendence, saying can be attested through there being an excess in relation to its fulfillment. All meaning has the property of being capable of exceeding each “present perceptive fulfillment: I say more than I see when I signify.”322 This dialectic of “name” or saying, and “perspective” or seeing, is the “dialectic of infinitude and finitude.”323 Because of the transcendence of speech (saying) over perspective (seeing),

Ricoeur accords further attention to the concept of expression and the delineation between a noun and a verb, the unity of which comprises “the cornerstone of human discourse.”324 He follows Aristotle‟s thinking in On Interpretation and says that the verb has a noun-meaning as an action that has additional meanings: First, verbs specify a tense as that of past, present, or future, which posits the activity of existence in temporal

319 Ricoeur, FM, 27. My emphasis.

320 Ibid.

321 Ibid.

322 Ricoeur, FM, 28.

323 Ricoeur, FM, 29.

324 Ricoeur, FM, 32. 120 terms. Second, verbs attribute the activity to a subject. Ricoeur explains, “‟Socrates is walking‟ means that the walk „exists now‟ [tense] and that the walk is „said of‟ Socrates [attribution].”325 Third, verbs contain the power to either affirm or negate something in someone.326 In this way, the noun-verb combination expresses not only truth, but being as well. The volitional moment of affirmation includes the seeking of assent as well as improvement, or the remedy of error. Finally, with regard to the transcendence of speaking as accomplished by the verb, what is disclosed is that the heart of the verb lies in affirmation, which entails freedom of judgment in relation to truth insofar as the verb

“aims at the truth.”327 What I have hoped to show is how meaning is made in the noun- verb combination, and that it is shot through with being; being enters language.

Conclusion The purpose of presenting Ricoeur‟s philosophical anthropology is to show how the practice of contemplative silence is possible. For that reason the ontological structure that is the condition of the possibility of the practice is explained. The human being is the activity of mediating at three levels and as a whole, and a hermeneutics of the practice of contemplative silence is grounded in this ontological structure. The practice is a highly refined, self-conscious instance of mediating activity that both establishes and transcends both the being of the self and the being of language in silence. The fragile mediations that are performed occur through language. In language, the “saying” in coordinating with “seeing” expresses more than it knows in such a way that metaphorical and philosophical language arises. In pursuing the notion of fallibility, one context for the practice is determined that centers on human reality. Fallible human is in relation to a

325 Ibid.

326 See Ricoeur, FM, 33. Ricoeur says that what was not considered by Aristotle was the power to judge that the verb reveals.

327 Ricoeur, FM, 37. 121 world, which is made more concrete in the next chapter. Accordingly, we see in Chapter Three how Ricoeur changes his method from reflection to hermeneutics. 122

CHAPTER THREE:

FALLENNESS AND FALLIBILITY GIVE RISE TO HERMENEUTICS

As an opening exercise, let us rehearse Ricoeur‟s thought once more so that we may ascertain the linguisticality of human reality. We have seen how in pure reflection he expresses the mediating activity that is intermedial being, and that reflective philosophy becomes the reflexive activity of thinking about thinking, which entails a philosophical anthropology. An iteration of that structure is to characterize it as a continuous theoretical striving of critical thinking to mediate among disproportionate and opposite powers and capabilities, as intermedial being relates to self, other, and world.328 Theoretical striving is a desire to know—the desire for knowledge and its fulfillment. Fallibility characterizes this movement of rigorous thinking that is on a par with the richness of a pathetic understanding of misery.329 The mediations that are performed in thinking become more fragile, however, the more interior they become, in moving from the theoretical, to the practical synthesis, and finally, to affective fragility. We can think about the meaning of thinking insofar as performing fragile mediations are mediations of our very being as thinking. Through the dialectic of originating affirmation and existential negation, the effort to exist and the desire to be that are manifest in perspective, character, and felt love for life, are negated through denial, as we have seen in the example that I presented in Chapter Two. This existential “difference” of intermedial being in the becoming of an opposition is the felt conflict of human reality,

328 See David E. Klemm, “Searching for a Heart of Gold: A Ricoeurian Meditation on Moral Striving and the Power of Religious Discourse,” Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought, 100 (hereafter cited as “Searching for a Heart of Gold”). He comments that “I think that it would be entirely fair to Ricoeur to add that dialectical thinking about thinking therefore means to question the meaning and truth of these mediations—and to put into question one‟s own being as thinking.”

329 Ricoeur, FM, 6. 123 which is interiorized by the self in the depths of the human heart. The primacy of willing means that human being is striving towards something; the human is act before representation. However, human being cannot confer being upon itself and persist in it; the human suffers an untold original woundedness. Human being is received. Human life, according to Ricoeur, is a combination of animal life (instinct and appetite), which is bios or living being, and rationality, or the capacity for rational thinking, which is logos, or thinking. The disproportion between bios and logos is the primordial discord suffered in the human heart. The term, logos, is not purely abstract and ideal. “Logos” refers to the capacity for, and possibilizing and actualizing of, abstract thought; it is the capacity for reasoning, and it is the resultant rationality as well. Here, “thought” means an abstract, invisible, spiritual or ideal meaning held in the mind. To think a thought is soundless. Logos as abstract meaning in thought is dependent upon language. It is with the practical synthesis that there is an ideal to attain through the intention that the self represents to itself in striving, as freedom in thinking, to become someone. An iteration of that structure is to characterize it as moral striving in the desire for the Good, and in terms of how I behave; I ought to comply with the Good. Thinking is appropriated as this freedom by explaining and thereby making clear its expressions in the characteristically linguistic world in which it is immersed.330 Hence “thinking qua thinking for Ricoeur has the identity of a moral striving.”331 A self of such representation is a combination of a specific and concrete living existence, and an idea of humanity. The experience wherein is constituted a synthesis between existence and reason, of presence and end, or between living being and thinking, is the moral feeling of respect. Here, there is a synthesis of bios and logos, of living being and thinking. This

330 Klemm, “Searching for a Heart of Gold,” 102.

331 Ibid. 124 moral feeling can be considered a moral schema, as it belongs both to sensibility and to reason, through the power of desiring and the power of obligation that issues forth from practical reason. Respect is both a sensible form of reason in the incentive to yield to the moral law in one‟s actions, as well as an actual empirical, felt appearance of reason. With this mediating term of respect, we see just how deeply intertwined are respect for others and self-respect. We become who we desire and ought to be inasmuch as we act and conduct ourselves in accordance with others who have inherent worth, and who, as such, are deserving of our highest esteem. This is precisely the locus of tension and strife, as well as the condition of the possibility of existential fault with the resultant human fragility. It is at this point that Ricoeur looks to a theory of feeling in addition to reason. The characteristic power and capability of feeling is receptivity. He defines receptivity, as previously mentioned, as the capacity to experience and endure the influence that the moral impulse exerts. That is, we must treat others as ends in themselves, and not strictly as the means to something, which is a demanding imperative. In so doing, we experience and endure the feeling of misery. Bios as concrete living meaning contained in avowals of misery is dependent upon symbolic language. With affective fragility, we reach the heart of human reality, or the heart of hearts—an interiority that localizes a duality of feeling “here” in this one who “I” am. An iteration of that structure is to characterize it as the experience of aesthetic striving, which is a personal felt aesthetic and a striving for the beautiful; it is a shared experience and a felt sense perception. Here, there is the tension between the intimation of beatitude and the lure of pleasures, but the aim, in the form of a goal, is to subordinate pleasure to beatitude. As beatitude suggests at this affective level, it is directing us to the beautiful. The movement that occurs is from self-consciousness, to the free part of the “we,” to the person embodied in universal reason; and, it is the relation of goodness and truth to beauty. These are regulative ideals that direct our thinking and acting rather than constituting metaphysical entities. 125

Feeling and knowing arise together. Feeling, insofar as it is a paradoxical unity of intention directed toward the world, and yet, of being inwardly affected, at the same time, is a paradoxical sign of mystery, too: it points to the undivided nature of my existence in relationship both to other beings and to being, in and through desire as well as love. Given the duality of feeling in the desire for pleasure and the desire for spiritual love, heart as the fundamental openness to, and availability of being, has to hold both desires in conflict. The summit of spiritual feeling is to lovingly participate in thought that transcends individual work. Bios and logos are principles of meaning for a finite creature because they function at the limit; we cannot approach either one without the other. The disproportion of bios and logos as ultimate meaning in the struggle that is living being and thinking, of which our heart suffers a primordial and resounding dissonance, is dependent upon language and silence. We shall come to see how this is so in the course of this study. What we have established is that the experience of language is integral to human being as intermedial between finitude and infinitude.

From Reflective Philosophy to Hermeneutics We have seen how fallibility is a constitutional weakness that makes moral evil possible insofar as there is a disproportion, a noncoincidence (which is a limitation) of the self to itself. Included in the notion of fallibility is the capacity to fail, which is a “power to fail” insofar as it makes the human “capable of failing.”332 That is, a fragile mediation makes an appearance as the condition of the possibility of the appearance of evil. The human who is a center of reality has to reconcile extreme poles, and is a weak link in respect to the real. The human, by virtue of his or her very existence, has to connect opposites theoretically in consciousness as well as practically in intention, all the while being ridden with conflict at a deep level.333 The gap between the possibility of

332 Ricoeur, FM, 141; 145.

333 Klemm, HTPR, 59. 126 evil, and the reality and actuality of evil is the leap, or the enigma of fault. Human being is fallen as well as fallible. The actuality of human being comes with the fall and evil. Evil becomes the source of actualized self-awareness in language and confession, as well as the occasion for the search for redemption. Fallenness and fallibility give rise to hermeneutics. This is the third step of the argument. Pure reflection cannot explain so as to remediate the fault and the fall from innocence to guilt. The reality of actual evil cannot be elicited from its mere possibility. One cannot deduce the actuality of evil from the structure of fallibility. Ricoeur therefore turns to the interpretation of linguistic expressions such as utterances in the form of avowals and confessions of sin, fault, and guilt to reveal the humanness of this existential experience.334 He explains how language serves as “the light of the emotions” in that initially a blind experience, such as dread, fear, or anguish becomes objectified in discourse through the emotional note that is struck.335 A confession expresses and pushes to the exterior this emotion; without it, this emotion would remain an interior impression. Thus, through this confession the human remains speech, although faced with the experience of absurdity and suffering, to be sure. This feeling is not only blind but equivocal in its multiplicity of meanings, which require the elucidation of language. Finally, this experience of alienation, of being oneself, and yet, alienated from who one is, is immediately transcribed in language as interrogative thought, e.g. “What have I done?

How long must I live like this?” We are incomprehensible to ourselves in this experience, lost to ourselves, which communicates with a need and desire to understand; self-alienation is a scandal and astonishing to the fallen self!

Ricoeur makes the change from pure reflection to hermeneutics because he hopes to gain new insight into the meaning of the self who, given the conditions of existence, is

334 Ricoeur, SE, 4-10.

335 Ricoeur, SE, 7. 127 alienated from itself in language as well as in a world in which the self has become objectified. He explains that in the philosophical tradition the first truth is “I am, I think,” which is a positing of both being and act, a positing of both existence and the functioning of thought.336 “I” exist insofar as “I” think. This truth is not verifiable. It can only be posited by reflection. “Self-positing is reflection” (he refers to Fichte here), he says, which is the starting point of philosophical reflection.337 This first truth, however, is abstract, empty, and invincible. Reflection therefore has to be more sufficiently characterized. Reflection is an effort to recapture the “I” precisely where it has been objectified—in its works, acts, institutions, monuments, ideas, and images. The first truth is mediated by what objectifies it.338 The “I” must lose itself in the objects and discover the meaning of itself anew in the act of existing by “deciphering” or interpreting the meaning of the “I” in the “signs scattered in the cultures in which our language is rooted.”339 Hermeneutics as reflection appropriates and reappropriates the effort to exist and the desire to be. In so doing, “I” discover something that was lost, but that had been originally a part of me in language, and which through time and space and distance had become separated from me. “Appropriation signifies that the initial situation “from which reflection proceeds is „forgetfulness,‟” Ricoeur says.340 Reflection is a task in that I have to make my concrete living experience on a par with the “I am” as posited.

Now, we can say that “positing the self is not given, it is task.”341 We have “the

336 Ricoeur, FP, 43.

337 Ibid.

338 Ibid.

339 Ricoeur, FP, 47.

340 Ricoeur, FP, 45.

341 Ibid. 128 experience of being oneself but alienated from oneself” which gets transcribed in language.342 Hermeneutics can reunite what is an astonishing alienation with what is lost and fallen in and through the experience of language. Further on, we will come to see the way in which mythological language and symbolical language function in this respect. Hermeneutics, as an expansion of philosophical reflection, takes on ethical and spiritual import insofar as “it leads from alienation to freedom and beatitude.”343 Ricoeur says that the self who is alienated can, through appropriation and reappropriation, be transformed through arriving at knowledge of the whole. The self does so in the act of existing by looking to equivocal signs dispersed among the cultures in which language is grounded. We return to the theme of Ricoeur‟s shift to hermeneutics in the latter part of the chapter. While Ricoeur discusses human being at great length in terms of possibility, the actuality of the world where human being lives remains, for the most part, unaddressed. We have to turn to Heidegger to present a more complete explanation of what being lost and fallen entails. Through a primordial evil decision and deed, human being is in a state of existential self-contradiction; human being is “fallen.” Let us turn now to Heidegger for enlightenment about the nature of “falling.”

Fallenness “Falling” (Verfallen), that is, being-fallen-into-the-world, is not a distant occurrence, or a “fall” from a primordial condition that is somehow higher and more pure. Nor can it be considered a deplorable existential quality which could be eliminated in an advanced cultural stage. It is, rather, an existential structure characterized by

342 Ricoeur, SE, 8.

343 Ricoeur, FP, 45. 129 motion, according to Heidegger.344 We shall follow this movement of falling as the potentiality-for-being-in-world in a mode of inauthenticity is at issue. Falling is the inauthentic everyday manner of Dasein being its “there.” It is a disclosedness of being-in-world in an ordinary way. Disclosedness, as an existential structure is inclusive of states-of-mind, understanding, and discourse. Idle talk, curiosity, as well as ambiguity are characteristic of the manner whereby Dasein “is its „there.‟”345 Idle talk refers to the disclosure in which Dasein understands itself, other, and world in a mode characterized as groundless floating. Curiosity is a disclosure of each thing as well as of every thing in the manner in which Dasein is everywhere, but also nowhere. Ambiguity hides nothing from Dasein‟s understanding, but only to subdue being-in-the- world in what is an uprooted everywhere but also nowhere. These existential determinations are constitutive of the being of Dasein, and illustrate the movement or “plunge” of falling that proceeds from temptation to tranquillizing, to alienation and entanglement. This movement culminates in a basic type of everyday being disclosing itself as entanglement. What is meant by the term entanglement is that Dasein is in relation to and takes care of the world. This absorption in the world entails that Dasein is “lost in the publicness of the they.”346 Inauthenticity is constitutive of the being-in-the- world that is absorbed in the world in and through caring for the world. Falling can be considered “an existential determination of Dasein itself” in that it has fallen from itself into a world which belongs to the very being of itself.347 Heidegger thereby extends Ricoeur‟s structure of human being to include the world.

344 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, A Translation of Sein und Zeit, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), 164 (hereafter cited as BT).

345 Ibid.

346 Ibid.

347 Ibid. 130

Heidegger considers falling, as a phenomenon, to be evidence of a mode of being-in-the- world that can be characterized as existential. The structure of falling that he explains as a movement illustrates that idle talk is not something that is objectively present in the world separate from the being-with-one-another. It is the type of being that is proper to being-with-one-another. It does not originate by way of fixed conditions which affect Dasein from outside. However, there is a temptation that Dasein sets itself up for; the temptation lies in the possibility of losing itself in the publicness of the they through that idle talk, and the manner in which things are publicly interpreted. This is also the way that Dasein can fall into groundlessness. Falling is a persistent temptation that Dasein makes ready for itself. Being-in-the-world is tempting in and of itself. “Idle talk and ambiguity” in having seen and understood everything, assume that Dasein in its disclosedness, could ensure for itself a “certainty, genuineness, and fullness” in terms of all the possibilities contained in its being.348 What comes to pass more and more through the “they,” in self-certainty, decisiveness even, is that an authentic and attuned understanding is simply not needed. A tranquillization comes to Dasein such that all is in “the best order” and “all doors are open.”349 Heidegger explains that “Entangled being-in-the-world, tempting itself, is at the same time tranquillizing.”350 Tranquillization, which is in the inauthentic being, drives one to an open and unrestrained “busyness.” There is no rest for the being who is entangled in a world. The understanding of foreign cultures and “synthesizing” them into one‟s own can lead to a thorough and initial genuine enlightenment by Dasein. Curiosity and “knowing it all” can “masquerade as a universal understanding of Dasein.”351 What it is that is to be

348 Heidegger, BT, 166.

349 Ibid.

350 Ibid.

351 Ibid. 131 understood in all of this busyness has not been considered. Heidegger explains that the important thing that has not been understood is “that understanding itself is a potentiality for being which must become free solely in one‟s ownmost Dasein.”352 Alienation comes about when Dasein is seemingly “understanding everything” and therefore goes about comparing itself; in this action is a concealing of the potentiality—its ownmost— for being-in-the-world. First, entangled being-in-the-world was tempting, then it was tranquillizing; now it is also alienating. Alienation is not a state of estrangement of Dasein from itself. Rather, alienation forces Dasein into a kind of “self-dissection” that is an intense scrutiny whereby it attempts to try out various kinds of possibilities for interpretation; the problem is that there are too many to comprehend. This alienation is a closing off of Dasein to its own authenticity as well as possibility. Alienation does not give Dasein over to an existence that it is not. Rather, it forces Dasein into inauthenticity, which is a possible sort of being originating from itself. The alienation of falling as tempting as well as tranquillizing has, in its own sort of movement, the effect of Dasein becoming entangled within itself.

In short, “falling” as a particular sort of being is characterized by the phenomena of temptation, tranquillizing, alienation, and entanglement of the self. The “movement” in the being of Dasein from one of these phenomena to the next is the plunge. Heidegger explains that “Da-sein plunges out of itself into itself, into the groundlessness and nothingness of inauthentic everydayness.”353 But because of the manner in which things are publicly interpreted, the plunge is hidden from view, and interpreted in terms of “‟getting ahead and „living concretely.‟”354 What happens in this movement within

352 Ibid.

353 Heidegger, BT, 167.

354 Ibid. 132 inauthentic being is that “understanding” continually gets torn away from putting forth authentic possibilities. Finally, falling as the sort of being in being-in-the-world, represents the basic proof of Dasein‟s existentiality. In falling, the issue is the possibility of being-in-the- world, even if it is the mode of being of inauthenticity. The reason Dasein can fall is “because it is concerned with understanding, attuned being-in-the-world,” he says.355 Authentic existence is, in existential terms, an altered comprehension of the everydayness that was previously mentioned. Heidegger explains that falling discloses the “essential, ontological structure of Da-sein itself.”356 In the end, falling can be considered an ontological concept having to do with motion.

Fallibility We have seen how, for Ricoeur, to refer to the human as fallible means that in the constitutive structure of human being there is an inherent possibility of moral evil.357 Fallibility has explanatory power in terms of how moral evil is possible, while the occurrence of evil, that is, the actuality of evil, is inexplicable. He considers two sorts of clarifications of this explanation. The first one has to do with “limitation” and fallibility. The second one has to do with fallibility and the possibility of “fault.” First, it is not the notion of limitation (or finitude in general), that brings us to what is “the threshold of moral evil.”358 Rather, it is a specific limitation that has explanatory power for Ricoeur, in that the possibility of failing resides in human reality, in the self that does not coincide with itself. Finite and infinite aspects of the self constitute the human disproportion.

355 Ibid.

356 Heidegger, BT, 168.

357 Ricoeur, FM, 133.

358 Ibid. 133

This disproportionate relation constitutes an ontological “locus” that lies “between” the “quantity of being” that is human—“being and nothingness.”359 He says that “It is this relation that makes human limitation synonymous with fallibility.”360 The three terms that characterize his philosophical anthropology, as previously mentioned, are the triad of originating affirmation, existential difference, and human mediation in the progression through the three levels of knowing, acting, and feeling. In the movement of his study, he says that what is playing out is an increasingly more real determination of the term, mediation, as representing the humanity of human being. The guiding concept in his anthropology, he says is most definitely not finitude; “finitude is the result and not the origin.”361 In order to be able to identify human thinking with human being, all three levels of human reality have to be analyzed. While we have an “idea” of humanity in moving from the first level to the second level, it is at the third level of feeling “that we are this humanity of thinking.”362 Eros and love illustrate this goal that is immanent to our human functioning in the anticipatory happiness that comes with a consciousness filled with direction as well as belonging. It is the infinite pole of feeling, or beatitude that provides this assurance. With originating affirmation comes a Joy about “existing in” what it is that enables me to be able to think as well as act, he explains. However, original affirmation has to become concretely human by proceeding through the existential negation of perspective, character, and vital feeling. Recall the example of existential negation that was provided in Chapter Two. Ricoeur says that

359 Ricoeur, FM, 134.

360 Ibid.

361 Ricoeur, FM, 136.

362 Ricoeur, FM, 137. 134 existential negation, the negation of the affirmation, is the most inward of negations.363 Recall, too, the sadness associated with the finite—that of contingency insofar as I do not have to exist but I do. Human mediation, that third term is the “mixture” of the two, originating affirmation and existential negation. This mixture, in its appearance, is “the progressive manifestation of the fault that makes” the human a fragile being.364 The paramount moment for revealing this fault is “this secret rift, this non-coincidence of self to self that feeling reveals.”365 Feeling as conflict is revelatory of the human as this primordial conflict. It illustrates that the mediation is merely intentional, and merely aimed at in the task that is performed. The possibility for evil comes in at the third level, the level of feeling, in the conflict between the feeling of pleasure, (or self-love without beatitude), and beatitude (without self-love). The second clarification concerns fallibility and the possibility of fault. The capacity to fail resides with the fragility stemming from the mediation that human “effects in the object,” in the notion of humanity, and within one‟s own heart.366 This fragility to fail is meant in three increasingly complex terms—it is an occasion to fail, the origin of failure, as well as the capacity to fail. In terms of the occasion, fallibility indicates the mere point or space through which the possibility of evil enters into the human. The gap is between the mere possibility of, and the reality of evil. Ricoeur says that his philosophical anthropological reflection remains behind in the leap, while ethics appears too late. We have the enigma of the “leap” from fallibility to what is already fallen. The only way “to catch sight of that leap” is to make a new start and engage in a new kind of reflection, that is, hermeneutics, “bearing on the avowal that consciousness

363 Ibid.

364 Ricoeur, FM, 140.

365 Ricoeur, FM, 141.

366 Ibid. 135 makes of it and on the symbols of evil in which this avowal is expressed.”367 Ricoeur explains that it is solely through the present evil condition of the human heart that one can ascertain a condition that is more primordial in comparison to any evil:

it is through hate and strife that one can perceive the intersubjective structure of the respect that constitutes the difference of consciousnesses; it is through misunderstanding and lying that the primordial structure of speech reveals the identity and otherness of minds….it is always “through” the fallen that the primordial shines through.368 This primordial way of being is available in the imaginary form of mythological-poetic language. It is in the mode of the imagination that one can both express the primordial and investigate the possible. Fallibility becomes the origin of evil whenever evil is actually posited in the world in and through human action. It is then that fallibility is a capacity that is realized. We shall briefly turn to a discussion of the relation of freedom to evil before discussing Ricoeur‟s hermeneutics of symbol. It is in the avowal of evil that the circumstance of freedom becomes apparent.

The Relationship Between Freedom and Evil

“Feeling” discloses the fissure, the split that we are as “primordial conflict” or, we are, Ricoeur says, “this non-coincidence of self to self.”369 We traverse the “enigma” of evil in the “leap” from fallibility to fault, from the possibility of evil to its actuality. Imaginatively, we can understand evil insofar as we understand good; goodness is even more primordial than badness. That we are fallible and “capable” of failing is due to our weakness—the limitation from which our “capacity” for evil derives; this is so “only” in “positing” it.370 In discussing the good life in Oneself as Another, Ricoeur explains that

367 Ricoeur, FM, 143.

368 Ricoeur, FM, 144.

369 Ricoeur, FM, 141.

370 Ricoeur, FM, 146. 136 we should act in conformity “with the maxim by which [we]…can wish at the same time that what ought not to be, namely evil, will indeed not exist.”371 He refers to the experience of suffering as “evil,” “a problem,” and “irreducible.”372 He is “haunted” by suffering in his thought, which explains his concern with duration in human action.373 Ricoeur says that we can engage in an ongoing effort to understand freedom and evil, each in terms of the other.374 Evil manifests in and through the exertion of our freedom. And, this space of the manifestation of evil becomes apparent to us solely in the case that we can recognize it. To recognize it is to intentionally decide to attempt to understand evil in light of freedom—it is our conscious decision to contend with evil. The decision is this announcement of a freedom, an avowal of evil that acknowledges responsibility to see that it is not perpetrated. Awareness of freedom and the ethical view of the world come into being concomitantly. The “grandeur” of the ethical vision consists in our continually striving to comprehend evil and freedom by each other—to move as far as we possibly can in this direction. Freedom, in undertaking responsibility for evil, arrives at self-understanding laden with meaning. The avowal of evil is the condition of conscious awareness of our finite, limited freedom. Furthermore, this avowal is significant in that it holds the past and the future together in the fragile bond of self, the acts that the self engages in, “of non-being and pure action in the very core of freedom”: This is what the ethical vision entails for Ricoeur.375

371 Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 218 (hereafter cited in as MHF).

372 See Charles E. Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996), 135. See also Paul Ricoeur, Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology, trans. John Bowden, intro. Graham Ward (London and New York: Continuum, 2007), 18.

373 See Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work, 135.

374 Ricoeur, FM, xivi-xlix. 375 Ricoeur, FM, xlix. 137

A Hermeneutics of Symbol Fallibility as the primordial weakness in the failure of human being to coincide with itself, the state of existential self-contradiction, gives rise to evil. The concept of fallibility is given profundity in the movement from innocence to fault that is disclosed in and through the positing of evil. Ricoeur‟s “meditative” reflection on symbols begins, he explains, within the fullness of the language and the meaning that is already present; in a sense everything has already been said, but it wants to be thought again—including any presuppositions—in the endeavor to “recollect” itself.376 This meditation includes both a moment of forgetting and a moment of restoring, in which a dim recognition of forgetting (of Sacred signs and human belonging to what is Sacred) rouses us to bring integrity back to language. The symbol, which contains a mass of significations, gives rise to speech before it gives rise to thought, he says.377 A symbolic manifestation of a thing is comprised of “a matrix of symbolic meanings as words,” in that an infinite discourse commences through this manifestation.378 “The symbol gives rise to thought,” in two respects: because of it we are given something.379 But beyond that, it provides us with the opportunity for thought insofar as we are able to think about something, which is a positing. The symbol also introduces a radical contingency to discourse, however, as it carries cultural contingency with it so that the philosopher who has a certain standpoint and speaks from that particular standpoint will pose questions from a Greek memory, for example, which will influence the way in which the investigation is oriented.380

376 Paul Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection: I,” The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, I, trans. Denis Savage, 287-288 (hereafter cited as “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: I”).

377 Ricoeur, SE, 11.

378 Ibid.

379 Ricoeur, SE, 348. See also “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: I,” 288.

380 Ricoeur, FP, 48. 138

In his discussion of symbols, elementary symbols have to do with experience in which there is “avowal” and self-confession. There is no language having to do with evil that is not symbolic for Ricoeur. Symbol, as we have previously seen with regard to confession, is able to supply the language for confession and avowal. The symbolism of evil begins with the “primary symbol,” or something that holds a first-level meaning, which comes from the human experience in nature, whereby one is oriented in space. We become aware of ourselves in the world in different modalities by means of primary symbols. Our consciousness is posited in an expressive cosmos that communicates through these primary symbols that carry a literal meaning.381 The elementary language of primary symbols can be distinguished from “mythical symbols” in that the latter are articulated more. “Mythical symbols” include narratives that have to do with the origins and end of an experience for which primary symbols serve as the avowal. A symbol is like a sign in that it points to and intends some other thing, and stands for that other thing. A symbol can be distinguished from a sign, in that a sign is a single- meaning expression, whereas a symbol is a second-meaning expression signifying a mode of our being in the world.382 Not all signs are symbols, however. Hidden in the symbol is a double-intentionality—a double-meaning expression. The first literal and apparent meaning intends through analogy the second meaning, which otherwise would not be given except by way of that first meaning. The second meaning about it is that it points to the circumstance of human being (e.g., a material stain in terms of a deviation in space, which points to a predicament of humanity with regard to the Sacred), an expression of what it is to be human; and it signifies a mode of being in the world (e.g., fallenness as an existential mode of being in the world). Hence the situation of stained

381 Klemm, HTPR, 70.

382 See Ricoeur, SE, 14-18. 139 and guilty being, as the literal meaning, points beyond to that “which is like a stain, like a deviation….”383 The symbol, in this way, “gives” a second meaning. Interior movement occurs in the dynamics of the primary symbols of “stain,” “sin,” and “guilt,” which are constellations. For example, “stain” has to do with more than just a “spot” in that the “whole” person of the penitent is affected; physical washing is not sufficient to remove whatever it is that is affecting the penitent. Ricoeur explains that in the performing of interchangeable acts (he mentions, for example, spitting and the covering of the body with earth), these rituals of purification so intend an integrity that can only be spoken by using symbolic language.384 A schema of exteriority lies at the heart of the symbolism, insofar as one is infected by evil: “Evil is evil only insofar as I posit it, but at the very heart of freedom‟s positing of evil is revealed a power of seduction by „evil already there‟ which the ancient „stain‟ had from the start already affirmed in the symbolic mode,” he says.385 Symbols destroy prior symbols. There can be an overturning of them in an inverse of images having to do with stain. For example, a new category of religious experience, “before God,” comes into being. That is, with a religious covenantal relationship, evil becomes a broken relationship rather than a thing—therefore no thing is expressed in images such as “emptiness” and “God‟s absence.” Evil arises again, however, not in the “exterior „something,‟” but in the fresh positivity of “a real enslaving power.”386 Hence it is “captivity” as a symbol that takes the historical events of captivity (e.g., Babylonian and Egyptian), and transforms them so

383 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: I,” 290.

384 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: I,” 291.

385 Ibid. My emphasis.

386 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: I,” 292. 140 that they become “a schema of existence,” which “represents the highest expression achieved by the penitential experience of Israel.”387 Ricoeur explains that when one endures living through an experience that one regards as evil, the linguistic expression of the experience is, in turn, an interpretation of symbolic expressions. Primary symbols such as those expressing evil derive from the literal meaning of the words as in “stain or pollution, deviation or wandering in space, and weight or burden, bondage, slavery, fall….”388 Both Greek mythology and the biblical rendition of fallenness disclose new countenances of the undergoing and suffering of evil, and recount the beginning and end—“a reminiscence and an expectation,” or how experience is directed “from memory toward hope”—insofar as our living reality is oriented in terms of temporality.389 Any admission or acknowledgment of fallenness, finitude, and guilt in the form of false consciousness is connected to the assertion of created being as innocent. Thus, in addition to their expressivity, there is exploratory value to these symbols of evil as they bestow “a universality, a temporality, and an ontological significance” on those evil expressions of “stain, sin, and guilt,” for example.390 With Ricoeur, hermeneutics becomes a global theory of understanding.391 Words that articulate “the consciousness of fault,” for example, in the Hebrew and the Greek, contain a kind of wisdom that can be clearly defined and used as a guide in our living experience.392

387 Ibid.

388 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 315.

389 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 316 and Ricoeur, SE, 6.

390 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 316.

391 See Ricoeur, SE, 9. 392 Ibid. 141

There are three dynamic stages of this original symbolic consciousness emerging from the Judeo-Christian tradition.393 The first stage manifests as surprise at the stain or pollution that is corrupting me, and which I can feel, although I refuse to impute this evil deed to myself and externally project it onto something Other. The second stage of deviation or wandering demonstrates cognizance of falling short relationally with God. There is an infraction of the covenantal relationship, and evil is the consequence. The third stage of bondage of the will admits of personally being responsible for the evil in symbolic terms. Reflective thinking concerning the symbolic manifestations arise out of

“primary symbols, the myth that schematizes them, and the symbolic avowals of fault made in response to the mythical meanings,” which serve as preparation for not only theological notions but metaphysical concepts as well.394 Symbolism is always subject to its being surpassed through the dynamics that are at work. These dynamics are animated by an opposition between myths that relate the origin of evil to primordial conflict, which predates the human, such as Greek tragedy does, and myths that attribute evil to human being who makes an evil choice, such as in the Book of Genesis where the person is immersed in evil through her own fault; this participation proves to be an ongoing activity. That is, there is a temporalizing process at work so that symbolic consciousness can take two different forms, which hinge on the issue of timing with regard to evil. There is, too, the juxtaposition of a schema of exteriority in the notion of evil considered as stain, versus a schema of interiority, which is captured in the pain-ridden experience of guilt and scrupulosity of conscience. Yet the conflict does not only pertain to two different kinds of myths, but within the single Adamic myth, there is the moment of the Fall attributed to one human, while the narrative concerning the temptation plays out over the duration of time, and is spread

393 See Klemm, HTPR, 70-71 on which this paragraph is based.

394 Klemm, HTPR, 71. 142 out among several characters and episodes. This is the conflict of myths contained in the single myth. The serpent symbolizes the preexisting evil that attracts the human; the human discovers evil rather than beginning it. For the human, to begin means to continue. The serpent represents “the Other of human evil.”395 The theology in tragedy is not something that can be thought, and is unavowable, Ricoeur explains. And yet, the unavowable is “shown” through the tragic hero who is at once innocent and guilty. Crucial for Ricoeur is the appropriative and restorative function of hermeneutics that maintains consistency with critical thought. He believes that critical thought ensures the authenticity and perfection of the process of appropriation.396 Furthermore, he explains that “the time of restoration is not a different time from that of criticism; we are in every way children of criticism, and we seek to go beyond criticism by means of criticism, by a criticism that is no longer reductive but restorative.”397 We pursue this thinking in Chapter Four. Symbol and thought are held together in hermeneutics; the meaning of a symbol and the task of understanding bond in the hermeneutical circle: “We must understand in order to believe, but we must believe in order to understand,” Ricoeur says.398 The interpreter and the expressions of life form a kinship of thought with the intended aim of that life—the thought and the thing in question. Philosophical hermeneutics, according to Ricoeur, entails a philosophy that begins with the symbols and strives to form the meaning through a creative interpretation. The symbol is a way of deciphering our human reality in such a way that the space of avowal or confession is illuminated. The symbol, in the power to make itself known, augments our self-awareness, while at the

395 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: I,” 295. 396 Ricoeur, SE, 350.

397 Ibid.

398 Ricoeur, SE, 351. 143 same time, a philosophy that is taught by these symbols has the task of “a qualitative transformation of reflexive consciousness.”399 It is in this regard, with Ricoeur‟s shift to hermeneutics, that we change our focus from fallible human to capable human.

399 Ricoeur, SE, 356. 144

CHAPTER FOUR:

CAPABLE HUMAN

This chapter signals a shift of emphasis and perspective in the study. Along with Ricoeur‟s change from reflective philosophy to hermeneutics, we move from primary focus on fallible human to concentrate on capable human. With Ricoeur as our guide, we have established fallibility as a constitutional weakness of human being and human existence. Fallibility is, however, a fundamental capacity to fail, which is a power, a capability of fallible existence. The medium of language makes it possible that the fragile mediations of life are carried out. Language as such, as a system of signifiers, denotes the possibility of human being. The actuality of human being comes with spoken language, as in the “confession” of fall and evil. The avowal of evil, as the source of actualized self-awareness in language is the impetus behind the human search for redemption. Utterances in the form of avowals and confession of sin, fault, and guilt give voice to, and are the human face of this existential experience. Given the conditions of human existence—the alienation from self that occurs in language, and the objectification of self in the world—these linguistic expressions require interpretation. It is through hermeneutics that the effort to exist and the desire to be are appropriated and reappropriated. Moreover, it is through the hermeneutical process of appropriation that language is experienced, and the self comes to better situate itself in being.400 That is, the symbol of evil, in its revealing power, does not merely augment our self-awareness; that would be tantamount to our severing it from the ontological function that it is meant to serve.401 After all, to “know thyself” is not purely reflexive. Rather, each human receives the entreaty to locate herself in a more excellent way in being, which is to say,

400 Ibid.

401 Ibid. 145 that we should “be wise.”402 In addition to its power to augment our self-awareness, then, the symbol expresses what is the situation at the core of our being, that is, the circumstance or existing condition of our heart, wherein we exist, move, feel, and will. As a result, the philosopher has the task of being guided by the symbols, so as to break free from and end the privilege of self-reflection. Ricoeur explains that the being who posits itself has yet to discover in the act of abstracting itself away from what is the whole, that it does not stop sharing in the challenge that being presents through the symbol. Both the symbols of guilt and the myths convey the situation that we are in—the being of human, that is to say, our being, is “in the being of the world.”403 The task, therefore, is to elaborate upon worldly existential concepts in beginning with symbols. Now, structures of existence, and not merely structures of reflection, demand explanation, as existence is what comprises being human. But, why these particular symbols rather than other ones? Ricoeur says that by virtue of a culture hitting upon them, then it becomes the task of philosophy, through the exercise of reflection as well as speculation, to make known the rationality that is its foundation. Ricoeur is concerned that this philosophy, which is fed by the “fullness of language,” continually should express its universal, rational structure. The situation of being human is one in which we are ridden with fallibility, fallenness, fault, evil, dysfunction, and error. However, given our basic capacity and our

402 Ibid. Ricoeur quotes from the Charmides of Plato here: “The God [at Delphi], by way of salutation, says to them, in reality: Be wise; but, as a soothsayer, he says it in enigmatic form. Be wise and Know thyself are fundamentally the same thing,….Nothing too much and To stand surety for someone invites misfortune….” See Plato, Charmides, Plato: The Collected Dialogues including the Letters, ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press), 99. The arrogant self-assurance that accompanies certitude is a quality abhorred by the Greeks, and is to be avoided. The subject of the Charmides is “What is sophrosyne?” which the editor explains cannot be translated into English in merely one word. According to Hamilton, the word means “accepting the bounds which excellence lays down for human nature, restraining impulses to unrestricted freedom, to all excess, obeying the inner laws of harmony and proportion.”

403 Ibid. 146 capabilities, that is, our powers, there is a constitutive goodness, an original predisposition to goodness that has only to be freed. The fourth step of the argument holds that progress toward spiritual and ethical maturity is both positive and negative. Human being requires an overflow, a superabundance so that it may be liberated. As growth in maturity occurs, there is increasing awareness of both fallibility and capability. The mediating work is accomplished through language in the reform of attitudes, behavior, motivations, intentions, and patterns of acting, as the will is conformed, and ultimately, the mind—consciousness—is transformed.

What I aim to accomplish in this chapter is to set out the essential elements that comprise capable human. I explain each of the elements in the sections that follow (with the exception of Ricoeur‟s move to hermeneutics, which has already been discussed), which are 1) the move to hermeneutics and the hermeneutical philosophy of Ricoeur, 2) expression and discourse in the interpretation theory of Ricoeur, 3) the relation of silence to discourse as set out in the phenomenology of Dauenhauer, and the grafting of contemplative silence onto that structure, and 4) an explanation of the hermeneutical self as derived from Ricoeur. The fourth step of the argument encompasses the first three elements, while the fifth step of the argument encompasses the fourth element. Finally, the chapter closes with a discussion of the concept of recognition. This discussion is an extension of the mini-phenomenology of recognition that is presented in Chapter Two.

Ricoeur‟s Hermeneutical Philosophy Ricoeur says that it is through the act of interpreting that we are able to hear the call of being once again. With his change in methodology from reflective philosophy to hermeneutical philosophy, he distinguishes between first naiveté, critique, and second naiveté. It is the task of the second naiveté to reunite thinking and being, and the split that defines the subject and consciousness. We noted the experience of self-alienation of human being. Ricoeur places hope in the re-creation of language that extends beyond 147 what he terms a “desert of criticism.”404 In his hermeneutical theory, the critical juncture of his endeavor lies between the thought that is articulated and given in the symbol, as well as the actual thought that posits and thinks. This circumstance brings together all that has already been said, albeit enigmatically, along with the necessity to start over, and begin again in the space of thinking; it is a hermeneutics of ordinary daily living that he is aiming for. We proceed now to what is a brief exposition of his hermeneutical philosophy.

First Naiveté In terms of interpretation, the literal or precritical level of original understanding can be characterized as subjectivity that corresponds to the expression of mythic- symbolic language. The primary symbol (the avowal or confession), and the myth (the narrative that tells a story about origins and end), coalesce in the emergence of language. The primary symbol carries the literal meaning; however, as discussed in Chapter Three, the second-meaning expression is carried in human subjectivity and becomes, through response, an expression of what it is to be human under the conditions and influence of the symbol‟s literal meaning. It is the human subject, the self who, in the process of temporalizing the primary symbols in the actual situation of its relation to a real historical community, engenders the myths out of the symbols.405 Primary symbols are given form in myth because the show of meaning and fullness of being communicated in them is not granted to a person in real life but has to be determined by means of mythic expression.406 Myth reestablishes in intention the self in its unity with the world by narrating the primordial story of the fall from essence to existence, from fallibility to

404 Ricoeur, SE, 349.

405 See Klemm, HTPR, 70.

406 Ibid. 148 fault.407 It is not only that I discover myself in the midst of evil, but that I am at present implicated in yielding to the evil by way of actions issuing forth out of the current moment.408 There is, too, a specific kind of understanding, ontological in nature, that reaches its highest communication in the philosophy of language that is articulated by Heidegger, “according to which symbols are like a voice of Being.”409 Ricoeur says that what is revealed here is that it is not so much that language is spoken by the human, than that language is spoken to the human, that humans “are born at the heart of language within the light of the Logos….”410 The self can be characterized as a naïve immediacy in its relation of openness and response before the sacred cosmos which expresses itself through the primary symbol. There is minimal difference between the self and the sacred cosmos with which it identifies in regard to responsivity and receptivity. There is some questioning at this level; however, what transpires is not critical questioning and the distanciation that that implies. In order to round out discussion of the first naiveté, I want to make a few remarks about the reader of a text within this context. While we take up expression and discourse in the next section, wherein it is perhaps more appropriate to discuss the relation of the reader/interpreter to the text, for the sake of coherence, I present the comments here. An example of the relation between the reader/interpreter and the text would be that of a person who reads a sacred text, for example, that is as yet an intellectual and a substantial whole, the production of which has not yet been analyzed and separated into constituent parts. Everything is understood to be in reality as it appears in the language of the text without submitting it to critical questioning and reflection. It can be likened to the wide-

407 Ibid.

408 Ibid.

409 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 319.

410 Ibid. 149 eyed sight of an innocent child. Ricoeur explains that “consciousness is originally false consciousness, „the pretension to self-knowledge.‟”411 We saw, too, in the last chapter how self-understanding in the first naiveté can take two different forms, which are dependent on timing with regard to evil: It can express “speculative myths,” such as those myths of evil deriving from Greek tragedy, where the evil is symbolically present in the entire cosmos, and as such still exists structurally; or, it can express the “reflective myth” of the fall from the Book of Genesis, where a person, immersed in evil through fault, is presently participating in the evil through current actions.412

The first naiveté is unimpaired, and the reality it points to persists as whole insofar as there is no calling into question the symbol. The appropriation that occurs in the first naiveté is of a superficial, outward character that cannot be distinguished from the inner matter at this level of subjectivity. The naïve appropriation is characterized by passive receptivity in relation to the content in that the self tracks the moving image, but remains unaware of the dynamics that are occurring—that is, that this is an event, and that it is in and of time.

Critique Assuming the stance of the questioning how knowing is possible forces away the first immediacy, according to Ricoeur. Critical reflection results, then, in the negation of immediacy. One questions the “how” of the knowledge of what appears in reality by asking if what appears is really as it appears, which can be traced back to Kant and his “Second Copernican Revolution.” That is, rather than be considered realities unto themselves, objects are only representative of appearances from the perspective of the viewer. The question bans the immediacy of the consciousness of the first naiveté by

411 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 330.

412 Klemm, HTPR, 70. 150 severing the relation between the expression and what appears as reality. The dynamism that is at work in symbolism that we referred to in Chapter Three, entails the surpassing of symbolic meaning, which involves a destruction of the immediacy associated with the symbolic meaning. This is the “desert of criticism” that, as previously mentioned, Ricoeur refers to in The Symbolism of Evil.413 The “desert of criticism” refers to the reflexive endpoint of critique: 1) it cancels the givenness of objects; 2) it cancels the givenness of the totality of objects; 3) it cancels the subject; and 4) it cancels the connection between subject and totality of objects

(being). Critique leads literally to nothing—in fact, beyond nothing to what is not nothing, and so on ad infinitum. Critique cancels all values and absolutes—even the value of critique, and it is incapable on its own of restoring any positive value or absolute. Or, so it seemed…(to Romantics). Critique, taken to its absolute power, signals the advent of nihilism! That is the “desert” of criticism. Critique is considered a second level of subjectivity in ontological terms, while the structure of a text corresponds on the object side. Critique can be defined as the infinite capacity to dislodge the meaning or being of whatever appears to us as self- evident. With critique, the myth as self-evident disintegrates: the gods are driven out of naïve consciousness. Once again, for the sake of coherence, it should be mentioned that in terms of the relation between the reader/interpreter and the text, with critique the referential activity of language is suspended so that distinctions can be drawn and separations be made to determine the relations fixed in the text under analysis. As a result, in terms of subjectivity, there is maximum difference and minimal identity with critique. It is the work of critique to delineate the textual structural features that direct the text world.

413 See Ricoeur, SE, 349. 151

Second Naiveté With the second naiveté, or the third level of subjectivity, there is a heightened awareness of the symbol in terms of the consciousness of both its naïve and critical forms so that accord and disaccord may be comprehended. There is intentionality involved as the “I” embraces the naïve state and empathically and responsively identifies with its symbolic expressions, and in this way shows consideration for the original understanding of the symbol. In addition, the “I” methodically examines the expressions that emerge out of symbolic consciousness using the implements of critical thinking. What is restored by means of empathetic imagining, together with the consequences of the engagement of critique, are set in productive tension so that we can continue to think the symbol‟s meaning. The “I” is not the existential self in immediate and unbroken relationship with the symbol, but rather, is the transformed “I” that intentionally engages relations of self- world. In the second naiveté, objective consciousness is not final, but is transformed and enhanced. Now objective consciousness can be mediated successfully with other forms of consciousness, as movement between immediacy and critique is facilitated. This movement is accomplished by connecting/combining immediacy of belief with the results of critical consciousness. This level of subjectivity is rooted in the manifestation of reflexivity as it occurs at the point at which the naïve sense is mediated by way of the critical consciousness. In terms of the relation between the reader/interpreter and the text at this level, the text is read both naively, as in the first innocence of original understanding (likened to the

“child” of the first naiveté, who identifies closely with the symbol/myth), and critically, taking in what is a desert trial insofar as we rigorously examine the parts of the text to therefore become adult critic and naïve child; then we can reposition our lives and 152 understanding now within the range of the reality of the text.414 This is another step or logical distinction. In so doing, a second immediacy is restored, but it is an interpreted immediacy at the level of the possible. We are aware that we are engaged in reading a text, but the possibility of being becomes for the reader the subject of the interpretation. The reader is drawn into the possible as possible. Thus, immediacy and the mediation of thought are held together. The power inherent in new possibilities precedes the power of decision and choice. The imagination of subjectivity can respond to the poetic text such that the distanciation involved is in relationship with the distanciation that has been “hollowed out at the core of reality by the „thing‟ of the text, a poetics of existence responds to the poetics of discourse.”415 Self-critique is central to the process of understanding the text, because our understanding is always ingredient as we permit the text to speak.416 The refiguring of reality is a possibility if we let self-understanding open to the understanding that is projected by the text.417 Critical reflection has to be forever grafted into reflection that is not mere representation, but truly critical examination into motives, intentions, decisions, leading up to action; the fateful step is action.418 The action is the mediating work that is carried out with the resultant transformation coming about through and appearing in language, and the way in which we relate to language. It is through

414 Mark I. Wallace, The Second Naiveté: Barth, Ricoeur, and the New Yale Theology (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1995), xv.

415 See Paul Ricoeur, “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Hermeneutics,” From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics: II, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 101. See also Paul Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation,” Philosophy Today 17 (1973): 129-169. Finally, see Paul Ricoeur, “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” Harvard Theological Review 70:1-2 (January-April, 1977): 29.

416 Ricoeur, “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Hermeneutics,” 100.

417 Wallace, The Second Naiveté: Barth, Ricoeur, and the New Yale Theology, 69.

418 My thanks to Professor David E. Klemm for this point. 153 transforming our relationship to language that we transform our relationship to ourselves. And, in transforming our relationship to ourselves, we transform our relationship to language. Next, let us turn to an examination of expression and an explanation of the nature of discourse in the mediating function of language—the second essential element in our discussion of capable human.

The Role of Expression and Discourse Expression includes the thought and experience of human being who is situated in the world. Ricoeur is interested in approaching language in terms of discourse that is used, and not merely considered in terms of its structure and system. He does not want language to be objectified and thought of only “as a self-sufficient system of inner relationships,” lest it no longer be regarded as discourse.419 In terms of a complete explanation of discourse, he looks to linguistic development and the distinction that is made between semiotics and the system of sign as a basic unit, on the one hand, and semantics and the production of the sentence, which is made up of noun-verb combinations as a basic unit, on the other hand. There is a stark contrast between these two units that characterize language in that the sign can be regarded as merely virtual, and an abstraction in terms of the absence of any reference to actual living conditions, while the sentence can be regarded as an actualization of the virtual in that it is “the very event of speaking,” which emerges from a living being who is situated in the being of the world.420 Semiotics involves the separation of language as it is into its structural constitutive parts, or “the science of signs,” while semantics has to do with an integrative procedure about language that has to do with meaning, or “the science of the sentence.”421 Ricoeur wants to return (ontological) priority to the semantic level of

419 Ricoeur, IT, 6.

420 Ricoeur, IT, 7.

421 Ricoeur, IT, 8. 154 discourse. He does so by performing a mediation between these two opposing elements of discourse, and thereby includes both of them in his notion of discourse. It should be noted that the semiotic, structural model comes as a result of the work of the linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, in that he makes a basic distinction between language in terms of langue and parole. Ricoeur explains that “Langue is the code—or the set of codes—on the basis of which a particular speaker produces parole as a particular message.”422 Whereas the message is individual, the code is considered collective. In terms of temporality, the message comes about as the result of an intentional, free act, and is, therefore, unnecessary and contingent; it is an individual speech event in time that participates in a successive series of events, sequentially, in diachronic time.423 In terms of temporality, the code, in its collectivity, exists as part of synchronic time insofar as it is “a set of contemporaneous elements” that is anonymous and unintended; it emerges from a structuring process that is unconscious at the level of culture, and is not only systematic, but compulsory for the given speakers of the community.424 Semiotics, as a model, brackets the message, the event, the intention, and the contingent, free act in order to prioritize the code, the system, the structure, and systematic combinations of the synchronic systems. This bracketing results in an objectification of language. Ricoeur proposes to counter this objectification by distinguishing between language as discourse and language as merely a system. He achieves this task by establishing a basic subject-object structure of discourse, which mirrors the basic subject-object structure of the self.425 He establishes two dialectics that

422 Ricoeur, IT, 3.

423 Ricoeur, IT, 3 and Klemm, HTPR, 75.

424 Ibid.

425 Klemm, HTPR, 77. 155 are set in tensive motion—the dialectic of event and meaning, and the dialectic of sense and reference, which we shall, in turn, consider below.

The Dialectic of Event and Meaning The first dialectic in discourse establishes a concrete polarity between event as the subjective pole, or subjective side of discourse, and meaning as the objective pole, or objective side of discourse, insofar as it is the propositional content in a sentence. This dialectic of event and meaning is considered by Ricoeur to be an inner dialectic which has to do with the meaning of discourse. Discourse is characterized on the subjective pole, i.e. event, as an actualization of codes. Given the distinction between langue or code and parole or message, Ricoeur says that “discourse is the event of language.”426 But there is an “epistemological weakness” with parole, or the message, due to the fleeting character of the event that soon vanishes in time; whereas the system is stable and remains. He wants to relate the message to an ontological priority about discourse, which is the consequence of the actuality associated with the event, in contradistinction to the virtuality associated with the system. That is, a message has a temporal existence, while a system has a mere virtual existence. A message bestows actuality on language, while discourse “grounds the very existence of language since only the discrete and each time unique acts of discourse actualize the code.”427 Discourse is characterized on the objective pole, i.e. meaning, as propositional content in a sentence. That is, an act associated with discourse is not just transitory in its vanishing aspect. An act of discourse can continually be identified or reidentified as, in fact, the same in that it may be repeated, or it may be said using other words. In addition, the act can be said in another language or translated into another language. There is an

426 Ricoeur, IT, 9.

427 Ibid. 156 identity that is being built up through all of these acts of discourse, and this is referred to as the propositional content of a sentence. In any given sentence, the subject bears singular identification and therefore identifies only a single item, in terms of a proper name, a pronoun, a demonstrative such as “this and that” or “now and then,” and a definite description.428 The predicate, however, delineates some universal quality, class, or type, whether it be relation or action concerning the subject. The basic polarity between that of singular identification, on the one hand, and that of universal predication, on the other hand, conveys a particular content to an idea of a proposition, understood as an object of what is a speech event. It discloses the nature of discourse insofar as it cannot be considered only as an event that vanishes, and an irrational entity. Rather, discourse has its own synthetic structure “as the intertwining and interplay of the functions of identification and predication in one and the same sentence.”429 An objective meaning is formed in the sentence by joining together a singular identification with a universal predication by means of the verb, which ascribes what is, in relative terms, the universal, to what is the particular, followed by the addition of a reference to existing in actual time.430 Ricoeur says that the idea of speech as an event is a reminder to us that discourse occurs and is temporally realized in the present moment, whereas if language is considered strictly in terms of a system, then it is merely virtual to us, and remains outside of real time. He explains that “If all discourse is actualized as an event, all discourse is understood as meaning.”431 The event is transient to be sure; however, the meaning that is understood in the propositional content endures through the joining together of noun and verb. There is a suppressing as well as a

428 Ricoeur, IT, 10.

429 Ricoeur, IT, 11.

430 Klemm, HTPR, 77.

431 Ricoeur, IT, 12. 157 surpassing of an event in a meaning, which is a trait of discourse that affirms an intentionality about language itself, and the subject-object structure. If we consider language to be an intending, he explains, then through the actualizing and canceling of the event, discourse is transient and vanishing; however, discourse understood as meaning endures and lives on in the propositional content.432 It should be mentioned in terms of the dialectic of event and meaning that with regard to performative discourse, as in the “speech-act” such as that of actual promises, the speaker says something, which is a locutionary act. The speaker also does what she says by virtue of saying it; the deed itself has to follow the semantic rules of articulating a promise as such in the first-person singular. The doing of the deed in the saying is the illocutionary act with regard to the event of discourse, and is what differentiates the promise from the order, or a wish, for example. The perlocutionary effect, as the objective correlate of the illocutionary act yields a result by saying; it is what is yielded in the doing of a saying.433 There is also the interlocutionary act in that discourse is always addressed to someone so that there is a speaker and a hearer, which means that discourse is communication.434 Ricoeur explains that communication is an enigma, however, for any existential investigation:

Why? Because being-together, as the existential condition for the possibility of any dialogical structure of discourse, appears as a way of trespassing or overcoming the fundamental solitude of each human being. By solitude I do not mean that fact that we often feel isolated as in a crowd, or that we live and die alone, but, in a more radical sense, that what is experienced by one person cannot be transferred whole as such and such experience to someone else. My experience cannot directly become your experience. An event belonging to one stream of consciousness cannot be transferred as such into another stream of consciousness. Yet, nevertheless, something passes from me to you. Something is transferred from

432 Ibid.

433 Klemm, HTPR, 78.

434 Ricoeur, IT, 14. 158

one sphere of life to another. This something is not the experience as experienced, but its meaning. Here is the miracle. The experience as experienced, as lived, remains private, but its sense, its meaning, becomes public. Communication in this way is the overcoming of the radical noncommunicability of the lived experience as lived.435 Ricoeur refers to this as a new property of the dialectic between event and meaning inasmuch as the event is composed of the experience in its expression and communication as well as the actual intersubjective exchange, or the “happening” of dialogue.436 That is, discourse as event is assumed into what is the propositional content so that private experience through discourse becomes public. The sense which becomes public is considered to be an event, while the actual experience as lived is, and remains private.437 The sense of the sentence is communicated in the event of dialogue. The sense can be transferred to the hearer because it remains external with regard to an event. Ricoeur explains that the “exteriority of discourse to itself—which is synonymous with the self-transcendence of the event in its meaning—opens discourse to the other. The message has the ground of its communicability in the structure of its meaning.”438 He further explains how the locutionary and illocutionary acts as acts are events to the degree that implicit in their intention is an intention to be recognized in terms of what they indeed are—the singular identification, the universal predication, a statement,

435 Ricoeur, IT, 15-16. See also Edmund Husserl, “The Appresentation of the Other,” The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, ed. Donn Welton (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999), 149. According to Husserl, we cannot actualize for ourselves the “hyletic” sense data of what has already been appropriated by another person in our own primordial, spatio-temporal position. This is all to the good: See John Durham Peters, Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999), 31. He states that “Ralph Waldo Emerson and William James struck the right note: acknowledging the splendid otherness of all creatures that share our world without bemoaning our impotence to tap their interiority. The task is to recognize the creature‟s otherness, not to make it over in one‟s own image and likeness.”

436 Ricoeur, IT, 16. My emphasis.

437 Klemm, HTPR, 78.

438 Ricoeur, IT, 16. 159 or an order, a wish, or a promise, etc.439 Because of the role that recognition plays in the intention of saying, he says that that intention itself becomes communicable to a particular degree. There is, of course, a psychological aspect that can only be experienced by the speaker, insofar as in a promise is the commitment, and in the assertion is a belief, which compose these mental acts; however, they are not, according to Ricoeur, radically incommunicable. As he explains, “Their intention implies the intention of being recognized, therefore the intention of the other‟s intention. This intention of being identified, acknowledged, and recognized as such by the other is part of the intention itself.”440 He says that this is how the noetic, or what is intellectual, is part of the psychic. The criterion for what is noetic is an intention of a communicability, and the expectation for recognition as part of an intentional act. There is a difference, then, insofar as the illocutionary includes the presence of an intention to bring forth in a listener a particular mental act through which that listener will recognize what is the intention. The reciprocity involved in intention constitutes dialogue as an event, Ricoeur says. And the bearer of the event is this “grammar” connected with recognition that is part of an intended meaning. In conclusion, language can be considered the process by which what is private experience becomes public. With language as exteriorization, an impression by way of being transcended becomes what is an “ex-pression,” which results in a transformation of what is psychic into what is the noetic. Ricoeur explains that “Exteriorization and communicability are one and the same thing for they are nothing other than this elevation of a part of our life into the logos of discourse. There the solitude of life is for a moment, anyway, illuminated by the common light of discourse.”441

439 Ricoeur, IT, 18.

440 Ibid.

441 Ricoeur, IT, 19. 160

The Dialectic of Sense and Reference In addition to the dialectic between event and meaning, the relation between sense and reference constitutes the other dialectic that Ricoeur devises in his theory of discourse. In terms of the objective side of discourse, he divides meaning into a second dialectic of “sense” (Sinn) and “reference” (Bedeutung). The objective side can be meant in two distinct ways: The sense is the “what” with regard to discourse, and the reference is the “about what” of discourse, a distinction originally made by Gottlob Frege.442 The distinction is fundamental to discourse insofar as it is applicable to sense and reference in sentences which are in use. Ricoeur says “that language has a reference only when it is used.”443 The distinction is not, therefore, applicable to signs because signs refer merely to the other signs that are in a particular system. While the sense of the sentence is immanent to discourse, and is objective in terms of the ideal, it does direct itself to what is its outside referent.444 The reference, or referring intention, is an expression of the movement whereby language can transcend itself, and has to be given independently of comprehending the sense, though it is only locatable through the hints in the sense.445

Hence sense correlates both the identification and predication function in the sentence, whereas the reference is what relates that language to a world, and establishes the truth claim of discourse. Ricoeur explains that “This notion of bringing experience to language is the ontological condition of reference….”446 In our experience and ontological condition of being in the world, we work towards expressing our experience

442 Ibid.

443 Ricoeur, IT, 20.

444 Ricoeur, IT, 20 and Klemm, HTPR, 79.

445 Ibid.

446 Ricoeur, IT, 21. 161 in language; however, language is not merely directed towards some ideal meaning, but refers also “to what is.”447 The dialectic of sense and reference is related to the dialectic of event and meaning: Reference is tied up in the event that is discourse inasmuch as “to refer” is what the speaker accomplishes in a given situation. However, this actual event is structured by the meaning in terms of sense, that is, “the objective form of meaning through which the speaker refers.”448 Ricoeur explains that “The sense, so to speak, is traversed by the referring intention of the speaker.”449 In the end, he defines semantics as a “theory that relates the inner or immanent constitution of the sense to the outer or transcendent intention of the reference.”450 “Discourse in action and in use,” he says, refers backwards to the speaker and forwards to the world.451 We now have in place two of the four essential elements that constitute capable human. I want to extend Ricoeur‟s notion of discourse to consider the role of silence as it relates to discourse, as we move into the next section of the study.

The Relation of Silence to Discourse The point I want to establish in this section is that any discussion of discourse remains incomplete without a discussion of silence. Moreover, my aim is to discuss silence and its relation to discourse, and to being human, and therefore to show how integral silence is to discourse, and to human life itself. Indeed, it is the third element of what constitutes capable human in this study. I turn to the work of Dauenhauer so that he

447 Ibid.

448 Klemm, HTPR, 79.

449 Ricoeur, IT, 20.

450 Ricoeur, IT, 21-22.

451 Ricouer, IT, 22. 162 may illuminate for us silence as a phenomenon.452 I want to explain what he does insofar as he engages in a phenomenological analysis of silence. He constructs the phenomenon of silence as basic and necessary to discourse, and accomplishes this task by engaging in a transcendental argument. He begins with a description of the ontic (or existential) phenomenon, i.e. in this case, silence, and then gives a formal analysis with respect to a noetic-noematic structure. His study thereby becomes a phenomenological analysis of the intentionality of consciousness. Intentionality itself divides into the aforementioned noetic-noematic or subject-object structure. The “noetic” refers to an act of consciousness, or an act of knowing. The “noematic” refers to an object of consciousness. This noetic-noematic structure is the result of an enactment of a phenomenological reduction; it is a reduction to some “eidos,” or in transcendental terms, to the condition of the possibility of the ontic phenomenon. The eidos is silence as a positive phenomenon.453 Silence as a positive phenomenon is a “cut” of some prior performance of the human activity of discourse, a kind of “break” in discourse, or a transition point in time. Dauenhauer discusses silence as “cutting” at various levels, so that silence is a turning point in discourse, and is, therefore, integral and preeminent in the dialectic between silence and discourse. Silence can be considered as an interruption of modes of discourse in everyday language. Let us take a closer look at Dauenhauer‟s argument, so that we may ascertain the phenomenon of silence and its relation to discourse.

Silence as a Phenomenon

He argues that silence is a positive phenomenon, and equiprimordial with the utterance. This thesis involves the two claims that 1) silence is both the necessary

452 See Bernard P. Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).

453 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 60. 163 condition of utterance, and is also coordinate with the utterance, and 2) there is a describable temporality about silence that is its own, so that its temporality does not come from the temporality deriving from the utterance to which it is joined.454 Silence is linked to the human performances of activity that he calls “utterances.” He defines the utterance as “any performance employing systematically related signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having recognizable meanings to express thoughts, feelings, states of affairs, etc.”455 Utterances can include not only word phrases and musical notes, and the aforementioned gestures, for example, but painted and sculpted shapes, as well. The self- initiated deployment of what is any kind of language counts as an utterance. Each specific utterance is considered a moment of actual discourse, with discourse being comprised of utterance in its totality. Without utterance as such, there is no silence, Dauenhauer says. There are three kinds of silence he describes as part of his “first approximations,” which precede his phenomenological analysis and that are bound up with utterances. They are as follows: 1) intervening silence, 2) fore-and-after silence, and 3) deep silence.456 First, intervening silence can be considered as a kind of punctuating silence in that it serves the function of punctuating words as well as phrases that comprise the sentences that together constitute discourse. In this regard, intervening silence has a melodic function in that it includes an operation of closing and opening. In actual occurrences, intervening silence ends a sound phrase, and then clears the path for the succeeding sound phrase. Intervening silence is in service to the actual sound phrases that it punctuates. It becomes subordinated to sound phrases that comprise an utterance.

454 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 5.

455 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 4.

456 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 5-6. 164

Intervening silence also has a rhythmic function. If we consider the story, the musical composition, or the painting as a totality, Dauenhauer explains, then we discover that silence does not merely punctuate what are the sound phrases. He says that “These occurrences of silence are just as essential to the rhythm of the totality as are any of the sound phrases which make up the utterance.”457 Hence to have an appropriate number, in addition to placement, as well as duration of these intervening silences are equally important to a dramatic and lexical sense of story in the same way that proportioned length and internal balance are important to sound phrases in music, especially; but this applies to all kinds of discourse, Dauenhauer says. It is the case, then, in terms of its rhythmic function, that intervening silence appears to carry the same weight as the sound phrases do in composing an actual utterance. The other important point to note about intervening silence is that it has a temporal structure of its own in addition to the temporal structure that it has as being constituent to what is the actual utterance. So, for example, the particular intervening silence of A‟ that lies between the given sound phrases A and B contains something of a sense of not only sound phrases A and B that frame it, but all of the sound phrases that are part of the utterance. If this was not the case, there would be no unity to the utterance except, Dauenhauer explains, in retrospect.458 Second, fore-and-after-silence is constituted in the silence that precedes the first and last sound phrase of an utterance. Fore-silence performs the opening operation,

457 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 7.

458 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 8. Dauenhauer explains that “The first moment of intervening silence A‟ is heavily freighted, but not exhaustively filled, with the retained sense of sound phrase A. As A‟ perdures, a „running off‟ of the retained sense of A „empties‟ A‟ of some but not all of the retained sense of A. A‟ could not be totally emptied of A without destroying the unity of the utterance. Correlated to the emptying, there is the filling up of A‟ with the protended sense of sound phrase B. But again, A‟ is never exhaustively filled with the sense of B. See also Edmund Husserl, “A Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time,” The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, 186-212. 165 which we can think of in terms of “casting a spell,” whereas after-silence performs the closing operation, which we can think in terms of “lifting a spell.” Were it not for this occurrence of after-silence, Dauenhauer says that an utterance would lose expressive force. Likewise, with regard to fore-silence, in that if an utterance becomes forcibly introduced into what is a full expressive space because there is no fore-silence, then there is a distortion of what is now this very crowded space. They each have a time structure, too. In the case of after-silence, what is its first now-moment retains what is the final now-moment of an utterance. However, succeeding moments of after-silence progressively release a sense of these individual, particular sound phrases connected with the utterance, while retaining a sense of the utterance in its entirety. With fore-silence, there is a twofold sense in its now moment: First, we gain a sense that the utterance along with the after-silence is in the past now. Second, we gain a sense that there is someone who is capable of, and might begin what is the new utterance. These successive now- moments retain the first sense, and increasingly refine (in combination with myriad cognitive, perceptual, and emotional changes to do with anticipation), this second sense so that there is a growing degree of specificity with regard to who is capable of uttering, and might, in fact, do so, as well as what it is that might be uttered.459 In the case that there is no new utterance issuing forth, then fore-silence is ended with the after-silence which has retained a “„tone‟ pre-delineated” in what is the final moment associated with fore-silence, so that fore-and-after silence is empty.460 This kind of silence occurs in combination with all discourse which, in intention, is intersubjective. Discourse is intended to be heard; however, there must be room for it, insofar as there is a frame of silence available for it to fit into. To conclude discussion of the first two kinds of silence, Dauenhauer says that fore-and-after silence assists in distinguishing a particular utterance

459 See Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 13.

460 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 14. 166 from all other utterances, while intervening silence has to do with distinguishing an individual sound phrase from all sound phrases in general. This sameness of function points to their unity in that these aspects comprise a background silence, positive in character, against which there is an unfolding of a determinate utterance that starts, runs a course, and reaches completion.461 The third kind of silence is deep silence. Deep silence is involved in all utterances, and is not subordinate to an utterance. Deep silence is distinct from the previous two kinds of silence in that it is not possible to identify numerically distinct instances of this kind of silence for every occurrence of an utterance. Dauenhauer explains three different modes of deep silence, which are 1) the silence of intimates, wherein their utterances find their place; 2) liturgical silence, wherein there is a reference made to something that goes beyond the scope of what can be achieved through the work of human agency; and 3) the silence of the “To-be-said,” which is characterized as a silence that transcends all saying, and is a silence of “what-ought-to-be-said” wherein “what is said” is firmly fixed.462 He also refers to it as a philosophical or a mystical silence. Deep silence runs through not only utterance, but the other two kinds of silence, too. It has its own time structure just as any type of silence does. Finally, given these first approximations, silence can be characterized as an active performance, in which someone has to perform an action in order that there be silence. It also appears as a yielding before a power that is beyond a person‟s control. This yielding serves to bind and join, whether it be the closing-opening function of intervening silence, or the deep silence whereby one is bound to the other, whoever and whatever the other may be.

461 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 15.

462 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 19. 167

Discourse and Silence Dauenhauer distinguishes between two types of discourse, topic-centered discourse and interlocutor-centered discourse. He paraphrases Ricoeur to say that when sense and reference are joined together in topic-centered discourse, it is a “coming to language of a world.”463 However, when sense and reference are joined together in interlocutor-centered discourse, this is a “coming to recognition” of participants in terms of their actual, situated individuality.464 Topic-centered discourse refers to a world and not merely a situation, and is non-ostensive; whereas interlocutor-centered discourse is ostensive, and refers to the spatio-temporal situation of the participants, as well as intending a dialogical situation. The types of interlocutor-centered discourse are “familial discourse, discourse with friends, and discourse with acquaintances.”465 The types of topic-centered discourse are scientific, technological, political, moral, religious, and artistic discourse. What is important to note is that each different facet of discourse manifests as joined together with a different aspect of silence.466 And, just as the facets of discourse are positive, so, too, are the aspects of silence positive.

Let us take a closer look at the relationship between silence and discourse with regard to these two types of discourse. We will not exhaust the possibilities here; rather, we will consider a few examples to illustrate the relation. In terms of interlocutor- centered discourse, let us consider the case of after-silence with regard to discourse with acquaintances, in contrast to after-silence with regard to discourse with friends, while realizing that in actual life the demarcation separating acquaintances and friends may not be entirely clear. Dauenhauer says that there is a qualitative difference between the after-

463 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 28.

464 Ibid.

465 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 30.

466 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 52. 168 silence of the former and latter cases above. There is a sense in which after-silence brings dialogue to a halt, and ends it with the former, whereas in the latter case, after- silence merely suspends but does not end the discourse; rather, discourse as ongoing is only interrupted. In terms of topic-centered discourse, the silence that has to do with political discourse binds and joins persons with the founders of the state and their originating discourse. Dauenhauer explains that there is a two-fold silence here in that there is the silence that allows the founding discourse to be heard in a fresh new way, and there is the silence that prepares the way for and yields to a fresh political utterance. In moral discourse, silence binds one to the moral law—or the voice of conscience—and the universal court of justice in the Kantian sense, as discourse referring to an individual is moral if and only if it can be universalized. In the case of religious discourse there is a reference to the world wherein both the moment of creation and the end moment of time are privileged and singled out. The silence that accompanies religious utterances binds and joins them to the originary utterance. An originary utterance can be considered a response to a manifest appearance of the divine as what is infinitely greater than the human. Religious utterances can be considered to be repetitious insofar as they repeat an eternal word that has always been uttered and will continue to be, from the beginning to the end. Finitude and awe constitute the silence associated with religious discourse. A paradoxical recognition occurs because the utterer realizes that she has to utter what has always and everywhere already been uttered, and yet that her word matters greatly. The awe lies in having to respond, no matter what, to the divine. Finitude is recognized in the fact that the only sufficient response is one that her predecessors have already made, and that those who 169 follow after her will make. Dauenhauer explains that “Religious discourse with its silence…eschews uttering the novel.”467 Finally, artistic discourse, at least in the modern world, has to overcome referential values having to do with routine discourse so that new expressions can be articulated concerning “the meaning of reality.”468 While the risk of unintelligibility can plague the author, the reader takes the chance that he or she will have wasted his or her precious time, or worse yet, that its world will be shaken to the core. There is also the recognition that every utterance must at some point yield to another utterance. For example, James Joyce‟s Ulysses might appear to have the last word, but even it will be superseded in time. The new utterance is, in its moment of origin, filled with a silence that reveals the finitude associated with the artistic discourse that preceded its own, in addition to being filled with its sense of finitude. Hence silence reveals “its own finitude” against the background of historical consciousness.469 In the end, each one of these different kinds of topic-centered discourse refers to a world, and spells out the kind of silence that has to accompany it. With Dauenhauer‟s concentration on the “world,” he is moving in the direction of a noematic analysis of a phenomenon. Thus far, we can think of silence in terms of “cuts” or “breaks” between discourse, or as “moments” of discourse, or even at the deepest cut, it is silence that makes discourse possible at all.

The Analysis of Silence

The domain of discourse is established, according to Dauenhauer, by moving away from a pre-predicative and spontaneous exploration in connection with our environment and surroundings. There is a cut that interrupts what he refers to as the “and

467 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 45.

468 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 47.

469 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 48. 170 so forth” of the spontaneous shifting of our interests. The cut is what makes expression possible. There is a specific kind of silence that becomes the necessary, if not sufficient, condition for expression at all. This type of silence interrupts what is the stream of pre- predicative experience, and provides for the possibility of expression, although it does not designate in advance a particular group of expressions as determinate. This kind of silence serves to detach us from what is our absorption in pre-predicative stream of experience. This is what makes of silence an act as opposed to what would be a spontaneous performance. This first cut takes the severed themes from pre-predicative experience and makes them “mine.” The second cut cancels the supposed exclusive “mineness” associated with determinate themes, and opens a way in order to recognize that there is another thematizing occurring in the perceptual experience of the other which is available to me. There is an acknowledgment of other selves here who are also thematizing. The second cut provides a foundation and a motivation for discourse. Hence Dauenhauer explains that “the first cut opens the way for a individualized, differentiated world as the totality of that which can be made determinate. The second cut opens the way for this differentiated world to be a social one.”470 And, he says, the two cuts provide almost all that is ingredient to constituting a sociohistorical world.471 The third cut serves to suspend the flow that constitutes perceptual experience insofar as the thematizer is distanced now from what has captivated her interest. The third cut provides the opening for the signifying performances of discourse. Space is provided so that the thematizer can mediate perceptual experience in and through symbols as well as signs. Perceptual experience associated with the third cut can merely ascertain with confidence that there is a common world. The content of the public world,

470 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 62.

471 Ibid. 171 the sense, is hypothetical. What remedies this situation is to overcome or attempt to mitigate restrictions as a result of the particular perspectival character of perceptual experience. The third cut provides the opening for the self to be able to mediate the perceptual experience not only to itself, but to other selves by means of symbolic performances that are, in turn, both initiated as well as received.472 Dauenhauer‟s claim is that unquestionably it is with this third cut that silence occurs. Silence and discourse are intertwined; he says he respects a distinction between “the perceptual and pictorial performances of consciousness on the one hand and its signitive performances on the other.”473 It is this third cut that decisively makes available this shift from performances of a perceptual nature to performances of a signitive nature. The domain of discourse and with it, the sociohistorical world, becomes available. There are three different levels of interpersonal participation in discourse accompanying the three “cuts” of silence. The first is the level of soliloquy. At this level, the author as well as the audience are not thematized as unique individuals. The discourse is regulated as well as determined by those themes that have been settled prior to the present discourse, appealing to tradition as the point for departure; in this respect the uttering is merely a reuttering, with a minimal amount of reflection on one‟s immediate surroundings. This level, which Dauenhauer refers to as personalizing silence, makes available the way for the second level of interpersonal participation, the activity of which enables the thematizer as a thematizer to be recognized as well as signified. Personalizing silence is the aspect of silence that serves to release discourse from the domineering effect of what are preestablished themes, so that discourse can be claimed as something for which the person takes a certain degree of responsibility.

472 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 64.

473 Ibid. 172

Silence that appears in this way is the aspect out of which intervening silence, as previously discussed, was derived. The second level of discourse is bipolar discourse, because there are two poles, the author and the audience, or one who utters and one who hears the utterance. This level includes monologue as well as dialogue. The cut between them is interpersonalizing silence. With monologue, the author exercises maximal control in minimizing any initiative that the audience would exercise over that discourse. At least in a minimal way, however, the initiative of the audience does have to be recognized, lest it be soliloquy. It is in the author‟s recognition of the other thematizers that the author becomes motivated to cut off the monologue. It is precisely this cut that is known as interpersonalizing silence. Interpersonalizing silence, in turn, makes available the possibility for dialogue. The possibility of role shifting exists as the hearer can become an author, or the blocking of utterance can occur insofar as the audience can leave. The cut here is the foundation also for the move from bipolar discourse, whereby the hearer can be distinguished from the author, and is, in fact, in opposition to the said author, to the third level of interpersonal participation, that of codiscourse. Interpersonalizing silence makes available the opportunity for the other self to take part in discourse, and for an author to move to a different audience, or change topics. With codiscourse there is a sublation of the author and the audience as the “I-you” becomes a “we.” The cut that inaugurates the third level is deindividualizing silence, which interrupts streams of the expressive performances that are identifiable as autonomous utterances of the subset of the group of participants that comprise the discourse. Whereas at the second level, there are individual streams of discourse deriving from individualized selves, which are intertwined, and at least in principle separable, at the third level the streams are inseparable. The pre-predicative experience in the referent with its commonality, is the motivating force for deindividualizing silence, with the interpersonal involvement for which it opens the possibility. The motivation for this third 173 level is the possibility of synchronic discourse raising to expression that which cannot be articulated diachronically. That is, codiscourse or we-discourse can articulate what cannot be articulated by bi-polar discourse. Whereas with bipolar discourse at the second level, where it is important that the “I” or “you” exercise an individual initiative in uttering whatever it is that is to be uttered, with codiscourse at the third level, the persons involved have to relinquish autonomy so that it is not properly “mine” or “yours.” The yielding involved is for the sake of the profundity of an interpersonal relationship that cannot come about under the influence of autonomy. Dauenhauer says that the antecedent requirement for being able to participate in codiscourse is emotional or psychological maturity, or in terms of another context, political maturity.474 Codiscourse is possible by an individual self in that it can be uttered on behalf of the community of which the person is a part, and thus, would not be primordially hers. There has to be the envisioning of coperformers in horizontal terms, otherwise, what is uttered and the way in which it is uttered would not make sense. Derivative cuts occur at this level in order that roles be established for the participants. The silence or cut that interrupted “and so forth” of the second level of bipolar discourse, and now made available for codiscourse, is the final cut of that which is within the sphere of predication or discourse. To summarize, there are three different levels of interpersonal involvement that comprise discourse, which are soliloquy, bipolar discourse, and codiscourse. The cuts between them are interpersonalizing silence and deindividualizing silence. Together, these comprise and exhaust what can be discovered in the signitive sphere.475 Discourse at the third level is the “flowering” of what occurs at the first two levels insofar as there is a commonality of what is a principle referent, or the “whole” to which that discourse in

474 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Significance, 72.

475 Ibid. 174 all of its components refers.476 Living within the domain of discourse entails all three levels and a “shuttling” between the levels, although a specific utterance occurs in a particular level. The cut at this level of codiscourse has a distinguishing feature in that it serves to change the direction of movement from a polarization of the autonomous participants towards interpersonal coalescence instead.477 There is a deepening of the capacity to engage in discourse as a result. A correspondence cannot be made between the cut of deindividualizing silence and the three kinds of silence that were identified at the beginning of this discussion. This cut can, however, be correlated with the personalizing silence occurring between the levels of prepersonal (soliloquous) and bipolar discourse. There is a final cut that is known as terminal silence that closes off the domain of discourse, and interrupts what is the “and so forth” of the domain of discourse in its entirety. Terminal silence and deep silence have the same structure, but terminal silence is also connected to after-silence which involves savoring the discourse such that a series of utterances can achieve their full existential weight. So after-silence, with its digesting in which nothing more that is determinate is added to the discourse, is connected to terminal silence, as the digesting is essential in acknowledging a pointlessness about expanding upon the utterances.478 The opening cut, or originary silence is what establishes the gap that exists between the two domains of intentional performances— perceptual and pictorial as well as signitive performances. Once this gap between the two is established, it is terminal silence that verifies its uncancellability.

476 Ibid.

477 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 73.

478 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 75. 175

Three Irreducible Moments of Silence Dauenhauer‟s intentional analysis of silence illustrates how the temporal structure associated with silence appears in combination with the various kinds of discourse. He remarks that “Without the conjunction of discourse and silence, discourse would collapse into mere untemporalized language and silence would collapse into mere muteness or non-signitive vision.”479 We have seen how he characterizes silence as surrounding, suffusing, and permeating discourse. Based on his depictions, in the final analysis, there are three kinds of silence, which we shall refer to as 1) originating silence, 2) pervasive silence, and 3) terminal silence. That is, there are “three irreducible moments” of silence that constitute a temporal structure in regard to silence.480 First, in terms of originating silence, or silence in its first moment, silence originates, that is, opens a way and provides a departure point for the domain of discourse in its entirety. Second, in terms of pervasive silence, or silence in its second moment, silence spreads or disperses the domain inasmuch as it enables the shifts to be made from one shape to another, and from one level to another within discourse. Further, it preserves movement within the discourse that commenced with the first moment of silence. Third, in terms of terminal silence, or silence in its third moment, silence closes off and turns discourse back to its departure point, its origination, which results in establishing a unity about the domain of discourse. This also entails silence being turned back to its originating moment, but

Dauenhauer does not explain how this is so. It has to do with our capacity to remember, and our memory as retrieval; it is an interpretive retrieval that involves the process of recognition. Through the process of the third moment, discourse is situated within a context that includes the entire scope of human experience. Discourse arises by means of silence, and reaches completion as a unitary domain by means of silence. Dauenhauer

479 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 77.

480 Ibid. 176 explains that, in turn, discourse provides the opportunity for silence to make an appearance “as senseful.”481 Terminal silence can be given specificity by virtue of being interpreted. Dauenhauer‟s intentional analysis affirms that silence is an active performance. Further, it discloses silence as being established on pre-predicative experience—the world of perception, which includes sensory and feeling—as silence arises from looking at the world around us.482 The pre-predicative world is a necessary condition for silence. Our being in the world precedes even the active world of silence. Silence, in turn, is a necessary condition for predicative and postpredicative experience. Now we can further delineate these three moments in terms of 1) pre-predicative, 2) predicative, and 3) postpredicative. First, the pre-predicative moment corresponds with originating silence; and there is an original identity of silence and discourse. This is the level of perceptual and affective consciousness. Second, the predicative moment corresponds with pervasive silence; and the original identity becomes divided. This is the level of discursive experience or consciousness as a moment of reflection. Acts of reflexivity are still within the predicative world, as we can talk about reflexivity. Third, the postpredicative moment corresponds with terminal silence, and this is the cut that opens and that follows discourse. There is a different form of reflexivity here that is in silence and not talk. We stop talking and the mind turns back and starts thinking, as in the German word, nachdenken. This thinking may not be formal thinking; it could be remembering, recalling, and recognizing. By bringing discourse to a close, a unity is brought about. Discourse continues on, and nevertheless within the finitude of silence, discourse is bound, and yet silence muses. With reflexive silence, we can muse back on

481 Ibid.

482 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 79. 177 originating silence, pervasive silence, and muse about discourse itself. We can muse about its (silence) own state of terminal silence—this silence is a recollective silence. There is a 1-2-3 structure above, and this is a moment within a larger analysis. But nonetheless, this 1-2-3 structure is valuable. “1” can be considered in terms of “paradise” with the original unity of subject-object. “1” corresponds to the first naiveté. “2” can be considered in terms of “fall” with the moment of reflection and the division of subject-object. “2” corresponds to critique. “3” can be considered in terms of “redemption” with the recovery of paradise. “3” corresponds to the second naiveté with reference to silence. Terminal silence is a musing upon our own musing, and is word- filled, as we muse on our own words. It is a recapturing of what was lost, but not a perfect recapturing. We cannot ascend to absolute knowledge in the Hegelian sense here. Ricoeur would say, instead of absolute knowledge, that our primordial finitude is shining through. This leads to a conflict of interpretations in Ricoeurian terms. Dauenhauer, too, says that silence yields with the recognition of finitude, and that there is a multiplicity of discourse.483

Situating the Practice of Contemplative Silence It is in this third moment of postpredicative silence that I want to situate the practice of contemplative silence, and graft it onto this structure. We shall carry this moment forward as we proceed with the study. For the most part, Dauenhauer is claiming that silence is an indeterminate performance, especially in the case of terminal silence; and that most forms of silence are of indeterminate intentionality. That is to say that they do not ask to be satisfied, and they are not referring to a determinate object of discourse. The key point that Dauenhauer makes is that “Performances of silence…do not focally intend an x which can properly be called a determinate object.”484 Finitude

483 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 80.

484 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 82. 178 prevents contemplative silence from being purely non-determinate, however, and “there is no complete determinateness.”485 Even the highest form of silence in contemplative silence is still aware in a determinate way of its own lack of absolute nondeterminateness, because any awareness of something is an awareness of some determinate (some x as opposed to non-x). So awareness of pure x would be a return to subject-object, and would be divine awareness. We may be able to think the thought that God‟s awareness occurs through our own, but we are aware that it is not our own, and contemplative silence cannot return entirely to the realm of originary silence. In other words, any awareness of x is determinate because it implies awareness of non-x, and is determined by the awareness of non-x. There would be a return to a subject-object unity without losing awareness, which is impossible, because if we lose it, it would not be human, but would be divine. It would be a different type of intellect. In the end, silence is not focally determinate; and, it cannot perfectly manifest nondeterminate consciousness.

The Ontological Significance of Silence

Dauenhauer probes, in a two-fold way, what the occurrence of silence, in its many ways of appearing, reveals about the structure of being and being itself. He asks what can be said of the human way of being such that it is possible to perform positive acts of silence, and what can be said of the way of being of the world, so that it actually makes sense for the human to perform silence. Silence and discourse, according to him, are two irreducible ways for the human to express life. Human expression is always by way of the world, he says. Dauenhauer‟s ontological claim is that the human and the world “are syntheses of two irreducible, but non-self-standing, components which are not contraries of one another. Rather, these components are simply other than one another. Being is the interplay of the play of these two components” in the human and in the world.”486

485 Ibid.

486 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 142. 179

He understands being as interplay, and as nothing but an enduring of its own. As play, otherness is included in itself, as itself. There are three domains that constitute active intentional performances, according to Dauenhauer, and are “three irreducible ways” in which humans mediate their encounter with a world: They are 1) the fabricational domain, 2) the actional domain, and 3) the signitive domain that includes constitutive silence.487 The fabricational domain has to do with a person exercising effort to produce a product that can endure without having to engage in ongoing effort. The world is changed as a result of the production of these products, but there is no further change involved beyond the establishment of a permanent object. With action, there is no product that is produced, but the person‟s relationship with the world is transformed indirectly as a result of a transforming of the person‟s relationship with other persons or oneself. In both of these domains there is interplay between determinateness and indeterminateness in the phenomenal form of rest and motion, both of which, in turn, involve determinateness and indeterminateness. Pauses in action and deciding in the actional domain can be compared to the relation between silence and discourse in the signitive domain, Dauenhauer says. The signitive domain differs from the other two domains in that only in the signitive domain can performances be mediated by different signitive performances. The signitive domain is constituted by the play between silence and discourse, and silence has primacy. Silence clears a way for the mediation. Furthermore, in the play between the determinate and the nondeterminate, that there is a priority of the nondeterminate means that silence has priority.488 An interesting parallel can be drawn here between Dauenhauer‟s argument for the priority of silence, and the ontological priority that Ricoeur argues for in his theory of discourse.

487 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 146-148.

488 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 151. 180

For Dauenhauer, history is a discursive account of the mediational performances in one of the above three domains whereby persons or groups attempt to bring something new about, or attempt to maintain affairs as they currently are. Tradition, however, refers to a sedimented remainder of the mediational performances that cannot be attributed to a particular person or a group, which supply the departure point for performances that are the topic of history. History and tradition, according to Dauenhauer, recall as well as preserve that which is given. There is a play between stabilization, i.e. determinateness, as well as nonstabilization, i.e. nondeterminateness, in both of them that is a disclosure of the play that occurs between the determinate and the nondeterminate of human mediational performances, and whatever it is that the human has to mediate. That silence has a preeminence in mediational performances is supported by a recognition that engaging in mediational activity is a response inasmuch as one has to listen before one speaks, or acts, or makes anything. When one listens in silence, he says, the way is opened for the occurrence of discursive performances. Listening is required to check answers as well as questions.

This brings us to the conclusion of Dauenhauer‟s discussion. He explains that it is in the form of originating silence and terminal silence that silence discloses the preeminence of the human as nondeterminate. With originating silence, a distancing occurs from what has been “immediately encountered as determinate.”489 There is an opening provided for mediations which bring forth into the world the human‟s determinations. Terminal silence discloses that the human is not preeminently a determiner, but nondeterminate as a being who wonders while performing those determining mediations. Terminal silence, Dauenhauer explains, has need for a sustenance that comes through a subsequent discourse, which suggests that human being is “en route,” which is to say that in “walking a path,” in being the kind of being who is a

489 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 173. 181 path-dweller, this entails both following the path and breaking it.490 As we bring this discussion to a close, we now have in place the third essential element that comprises capable human. Capable human understands the relation between silence and discourse. Let us turn to a discussion of the fourth element that constitutes capable human.

The Hermeneutical Self The hermeneutical self is the fourth key element in the explanation of capable human. The recognition of feeling lost and abandoned points to the nothingness of the human being who in humility stands before the reality of the Word. Prior understandings always yield to new and deeper understandings. This is what it means to be on the way. It appears that human being has a propensity for spiritual and ethical growth through reflexively understanding itself as situated in the world; human being discovers a relation with itself as other. This is the fifth step of the argument. What follows is an exposition of several types of identity that together constitute the hermeneutical self.

Personal Identity

Ricoeur increasingly and constitutively connects personal identity with the idea of the other and relation between self and other. He advances an idea of personal identity that includes a notion of otherness about the self, both in terms of the relationship of self with itself, and the relationship of self with the other in his work, Oneself as Another.

This work can be understood as a reflection that has to do with the self, which is, in hermeneutical terms, different than the I. He explains that “To say self is not to say I. The I is posited—or is deposed. The self is implied reflexively in the operations, the analysis of which precedes the return toward this self.”491 He gives priority, then, to reflective mediation in which mediation occurs with regard to the self or subject rather

490 Dauenhauer, Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance, 161.

491 Ricoeur, OA, 18. 182 than simply positing a subject. The being of the self is relationality. To say “I am this one here” is a relational view. The goal of reflection is to give primacy to the being of the subject who is an “I” engaged in thinking. We can say that “When I think, I am understanding and interpreting.” Selfhood is the topic of his work, insofar as he asks in a variety of ways “Who is a self?”492 That is, he divides the studies into four subsets and poses the question “Who?” to each of them in an attempt to ascertain features of selfhood: Studies 1 and 2 have to do with a philosophy of language, and are correlated with the question “Who is speaking?”

Studies 3 and 4 have to do with a philosophy of action, and are correlated with the question “Who is acting?” Studies 5 and 6 have to do with the question of personal identity in relation to temporality under the term, narrative identity, and are correlated with the question “Who is recounting about himself or herself?” Finally, Studies 7, 8, and 9 have to do with ethical and moral determinations of the action that is taking place, and are correlated with the question “Who is the moral subject of imputation?” A hermeneutics of the self has to take the way of a detour that proceeds by way of an analysis in which we examine the language that is used to discuss the self. With regard to the word “self” in the title of the work, Ricoeur wants to distinguish between two meanings of identity by using the Latin equivalent for “identical,” which can be either ipse or idem. The equivocity associated with “identical” is connected to what is the primary trait about the self—its temporality. “Permanence in time constitutes the highest order, to which will be opposed that which differs, in the sense of changing or variable,” he explains.493 To establish personal identity, Ricoeur sets up two dialectics. First, there is a dialectic between two aspects of selfhood that he refers to as idem-identity and ipse-identity. Idem-identity is sameness. It has to do with

492 See Ricoeur, OA, 16 for the following discussion.

493 Ricoeur, OA, 2. 183 temporality in terms of permanence in that we have physical bodies. Ipse-identity is selfhood or ipseity. It has to do with temporality in terms of a constant, insofar as we possess character. His thesis throughout the study is “that identity in the sense of ipse implies no assertion concerning some unchanging core of the personality.”494 Further, ipse-identity includes a dialectic that is complementary to the one of sameness and selfhood, which is a dialectic between self and other than self. If we remain within the confines of sameness-identity, he says, “the otherness of the other than self offers nothing original.”495 However, in pairing together the terms “otherness and selfhood,” there is a type of otherness not merely a result of a comparison, which is constitutive of this selfhood. For Ricoeur, Oneself as Another involves “a comparison (oneself similar to another)” as well as “an implication (oneself inasmuch as being other).”496 Ricoeur therefore gradually reveals a three-fold hermeneutics of the self that includes, first of all, a roundabout way of approaching reflection by engaging in analysis, or a detour by way of philosophically analyzing the language that we use to talk about the self. This is an indirect and long way of carrying out a hermeneutical discussion. We can say that we are other unto ourselves. For example, I am me, that is, a body, and yet, I refer to or talk about my body. Second, there is dialectical movement between selfhood and sameness. That is, we share our commonality and solidarity as humanity, but we all have different stories in the form of narratives to share. Third, there is dialectical movement between selfhood and otherness. That is, we have the experience of inner truth arising out of our thought. In the end, a hermeneutics of the self involves a description of the self, on the one hand, and the experience of selfhood, on the other hand. Movement occurs between third person, on the one hand, and first or second

494 Ibid.

495 Ricoeur, OA, 3.

496 Ibid. 184 person, on the other hand. What is important to keep in mind here is that there is no attempt to return to immediacy. Before we move on to narrative identity, it is essential to note for the argument of this study, that Ricoeur suggests that there is an ontology of the lived body (which is intermediary between the action and the agent) “that is of a body which is also my body and which, by its double allegiance to the order of physical bodies and to that of persons therefore lies at the point of articulation of the power to act which is ours and of the course of things which belongs to the world order.”497 This is his phenomenology of the

“I can” in relation to an ontology of a lived body, that is, one‟s own. The notion of capability is, for Ricoeur, “the cornerstone of philosophical anthropology.”498 The capacity to act is his central concept, as in the modal verb “I can.” Ricoeur‟s hermeneutics of the self is inclusive of the capacities of the “I can.”499 He says that the benefit of beginning with this verb is that we can connect it to a multitude of verbs that entail a type of “actualization, a variety of potentialities or capabilities.”500 In taking a retrospective view of his masterful book, Oneself as Another, he says that we can read this work as employing the “I can” in four ways: “I can speak, I can do things, I can tell a story, and I can be imputed….”501 These capacities are moral powers than can be exercised.

497 Ricoeur, OA, 111.

498 Ricoeur, “Ethics and Human Capability: A Response,” 280.

499 Paul Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2005), 151 (hereafter cited as CR).

500 Ricoeur, “Ethics and Human Capability: A Response,” 280.

501 Ibid. 185

Narrative Identity Narrative identity emerges out of the problematic of personal identity. Narrative identity introduces change into the notion of character. It prepares the ground for moral identity. Ricoeur asks, “Is there a form of permanence in time that is a reply to the question „Who am I?‟”502 There are two models that Ricoeur offers that are both descriptive as well as symbolic—that of character as well as keeping one‟s promise. Character has to do with sameness and perseverance. Keeping one‟s promise has to do with a constancy about the self who promises. In terms of character, this identity, then, is similar to the identity involved with sameness. He explains what he means: “By „character‟ I understand the set of distinctive marks which permit the reidentification of a human individual as being the same.”503 The descriptive features include “numerical identity and qualitative identity, uninterrupted continuity and permanence in time.”504 He reinterprets character as having to do with dispositions that are acquired, which brings in its temporal dimension. “Character, I would say today, designates the set of lasting dispositions by which a person is recognized.”505 Sameness is essential to selfhood.

Hence in terms of idem-identity and ipse-identity, they both come together in Ricoeur‟s notion of character and overlap. In the case of keeping one‟s promise, the self does not stay the same throughout the course of time; time is challenged, and the change time effects and brings about is resisted. He says “even if my desire were to change, even if I were to change my opinion or my inclination, „I will hold firm.‟”506 To keep a promise serves to safeguard language

502 Ricoeur, OA, 118.

503 Ricoeur, OA, 119.

504 Ibid.

505 Ricoeur, OA, 121. My emphasis.

506 Ricoeur, OA, 124. 186 and entails a certain responsivity to a trust that one has in the faithfulness of the other. There are two poles in the dialectic between selfhood and sameness: “character, where sameness and permanence of dispositions constitute selfhood; and promising, where selfhood is maintained in spite of change, or in the absence of sameness.”507 Narrative identity for Ricoeur is the mediating notion. Narrative identity is disclosed in this dialectic between sameness and selfhood. Character constitutes one pole, which is “a constant set of dispositions which remains the same across time,” while the other pole is constituted by self-constancy represented in the form of a commitment that once having been made is then kept.508 In the ethical rendering of a dialectic in terms of identity, character assumes the pole of sameness insofar as character “is what is identifiable and reidentifiable in me, through time and across all of my experiences and actions,” whereas responsibility assumes the pole of selfhood (identity despite a diversity), “or acting in such a manner that others can count on me and thus make me accountable for my actions.”509 Narrative identity lies between these two poles.

Emplotment allows the character to preserve its identity throughout the course of the story, and is correlative to the story as well. Diversity and discontinuity, for example, are integrated into permanence through time. Plot is a unifying feature of elements that are disparate. It is the plot as a dynamic identity that constructs character identity. Also, emplotment passes from action, now, to characters in the narrative as distinguished from the character that comprises the individual. Finally, Ricoeur says that we have a

507 Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work, 84.

508 Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work, 85.

509 Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work, 85-86. 187 preunderstanding that narratives concern agents as well as sufferers.510 “For my part, I never forget to speak of humans as acting and suffering,” he says.511

Moral Identity Narrative identity is expressed in the question, “Who am I?” while moral identity is expressed in the statement, “Here I am,” in the recognition of the self as a subject of responsibility and imputation. Ricoeur places these two identities in an opposition that is transformed into one of fruitful tension. The gap between the question of narrative identity and the answer of a subject, who through the other‟s expectation, has become responsible, i.e., in the moral identity through the “Here is where I stand!” is a secret break that cuts to the heart of commitment, he says.512 An ambiguity arises in ethical terms when selfhood is characterized as a “relation of ownership” between a person, on the one hand, and that person‟s thoughts, actions, and feelings, on the other hand.513 Ricoeur says that what is suggested by a narrative imagination is a dialectic between ownership and dispossession, between care and carefreeness, between self-affirmation and self-effacement. But this “imagined nothingness of the self” turns into an “existential „crisis‟ of the self,” he asserts.514 What emerges is an ethical primacy accorded to the other than self over and above the self. However, with self-effacement by which the self becomes available to the other, it is important that self-hatred not replace self-esteem. Ricoeur distinguishes between what is “ethical” and what is “moral,” and of the two terms, gives primacy to ethics, insofar as an “ethical intention” is “aiming at the

510 See Ricoeur, OA, 144n8. Ricoeur follows Claude Bremond here.

511 Ricouer, OA, 144-145.

512 Ricoeur, OA, 168.

513 Ibid.

514 Ibid. 188

„good life‟ with and for others, in just institutions.”515 Ethics has to do with the aim of the accomplished life, while morality is an articulation of the aim in norms that claim universality. Morality is a limited, although perhaps indispensable actualization of an ethical goal, so that ethics encompasses morality. When ethics and morality are considered in relation to selfhood, he says that “to the ethical aim will correspond what we shall henceforth call self-esteem, and to the deontological moment, self-respect.”516 The narrative unity of a life brings together judgment of particular actions with an evaluation of the persons who carry out those actions. Ricoeur says that in terms of hermeneutics, “For the agent, interpreting the text of an action is interpreting himself or herself.”517 Further, the concept of self is enriched by a relation between interpreting the text of action and the self-interpreting process that occurs along with it. He explains that “On the ethical plane, self-interpretation becomes self-esteem. In return, self-esteem follows the fate of interpretation.”518 Insofar as one lives the good life, an ethical life, one exercises concern for an other; feelings are evoked in a self by an other‟s suffering and the moral injunction emanating from that other—feelings that are spontaneously directed at the other—which he refers to as “solicitude.” And, language has been powerful in shaping not only thoughts but feelings, as well, Ricoeur explains. His thesis “is that solicitude is not something that is added on to self-esteem from outside but that it unfolds the dialogic dimension of self-esteem, which up to now has been passed over in silence.”519 The unfolding that he refers to has to do with a break or cut in life as well as discourse

515 Ricoeur, OA, 172.

516 Ricoeur, OA, 171.

517 Ricoeur, OA, 179.

518 Ibid.

519 Ricoeur, OA, 180. 189 whereby the conditions are created in terms of “a second-order continuity” so that both solicitude and self-esteem must be reflected upon and experienced together—one cannot exist without the other.520 Self-esteem has to do not with accomplishments but with capacities. There is a correspondence between the “I can” and the “being-able-to-do” and, on an ethical plane, the “being-able-to-judge.” Ricoeur says, “The question is then whether the mediation of the other is not required along the route from capacity to realization.”521 The goal of the good life is self-esteem as the primordial and reflexive moment. In terms of the relation between self and other that is distinguished in terms of solicitude, it has its basis in the exchange of giving as well as receiving. Suffering is the inverse of the moral command. While suffering can be thought of as physical or mental pain or anguish to be sure, for Ricoeur, it is defined in terms of a reduction and a destruction that occurs in our capacity to act, the experience of which is a violation of our self-integrity. Agents and patients of action get taken up into “relationships of exchange,” and what comes together just like language is a reversibility in regard to roles, and nonsubstitutability in terms of persons who have roles to play.522

“Solicitude adds the dimension of value, whereby each person is irreplaceable in our affection and our esteem.”523 The notion of similitude emerges from the notions of irreplaceability and nonsubstitutability. Similitude is a fruit of an exchange occurring between self-esteem and the solicitude we hold for an other. There are ethical feelings that have to do with a phenomenology of “you too” and “like myself.” There is a paradox of an exchange at the locus of what is irreplaceable. Hence Ricoeur says that “Becoming in this way fundamentally equivalent are the esteem of the other as a oneself

520 Ibid.

521 Ricoeur, OA, 181.

522 Ricoeur, OA, 193.

523 Ibid. 190 and the esteem of oneself as an other.”524 One final point should be made by way of concluding this section: Ricoeur makes a distinction between the “power to act” insofar as an agent has a capacity to be an author of her actions, and the “power-in-common” that is a capacity that persons of a community have in the “will to live together.”525 This second capacity is opposed to relations characterized by domination that result in political violence such as torture, for example.526

Aesthetic Identity

In this section, I want to extend Ricoeur‟s discussion to include the notion that in addition to personal identity, narrative identity, and moral identity, the hermeneutical self has an aesthetic identity as well. The hermeneutical self, who understands the relation between discourse and silence, has an aesthetic identity in the depth of receptivity through which the felt sense perception of admiration arises, along with awe and wonder, in the face of existence. This felt sense perception involves both a sense of moral worth and the continual transformation of mood by the self who is situated in the world; it is an ongoing fluctuating component of the existential structure, inasmuch as there is consciousness of existence. While it is personally felt in the movement characteristic of its structure, beatitude is directing the striving for the beautiful in the movement from self-consciousness to the free part of the “we,” through to the shared experience of personally embodied universal reason, or logos, as previously discussed in Chapter

Three. In the fragile synthesis that characterizes respect, whereby a person‟s form is constituted, there is a mediating activity that goes on in understanding the relation of

524 Ricoeur, OA, 194-195.

525 Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work, 90.

526 See Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work, 90. See also Ricoeur, OA, 225. 191 silence to discourse. Our aesthetic identity, I contend, is formed in direct proportion to the degree that we remain receptive in embracing what is other in our lives, in the two- fold sense of the self as other, and in terms of the self in its relation to the other person. It is in this sense that we transcend, in a finite sense, our form by continually being receptive to what is other, which is synonymous with the ongoing transformation of self. Receptivity involves intentionally letting ourselves be and letting others be. It is an action insofar as there is intentionality involved. The letting something be can be seen to be a striving for the beautiful inasmuch as one beholds the other in the manner of a gaze, which is to say, one lovingly participates in (the structure of) existence; there is a seeing and a being seen at work here. To lovingly participate in existence is to lovingly participate in language and silence that goes beyond our individual existence, as such, and points to ultimate meaning. We are intermedial, on the way, not only between finitude and infinitude, but between language and silence as well. Awareness of the mediating activity between silence and discourse is grounded in the practice of contemplative silence. We have now covered four essential elements that constitute capable human. The final task in this chapter is to explain the concept of recognition, which is integral to the process of transformation associated with reflexive consciousness.

Recognition The capacity to undergo a transformation of reflexive consciousness, and the concomitant transformation of one‟s being, has to do with the moment of self- recognition. I established the groundwork for recognition in Chapter Two, by explaining three steps in the form of a mini-phenomenology that is derived from Hegel, which Ricoeur presupposes in his work on recognition. Here, I briefly adumbrate Ricoeur‟s structure of recognition—identification, self-recognition, and mutual recognition. This structure provides us with a basic order for thinking about recognition, before moving to the next part of the study where the focus is on the practice of contemplative silence. The 192 practice of contemplative silence may choose to focus on moments of recognition. Second, I will explain the conceptual work of the moment of recognition, and how self- recognition works. Ricoeur pursues a threefold inquiry in his work on recognition. Identity, otherness, and a dialectic between that of recognition and misrecognition constitute what he refers to as The Course of Recognition, hence the title of his work. I also want to note that Ricoeur calls attention to an active and a passive voice with regard to the verb, to recognize.527 That is, in the active voice we can recognize something, whether it be a person, an object, oneself, another, or one another. The passive voice has to do with what it is to be recognized; we seek to be recognized. I discuss, in turn, the three kinds of recognition that constitute his structure, beginning with recognition as identification. Within this structure, I further address six forms of recognition, in order to illustrate the concept of recognition.

Recognition as Identification

To identify is to establish a relationship involving the identity of one thing with another. When we identify something we distinguish it from some other thing. In order to identify we have to distinguish, and by distinguishing we are identifying.528 The first three forms of recognition below can be subsumed under the first kind of recognition in Ricoeur‟s structure—that of recognition as identification.

The first form of recognition is the apprehension of sense manifold in intuition. Sensation is the domain of immediacy, which is not yet mediated by thought. We are given modifications of our own state through a series of sensations. Here we are mediating a manifold of sense impressions into a singular intuition or perception of an

527 Ricoeur, CR, 19.

528 Ricoeur, CR, 25. 193 object.529 A perceptual object has to include a series of sensations, and with each of these sensations are properties. The second form of recognition is the recognition of a concept in intuition, or the concept in perception.530 Kant claims that knowing is a synthesis of two elements: On the one hand, there is intuition, a synthesized perception. On the other hand, we have concepts or notions of things. Knowledge is a justified synthesis between a concept and an intuition. Consider this example: I see something growing in my garden, and I say, “This is a flower.” “This” denotes the sense perception, the intuition, and “a flower” is a concept. “Is” marks the synthesis that produces objectivity. The synthesis is performed by the transcendental imagination. With it, I recognize what I see in my garden as a flower. When I think “this is a flower,” I subsume the sense perception under the concept. I want to note here that Ricoeur explains “that the unity of consciousness produces itself in the concept in order to recognize itself in it.”531 I unite the percept and concept in thought. The thought, as expressed in language, is either true or false. The truth or falsehood of the sentence must be determined by an independent act of verification. Ricoeur says that change as well as temporalization constitute the circumstances for the events of identification and recognition. As a result of change and temporality, recognition can turn to misrecognition, and beyond, to nonrecognition. Change and temporality can accompany situations having to do with perception and recognition such that someone is unrecognizable. Or, it may be that someone, despite the lapse of years and much change in physical appearance, for example, is still recognizable. Ricoeur says

529 See Ricoeur, CR, 44. See also Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. See the part entitled the “Transcendental Aesthetic.”

530 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. See the section entitled “On the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding,” in the division entitled the “Transcendental Analytic.”

531 Ricoeur, CR, 46. 194 that “The temporal distance that disappearance stretches and distends is integrated into such identity through the very grace of otherness. Something escaping the continuity of our gaze for a time makes the reappearance of the same a small miracle.”532 Further, lived experience provides an illustration of the threatening aspect about both change and time, which gives to the concept of recognition the emotional dimension. This idea is explored below in the third form of recognition. Recognition of the other person over time is the third form of recognition.533 Let‟s consider this example: We go to meet a friend at the airport whom we have not seen in a few years. As he steps off the airplane, we can say “There he is! I recognize him!” We may remark to our friend, “You look the same! You haven‟t changed!” Ricoeur develops this understanding of recognition in the notions of idem-identity and ipse- identity, as previously mentioned. He writes of our idem-identity or sameness, which has to do with our temporality in terms of permanence over time in that we have physical bodies.534 We also have an ipse-identity, which has to do with temporality in terms of a constant, in that we possess character. Ipse has to do with a changing identity as the self is situated “with its historical condition.”535 Change happens, Ricoeur explains, although in a certain regard we have not changed.536 Let‟s consider once more the example of meeting our friend at the airport. This time, however, it has been twenty-five years since we last met. Our friend has undergone much life experience, and his appearance has changed, to be sure, with the graying of hair and the deep lines in the face; however, there are the familiar gestures and expressions, the facial features and

532 Ricoeur, CR, 65. 533 Ricoeur, CR, 67.

534 Ricoeur, CR, 101.

535 Ibid.

536 Ricoeur, OA, 117. 195 definite personality traits that enable us to recognize this person once more as our dear friend. Finally, in drawing from the work of Proust, Ricoeur discusses the kind of recognition in which the reader is summoned in the reading to become a reader of herself.537 This occasion provides the opportunity for the reader to discern something in herself that perhaps never would have been able to be discerned were it not for the text. The veracity lies in the very recognition on the part of the reader in herself about what it is that the text says.

Self-Recognition Ricoeur says that identity is still an issue when it comes to self-recognition.538 Self-recognition has to do with the recognition that he or she is “capable” of many different accomplishments. Moreover, self-recognition requires the assistance of others. Ricoeur explains that “Self-recognition…[is] found in the unfolding of the figures of the „I can,‟ which together make up the portrait of the capable human being, its own space of meaning.”539 The self as a capable human can recognize herself in her capabilities. To the “I can‟s” he adds the unfolding of the temporality of the self with regard to the past— memory, and the future—promises, as what is a lived present discloses a double valence that includes presence as well as initiative. Memory and promises have to be considered together in the moment of self-recognition, which is the living present. Both memory and promises carry negative opposites that threaten them in their capacities as such, and constitute part of their meaning—forgetting accompanies memory, and betrayal accompanies promises. Further, these opposites help form their meaning insofar as when

537 See Ricoeur, CR, 68.

538 Ricoeur, CR, 21.

539 Ricoeur, CR, 151. 196 we remember we do not forget, and when we keep our promise to someone we do not break it. Finally, there is a connection between attestation and recognition, Ricoeur explains, in that when a person says, “I am confident that „I can,‟ I attest to it, I recognize it.”540

Mutual Recognition Once again, with mutual recognition there is, too, a question of identification. As Ricoeur explains, “Being-recognized, should it occur, would for everyone be to receive the full assurance of his or her identity, thanks to the recognition by others of each person‟s range of capacities.”541 With mutual recognition, there is both a struggle waged against being misrecognized by others, as well as a struggle to be recognized by others. In the case of misrecognition, there is an original asymmetry between self and other, which the mutual reciprocity of the giving and receiving associated with the exchange of gifts, for example, cannot eliminate; Ricoeur calls this “a more subtle form of misrecognition that misrecognizes itself.”542 This asymmetry would like to be forgotten in the sheer happiness “of „each other.‟”543 As he explains, even in the celebratory exchange of gifts, the other is always inaccessible in terms of her alterity such that she, as other, remains unknown with regard to the “originary apprehension of the mineness of selfhood.”544 Here the recognition has to do not with misrecognizing someone, but with misrecognizing that asymmetry in the relation between the two persons. This point is important to remember, as the dissymmetry serves as a reminder of

540 Ricoeur, CR, 250.

541 Ibid.

542 Ricoeur, CR, 259-260.

543 Ricoeur, CR, 260.

544 Ibid. 197 the intrinsic value of each and every person who is utterly irreplaceable. Ricoeur says that while we can exchange gifts we cannot change places. The concept of mutuality is also protected from our conceiving of it in terms of something like a fusional union, as well. To keep a just distance in a relationship serves to integrate respect into the intimacy that is characteristic of the relationship. Recognition of the self in the other is the fourth form of recognition.545 This kind of recognition has to do with mutual dependence. It is recognizing the sameness and difference in the relationship between the self and other. A good example of this form of recognition is the master-slave relationship in Hegel‟s The Phenomenology of Spirit, whereby in dualistic thinking the master and slave are utterly different and can demonize one or the other.546 They both are, however, dependent on each other: Without the slave, the master cannot be the master, and without the master, the slave cannot be a slave. I would like to alter the terms used to characterize this relationship slightly, however, and consider it to be a relationship of friendship rather than a master and slave relationship. While it is true that one of these two selves appears to be domineering with regard to the extent to which the one asserts and maintains itself, this distinction depends ultimately on their essential identity. The truth is that the two selves are identical; this identity is the more comprehensive and perfect realization of each self in the other. The accord is superior and more significant than any difference that exists. Even so, the contention and clash has to be experienced so that this effect is brought to the fore. Consciousness discovers its own self-existence in the other‟s self-existence. Hegel explains that both of them discover that they serve a mediating role for each other,

“through which each mediates and unites itself with itself; and each is to itself and to the

545 See Ricoeur, CR, 171-186. Ricoeur engages in an extensive discussion of Hegel and his interpreters here. My aim is to acknowledge one of the most significant notions of recognition— that of the master-slave relationship. 546 See Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (The Phenomenology of Mind), 86-92. 198 other an immediate self existing reality, which, at the same time, exists thus for itself only through this mediation.”547 And, he says, “They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another.”548 The fifth form of recognition is the recognition of the otherness of the other.549 This recognition is different from that of seeing the self in the other, because it involves recognition of the transcendence of the other. Levinas privileges a more radical alterity in the other. The “face of the other” summons us, elicits our response, and places a demand on us to extend hospitality in welcoming the other; the self as other is infinitely transcendent.550 His claim is not that the other is a formal inbreaking, but rather that the actual, witnessed, sensible, perceptive other has something specific to say.551 Specifically, the face of the other says “Thou shall not kill.” We are absolutely convicted by the face of the other.552 The face is directly apprehended such that the other demands recognition in its otherness.553 It enjoins, arouses, and provokes responsibility for evil deeds. In recognition, there is the abjectness of the seeing of ourselves, and our own miserable deeds and fault in the light of the other. We affirm the freedom of the other in letting the other be. We maintain self and freedom through encounter of the face of the other.554

547 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (The Phenomenology of Mind), 87-88.

548 Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (The Phenomenology of Mind), 88.

549 See Ricoeur, CR, 259-260. This form of recognition has to do with what Ricoeur refers to as the alterity of the original asymmetry existing between persons that is characteristic of mutual relations involving mutual recognition and misrecognition. 550 See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 75; 77; 194 (hereafter cited as TI).

551 Levinas, TI, 66; 297.

552 Levinas, TI, 75.

553 Ibid.

554 Levinas, TI; 73-74. 199

I want to note here that Ricoeur brings to the surface a difficult enigma in relation to the work of Levinas.555 The writer-philosopher who is the third party to his work has to engage in a comparison between what are incomparables—the pole of the other and the pole of the “I.” There has to be justice among the incomparable ones, and justice is a comparison between these incomparable ones. In considering the original asymmetry between the other and the “I,” whichever pole it is that one starts from, the question is one of comparing incomparables, and therefore “of equalizing them,” he notes.556 The point is that Levinas cannot coherently elevate otherness over sameness.

The sixth and final form of recognition is theological recognition, or recognition of the divine in the non-divine. Theological recognition can be recognition of the divine in the human, or of the human in the divine. In the final chapter of Memory, History, Forgetting, Ricoeur discusses forgiveness. He says that forgiveness happens, and is the ground from on high of the way in which the admittance of wrong-doing emerges from the impenetrable profundity of the self.557 Forgiveness can signify seeing the divine in the non-divine, or as Scharlemann says “the being of God when God is not being

God.”558 Forgiveness can signify that there is an infinite, mysterious depth to our humanity, and that we cannot definitively understand ourselves or others. Forgiveness can signify a rich and vast reality and points the way to that reality by teaching us to be open to its possibility. We can rethink this mystery in our felt knowledge of the experience of forgiveness, and assign theological meaning to it. In the moment of self-recognition, the two movements, recognition of the self and other, and recognition of the other as other (the fourth and fifth forms of recognition), are

555 Ricoeur, CR, 161.

556 Ibid. 557 Ricoeur, MHF, 467.

558 Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections, 53. 200 important. To illustrate this point, I want to deviate slightly from Ricoeur‟s structure; these forms, as we have seen, belong under mutual recognition. In considering just one side of the relationship in the discussion that follows, these forms will be considered as part of the moment of self-recognition. Imagine that while practicing contemplative silence we remember a recent altercation we had with a friend that continues to weigh heavily on our minds. In a moment of frustration and impatience, our friend made a rash comment and said something hurtful. We experience a moment of illumination. In remembering and rethinking the lived experience, we recognize that immediately prior to that rash comment, we made a statement that could have been taken the wrong way. In truth, if it was interpreted in the way that has occurred to us just now, it is a wonder that our friend remains our friend. In this moment, we recognize the vulnerability of our friend, but in acknowledging the vulnerability of the other, we also experience a moment of self-recognition in experiencing our own vulnerability in relationship as well. We understand at a new level how dependent we are on each other. We have made a connection between our insensitivity and the other by thinking the concept of fault: “We were insensitive, and we are to blame.” Our friendship is strained—there is an awkwardness in our relationship now. We may feel unworthy. In the practice of contemplative silence, we can practice what Ricoeur refers to as “an idle forgetting” that is analogous to memory, insofar as it is “a concerned disposition established in duration.”559 While keeping in mind Ricoeur‟s notion of “memory as care” in which we openly continue to be concerned about the past, we can consider Ricoeur‟s question, “Would there not then be a supreme form of forgetting, as a disposition and a way of being in the world, which would be insouciance, carefreeness?”560 This form of forgetting does not comprise a separate order from

559 Ricoeur, MHF, 504-505.

560 Ricoeur, MHF, 505. 201 memory, and continues to be related to memory. It is classified under happy memory, and contributes graciousness to our memory. In the practice of contemplative silence, we can carry a kind of intentional forgetfulness of this past action within the context of memory. Thus, in the case of our friendship, we become aware that we can graciously extend the benefit of the doubt to the other, and speak words of forgiveness to clear the space between us. We also can recall all of the wonderful times we have spent together, and the possibilities we have in the future, which can serve as an impetus to speak words of forgiveness. There is a transformational quality of appropriating this moment of recognition in which we go beyond self-recognition and recognition of the other by opening up the space of hermeneutical activity for transformation. This space is the dimension of a new relationship that we have with ourselves and the other. In the example of friendship above, recognition of the self and other occurred in the moment in which we recognized our own vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of our friend. Recognition of the other as other occurred when we did not expect words from the other. The other was remembered in freedom. The transformational quality of the moment of recognition occurred in extending the benefit of the doubt, and for the sake of the sheer joy of friendship, we spoke words of forgiveness. Integral thinking is the hermeneutical expression of contemplative silence as we rethink our relational realities in the light of our experience. In our consciousness of time, we can bring selected moments of interpretation to bear in this hermeneutical activity. This space can become the origin of the new relationship that both we and other are brought into. A new relationship (relational reality) commences in self-recognition so that there is a transcendent possibility embedded in recognition. At the very least, the hope of community and being together is possible, or awareness of our being in being-with others. Minimally, there is the transformation towards we, as we consider new motivations and intentions for acting, in relationship with others, and maximally towards the awareness of the wholeness of being and possibility of new being. There is a 202 disclosure of a new possibility for the lighting process, i.e. the illuminating process. This process is not only the opening of intelligibility, but also is the appearance of something brought about in the world, and that appearance can be a symbol of God. This is theological recognition. Moments of self-recognition open us to the possibility of transcendence in our relational realities and open up new and fresh ways of dwelling in the world. As Ricoeur explains, “An acceptance of a kind of companionship with misunderstanding, which goes with the ambiguities of an incomplete, open-ended life world, has to replace the fear of error.”561 Such a fresh way of dwelling in the world is a possibility as we see in the next part of the study.

561 See Ricoeur, CR, 255-257. 203

PART III:

AN EXPLANATION, CONTINUED 204

INTRODUCTION TO PART III

Let us review the itinerary that we followed in Part II. I formulated a response to the question, How is the practice of contemplative silence possible? by fashioning a philosophically determined explanation of a structure of human being that derives from the philosophical anthropology of Ricoeur. I further expanded upon this initial structure by explaining an existential structure of being-in-the-world that has its origin in the philosophical thought of Heidegger. I then explained Ricoeur‟s significant move from reflective philosophy to hermeneutical philosophy and hermeneutics, including a discussion of his hermeneutics of symbol. Upon this foundation, I explained Ricoeur‟s notions of expression and discourse, and expanded the discussion to include an explanation of the relation of silence to discourse, in appropriating the work of Dauenhauer. Next, I grafted the practice of contemplative silence onto the structure, and by so doing, situated the practice of contemplative silence. From a theoretical perspective, I explored the notions of fallibility, fallenness, and capability within the capacity of finite existence. Hence I presented the ontological structure that provides the condition of the possibility for the practice of contemplative silence. That is, I determined the philosophical and theoretical context for the practice. In Part III, the task is to determine the religious and theological structure so that what it is that makes the practice of contemplative silence possible is, in the end, sufficiently explained. Our goal is to reach the point in our study where we can discuss what ought to be—that is, that the actualizable possibility for the transformation of reflexive consciousness is, in fact, a part of human reality; and, it is an ethical and spiritual task that warrants explanation and interpretation. The religious determination of context in this section is historical in nature. It traces the three ways to the divine, a spiritual itinerary, to follow the lead of one of the most significant renditions of the experience in the tradition, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, The Mind‟s Journey into God, or 205

The Mind‟s Road to God, by Bonaventure.562 The historical discussion of three moments in the tradition is highly selective in approach, with an explanation of the principles of the practice of the threefold progression to the divine intertwined in the presentation. After determining the religious context, we proceed to Chapter Five of the study. In this chapter, in which the sixth step of the argument is made, the practice of contemplative silence is explained as both the means and end of spiritual transformation. An analysis of the meaning of the practice of contemplative silence is undertaken that includes a discussion of a dialectic of silence and language within the Word, or Logos. Two ontic examples of the practice of contemplative silence are also presented to further illustrate its transformative dimension. Next, evil is mediated in Ricoeur‟s thought as a way of illustrating the importance that Ricoeur attaches to the continuation of action. In the exercise of rethinking a wrong, the practice of contemplative silence is applied to hermeneutical activity. Here hermeneutical activity takes on the character of an ethical action, appearing as it does beyond the bounds of formal thinking.

To complete an understanding of the transformation that is entailed, five levels of awareness ingredient in the phenomenon as potentialities—immediate, objective, reflective, reflexive, and contemplative awareness are presented. With the explanation of the practice of contemplative silence and the five levels of awareness in place, these aspects round out discussion of the capable human. That is, all of the elements are present for us to understand the meaning of capable human, which takes us to Part IV, the final part of the study.

562 See Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God; The Tree of Life; The Life of St. Francis, trans. and intro. Ewert Cousins, preface Ignatius Brady (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1978), 21. “Mentis” is often translated as “Soul‟s.” In this study, I prefer to use the translation “Mind‟s” in order to articulate a philosophical anthropological approach to human being, self, and consciousness that strikes a clearly nondualistic tone. To be sure, Bonaventure is considered to be a Platonist; however, he also adopts a balanced approach to the contemplative journey by displaying in his spiritual writings an integration of the intellectual and the affective. 206

An Explanation of Contemplative Reality: An Intermedial Way We have seen how human being as intermedial being is intermediate between the finite and the infinite, and between discourse and silence. Spiritual joy or beatitude is the hoped for ecstatic, crowning gift of a life humbly dedicated to living in the truth. To live in the truth entails both expressing what is the truth with love, as well as loving in a truthful way. There is a conceptual framework that spans the history of the tradition of Christianity, which provides a way to think about the progression of growth that occurs in the spiritual life—three stages inasmuch as there is a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is a spiritual itinerary commonly known as the purgative, illuminative, and unitive ways. The stages begin and end with the Word. Through conforming one‟s life to this threefold way there is a sought after congruence so that the content of one‟s life (as the means of spiritual transformation), and the form of one‟s life (as the end of spiritual transformation), may assume a growing dynamism. It is in this way that they come to more closely coincide and mirror each other such that the image of God (imago Dei), which is the depth of being, is disclosed. To be sure, this is a way of living, a contemplative reality in which the Word is liberating one through the experience of prayer for encounter with the divine. While many writers in the tradition depict the threefold way in terms of a linear progression, it is also characterized in terms of a spiraling dynamic. This pattern, the three stages, can be traced back to Origen and courses through the entire tradition as a way of contemplating human reality. Figures such as Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius Ponticus, Bernard of Clairvaux, John of the Cross, and Thomas Merton all embraced and used this structure, a journey of ascent, to articulate the idea of growth in the spiritual life. Here we consider the work of three exemplary figures—Origen, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Bonaventure. 207

We begin with Origen, who lays the foundation in the tradition, for the threefold way.563 He considers the process to be a return to God. The three biblical books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs instruct one in how to live out the three respective stages of what was the tripartite philosophical education of the Greeks—moral, natural, and contemplative science.564 A beginner is one who is willing to engage the process and embark upon the journey to spiritual maturity. The first stage is the purgative way, and involves moral clarity, whereby one has to exert moral effort to rid oneself of any attachments that may impede one from exercising a deeper commitment and involvement in the process. Reform has to occur in relation to intentions, attitudes, behavior, in short, all aspects of thought, action, and feeling with reference to one‟s own existence, which is inclusive of the world. One attempts to reorder values and priorities, while abandoning those that are deemed to be of a superficial quality, or that are sinful in nature. A conversion occurs insofar as one practices the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love through choosing to do good and avoiding whatever hinders one from making progress on the path. Human weakness and a sense of helplessness constitute the grim reality for the individual who has begun this journey. In the increasing detachment from all that distracts one from the goal, the self becomes aware of the purifying work that the divine is carrying out in his or her life. Attentiveness in the exercise of the theological virtues occurs as one responds to the Word. There is a surrender to the divine will. Apparent obstacles come to be seen as the unique way in which one is being purified and cleansed of impediments, as divine love gradually liberates the individual from whatever it is that blocks the way to full union with the divine.

The second stage is the illuminative way in which through a kind of natural contemplation, according to Origen, the individual reaches an understanding of how

563 See Origen, Homily XXVII on Numbers.

564 See Origen, Commentary on the Song of Songs, 231. 208 everything that is created in the world is of the divine. This stage denotes proficients on the journey who proceed from a prayer of simplicity, which “is a contemplative experience acquired by cooperation with God‟s ordinary grace,” and that reaches a climax in both an active and a passive purification, to the prayer of infused recollection, which “is a contemplative experience resulting from the infusion of a special grace.”565 There is disclosure of the divine presence in ordinary, day-to-day life. The prayer of infused recollection together with the prayer of quiet are the means for the faculties of the intellect and the will to be conformed to the incarnate Word.566 In the prayer of union, the dynamic at work—conforming love—extends out to embrace the entire person so that that person is brought into a relation of greater depth with the divine.567 Here one understands and has knowledge of the divine presence in all that one endeavors to undertake. The experience of the prayer of quiet, in particular, is a peace- filled experience that refreshes one and renews one such that ordinary, everyday responsibilities are performed with renewed passion and interest. The imagination, as well as the memory, undergo the integrative process that the intellect and the will previously did. Hence with the illuminative way, there is a passing from work on the exterior, in terms of personality, to the interior in terms of intellect, will, memory, and imagination.568 Woundedness as a result of sin or human weakness, frailty, and brokenness, which reach to the heart of the self, are healed. This work, which is the result of the light connected with infused contemplation and darkness in connection with the dark night of the soul, leads, in turn, to greater depth of relation with the divine.

565 The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.v.v. “Illumination, Illuminative Way” (by Thomas D. McGonigle).

566 Ibid.

567 Ibid.

568 Ibid. 209

Particular features of the personality that are broken encounter divine love; divine love is characterized as a fire that purifies one. The person, in and through all of this activity, is being prepared so as to be able to respond to the divine summons. The third stage, according to Origen, is contemplation—the unitive way—in which there is contemplation of the divine, and a transformation of the individual into the divine who is the Beloved. This transformation is the result of a purification that occurs at the heart of one‟s personality. Origen has an understanding of the repair to be in the image of God. A person is hereupon open to the initiative of the divine. Divine love is characterized as an ecstatic love such that the self, in being drawn outside of itself, is delivered into a divine embrace.569 There is an awareness of the divine as being the depth of reality at the heart of one‟s being and existence. Divine absence and presence mirror the purgative and illuminative work, and together constitute a life in conformity to the divine life that is at the heart of reality. Through this activity, the capacity of the self to share in the divine life grows. Infused contemplation and an intellectual vision of divine relational life are characteristic of the third stage. Wisdom is imparted such that a person is in total and dedicated humble service to others in daily life. Through the entire process that is occurring, the person is increasingly being freed to be present to others in a sacramental way, that is, as a sign of merciful love and forgiveness that is of the divine. Sorrow and suffering are experienced as part of what it is to live in the truth that one‟s being is united with the divine, the fullness of which is the eternal dimension of life wherein the divine is all in all.570 In the end, for Origen, to proceed from praxis, or the conversion process in which virtues are cultivated, to theōria, in which the world is seen in a fresh, new way, to theologia, in which the world echoes the divine, insofar as the

569 The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.v.v. “Union, Unitive Way” (by Thomas D. McGonigle).

570 Ibid. 210 healing is understood to be in the image of God, means to have a greater capacity to experience the divine within oneself; indeed it is understood as a kind of return to the divine.571 In addition to the foundational work of Origen, the work of two other figures— Pseudo-Dionysius, whose work is considered to be a classic formulation, and Bonaventure, whose work is perhaps the most widely known—will assist us to round out an explanation of this spiritual itinerary. First, Pseudo-Dionysius regards the divine as ordering human activities as well as that of the cosmos. Life flows out from and returns to the divine. Everything that exists in the cosmos is based on a hierarchy. The goodness of creation is the foundation for a creation theology. In his works entitled The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and The Celestial Hierarchy, there is an earthly hierarchy and a celestial hierarchy, both of which are structured into detailed, tripartite systems. Each hierarchy contains three levels, as well as anagogic activity in three modes, which include a purifying mode, an illuminating mode, and a perfecting mode.572 Hence we see the pattern emerge of purgation, illumination, and union. The earthly, ecclesiastical hierarchy constitutes the church in a liturgical sense. Within it, he has a highly developed structure of interrelationships ranging from those who are to be purified to communicants, monks, deacons, priests, and the hierarch, and which incorporates sacramental life. There are three tasks or functions of people who comprise the church on earth. They are to listen to the sacred oracles or scriptures, participate in liturgical action and worship, and perform duties depending on one‟s place in the hierarchy, which accords with the principle of subsidiarity.

571 The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.v.v. “Contemplation, Contemplative Prayer” (by William H. Shannon).

572 See McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 151. 211

In terms of the celestial or heavenly hierarchy, which counterbalances the earthly dimension, Pseudo-Dionysius defines a hierarchy as “a sacred order, a state of understanding and an activity approximating as closely as possible to the divine.”573 The meaning of hierarchy is that of a perfect arrangement; it is also “an image of the beauty of God….”574 It is a dynamic energy, and not something static. Perfection on the path consists of being lifted up so as to reflect the divine workings. Within the hierarchic order, some members are purified, while other members engage the purifying activity. Some members receive illumination, while other members cause illumination.

Finally, some members are perfected, that is, in full union with the divine, while other members bring perfection about in yet other members. The members therefore imitate the divine in a way that corresponds to their separate roles, which they have been assigned. While this order belongs to the heavenly realm, it serves as a good example of the ordering process that occurs, as well as the differentiation, in terms of understanding and activity of the person, on the threefold path to the divine. According to Pseudo-Dionysius, the beauty of the divine in its simplicity and goodness remains untainted by dissimilarity, and reaches out to grant beings a share in light, harmony, and peace. It also bestows form on those who set out on the path. He says that what humans refer to and know as “the beatitude of God” would be something that is untainted by dissimilarity insofar as it is filled with “a continuous light.”575 The beatitude of the divine is not only “purifying, illuminating, and perfecting,” but “is itself purification, illumination, and perfection.”576

573 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy, The Complete Works, 3.1.

574 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy, 3.2.

575 Ibid.

576 Ibid. 212

Bonaventure is the third and final figure to be discussed. His work, as previously referred to, Itinerarium mentis in Deum, is considered to be a masterpiece of the union of spirituality and theology. It is a tour de force because of its brilliant combination of the intellectualism that is characteristic of philosophical speculation, and of mystical affection. His synthetic vision (synthetic in that he brings together different strands from the spiritual tradition), is one of creaturely movement out from the divine, followed by a return or contemplative ascent into the divine.577 He tells the story of how while meditating, the symbolic meaning came to him of the vision that Francis of Assisi had of the six-winged Seraph. It is this symbolic interpretation of the vision that Francis experienced that forms the structure of Bonaventure‟s treatise. He explains that “While reflecting on this, I saw at once that this vision represented our father‟s rapture in contemplation and the road by which this rapture is reached.”578 He adheres to a theory of exemplarism in that when a person comes to know the divine, it is discovered that the divine is all around—in all of created reality; creative energy not only flows but expresses itself from what is a divine fecundity. A contemplative person gazes into God by means of creation. This leads one to go within in order to reach a deeper understanding of the divine. Contemplation is possible because of the theory of exemplarism, as the objects of creation can be traced back to the “archetype in the divine mind,” which are moments of divine dynamism.579 Archetypes or exemplars are first and foremost in the divine mind, and therefore structure God‟s creation in the world. That is, they are principles of being, and by virtue of our human thinking, then for us it is thinking and being. In his own words he explains that “These

577 See McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 162. McGinn points out the sources as being Augustinian, Dionysian, Cistercian, and Victorine.

578 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 19-20.

579 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 26. 213 creatures, I say, are exemplars or rather exemplifications presented to souls still untrained and immersed in sensible things so that through sensible things which they see they will be carried over to intelligible things which they do not see….”580 The divine is present in rational creatures through the powers and capacities of the human mind in memory, understanding, and will. As eternal and present, the divine enters duration—what persists in time—“as if it were at one and the same time its center and circumference,” that is, everywhere and nowhere.581 As a sphere of intelligibility the divine is “within all things, but not enclosed; outside all things, but not excluded; above all things, but not aloof; below all things but not debased.”582 Bonaventure divides the journey into stages, with the seventh and final level culminating in ecstatic rapture as the goal, as he describes the source and summit of contemplation: “it now remains for our mind, by contemplating these things, to transcend and pass over not only this sense world but even itself.”583 What distinguishes this level from the other six levels is that affection has, in its entirety, passed into the divine, which is a “passing over and spiritual ecstasy.”584 At this level, Bonaventure explains that

“nature can do nothing and effort can do but little,” and he therefore characterizes this ecstasy as a gift of the divine.585 It can be characterized, too, as an overflow of the intellect insofar as there is a shining forth of everything in the darkness. This ecstasy of “pure mind” abandons everything, and is liberated from everything in this ascension into

580 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 2.11.

581 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 5.8.

582 Ibid.

583 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 7.1.

584 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 7.3.

585 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 7.5. 214 the “ray of the divine darkness.”586 It is a divine fire that rages, penetrates, and consumes the mind, which transcends itself in reaching divine union. The first six levels of contemplation are a refinement of the three stages that represent the major kinds of religious consciousness. His treatise outlines three practices—meditation, prayer, and contemplation—that through integration, lead the mind through the three stages into the divine.587 He says that the mind has “three principal perceptual orientations:” 1) through sensuality it is oriented “toward external material objects,” 2) through spirit it is oriented “within itself and into itself,” and finally,

3) because it is oriented “above itself,” it is “designated as mind.”588 At the first and second levels, there is movement of subjectivity beginning with meditation on sensory experience. The first stage is perception, and is characterized by passivity, while the second stage is conception, and is characterized as activity. The contemplative practitioner looks to the divine to ascend; however, this is, in fact, accomplished “below” by means of discovering the divine in creation. At the second stage, there is introspective meditation or prayer whereby the divine is contemplated first “by means of reason through itself as the created image…and then, by the higher power of intellect….” as the spiritual capacities of memory, intellect, and will are exercised in the third and fourth levels.589 At the third stage, the mind is raised to the divine light, which is contemplated both in the fifth and sixth levels. Here, there is a symbolic identification with the Cherubim in the Book of Exodus who in amazement gaze upon the attributes of the

586 Ibid.

587 McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 151.

588 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 1.4.

589 McGinn, The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, 162. 215 divine.590 The third stage is reason—ideas, archetypes of unity in difference of subject and object, percept and concept. At this level, the thinking activity of searching for the concept that illuminates a percept ends in the perfect unity of the two. Activity comes to a rest, a stasis. This is contemplation. Hence the three stages are 1) sensing, 2) thinking, and 3) contemplation—intuition as a union of sensing and thinking. Bonaventure invokes the Song of Songs in his discussion of the importance of affective experience. The mind “is prepared for spiritual ecstasy through devotion, admiration and exultation according to the three exclamations in the Canticle of

Canticles,” he explains.591 Further, when this preparation is realized, one‟s spirit is then hierarchical, which means that it can ascend upward. Bonaventure is deeply influenced by Pseudo-Dionysius, as he explains that the spirit is made hierarchical through purification, illumination, and perfection or union, which is a “reformation of the image” of the divine in the depth of one‟s being.592 After having reached the sixth level, the human is “made to the image” of the divine just as if it were “the sixth day of creation,” whereupon the mind comes to rest in the mystical ecstasy of the seventh level.593 We have come full circle in his work. To conclude, Bonaventure‟s great feat is a dynamic expression of the spiraling of the journey into the divine. His work reveals a deeply integrated understanding of theology, spirituality, biblical theology, human knowledge, and linguistic structure. Having determined the religious historical context, we can proceed to the discussion of the practice of contemplative silence.

590 Ibid.

591 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 4.3. He cites verses 3:6; 6:10; and 8:5.

592 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 4.4.

593 Bonaventure, The Soul‟s Journey into God, 6.7. 216

CHAPTER FIVE:

THE PRACTICE OF CONTEMPLATIVE SILENCE AS A

TRANSFORMATIVE SPIRITUAL AND ETHICAL ACTIVITY

The heart of this chapter lies in the task of adumbrating the five crucial levels of meaning-creating consciousness as potentialities ingredient in the phenomenon of the practice of contemplative silence. I want to connect the intentionality and practice of contemplative silence to the heart of meaning in language. In this way, lived experience and language can be brought into a dynamism that gives expressive voice and clarity to the mode of being that is connected with contemplative silence. The mode of capable being of one who engages in the practice of contemplative silence, in all of its depth, is an exceedingly rich and intense form of consciousness in which the individual subject experiences a release in which he or she is reflexively aware of being with being, and is simultaneously aware of the reflexive awareness. Contemplative silence is practiced by persons who live a disciplined religious life not only in the cloistered settings of monasteries and convents, for example, but in the midst of ordinary, everyday life, as well. This mode of being is also highly sought after and valued as an aesthetic experience by writers and artists, and other creative and committed individuals from a variety of walks of life who inhabit many different settings. That is, in any place where the human search for the heart of meaning is carried out, it is possible that the practice of contemplative silence accompanies this search. Communities of discourse can be the locus of this practice, too. Persons who participate in such communities express contemplative silence in language whenever there is the spontaneous experience of shared understanding such that a complete and pervasive stillness is imparted. Let us proceed to the first task of the chapter, which is to engage in a brief analysis of the meaning of the practice of contemplative silence. 217

An Analysis of the Meaning of the Practice of Contemplative Silence In Chapter Four, the relation of silence to discourse was set out. We found that silence can be thought of as surrounding, suffusing, and permeating discourse. Also, there are three irreducible moments of silence—originating silence, pervasive silence, and terminating silence. Thus explained, silence can be defined as a kind of “break” or “cut” in discourse, or as a transition point in time. We also established that the locus of the practice of contemplative silence is within the third moment, that of terminating silence. Max Picard, in his elegantly written classic, The World of Silence, says that “Speech and silence belong together.”594 He says that “Words that merely come from other words can be hard and aggressive,” lonely even.595 Words require the spacing that silence gives in order that the full meaning can emerge. Commas indicate where a pause should be taken in the succession of words, so that meaning can shine through. Words need silence, and language and silence share in an intimate relationship, he explains. According to Picard, silence also provides for language “a natural source of re-creation,” which serves to refresh and purify it from the maliciousness that sometimes arises out of language.596 Finally, he says that silence donates to word a depth dimension. “The word would be without depth if the background of silence were missing,” he says.597 Words rest in that depth. Hence there is an ongoing dynamic of words flowing out from and returning to the great silence. With regard to the word “contemplative,” we need to ask “What qualification of silence is made by the adjective “contemplative?” In response, we can say that

594 Max Picard, The World of Silence (Wichita, Kansas: Eighth Day Press, 2002), 36.

595 Ibid.

596 Max Picard, The World of Silence, 38.

597 Max Picard, The World of Silence, 28. 218

“contemplative” refers to the form of silence in which the depth of meaning is held in consciousness amidst silence. Here I want to explore two additional definitions of the word as well. I want to set out a philosophical definition of the word according to Aristotle, and a religious definition according to Thomas Merton. Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, explains that the summit of a virtuous life is one that is characterized by theōria, i.e., contemplation, which is translated as “understanding.”598 He says that we “understand what is fine and divine, by being itself either divine or the most divine element in us.”599 For Aristotle, intellectual life—the life of the mind—is our supreme element. The activity of contemplation is supreme because it is engaged in for its own sake. Aspects usually attributed to blessed persons, such as unwearied activity, for example, are features of the activity of contemplation. A life so characterized would be considered superior to what is life on the human level. As he sees it, “For someone will live it not insofar as he is a human being, but insofar as he has some divine element in him.”600 Furthermore, he explains that “if…[contemplation] is something divine in comparison with a human being, so also will the life in accord with…[contemplation] be divine in comparison with human life.”601 Cultivating the life of the mind is an opening to the divine, in the human person, for Aristotle. Finally,… [contemplation] is constitutive of the human being, and is proper to its nature insofar as “for a human being the life in accord with…[contemplation] will be supremely best and most pleasant, if…[contemplation], more than anything else, is the human being.”602 It

598 See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Second Edition, trans. and intro. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1999), X.7.1.

599 Ibid.

600 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, X.7.8.

601 Ibid.

602 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, X.7.9. My emphasis. 219 appears to be the case, according to Aristotle, that contemplation constitutes the highest mode of being. Next, I want to expand upon the initial discussion of Merton‟s thought in Chapter One of this study, in order to further define contemplation, according to him. Contemplation is, he says, “a sudden gift of awareness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real.”603 Further, it is the awareness of the contingent reality that characterizes human life as received. He defines it, too, as “the response to a call,” in that humans are words who in responsivity answer and echo the divine in contemplation.604

Contemplation is also “awakening, enlightenment, and the amazing intuitive grasp by which love gains certitude of God‟s creative and dynamic intervention” in daily life.605 He says that contemplation carries one away into the divine and the divine realm, which is characterized as mystery and freedom. Finally, he explains that contemplation is “a pure and a virginal knowledge, poor in concepts, poorer still in reasoning, but able, by its very poverty and purity, to follow the Word „wherever [it] may go.‟”606 Merton is making a distinction here between meditation, which is discursive, and contemplation, which is a simple letting go, and the quiet of resting in the presence of the divine, which is equivalent to intuition. As a final task in this section, I want to define the word “practice.” I follow Alasdair MacIntyre‟s definition of practice, which he explains as follows:

By a „practice‟ I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity,

603 Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 3.

604 Ibid.

605 Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 5.

606 Ibid. 220

with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.607 I want to note that “practice,” according to MacIntyre‟s definition, requires deliberation, choice, and a great degree of intentionality. “Practice,” so understood, is the means and end of spiritual transformation. Having defined the basic terms of this study, we move, now, to a discussion of the relation of word and silence within the Word. As we do so, I want to note that several of the terms below were previously introduced and defined. For the sake of coherence, they reappear in the discussion that follows.

The Dialectic of Silence and Language within the Word or Logos Animal life can be characterized as instinct and appetite. Human life can be characterized as animal life plus rationality, or bios plus logos, which is a struggle. Divine life is the perfected unity of bios and logos, or the incarnate Logos. Logos is the capacity for rational thinking. Logos as abstract meaning in thought is dependent on language. The Greeks idealized logos. The tradition of Christianity negated the ideality and transcendence of logos to conceive of it as incarnate. Let us proceed by characterizing the relation of silence and language in three ways. First, there is silence prior to language. It is the undifferentiated Divine Word. Word comes out of primordial silence as the potentiality to speak and write, to listen and read. Humans have fallen out of primordial silence by having received the word. Silence prior to language can be referred to as bios or animal life, which is instinct and appetite. This level also corresponds to what we refer to in Chapter Four as originating silence.

Second, there is silence within language. As was previously discussed in Chapter Two, to think in language requires combining and separating the words in sentences with

607 Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Second Edition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 187. 221 meaning. The sentence can be regarded as a primary unit of meaning. Because of the activity of combining and separating word-meanings in sentences, language is always punctuated by silence. “Word” means a sign (uttered or written) that carries a meaning (or many meanings). Language can be regarded as the medium of being, because being is the combining and separating. “Language” means a system of relations and rules governing words, plus a lexicon of word-meanings. Thinking is the sheer activity that includes knowing, understanding, imagining, remembering, and all other mental activities. Thinking activities, while dealing with the world of appearances, do not themselves appear. Thinking is a self-removal from the world of appearances into a world of thoughts. It is soundless but not silent, because in thinking I am always conversing with myself. Thinking is a dialogue of the “I” with itself—an activity that displays the two-in-one structure of human being. Thinking is solitary but not lonely, because of the reflexivity of the thinking ego. Thinking presents sense-objects to the mind in their absence as sense-objects, but in the form of thought-objects, which are universals, concepts, ideas, etc. “Thought” means an abstract, invisible, spiritual, or ideal meaning held in the mind. To think a thought is soundless. Next, “logos” refers to the capacity for, and potentiality for, abstract thought; it is the capacity for reasoning, and it is also the resultant rationality. Silence within language can be referred to as bios mixed with logos, or human life (animal life plus rationality), or bios plus logos, and is characterized as a struggle. This level also corresponds to what we refer to in Chapter Four as pervasive silence. Third, there is silence following language. Language strives toward a postulated silence, which is the plenitude of meaning—a totality of meaning relative to past, present, and future. The silence beyond language is the Divine Word—the fully differentiated Divine Word, or the Logos. This silence beyond language, can be referred to as Logos, or Divine Life, and is the perfected unity of bios and logos, the incarnate Logos, as previously mentioned. This level corresponds to what we refer to in Chapter Four as 222 terminating silence, the locus wherein the practice of contemplative silence is grafted. Finally, we can say that in the silence prior to language, the one is everything. In the silence following language, everything is the one. In the silence within language, one and everything are mixed. Yet in the silence following language, there is nothing to talk about. Thinking ceases. Now that the fundamental terms and their relations are established, let us proceed to the next step of the argument, and two examples of the practice of contemplative silence.

Two Ontic Examples of the Practice of Contemplative Silence I turn now to the practice of contemplative silence to grasp it as the means and end of spiritual transformation. The sixth step of the argument is that human being fashioned a practice of contemplative silence as a transformative practice in order to open itself to, and understand more fully the truth of redeeming grace in lived existence— that is, to always be able to look with ever fresh eyes to the world, and see the world in a new way. Two ontic examples of the practice of contemplative silence illustrate how this is so. Human being discovers an infinite capacity to grow in spiritual and ethical maturity through attentive listening and responding to the Word. The practice of contemplative silence is one means or approach to redeeming fallen human being. It is undertaken in a reflexive space of consciousness that involves a dialectic between silence and language within the Word, or Logos. With the practice of contemplative silence, there is the possibility that one‟s awareness can be expanded such that one can reach a new understanding of the depth of one‟s connection to all of reality. The first ontic example of the practice in what follows below is elicited from a text, while the second example derives from a film. 223

Climbing the Mountain The word “mountain” looms large in Thomas Merton‟s texts, and is the image he employs to depict the journey to the divine. Hence climbing the mountain here refers to the practice of contemplative silence in the ascent to the divine. Merton was a member of the religious monastic community of the Cistercian (Trappist) Order, which follows the Rule of St. Benedict. The monks are grounded in community prayer as well as silent contemplative prayer. Community members have a daily rhythm that includes prayer, meditative reading, as well as arts and skilled manual labor. The cloistered milieu is one of silence and solitude. The monastery is a school, and the monks are students with a vocation who, in making the commitment to learn to love God, center their lives on relationship with the divine. Through cultivating this relationship, and physically being set apart from the world, they come to experience a heightened awareness of the genuine needs of persons everywhere. The daily life of a monk, which is characterized by structured activity, aims at the education of the heart in order that there be a transformation of one‟s life into the imago Dei. The day begins at 3:15 a.m. when the monks rise. The day is punctuated by community prayer, which includes the Office of Vigils, Lauds, (Eucharist), Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. The day ends immediately following Compline at 7:30 p.m. In addition, periods of time set aside for meals, prayer, reading, and work round out each day. The practice of contemplative silence is a way for the monk to ascend to the divine, inasmuch as he opens himself to hearing the Word of God, who speaks in the depths of his own heart. Merton, in his text entitled, Contemplative Prayer, explains the practice of contemplative silence.608 Prayer should be essentially simple, Merton says. One lives with an orientation to solitude as well as poverty in engaging the practice. With a bodily

608 This text was originally published as The Climate of Monastic Prayer (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications). 224 comportment of stillness and calm, the mind and the heart are emptied of any care or concern so that a person can, in repose, devote himself to a loving attentiveness in serving the divine. Love is expressed first of all, through love of the Divine Word. Meditation consists of repetitious recitation of the Divine Word such that it is interiorized in the heart. A person engages in a search of his own heart, as well as interiorizing the heart of the world; there is no separation of the two in this regard. Prayer forces a person to face the false self that wants to live only for itself. The practice involves a silence, a listening, a questioning, and a “humble and courageous exposure to what the world ignores about itself—both good and evil,” Merton explains.609 Out of an abyss comes a mysterious gift that renews and transforms the world. It is work that is of a healing and creative nature; “it is accomplished in silence.”610 It is a “desert” climate that provides the setting for contemplation to flourish. A personal integration occurs in and through attentiveness and listening. Merton explains the progression from meditation to contemplation using the “The Dark Night” by John of the Cross. In the process of knowing through an unknowing—or knowing that one does not know—sense and reason are darkened, indeed the mind is darkened such that there is an enlightenment, or the light of faith shines through. This is a paradoxical experience as it is characterized by excessive light, a supernatural light, Merton says, in which the mind and the heart are darkened. This is the dark night of faith in which there is a passing from meditation to contemplation. Contemplation is “a deeper and simpler intuitive form of receptivity” whereby one passively receives light with loving attention and awareness.611 The various forms of prayer mentioned above prepare the monk for the capacity to

609 Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, intro. Thich Nhat Hanh (New York, London: Doubleday, 1996), 25.

610 Merton, Contemplative Prayer, 25-26.

611 Merton, Contemplative Prayer, 44. 225 receive inner illumination, which happens through faith and wisdom in the silence, the solitude, and the quiet stillness of the practice. Merton explains that “The unitive knowledge of God in love is not a knowledge of an object by a subject, but a far different and transcendent kind of knowledge in which the created „self‟ that we are seems to disappear in God and to know him alone.”612 This emptying and destruction turn into an emptiness in which there is no longer knowledge of self apart from the knowledge of the divine. He says that the mind comes to realize a lack of autonomy. The practice entails the intentional selection of emptiness and poverty; it is a deliberate preference for an intuitive and spontaneous seeking of the dark and the aridity of the desert. There is an expectancy about the practice of listening in the stillness of silence. Silence reveals itself to be full of a great and powerful word. There can be no deliberate “technique” with the practice. Merton says that whatever one says of emptiness, it is other than what one says of it, and that the character of it “is pure love, pure freedom,” or “love for love‟s sake” or indeterminate love.613 Further, he says that “It is the contemplative, silent, „empty‟ and apparently useless element in the life of prayer which makes it truly a life.”614 The practice of contemplative silence gives all aspects of temporal existence an orientation to the divine. It involves an open stance and a surrendering to the divine, through the letting go of thought; and in and through the distancing from those very thoughts and feelings, there is the possibility of an expansion of awareness, yet it points to something beyond or behind being aware. The intentionality, deliberation, and choice with which the monk performs silence in daily living, whether it be through praying, reading, eating, or working, is the source of spiritual transformation, which opens and makes way the path to be cut straight up the

612 Merton, Contemplative Prayer, 75-76.

613 Merton, Contemplative Prayer, 94-95.

614 Merton, Contemplative Prayer, 114. 226 mountain, which is this ascent to the divine. Because the inner life is deep, the climb is steep with a potential precipice at every turn; however, the practice of contemplative silence guards the heart of the monk, who makes his way and ascends to the top.

A Still Life Portrait The second ontic example of contemplative silence is a depiction of the practice, as portrayed in the film entitled Into Great Silence (Die Größe Stille), by Philip Gröning. The setting for the film is the apparently austere and magnificently majestic and beautiful monastery, the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps. Here, too, daily life is punctuated by periods of personal and communal prayer, reading and study, meals and manual labor, and solitary stillness. Becoming empty and listening are characteristic of the monk who prays. A distinctive feature of Carthusian life is long periods of solitude spent in one‟s individual cell. Solitary life is supported by the community as a whole. There are spaces that are designated as common, whether it be to receive new members or to care for the infirm. Also, there is communal activity in shorter increments of time spread throughout the day. Then, in the darkness of the night, the monks vacate their cells, and gather together to sing the offices of matins and laudes, as the Night Office is prayed together in community at 12:15 a.m. For two to three hours, a prayer ritual is performed consisting of psalms, songs, oration, lectures, and the deep silence of contemplation. Through prayer and song, life itself is transformed in and through the experience of this performance, a performance that plays to a full house—before the presence of God. The periods of deep silence are a way of growing closer to the divine. This ongoing practice is embodied in the quiet and still, pulsating heart of the Carthusian. The film is punctuated by close-up, still life frames of the individual monks‟ faces. In this way, each monk assumes the character of an icon. They are icons in living flesh and bone. As they gaze into the camera we, in turn, gaze back penetrating the resplendent depths of their sparkling, dancing eyes, which mirror our own. We see the 227 contours of their expressions and their facial features, all the lines and twitches that reveal as well as conceal their personalities, as we look for a sign, a sign that would tell us who they really are. One monk explains that it is not signs that are to be questioned, but the monks themselves that are to be questioned. They could be mug shots for all we know, prisoners as they are of time, shut up in a world in which time seemingly goes on forever, with the date of their eternal release known only to God…one day unfolds onto another in rhythmic progression, as they vow to live each day out, each monk in his own cell, in everlasting prayer and penitence—in perpetuity ad infinitum.

A crystal clear glass of water sitting atop the desk. Sun streaming in through the window. Sliced apples. A monk who is ill. A monk at the altar reminiscent of a bride at the altar. Flames from a fire. The flame of dawn—a new day. The sanctuary light. The sun beaming, streaming through the window. The haircuts and close shaves. “Behold I have become human.”615 Cleaning—the mopping of the wood floor. The smoke of incense billowing out in the shape of clouds. A monk praying the rosary in the choir stall. The procession: Monstrance and Eucharist. Eucharistic Adoration. The pale blue sky with the puff and billow of white clouds floating ethereally. A monk praying before ringing the bells that call the community to prayer. The frost that coats the plants. The still, soft snow. Praying in the cell and the creaking of wood. The monks praying prostrate in their choir stalls. The baguette and the bottled water—the scene shot from behind as the monk sits at the window and eats. The bowl of fruit on the window sill, and the snow outside covering the rooftops—a scene through the window as seen through the window—the monks are letting themselves be found.

615 Into Great Silence, Disc 1. DVD, directed by Philip Gröning (Berlin, Germany: Zeitgeist Video, 2005). 228

The sole of the shoe glued and repaired by the strong hands of a workman. The monks outside with snow shoes, walking and visiting in the snow, two-by-two. Sledding and skiing. Winter. “No, why be afraid of death. It‟s the fate of all humans. One should have no fear of death. For us we find a Father. In God there is no past. Solely the present prevails. He eternally seeks our well-being. I often thank God [that I am blind]…. Everything that happens is God‟s will. God is infinitely good.”616 Plants growing. Practicing chant with the small portable keyboard. The woods. The elderly monk who is blind. The unadorned, unaffected monk in his cell praying incessantly, unceasingly. Silence. The posture of the body—the reverential bowing that punctuates the prayer. Silence. The monk who with his eyes closed prays and utters words to close the prayer. A monk who puts his sandals on, and then looks up and smiles. Birds flying. Airplanes flying. The mountains and fog. The repetition of the saw in the arm of the monk who cuts wood. Night prayer. The chanting of the Night Office. Chant and antiphonal prayer. The stars are out. The flame. The chanting of the Treatise of St. Basil on the Holy Spirit: “Reason demands that the singular is separated from the plural.” The monks in the choir stalls chanting. They ponder the analogy connected with the sunbeam, insofar as the spirit is sent to each person, as if that person is the only one. Bells ringing, calling the community to prayer. The dipping of fingers into the holy water font before going into the church to pray. Walking through the cloister. The monk reading. The monk kneeling. “What do you ask for? Grace. Out of love I ask…to be admitted to community life.”617 The desire for the desire…the desire for the word…the desire for silence…the practice of contemplative silence…the means and the

616 “Chapter 20. Speaking of God,” Into Great Silence.

617 “Chapter 4. Assimilation,” Into Great Silence. 229 end of being transformed…Into Great Silence: “Oh Lord you have seduced me and I was seduced.”618

Mediating Evil in Ricoeur‟s Thought Ricoeur continually mediates polarities in his thinking, and I want to focus initially on two of them. In doing so, I hope to accentuate the overriding concern in his thought with the continuation of action. In the epilogue to Memory, History, Forgetting entitled “Difficult Forgiveness,” he discusses the polarity of the “depth of fault” and the

“height of forgiveness.”619 Fault refers here to the recognition of my fault. He says that we are paralyzed in our capacity to act due to the “enigma of a fault,” and yet the lifting of this very incapacity is the “enigma of forgiveness.” Forgiveness, while difficult, is not impossible, according to Ricoeur. The possibility of forgiveness stands within the common, if elusive, horizon of memory, history, and forgetting. In formulating this polarity between avowal and hymn, that is, between fault and forgiveness, he takes the tension between them close to the point of rupture. How impossible forgiveness is when someone has carried out an unpardonable act, and yet, it is the guilty who are most especially due our consideration!620 To be sure, paralysis and inertia can plague us and prevent us from taking action that would lead to re-establishing and healing relations. Suffering can also be an impediment to forgiveness. In Oneself as Another, Ricoeur characterizes suffering not only in terms of physical and mental pain, but also as a

“reduction” or “destruction” of the diminished “capacity for acting, of being-able-to-act,” which in experience, he says, is “a violation of self-integrity.”621 When suffering

618 Into Great Silence.

619 Ricoeur, MHF, 456-457. 620 Ricoeur, MHF, 458.

621 Ricoeur, OA, 190. 230 harbors resentment and the desire for revenge, the possibility of forgiveness is often stifled. Spanning the polarity of fault and forgiveness are two speech acts. The first speech act is the avowal of imputability, the acknowledgment or admission of agency— the “I can” which “binds” the agent to the action—in recognition of being accountable as an agent.622 The second speech act is a hymn to forgiveness which, he says, is captured in the celebrative love and joy of sapiential poetry, and which exudes, I would add, a generosity of spirit: “There is forgiveness, this voice says.”623 It is in the practice of contemplative silence that “conscience” exerts its force. Conscience is the voice of the claim of the other (relational reality) on the self at the depth of language. The second polarity is formed by placing into tension the notion of origin from The Symbolism of Evil and the horizon of eschatology from Memory, History, Forgetting. With regard to the first pole, Ricoeur says that “The symbol gives rise to thought;” it gives us something to think about. Symbol stands close to the origin of consciousness, arising, as it does, out of immediacy in life experience. This is close to the moment of originating silence and its initial interruption by logos. However, when we think, we bring presuppositions with us. Thinking necessarily expands from thinking about what is given to recognizing and remembering where we come from. Modernity, Ricoeur says, gives us the dynamics of emptying language through technical and formal usage, as well as filling language by remembering the fullness of meanings that are connected with sacred presence in our lives. In his call for a re-creation of language, he comments that even though “everything has already been said enigmatically,” it is not fully known and understood by us; we start with an interpretation that takes account of the original enigma contained in the symbol and that advances and shapes the meaning in the freedom of

622 Ricoeur, MHF, 457-458. 623 Ricoeur, MHF, 458. 231 thought.624 We have to bind ourselves to the immediacy of the symbol and at the same time, freely mediate our thought. We do this as reflexive relational realities who, by virtue of correlating thought with understanding, can understand our understanding.625 This act of interpretation is an original appropriation, and an event of language as Heidegger explains.626 The presencing of meaning is a “happening of truth” through the language-event (Heidegger says the “world worlds”), in which the context of meaning presents itself in a way that bestows upon us direct and recognizable understanding as language is understood.627 This event is one of poetic presencing, insofar as future possibilities are made present, in language. Through this process, the symbol has the power and force to disclose and unveil reality. Interpreting symbols, Ricoeur says, augments our self-awareness. A philosophy that has been taught by the symbols has the work of transforming reflexive consciousness, of understanding ourselves in a way that situates ourselves to a greater degree in being.628 How so? The answer is that the symbol, temporalized in metaphor, addresses the mind at the level of feeling. The other pole is the horizon of eschatology. This pole can be related to terminating silence. Following Kant, Ricoeur says that philosophy of religion has the forward-moving agenda of setting free the original ground of goodness in human nature. He calls this task “the restoration…of the original predisposition to the good.”629

624 Ricoeur, SE, 348-350. 625 See Scharlemann, The Being of God, 48.

626 See Martin Heidegger, “The Nature of Language,” On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1971), 59. He explains that “In experiences which we undergo with language, language itself brings itself to language.”

627 See Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. and intro. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1971), 69 and 44. 628 Ricoeur, SE, 356.

629 Ricoeur, MHF, 491-492. 232

“Restoration” is Kant‟s term for redemption from evil. The agenda of restoration should occur in the “optative mood,” insofar as one expresses a wish or a choice.630 After all, a person who is guilty, Ricoeur says, is capable of so much more than his or her offenses or faults. The agent should be released from those very acts. To be rehabilitated, the guilty one must “be restored to his capacity for acting, and his action restored to its capacity for continuing,” he says.631 This latter notion of the capacity for continuing action is drawn from Hannah Arendt‟s argument in The Human Condition regarding the dialectic of binding and unbinding under the law.632 Unbinding the bound one requires forgiving and promising. Promising engages the capacity for acting. Forgiving permits the continuation of human action. This dialectic of binding and unbinding takes place within the ultimate horizon of an anticipated and projected restoration of goodness—a horizon of hope. The practice of contemplative silence can be considered as the space within which we may mediate the meaning of ultimate origin with the meaning of ultimate goal— symbols of creation are trans-critically interpreted in terms of the speculative language of the coming Kingdom of God, of utopia. In this space, we hold polarities open, self- consciously link them while withholding judgment, and listen to the voice of conscience. The goal is both to find the evil we would ascribe to others in ourselves, and to recognize

630 Ricoeur, MHF, 493. See also OA, 218 in which Ricoeur explains that “Human (free) choice appears to carry with it an original wound that affects its capacity for determining itself for or against the law; the enigma of the origin of evil is reflected in the enigma that affects the actual exercise of freedom. The fact that this penchant is always already present in every opportunity to choose but that it is at the same time a maxim of (free) choice is no less inscrutable than the origin of evil.”

631 Ricoeur, MHF, 493.

632 Ricoeur, MHF, 486 and 493. See also Ricoeur, “Ethics and Human Capability: A Response,” 290. Ricoeur, in quoting Hannah Arendt, says that “‟the continuation of action‟ may be the ultimate concern of ethical action.” 233 that the goodness toward which we strive is already present as the presupposition of the projection of hope. We can manifest this mode of being and this kind of thinking in and for the world. We come to recognize ourselves in this movement and we see truth emerge in the process. We can appropriate “the Joy of Yes in the sadness of the finite” through the practice of contemplative silence, by allowing the depth of language to manifest itself in and through the activity of interpretation. Take, for example, the activity of rethinking a wrong that has been perpetrated. Let‟s say that in immediate response to the wrong, we suffer pain. The underlying unreflected thought is “I am in pain.” We may recall and recognize the fact of our lived experience, that we fired back at this pain in anger, resentment, and fear. In contemplative silence we recall our 1) immediate self-awareness or the direct experience of the self or being at that moment as one of victim of injustice by connecting the idea of justice with the pain we face. Furthermore, we recognize our 2) immediate objective awareness or being with being as one of blaming the other, the one to whom we impute the cause of the injustice. This level is also one of unreflected immediacy. At the third level of 3) reflective awareness we understand that we made the connection between blame and the other by thinking the concept of fault and engaging in a judgment: “She is guilty.” The relational reality we establish is one of moral fault—a rift between us.

At the fourth level, of 4) reflexive awareness, we consciously intervene in the reflective awareness by holding open blame and innocence, withholding judgment so that we may become aware of new possibilities of interpretation. We may reflect that the wrong we have suffered is itself a response to our own prior actions within a competitive cycle whose origin is unknown. We may seek the symbols of the origin of tainted relational realities in the Adamic myth, which speaks of the first sin as a broken relationship with God, the loss—through misused freedom—of primordial trust in being. We apply not only phenomenology of symbols but also a critique of hidden ideologies: Is 234 our view skewed because of sexism, or racism, unconscious repressions, or distorted economic conditions? Once purified of systemic distortions, our practice of contemplative silence may further bring us to project our image of the day in which this relationship—and all others—will be mended and goodness restored. We might think of what action would be required to bring about the desired reconciliation—namely words of forgiveness. Finally, in 5) contemplative awareness, we are aware of the entire arc of interpretation, a complex act of selectively recalling, working through, and re-imaging the identities that reflect our relational realities. We hold together conflicting meanings and ambiguity, as we engage in nondual thinking. Nondual thinking is a cessation of thinking that comes to its rest, its final end, in the unity of intuition defined as the conjunction of concept and percept, thinking and perceiving. We confront evil in ourselves. Hermeneutical activity can help us work it through in a way that enriches our humanity, and our humanity is brought into integrity. Thus, hermeneutical activity can be integrated into contemplative silence and contemplative silence can be enriched by hermeneutics. We ought to think of hermeneutical activity as ethical activity; it is not just an activity of formal thinking. Hermeneutical activity is an ethical action, and its aim is the ethical transformation of my being. Contemplative silence applied to ourselves and our life circumstances has ethical import. We have moved through all five levels of awareness. In concert with Ricoeur‟s thought, we have also reached an understanding of the ethical and spiritual import of hermeneutical activity and contemplative silence, having examined what is at stake in contemplative silence understood as a practice. We are now positioned to focus on the respective levels of contextual awareness. My aim shall be to set out the trajectory of philosophical thinking that undergirds each of the contextual levels of awareness. In order to understand this transformation, we must have knowledge of the five levels of awareness ingredient in the phenomenon itself as potentialities. 235

Immediate Self-Awareness The first level of awareness is immediate self-awareness. It is the direct experience of the self, of being. I have awareness that I am here—the I to whom I ascribe actions. I have an awareness that it is I who am thinking when I think, or that it is I who am feeling when I feel. There is an immediate experience of my own being both in terms of what is, as present and manifest, and to what is, as absent or unmanifest. Immediate self-consciousness is the awareness of my seeing a tree, for example; and if I was not conscious of this, I could not ascribe to myself the seeing a tree—the immediate conviction that it is my seeing. Immediate self-consciousness is the necessary condition of all other acts of consciousness. In it, I am conscious of a modification. The “I” feels itself affected, and I sense my own condition. We have no warrant for the object at this point. Immediate self-consciousness is not yet objective consciousness; it is subjective consciousness. Feeling or mood enter into the discussion at this level, because I immediately feel “how I am” or “how it goes with me.”

Being as What Is in Understanding its Understanding Heidegger probes the meaning of hermeneutics insofar as it has to do with the interpretation of existence. The question of the meaning of being forms the centerpiece of his Being and Time. Heidegger‟s move is considered a fundamental ontological one in that he shifts from the Kantian how we know signaled by the “Second Copernican

Revolution” and critique, to discussion of the mode of being of the person, who, as being, understands the meaning of being. He puts in question the questioner. Understanding is a more primary term for Heidegger than is knowing. In the most elemental sense, understanding means to transfer the meaning expressed in signs, such as verbal, written, and gestural signs, into our minds. The test of understanding is to be able to articulate meaning in our own words. Interpretation is the secondary term, and it works by asking 236 if there is any hidden meaning contained in the signs, that is, whether there may be something not immediately grasped in our mind that takes time to figure out. Understanding can be considered as a thought-relation to the world. There are three initial thought-relations in the statement, “The sky is blue.”: 1) I perceive in that I perceive concrete things and have the percept as object, as in the statement, “I perceive the sky.” The subject term, “the sky,” indicates that a particular something exists as an object of perception. 2) I conceive concepts in that “I conceive the sky as blue.” The quality of blueness as designated by the nominative predicate is a universal one. Finally,

3) I understand the connection between percepts and concepts, and thus, render being. That is, I understand being. Concerning the “is,” or the copula in grammatical terms in the above statement, there is a forgetfulness of being, because we cannot define the “is,” nor can we perceive it. Nonetheless, being as the connector appears in the “is.” “Is” connects the percept and concept, the particular and the universal. “Is” refers to the connection as well to the connecting activity, which is an act of being. Particulars are given to experience, while universals (such as ideas, concepts, rules, laws, and the like), are thought by the thinking ego; it is between the particular percept and the universal concept that being is. How does being appear? It appears in the medium that is between concept and percept, universal and particular—namely language. Hence being appears in language. When we understand “is,” we are understanding the connectedness of things in language. When we reflect, what we reflect on is language. We take up reflection itself at the third level of awareness. This line of approach originates with the work of Kant, and is carried on through the work of Fichte and Heidegger.633 It is further characterized in the work of Gadamer, who attempted to pursue understanding as the mode of being that is also an understanding of being. The line of inquiry proceeds as follows: If I reflect on Dasein, then I can

633 Klemm, HTPR, 26. 237 articulate the conditions of my understanding, and in that way I can understand, at least in part, the meaning of my own being as Dasein, i.e., as the kind of being that understands being. Thus, I can understand in a limited way the structure that makes it possible to understand the meaning of being. This structure is Dasein, construed as the place where being manifests itself in the activity of care (Sorge). The hope expressed in Being and Time was that if I can understand the meaning of being, then I might even be able to understand being itself. Heidegger, however, could not finish the project. Dasein‟s being is care and the meaning of care is temporality. Because of temporality, Heidegger could not move any further with his analysis, and there is a kind of disappearing into the temporality of Dasein that occurs. According to Heidegger, what the human mind cannot think, however, language can sometimes give or donate. That is the notion behind his statement that thinking is a thanking. Ricoeur says that Heidegger wants us to make historical knowledge secondary to ontological understanding, as the derivative of some primordial form of understanding being, but he does not furnish us with a means to demonstrate in what way historical understanding comes out of primordial understanding.

Ricoeur asks if it is not more efficacious to start with “derived forms of understanding” so as to illustrate the signs of derivation.634 He concludes, “This implies that the point of departure be taken on the same level on which understanding operates, that is, on the level of language.”635 This observation, Ricoeur says, leads to a second one. Heidegger wants a reversal in thought “from epistemological understanding to the being who understands” in which “we must…describe directly—without prior epistemological concern—the privileged being of Dasein,…as it is constituted in itself….”636 Ricoeur

634 Ricoeur, “Existence and Hermeneutics,” The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. Kathleen Blamey, 10.

635 Ibid.

636 Ibid. 238 points out that any such passing from understanding as a mode of knowledge to understanding as a mode of being must occur within language. Consequently, Ricoeur advocates a long route, as he says, through semantics and the theory of text, rather than the short route of Heidegger, who transforms hermeneutics so that it is an ontology of understanding. Ricoeur, in commenting on Heidegger‟s work, states that “the theory of knowledge is overturned by an interrogation that precedes it and that concerns the way that a being encounters being….”637 Ricoeur explains that while Heidegger emphasizes

Dasein as “the being-there that we are,” this Dasein should not be considered a subject for whom there is an object, but instead, a “being within being.”638 Dasein indicates the place which gives rise to the question of being. Ricoeur refers to this place as a locus of manifestation. Dasein‟s centrality is “that of a being that understands being.”639 Dasein as being, has as part of its structure “an ontological preunderstanding of being.”640 Ontological hermeneutics, for Heidegger, is the activity of interpreting Dasein. Ricoeur explains that to present the structure of Dasein has more to do with an unfolding of a foundation through clarification rather than a grounding by means of derivation. Ricoeur points out that Heidegger depsychologizes understanding by articulating it as worldly, rather than making it a question of the other. He accomplishes this task by reflecting on and placing the greater emphasis on being-in the world rather than on being-with another, who would merely duplicate subjectivity. This being-in is the locus, the beginning point of an ontology of understanding. Ricoeur says that this

637 Paul Ricoeur, “The Task of Hermeneutics,” From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. John B. Thompson, 64.

638 Ricoeur, “The Task of Hermeneutics,” 64. See also Heidegger, BT, 7. Heidegger states, “Being is always the being of a being.”

639 Ricoeur, “The Task of Hermeneutics,” 64.

640 Ibid. 239 shift of the philosophical starting point from being-with to being-in is just as significant as the move Heidegger makes from the problematic surrounding method to the problematic of being. Following in the philosophical line of Kant, Heidegger has to inquire into the conditions that must exist for being to be known so that beings are accessed as they are constituted by the understanding. He says that “The way what is questioned essentially engages our questioning belongs to the innermost meaning of the question of being.”641 What this statement means, Heidegger goes on to say, is that with regard to Dasein, there is a relation between this being and the question of being. Dasein has an ontic distinctiveness in that Dasein has within itself a concern about its own being, which means that being has a relation to itself. Hence Heidegger says, Dasein can understand itself in its very being in a certain, explicit way, in that a disclosure of itself to itself through the vehicle of its being transpires. “Understanding of being is itself a determination of being of Da-sein. The ontic distinction of Da-sein lies in the fact that it is ontological.”642

Heidegger says that the pre-ontological designation of Dasein signifies not merely being ontical, but instead “being in the manner of an understanding of being.”643 He refers to the being that Dasein continuously relates to as existence (Existenz). An essential definition cannot be achieved by assigning to it a “what, because its essence lies rather in the fact that it in each instance has to be its being as its own, the term Da-sein, as a pure expression of being, has been chosen to designate this being.”644 Fundamental ontology must be searched for in and through an existential analysis because of the

641 Heidegger, BT, 7.

642 Heidegger, BT, 10.

643 Ibid.

644 Ibid. 240 essential tendency of Dasein that is proper to it, to have a preontological understanding of the meaning of its being through understanding its existential possibility of being or not being itself. Existence determines the essence of what Dasein is, “and as existent Dasein, it understands what it means to be the one it is.”645 What Heidegger is saying is that the way in which Dasein understands its being is constitutive of understanding itself; and that there is an orientation of understanding that is disclosed through understanding itself, in my own, fullest possibility to be myself. Being is in the way, in the path of an understanding of being.

In terms of the ontological structure of the being of Dasein, he says that “being in the world is essentially care (Sorge)....”646 What allows for the possibility that care is the being of Dasein is the distinct group of relations that creates of Dasein a clearing that is within being.647 Dasein indicates a being, or the one that I am, and I have understanding as my primary mode of being, and I understand being. There is mutual reflection upon subject, activity, and object such that a locus of manifestation emerges, which is the clearing of being.

Scharlemann brings clarity of expression to Heidegger‟s discussion of understanding. He discusses how in terms of seeing the same in the different, the experience of truth is inclusive of meaning as well as reality. The experience of truth “has to do with „being,‟ which appears in the assertion as meaning and in the projection and disclosure as reality.”648 Thus understood, being correlates with our understanding rather than with either perception or conception. While perception has to do with the singular, abstract conception has to do with the universal. Being, however, comes

645 Klemm, HTPR, 29. See also Heidegger, BT, 11.

646 Heidegger, BT, 179-181.

647 Klemm, HTPR, 30.

648 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 47. 241 between them as a pure connection, that of singular to that of universal. While it indicates a connection of them (singular and universal), it is imperceptible as well as uncognizable. It is indeed “understood,” although neither “perceived” nor “cognized.”649 We can therefore understand the “is” of the judgment or the entity, but we neither visualize nor define it. Understanding as an act should not, therefore, be confused with the perception coming from singulars or the abstraction coming from universals. When we understand we ascertain the sense in the sign. Scharlemann says we can understand a tree, for example, if the word evokes the image of what it indicates.650 Being has to do with understanding instead of perception insofar as it comes to us in the manner of a sense in a sign. The sign is considered twofold: On the one hand, it is a group of words that constitute a proposition (“This is a tree.”) or, in a more limited sense the word “is” in that sentence.651 When we understand this proposition we see the sense that it holds; we see being as meaning. However, on the other hand, the sign can be considered the object itself that appears; because when we understand this object, we ascertain the connection there is between the singular and the universal, or “being as reality,” which is signified in its appearing to our mind, the appearance of which is communicated in a judgment.652 It is in language, in the sense of the sentence considered as a whole that being comes to be manifest, Scharlemann explains. In the case of a proposition that is understood, being opens to the mind. The truth of the proposition has to do with whether or not there is correspondence between how being manifests itself in both meaning and reality.

649 Ibid.

650 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 47-48.

651 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 48.

652 Ibid. 242

When we correlate understanding with thought, we have an understanding of what exactly we are understanding. This is where interpretation and hermeneutical theory come into consideration, because they are premised on the possibility that we can articulate what we have understood through an act separate and distinct from an original understanding of meaning (what is said), and reality or appearance (what is so). If, for example, we understand what a particular sentence says, but when called upon to explain what we have understood, we can only respond by using the exact same words, then this is a case in which indeed we have understood the sentence (what it says), but without fully understanding what it is that we have understood (what it means). Insofar as being includes meaning and reality, Scharlemann explains that interpretation and verification should be together. When truth is taken to be the identity that exists between being insofar as it is a meaning that is understood, and being insofar as it is a reality that is disclosed, then deciding the truth of a statement is dependent upon interpreting what the statement means, especially if the meaning is ambiguous. While interpretation involves clarity of meaning, verification involves deciding whether what has been said is actually true or not.653

Being as Non-Being in Understanding Being as Not It is important to establish an awareness of the “not” so that we are clear that the aim of this study is a hermeneutical project, and not an onto-theological program. In the end, we must always cede before the mystery of human albeit hermeneutical existence. In “What is Metaphysics?” Heidegger addresses the question of the nothing in regard to being. We can think in terms of identity in difference here. That is, when we approach the question of the nothing, Heidegger says that “we posit the nothing in advance as

653 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 49. 243 something that „is‟ such and such; we posit it as a being.”654 However, that is precisely what it should be distinguished from. He explains how when we think, we are always thinking about something; however, thinking has to act in such a way that it opposes what is its essence, when thinking of what is the nothing. Heidegger regards the nothing as nonbeing. The nothing is to be distinguished from the negative or negation, which is, in turn, an act of the intellect. Heidegger asserts the thesis “that the nothing is more originary than the „not‟ and negation.”655 The ramifications of this thesis are that the act of negation on the part of the intellect, as well as the intellect itself, are in a dependent relationship with the nothing. Heidegger defines the nothing as “the complete negation of the totality of beings.”656 We come to meet the nothing through our experience, and thus, we are aware of the nothing in that it manifests through a preunderstanding of the totality of all beings that is given in advance. “Beings as a whole” manifests in our everyday experience when we experience the mood of joy. According to Heidegger, when we love someone, there is a possibility of a manifestation concealed in the joy we hold. When we “are” in joy, we are attuned, not to any particular being but to the totality of being. This mood determines us and we discover ourselves in the midst of the whole of beings. It is in the mood of anxiety that we are brought face to face with the nothing. Heidegger says that as beings as a whole recede from us, they actually turn toward us. We experience the receding as anxiety in which things close in on us and oppress us. We cannot obtain a hold on the things, and as beings slip away, this inability to obtain a hold on things is what remains with us. He says that we hover with nothing to hang on to in the anxiety which manifests the nothing.

654 Martin Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?” Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill, trans. David Farrell Krell (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 85.

655 Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?” 86.

656 Ibid. 244

The nothing that is unveiled in anxiety is not unveiled as a being, although “in anxiety the nothing is encountered at one with beings as a whole.”657 Heidegger says that the nothing comes to be known with and in being through its nihilating activity, a repelling gesture, as beings in their wholeness slip away. It is in this “clear night” of the nothing associated with anxiety that he says an original openness arises with regard to beings: “that they are beings—and not nothing.”658 It is in this way that a manifestness about beings is brought about in general. This originally nihilating nothing brings Dasein to the fore of beings such that the meaning of Dasein has to do with being extended into what is nothing. It is in this way that a manifestness of beings is made possible by the nothing. The nothing is an original belonging of the essential unfolding of beings. Heidegger says that “In the being of beings the nihilation of the nothing occurs.”659 The nihilation of the nothing is, according to Heidegger, the origin of the manifestation of the “not.” The origin of the “not” does not occur through negation. Rather, the ground of negation lies in the “not” that emerges from the nihilation of the nothing. Therefore, the origin of negation lies in the nothing, rather than vice versa, he explains. The reason that being and nothing belong together, according to Heidegger, is because of the finiteness of being which can manifest solely in Dasein‟s transcendence as it is extended into that nothing. We are overwhelmed by the entire strangeness of being for the reason that the nothing manifests through Dasein‟s ground. Heidegger writes in the essay, “On the Essence of Ground,” that “The nothing is the „not‟ of beings, and is being, experienced from the perspective of beings.”660

657 Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?” 89-90.

658 Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?” 90.

659 Heidegger, “What Is Metaphysics?” 91.

660 Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence of Ground,” Pathmarks, 97. 245

In the “Postscript to „What Is Metaphysics?‟” Heidegger further explains what he means by being as “not.” Being is not of a qualitative nature that can be brought forth from beings in an objectified manner like an object. Being is completely “other than all beings,” and “is that which is not.”661 The nothing is a deep-felt expanse consisting of what it is that grants each being the justification to be. We actually experience being “as that which is other than all beings” as it is given in anxiety, if we do not attempt to escape from what is a silent voice that attunes us to face what is the horror surrounding the abyss, Heidegger explains.662 This is what it is to have an experience of being in the nothing. Tillich calls it the “courage to be”—namely, the courage to affirm one‟s own being in the face of the nothing revealed in anxiety. There is a voice of being that calls out of all beings, only the human being, to experience the wonder that indeed, beings are. It is in this way that a human being is called into the truth of being and is attuned in this essential way. A sense of awe dwells near the horror associated with the abyss. And courage is what withstands the experience of the nothing. Therefore, there are three ontological moods: joy, which reveals being in beings; anxiety, which reveals the nothing in beings; and courage, which reveals being-itself as beings overcoming the nothing, so that something, not nothing, is. Heidegger regards essential thinking as that event which is proper to our being, rather than the product of our thinking. He defines essential thinking as “That thinking whose thoughts not only cannot be calculated, but are in general determined by that which is other than beings….”663 This kind of thinking can be thought of as responsive thinking in that it answers to the claim emerging from being inasmuch as the human being permits its own historical essence to be held accountable to a simplicity of the

661 Martin Heidegger, “Postscript to „What Is Metaphysics?‟” Pathmarks, 233.

662 Ibid.

663 Heidegger, “Postscript to „What Is Metaphysics?‟” 236. 246 singular necessity. Originary thinking is a thanking for the favor of being whereby an event, singular in nature, is cleared and allowed “to come to pass [sich ereignen]: that beings are.”664 The thanking takes the form of a human response to a word which emerges from “the silent voice of being.”665 The human word originates in a response of thinking, “which word first lets language arise as the sounding of the word into words.”666 Such thinking obeys the voice of being, and endeavors to discover the word by which the truth about being enters language. Language has to arise from the word in order to be true. Through the very thinking of being the word is protected, and hence fulfills the vocation humans are given in caring for the use of language. The saying from the thinker emerges out of a guarded speechlessness as well as a solicitous clarifying of what is cleared. The nothing that is, for Heidegger, “other than beings” serves to be a veil for being.667

Immediate Objective Awareness

The thought of Heidegger is of importance to the second contextual level of awareness as well, which has to do with being with being. It is the case that Dasein is always already an intimate part of the surrounding world in which Dasein discovers itself, which, in turn, is comprised of other Daseins. The world is a correlate to existence and immediate self-awareness. Furthermore, it is of great import as to the way Dasein is oriented and focused on other Daseins. Dasein is at once rooted and has a fundamental openness about itself. The body is an openness to the world, as it is the vehicle through

664 Ibid.

665 Ibid.

666 Ibid.

667 Heidegger, “Postscript to „What Is Metaphysics?‟” 238. 247 which what is perceived appears. Moreover, there is a kind of thinking that characterizes being in and with the world that points to something about the nature of human being. Heidegger, in juxtaposing meditative thinking and calculative thinking, as is explained below, notes the necessity of both kinds of thinking, while also emphasizing the danger involved if the former kind of thinking is lost to the latter kind of thinking.

Mitsein Heidegger explains in Being and Time how when Dasein first understands itself, it understands itself mostly in regard to its world. When other persons are understood in their Dasein, we meet them as they are at work, which is to say in their being-in-the- world. Even a person whom we meet who appears to be just standing around is living an existential mode of being, and in lingering is not to be understood in terms of a “human- thing” who is merely objectively present. Rather, it is the case that we encounter the other in his or her being-in-the-world. Thus, what Heidegger essentially means by Dasein‟s being-in-the-world is that “being-with”(mitsein) is constitutive of Dasein as being in the world. This being-with so determines and pervades the person in existential terms even when other persons are not present or cannot be perceived. Hence even when Dasein is characterized as a being-alone, and is somewhat isolated as such, and deficient, Dasein is nevertheless in the world as a being-with. This essential structure of being-with makes it possible for others to encounter us.

Heidegger says that if mit-dasein is to continue to be existentially constitutive to our being-in-the-world, then it has to be interpreted, as does our mindful association with what is at hand in terms of the phenomenon of care. Being-with, however, does not have the character of taking care of things. Dasein is related to a being as being-with in terms of concern. Showing genuine and authentic concern in being-with-another is not to free the other person of their cares, but rather, it is to “leap ahead” of that person to give care 248 back so that the person can “become transparent to himself in his care and free for it.”668 This “being-with-others belongs” to Dasein‟s being, and is itself that with which it is concerned.669 In terms of being-with, then, Dasein exists, in terms of its essence, for the sake of other persons. When Dasein is being-with existentially for-the-sake-of-others, those others are disclosed; and, it is these two elements taken together that comprise significance, or what he refers to as the “worldliness of the world.” There is a structure to the worldliness of the world such that others are not merely present in an objective and unattached way, but are present in a way in which they show themselves in terms of their mindful being in the world that surrounds them. Furthermore, Heidegger explains that this disclosedness of being-with “means that the understanding of others already lies in the understanding of being of Da-sein because its being is being-with.”670 He says that the knowledge he is referring to with regard to understanding is not obtained from cognition, but is primordially and existentially present in a way that allows for the possibility of knowledge and cognition. To know ourselves, Heidegger says, is to be grounded in a primordial understanding of being-with. It is in and through the taking care of concern that the other person is first disclosed. Since concern, though, has to do with dwelling in modes that have to do with our deficiency or even indifferent modes, such as “passing-one-another-by,” this essential knowing ourselves requires a getting-to-know-ourselves.

Heidegger says, to be sure, that there is indeed an ontological distinction in relational terms between the way we are toward things that are objectively present in general, and the way we are in our being-toward-others. That this relation of the being of ourselves to the being of other persons can become a kind of projection of our own being

668 Heidegger, BT, 115.

669 Heidegger, BT, 115-116.

670 Heidegger, BT, 116. 249 toward ourselves into that of other persons, and that other persons then become doubles of ourselves involves an incorrect presupposition, he says. This incorrect presupposition is “that the being of Da-sein toward itself is a being toward another….”671 Heidegger explains that “Being toward others is not only an autonomous irreducible relation of being, as being-with it already exists with the being of Da-sein.”672 He says that of course it is the case that a relationship that is full of life and energy that is based on being-with is many times dependent upon exactly how much our own Dasein understands itself, however, this means that our own Dasein is dependent upon the extent to which our essential being with others has created transparence in not obscuring itself. That this is a possibility is due to the fact that “Da-sein as being-in-the-world is always already with others.”673 It is not the case that empathy first composes being-with, but rather, empathy is initially possible on this basis, and is impelled by the predominant modes of being-with in the inevitability of their appearances as such. What makes for the possibility of an existential condition that can be characterized as positive, is an accurate understanding of a stranger. Being-with is considered to be existentially constitutive of being-in-the-world. The way of being that beings encounter in the world that is our own is mit-dasein. “In that Da-sein is at all,” Heidegger says, “it has the kind of being of being-with-one-another.”674 As existentially expressed, distantiality characterizes being-with-one-another.

This distantiality has to do with being-with in that Dasein stands and perdures in a subordinate position to other persons in its everyday, ordinary being-with-one-another. It, as Dasein, is not, Heidegger says. That is, other persons have taken away its being. In

671 Heidegger, BT, 117.

672 Ibid.

673 Ibid.

674 Heidegger, BT, 117-118. 250 the everyday being-with-one-another that is characteristic of ordinary life, our own Dasein disappears entirely into the type of being of other persons so that these others as distinct, gradually vanish. The “they” then holds sway over us, as we receive pleasure or satisfaction in the same way that “they” do. “Publicness” is constituted by distantiality, averageness, and this levelling down, all of which are ways of being of the “they.” Publicness holds sway over the ways in which the world, as well as Dasein, are interpreted. Moreover, publicness is always in the right simply because it fails to get to the heart of reality, being as it is insensitive to distinct levels as well as genuineness.675 Publicness obfuscates everything, but then asserts that whatever has been hidden or concealed is merely the familiar, and as so is easily approached or obtained by everyone. Since the they presents all judgments or decisions as coming from them, it strips Dasein of its own responsibility. One is in the way of a dependency as well as an inauthenticity. The self that constitutes everyday Dasein is called the “they-self,” which is distinct from an “authentic self,” which Heidegger defines as “the self which has explicitly grasped itself.”676 Dasein is, in the they-self, absorbed in the world that is near and which surrounds it, and thus, is dispersed in this world so that it must first discover itself anew. First, “I” am not with regard to my own self; however, I am, in terms of the mode that is the they. It is with regard to the they, and “as the they” that I am first “„given‟ to „myself.‟”677 Thus, Dasein is first the they, and mostly remains so. Everyday Dasein draws its pre-ontological interpretation of its own being from what is the nearest type of being, which is the they. The meaning of being with regard to

Dasein‟s ontology has as its foundation the other existing subjects which are also

675 Heidegger, BT, 119.

676 Heidegger, BT, 121.

677 Ibid. 251 understood with regard to the world. This engrossment in the world causes a passing over of the phenomenon of the authentic being of the world itself, which is then reduced to objective presence. Heidegger explains, therefore, that “The being of beings, which is there, too, is understood as objective presence.”678 He says that it is precisely through this displaying of the positive phenomenon of what is near, that is, our “everyday being- in-the-world,” that it is possible to gain insight into what is the source of “missing the ontological interpretation of this constitution of being.”679 It, as itself, with its everyday type of being, is first what misses itself and conceals itself.

Being-in Being-in-the-world involves the basic relations of “being together with the world (taking care of things), being-with (concern), and being one‟s self (who).”680 Towards the goal of a fundamental ontology, Heidegger wants to examine constitutive characteristics of primordial being, recognizing that he cannot derive the qualities of something primordial from any founded beings. If it happens to be, however, that there are constitutive characteristics that show themselves in the process, then his method of phenomenology, or reasoning about what shows itself from itself, would be justified. The being that is basically constituted by being-in-the-world is invariably its “there.” If one follows its common meaning, “there” means both “here” and “over there.” The “I” that is “here” is always implicitly understood with regard to an “I” that is

“„over there‟ at hand in the sense of being toward it which de-distances, is directional, and takes care.”681 Dasein‟s existential spatiality which establishes its “place” in this

678 Heidegger, BT, 121-122.

679 Heidegger, BT, 122.

680 Heidegger, BT, 123-124.

681 Heidegger, BT, 125. 252 manner is itself centered on being-in-the-world. “Over there” can be considered what is definitely encountered in the world. Hence the possibility of a “here” and “over there” in the “there” exists when a being discloses spatiality through “the being of the there.”682 It is part of the ownmost character of such a being that it is not closed. Heidegger says the expression “there” entails an essential disclosedness. He explains that “Through disclosedness this being (Da-sein) is „there‟ for itself together with the Da-sein of the world.”683 The lumen naturale is an ontic-ontological structure insofar as human being is its

“there,” which is a mode of being. To say that this being is illuminated is to mean that this being is “cleared,” not through another being, but as it is in itself as a being-in-the- world such that it, in itself, is the clearing. “Cleared” as used here has the meaning of truth (aletheia) through an openness insofar as there is a clearing, light, and the shining of being as it is in itself as being-in-the-world. While truth as aletheia enters into discussion at the fourth level of awareness, what is important here to note is that the sustaining ground for truth as correspondence at the third level of awareness is herein established.

Here being emerges from hiddenness and is brought into presence by virtue of the mode of being of Dasein—the openness that characterizes Dasein in terms of being-in-the- world. Dasein either brings the there forward with it, or it is not a being. Dasein and disclosure are synonymous. As its disclosure, the existence of Dasein is referred to by

Heidegger as “standing out and perduring the openness of the there: Ek-sistence.”684 In existential terms, the constitution of the being of disclosure has to do with being in such a way that in the very being of beings, beings are concerned to be the there.

In an everyday sort of way, this type of being is the there. Hence being-in, for

682 Ibid.

683 Ibid.

684 Ibid. 253

Heidegger, is the being of the there. We can be the there, according to Heidegger, through “attunement and understanding.”685 As two constitutive ways of being the there, they are equiprimordial, he says. It is to the idea of attunement to being through mood or (Befindlichkeit) that we shall turn now as we explore Heidegger‟s first existential. We want to be mindful in examining the existential constitution of the there, in order that we can determine the mood appropriate to the practice of contemplative silence, and the openness with which it is characterized.

Befindlichkeit Being-with discloses how it is that being appears, and connects the “I” with whatever the temporal object is at hand. What is signified ontologically in the term “attunement,” entails ontically an ordinary, everyday type of thing, which is “being in a mood.” Before there is a psychology having to do with moods, however, there can be said to be a kind of mood that Dasein always already is in, which manifests how exactly one is and is getting on in life. Heidegger says, “In this „how one is‟ being in a mood brings being to its „there.‟”686 As Dasein is being in a mood, and as it always already is disclosed in conformity with its mood, it has been delivered over to be the being that it has to be in its existence. In the open disclosure “that it is” it is “thrown” (or delivered over) into the there as a being-in-the-world.687 It is in discovering the self in attunement, rather than in perceiving the self to be present there, and as having been found in attunement that always already Dasein has brought itself before itself. Mood is disclosed, not in an inward sort of way of gazing at the thrownness of Dasein, but rather, in the mode of

685 Heidegger, BT, 126.

686 Heidegger, BT, 127.

687 Ibid. 254

“turning toward and away from it.” 688 The mode of attunement is characterized by a turning away. Heidegger says that in phenomenal terms, “what” and “how” mood discloses is incorrectly understood if that which has been disclosed is conflated with that which one knows and even believes. There are specific existential possibilities in which Dasein must exert control with its mood using knowledge and will, however, which therefore signifies that willing and cognition do assume a certain priority in particular instances. However, ontologically, mood can be considered a primordial type of Dasein‟s being wherein Dasein discloses itself to itself prior to cognition as well as all willing, and thus, beyond the range of their disclosure. He refers to the first ontological characteristic having to do with attunement in the following terms: “Attunement discloses Da-sein in its thrownness, initially and for the most part in the mode of an evasive turning away.”689 This “turning away” concerns the fact that Dasein is in the world inauthentically, and that it must find itself in its dispersal into the “they.” Mood does not arise from without or from within, but rather, it is a mode of being-in-the-world. Heidegger says that “Mood has always already disclosed being-in-the-world as a whole and first makes possible directing oneself toward something.”690 To be attuned is not an inner condition that is connected initially to having a relationship with what is psychical. This can be considered a second basic characteristic with regard to attunement. Attunement is a basic

“existential mode of being of the equiprimordial disclosedness of world, being-there- with, and existence because this disclosure itself is essentially being-in-the-world.”691

688 Heidegger, BT, 128.

689 Ibid.

690 Heidegger, BT, 129.

691 Ibid. 255

In addition to the above two determinations derived from attunement, insofar as there is a disclosure of thrownness and our whole being-in-the-world, there is a third disclosure which points to our better comprehending “the worldliness of the world.”692 “Letting something be encountered” is to be attentive and mindful, to listen to and be considerate in a heedful way of circumstances and their consequences, inasmuch as we can be either moved or affected by them. Something in the surrounding world, for example, can be found to be threatening to it, which means that there is an attunement of fearing. The moodedness associated with attunement constitutes, in existential terms, an openness to Dasein‟s world. That a being can be “touched” and thus “have a sense” for a thing such that whatever it is that has touched a being reveals itself through this affect is possible because in ontological terms “senses” are part of a being that has the type of being that is “attuned to being-in-the-world.”693 That affect arises is due to attuned being-in-the-world related in such a way to things in the world that they matter in a manner “prefigured by moods.”694 Heidegger says “In attunement lies existentially a disclosive submission to world out of which things that matter to us can be encountered.”695 Our ordinary circumspection can go wrong because of attunement. However, there is much to be learned even from this fluctuating state of affairs. Merely examining the world in theoretical terms, he says, has flattened what is present to a strictly objective presence which is to say, to a certain uniformity. Further, even the most unadulterated theōria, or contemplation, will not abandon moods. Heidegger explains that “Even when we look theoretically at what is merely objectively present, it does not show itself in its

692 Ibid.

693 Ibid.

694 Ibid.

695 Heidegger, BT, 129-130. 256 pure outward appearance unless this theōria lets it come toward us in a tranquil staying….”696 Heidegger is explaining here the significance of the way in which we are with things. Dasein is disclosed through attunement in the thrownness and dependence upon the world which has already been disclosed in conjunction with its being, and is the type of being in existential terms whereby it is continuously surrendered and given over to the world. Moreover, Dasein allows itself to be concerned by the world in an unspecified way in which it “evades its very self.”697 Heidegger says that “Attunement is an existential, fundamental way in which Da-sein is its there.”698 Attunement characterizes Dasein in ontological terms, and is of basic methodical importance to the existential analytic in terms of its disclosure. The phenomenological interpretation cooperates with the disclosure solely so that whatever is the phenomenal content of the disclosure as such can be existentially elevated to the conceptual level. In drawing this section to a close it should be reiterated that, according to Heidegger, attunement is a way in which we are our “there,” insofar as we are attuned to our being through mood. Attunement entails a kind of surrender. This surrender has to do with our ability to allow something to be encountered, and to be, therefore, attentive and mindful. Moreover, we practice submission in such a way that we existentially give ourselves over to that which is our there. In so doing, we are affected or moved in our very being, as that which is encountered matters to us. This attunement to our being through mood is a being-with insofar as there is a disclosure of how my being manifests as well as “how I am.” And, this being-with connects the “I” with whatever is the temporal object.

696 Heidegger, BT, 130.

697 Heidegger, BT, 131.

698 Ibid. 257

Gelassenheit In addition to attunement to being through mood, that is, being-with, the notion of “letting be” (Gelassenheit), as Heidegger uses it is significant for a hermeneutics of contemplative silence. In his “Memorial Address,” he makes an important distinction between two kinds of thinking. The first kind of thinking is calculative thinking, which is characterized by the peculiarity of reckoning with preexisting conditions whenever it is that we engage in the activities of planning, researching, organizing, and investigating.699 Heidegger explains that these conditions are taken account of in terms of a calculated intention that they will serve some specific purpose. Hence explicitly defined results can be counted on. Calculative thinking involves computation. It races from one possibility to another, never ceasing to entertain myriad prospects. Calculative thinking does not collect itself. It certainly does not contemplate the meaning that is present in all that is. The ordinary view of thinking is that it is a type of activity that leads to our understanding objects as such.700 Hence it can be considered a type of willing, and thus, an utterly human enterprise. It is representative thinking insofar as it depicts what is considered typical about things. Meditative thinking is the other kind of thinking Heidegger discusses.701 Meditative thinking as Heidegger characterizes it can be thought of as relational thinking in that connections are made as they become apparent and realized as actual in and through this wider and deeper perspective, which the thinker is taking into account. Meditative thinking has to do with contemplating the meaning which is prevalent in all that is. Meaning (Sinn) comes to light in awareness, or thinking remains open to what

699 Martin Heidegger, “Memorial Address,” Discourse on Thinking, trans. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund, intro. John M. Anderson (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1966), 46.

700 John M. Anderson, “Introduction,” Discourse on Thinking,” 23-24.

701 Heidegger, “Memorial Address,” 46. 258 meaning there is. The beginning point for meditative thinking, then, is not actual objects, but rather, the field within which the objects appear. This involves an awareness of a horizon, the awareness of a field of awareness that provides given meaning to our thinking. Meditative thinking is open to the actual field of awareness itself, as meaning, and as given. It demands effort and practice, and waiting insofar as we are able to bide our time. Human in its thinking can be characterized as a meditating human being. He explains how we dwell in our everyday, ordinary lives on that which is close to us and that which concerns us. Yet, he says that “we forget to ponder.”702 This can be difficult to do in an age in which humans have a technical relation to the world. We have to be with something in such a way that we bring the depth of our own thinking, meditative thinking, or contemplative awareness, to bear. Then, with originality, we can reach a new understanding. He warns against setting calculative thinking and meditative thinking in direct opposition to one another. Rather, meditative thinking must be at work continuously in this atomic age. The machinery associated with technology is indispensable; however, we are in bondage to technical devices. We should use them in the manner in which they should be used, and then distance ourselves from them in such a manner that our personal and real core remains unaffected by them. This manner of conducting ourselves, in expressing both a “yes” and a “no” to technology, is referred to by Heidegger as a “releasement toward things.” (“die Gelassenheit zu den Dingen.”)703 It should be noted here that the translator points out that Gelassenheit, in the contemporary sense of the term, means “composure,” calmness,” and “unconcern.”704 However, it is also explained that the early Rhineland mystic,

702 Heidegger, “Memorial Address,” 50.

703 Heidegger, “Memorial Address,” 54.

704 Heidegger, “Memorial Address,” 54n4. 259

Meister Eckhart, uses it in his writings in the sense of a letting go of the world so that one is free to give oneself over to God. Heidegger does, in fact, draw a distinction, as noted below, in his “Conversation” between Meister Eckhart and himself in that he thought of releasement “as within the domain of will….”705 Releasement is interpreted and defined in this study as “letting be” in that we are “released” into something in such a way that we remain freely present and open to reality, to that which is hidden, and that which can, at anytime, therefore, be disclosed in the moment. There is a sense in which there is releasement “from” something, and a releasement “to” something, which is authentic releasement for Heidegger. Moreover, Heidegger says that this being released to a region in our being has to do with that to which we originally belong, and that we are appropriated to and through this very region. Releasement is also considered as the higher activity of meditative thinking as it relates to openness. Releasement as a distinguishing characteristic of the true nature of the human being includes openness and, by way of it, “direct and immediate reference beyond man to Being.”706 It should be noted, too, that Heidegger stipulates that releasement lies “beyond the distinction between activity and passivity,” and that it “does not belong to the domain of the will.”707 Heidegger explains that “In waiting we leave open what we are waiting for…Because waiting releases itself into openness.”708 We also are resting, in this opening onto mystery. In Heidegger‟s own words, things “rest in the return to the abiding of the expanse of their self-belonging,” and “rest is the seat and the reign of all movement.”709 Hence waiting and resting are associated with

705 Martin Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path,” Discourse on Thinking,” 61.

706 Anderson, “Introduction,” 25.

707 Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path,” 61.

708 Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path,” 68.

709 Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path,” 67. 260 releasement. Releasement is very close to the meaning of contemplation, insofar as it is beyond the distinction between activity (thinking) and passivity (perceiving). If we hold together both a releasement toward things and the openness to the hidden meaning of things, to the mystery, then a possibility for us to dwell in our world in a completely different manner is bestowed upon us. This releasement and openness promise to provide for us a new base that we can stand upon and bear without being endangered by the world of technology. There is, according to Heidegger, a much greater danger that could come to pass when the danger of war is eliminated. That danger would be that the technological revolution “could so captivate, bewitch, dazzle, and beguile” humans, so that calculative thinking could one day be considered “as the only way of thinking.”710 Then, there would be a great risk in the form of an indifference with regard to meditative thinking which could result in total thoughtlessness. Hence the special nature of humans—that we are meditative beings— would be rejected. The issue, Heidegger says, is that of saving the essential nature of humans by carrying on meditative thinking.

This releasement toward things and openness to the mystery thrive through persevering in courageous thinking. Heidegger explains meditative thinking in terms of an opening of humans insofar as there is an opening of a region. He refers to this region in terms of “that-which-regions” or “regioning” in that it is a movement whereby human nature is brought forth in it.711 Meditative thinking, in its being regarded as an indwelling expresses a necessity that it must become true for that-which-regions, that is, the dynamic ground out of which the nature of humans emerges. It is through this indwelling that we have the ability to express what is a resolve for truth. Importantly, while humans make a resolve for truth, what it is that is required by humans remains

710 Heidegger, “Memorial Address,” 56.

711 Anderson, “Introduction,” 30-31. 261 independent of humans.712 Heidegger is not, therefore, speaking about subjective truth here. Entailed in the resolve for truth is the necessity that the regioning or movement involved in that-which-regions should be a disclosure, or unveiling. In this disclosure human “nature as thinking” does not create or impose structure, but rather it is the receiving of the movement (regioning).713 Hence humans are essential to the disclosure that is made. This identity of openness is only a partial identity, however, as there is more complexity to this relation between the human and that-which-regions. The human, as an indwelling, is positioned in that-which-regions, and in this stand “resolves for its disclosure,” insofar as it is a coming forth in the truth.714 The resolve for truth in expressing “that-which-regions as the bringing forth of all natures,” should not be regarded as subjective.715 It is that which emerges out of inner necessity, and can be understood as the foundation of our thinking itself. This inner necessity is bestowed as a gift to humans. The nature of thinking is such that its origin lies prior to that of thought. Meditative thinking has a ground, which includes the resolve for truth, and is not, therefore, that-which-regions, but rather, its nature. Meditative thinking in its openness and opening is, therefore, “grounded in that-which-regions as undisclosed, as veiled,” as well as in that which is “disclosed, as unveiled.”716 The relation of these two aspects that comprise meditative thinking has to do with movement in thinking. In this movement, thought opens in turning itself to whatever is given; and what is given approaches the demand of thought that what this is be

712 Anderson, “Introduction,” 31. My emphasis.

713 See Anderson, “Introduction,” 31 and Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path,” 81.

714 Anderson, “Introduction,” 32.

715 Anderson, “Introduction,” 35.

716 Anderson, “Introduction,” 34-35. 262 articulated, and thus become true. Hence this turning toward and opening to the given actually sets whatever is given at a distance, because it is the movement which distinguishes and thus sets thinking apart from the given meaning. Meditative thinking can therefore be thought of with regard to its two aspects in terms of nearness and distance. Heidegger explains this movement “by saying that we are coming near to and so at the same time remaining distant from that-which-regions….”717 This movement takes what is given and veiled and makes it into what is unveiled as well as articulated. Heidegger characterizes this movement as Being. This movement would seem to imply that there is continuity between what are the two grounds, that is, that-which-regions as well as its nature. We can shift perspective here from human being to Being as Heidegger explains that “Evidently truth‟s independence from man is a relation to human nature, a relation which rests on the regioning of human nature into that which regions.”718 We are right here in the middle of the ultimate as we have gone beyond what is subjective—that which is our human perspective. The continuity that is attained between on the one hand, “thinking of opening and openness,” and on the other hand,

“the resolve for truth,” is that which furnishes the last step to Being.719 In all probability the continuity vanishes, however, and in so doing, thus mirrors the characteristic vanishing aspect of Being. Heidegger cautions against a literal interpretation of this position in the midst of what is ultimate.

Serene Acquiescence and Attentiveness We have seen how for Heidegger the way in which we approach thinking is of paramount importance. Chauvet, in his interpretation of Heidegger‟s work, explains this

717 Anderson, “Introduction, “ 37. See also Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path,” 86.

718 See Anderson, “Introduction,” 38. See also Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path,” 84.

719 Anderson, “Introduction,” 39. 263 way as one in which “thinkers learn to serenely acquiesce.”720 Serene acquiescence, according to Chauvet, is a process of “learning to „let go,‟” whereby we learn in small increments “to reverse the direction of the tradition with which one lives and by which one is nourished.”721 He equates letting go with letting be or Gelassenheit, as Heidegger employs the idea. In his appropriation of Heidegger‟s work, Chauvet further says that if we attempt to overcome metaphysics by jumping outside of it we will naively repeat it. The task, which is never fully carried out, can only progress insofar as there is a stepping backwards on the part of a thinker from the received tradition. There has to be an unmasking of what Chauvet calls “the never-elucidated metaphysical presuppositions.”722 The process by which the unmasking occurs is a kind of emptying activity. The thinker empties of the notion of any prospect of attaining some ultimate foundation. In reversing the direction of thought, the thinker is now oriented to set off in a new direction as much as is possible, in order to begin from the uneasy “non-place” whereby the ongoing activity of permanent questioning is carried on. This non-place that Heidegger refers to is a correspondence to, as well as the guarantee of being. Moreover, according to Chauvet, “this ecstatic breach that a human being is” is that with which we must start to learn how to think.723 Thus, the emptiness is certainly not nothing, and should not be considered a deficiency due to the absence of a god. Chauvet explains that it is in this very absence that humans are enabled to reach their truth, which they do by overcoming the barriers of reason insofar as it is activity of an objectifying and calculating kind. The task is burdensome as it remains difficult to consent to the presence

720 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 53.

721 Ibid.

722 Ibid.

723 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 53n29. 264 of absence. The task is also unachievable with its very essence being one of incompleteness. Chauvet is saying that we are being challenged to be attentive in our thinking to the way being is. We are on a transitive way, in fact, we are always on the way when we think; this is what it means to think, he explains in interpreting Heidegger. It is the “way making its way,” and that which is on its way is set on its way insofar as there is “a speaking way.”724 This speaking has to do with listening as well as a response in opening to what is a primordial summons on the part of Being. Words are addressed by us in that we speak by virtue of the fact that we have always-already been claimed and belong. The hearing becomes genuine insofar as we become a part of the spoken. Chauvet says, “the treasure is nothing else but the work of journeying which takes place in ourselves, the labor of giving birth to ourselves since it is we ourselves who are being plowed, turned over and who are bearing fruit by becoming different.”725 He calls this event “the infinity of genesis” which has to be rehabilitated in a perspective that understands the overcoming of metaphysics in that the task is possible strictly by way of the “permanent non-completion” of it.726 In echoing Heidegger, Chauvet says that this kind of thinking includes “human beings themselves, for what is at stake is to think the truth about being,” by way of being.727 But what does this “by way of being” mean? For Heidegger, as Chauvet points out, being and being there “subsist in a relation of mutual belonging; this relation may become the object of reflection because being is never separate from language and language is “the house of being.”728 Hence we

724 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 54n30.

725 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 54.

726 Ibid.

727 Ibid.

728 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 54-55. See Heidegger‟s book, On the Way to Language. 265 overcome metaphysics in being always underway, on the way, or on the path toward language. Chauvet believes that in considering a conception of language that is non- instrumental, it becomes necessary to rethink everything. As a reverse journey in terms of metaphysics, the journey unknots rather than dissolves what has been made by metaphysics, which results in our journey reconnecting metaphysics in a different way. Rather than our exerting mastery and control over language, language is, primarily, a summons or vocation for us. Chauvet explains, in referring to Heidegger, that

“Transcending the congenital dualisms of metaphysics, thought unavoidably questions the instrumental representation of language.”729 While language can name and label things in an instrumental sort of way, at the ontological level, he explains, “language is capable of seizing us—of trapping us.”730 This power illustrates how language is not simply an attribute of our human nature. Hence rather than our possessing it, we are possessed by language. Language as the voice of Being is the means through which humans come into being. It is within a matrix of the universe that has always already been spoken into the world that precedes their arrival, that the human, the individual subject comes into being. The saying of language in its primordiality is the coming forth and emergence of being. This “coming-to-presence” is, as essence the coming advent, and is essentially marked by the touch of absence.731 The presence can be regarded as a trace of that which is absent, that is, of the passing that is always-already in the past. The trace signifies a happening whereby we are called to attentiveness, to that which is new—that which will still come.

The way in which we are in our being with being has ethical implications because it

729 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 55.

730 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 56.

731 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 58. 266 includes our relationship to language. That is, we can regard language solely for utility, and objectify it, or we can understand language as a way of also expressing something of who we are in our humanness. Attentiveness and watchfulness—a readiness inasmuch as we are mindful and ready for what is to come—is the way in which we are being with being. The human project is one of learning how to speak well, not in the value-laden sense of the notion with reference to grammatical and aesthetic norms, but in the way of letting ourselves be spoken such that we can express a silence that is appropriate.

Chauvet comments that “The human mode of the appropriation of Being as play and grace is through the disappropriation, that is, the Gelassenheit.”732 He calls this a “gratuitousness of being” that characterizes a gracious attitude.733 Habitual and ordinary everyday use of language must be broken in the very address or speech of being so that it is not merely calcified representations, explains Chauvet. He says that this is precisely what Heidegger accomplished. He believes that Heidegger did not have an interest in sounding esoteric, but that he was interested and motivated by what he regarded as a necessity in granting proper respect to what is the mystery surrounding Being. Finally, I want to mention that Simone Weil, in a beautiful, reflective essay, addresses the notion of attention within the context of studious endeavors, and attests to the important work that it is. In this respect, studious endeavors can be seen as preparatory for the kind of attentiveness, waiting, and openness that are characteristic of the second level of awareness. A certain receptivity is essential. She says that “Attention is an effort, the greatest of all efforts, perhaps,….”734 She explains the way in which

732 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 61.

733 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 60.

734 Simone Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd, intro. Leslie Fiedler (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 61. 267 attention works: “Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty,…it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought, but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse knowledge we have acquired….”735 Furthermore, she connects the notion of attention with that of waiting in that she says “Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seeking anything,….”736 In emphasizing the importance of waiting, she says that “We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them.”737

Reflective Awareness At the third level of awareness, it is possible to articulate the awareness of objects in the world. As previously mentioned, language is the first object. What we reflect on is language. Proper concepts are formulated that define percepts. In joining together the concept with the percept, which is expressed in the linguistic form of subject-copula- object, a judgment is produced. We have seen how being has to do with understanding rather than perception as it is a matter of ascertaining the sense in the sign. The sign is twofold. For example, it is the combination of words in the proposition, “This tree is old,” or in a more limited way, “is.” When the proposition is understood, we see what sense is in it; and we therefore see being itself as meaning. Second, the sign can be regarded as an appearing object, as when we understand an object, we are ascertaining a connection between what is singular and what is universal (“being as reality”), which is signified in terms of its appearance to the mind.738 It is this appearance that finds expression in a judgment. The meaning of a judgment can be detected or denied.

735 Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God, 62.

736 Ibid.

737 Ibid.

738 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 48. 268

Being manifests in language through the entire sense of the sentence. Through understanding a proposition, being becomes open and accessible to the mind. The question of truth arises at the third level of awareness, insofar as we can ask if there is correspondence between how truth manifests in meaning and how truth manifests in reality. Being appears in the form of a judgment in language as well as in the world as reality in the connectedness of the universal and the particular. Whereas interpretation strives at clarity of meaning, verification involves making a determination of the truth of what is said. With reflective awareness and the concomitant critical thinking that accompanies it, truth lies in the correspondence between the thought itself and the percept, with the locus of this reflection lying in the judgment that issues forth. Scharlemann explains that “Without the capacity for reflection—the self‟s relating itself to its relation-to—a distinction between the entity as the referent of an assertion and the entity as the bearer of an essence cannot be made.”739 In order to make the judgment, “This is a rose,” we have to add two categories: 1) substance, which is a concept of identity through time, and 2) causality, insofar as we have to posit the causal law or applications in two senses, inasmuch as the rose is a causal nexus and affects other things, and the rose also affects me. The rose is an independent entity, it has substance, and is in causal relationship to me. Also, the rose has a cause—something brought it about. These two concepts, substance and causality, are universals in the form of categories as a priori concepts. The concept of a rose is an empirical concept. Empirical concepts have no necessity because the objects to which they refer—in this example, a rose—is not necessary because we can imagine a world or a garden without a rose. The empirical judgment is either true or false. We enumerate properties, and if there is correspondence between the empirical concept and the percept, then the statement is true.

739 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 82. 269

Hence in the example above, we can say that there is correspondence between what is said—“This is a rose,”—and that it is so. An object (an acorn as just an acorn, for example) and a symbol (an acorn as the very essence of what an oak tree is) can be distinguished by reflection, according to Scharlemann. An assertion has an object as the referent. The object is what the assertion is about. The object inasmuch as it synthesizes elements that are perceptual as well as cognizable, indicates being as appearing in a specific place, and as indicating an essence; this object is the referent of an assertion and the signifier of yet another referent, as an essence that is embodied there.740 The essence can be considered as a second referent, and paraphrased in terms of a capacity, which is the meaning that is the being of a thing. Scharlemann explains that “A sentence has a meaning (carried by the linguistic signs), but an entity also has a meaning (carried by its appearance as a signifier of essence).”741 The verification of the assertion about the symbol is different than that of the assertion with regard to an object. In the assertion concerning the symbol, “A tree is this,” the thing as a symbol reveals essence. In showing essence, Scharlemann says that rather than it saying that “This is what is meant by the word or idea „tree,‟” it says, “There we can see what it means for a tree to be a tree at all.”742 The thing as symbol works as the sign which carries the meaning, which in turn indicates the being as the very essence of the thing. Finally, he explains that “To see that the meaning of an assertion is the same as the reality of an object is to experience truth upon that object; to see that the meaning of an object is the same as the reality of the object (though meaning is distinct from reality) is to experience truth upon a symbol.”743

740 Ibid.

741 Ibid.

742 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 83.

743 Ibid. Furthermore, Scharlemann explains that “We determine whether a thing has certain properties (“this is a tree,” “the leaf is green”) by what we can see—with our eyes, our intuitive 270

Reflexive Awareness The fourth level of awareness is reflexive awareness, which has to do with the truth about truth, or reflection on the event of being in truth. Truth can be characterized as disclosure rather than correspondence at this level. The awareness of time is brought to this level. In considering the truth about truth, the temporality of being emerges as an event; being is not simply the awareness of being and the appearing of being. Being has a temporal structure in appearing. Although humans have no access to immediacy in that it is systematically elusive, the thinking “I” or consciousness itself is immediate. When we reflect on reflecting or think about thinking, which is reflexivity, we have the memory of the event of pain or of joy, for example. When the memory subsides and diminishes into the horizon, we lose the immediacy of the situation that initially generated the pain or the joy, and we thus no longer feel it. However, the pain or joy is still registering in time-consciousness, which means that I still have it, albeit in a diminutive form. I can, through this past experience, anticipate new experiences of pain or joy. Our memory and imagination, and the oscillation between the two, assist us in spanning the gap, and bring us up to the door of immediacy. We have awareness of the one or the other, and an awareness of being neither, and we are aware of this awareness. With the event, there is an irreducibility about the subject-object relation. I also want to mention here that the symbol can have a reflexive character about it. We can say that the certitude of truth “is the truth that no one possesses the truth.”744 perception of form, or through some measuring instrument. We determine whether a thing shows the essence, or being, of what it names by what we can understand in view of the object. If, for, example the response to a particular thing is to think or say, “It makes sense for a tree to have branches if to be a tree means to be able to offer protection and refuge,” then in view of this object we can understand the being of a tree. The essence (in this case, the capacity of offering protection and refuge) is what is shown by the particular object; that capacity is the second referent, which is contained in the first referent, the perceived object tree, and which we become aware of as an understanding. This is what seeing that the meaning of the object is the same as the reality of the object amounts to.”

744 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 178. 271

There is a self-relativization entailed here which has to do with an experience that we have of truth that is characterized as both the experience of truth and the experience that places truth in connection with what is its opposite. Scharlemann explains that “The truth about truth is experienced as the possibility of its being other than how it is actually experienced. There is no experience of truth that is itself an experience of the one and only truth, except in the reflexive form of the experience of the relativity of truth.”745 The truth about truth of the symbol is that a depth can be experienced in that it allows an experience of what is true, as well as what is false. Reflexive awareness therefore sees that reflection carries the capability of being able to see the true as well as the false.746 Let us take a closer look at reflexive awareness through the prism of the work of Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Schleiermacher, respectively. These figures make important contributions to the notion of reflexive awareness.

Heidegger Whereas reflective awareness concerns the truth, as mentioned above, reflexive awareness is concerned with the truth about truth which, according to Heidegger, is an event insofar as there is an announcement of the meaning of being, and the announcement of being itself. What becomes manifest in the being of the temporal object is a being-with in that the temporal object has a meaning, which is namely a meaning of being. Its meaning reciprocally determines the meaning of my being, and it therefore discloses a mode of being. I want to briefly mention two modes of being that Heidegger develops. The first mode of being is that of a work of art, and the second mode of being is that of poetic language.

745 Ibid.

746 Scharlemann, The Being of God, 179. 272

First, in the mode of being of a work of art, “the world worlds,”—the opening up of a world and a disclosure of truth are made.747 This mode of being is religious because it shows us a living universe to which we respond. In this way, voice is given to our understanding of life. In his essay entitled “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger discusses how in the artwork itself, that of a pair of peasant shoes in the painting by Van Gogh, for example, one is gathered into the truth of the life of the shoes.748 The world that is disclosed is at once revealing and concealing, as truth happens in the disclosure, and yet something, too, is held back in reserve. In this happening, something appears from itself as itself as one lets it be as it is, and lets it show itself; there is a concealedness which belongs to the nature of the thing, in this case, the shoes, which Heidegger says should not be forced out. That is, the peasant shoes disclose the way in which they belong to the earth, as well as project the world of the person who wears them, although we cannot learn of everything of that world. Hence it is in this way that we can speak of what is revealed as concealed; this is an originary event. The earthly quality of the earth and the depth of the work quality of work, in its revealing and concealing in the painting of the peasant shoes, is about what they show—being, and perhaps even the disclosure of being itself. In this way, art opens us up to a new world here and now—the world in which we actually live. Art brings us deeper into ourselves, and tells us what it means to be in the world; it is in this sense that truth happens. It is an event in the present, in the time that is “now.” Second, in terms of the mode of being of poetic language, Heidegger explores the relationship between language and being in his essay entitled “Language,” which is a calling into question of the meaning of being in the most fundamental sort of way.749 At

747 Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” 43.

748 See Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” 32-36.

749 See Martin Heidegger, “Language,” Poetry, Language, Thought. 273 stake is ontology for Heidegger, the very essence and existence of human being in the world. Language, in showing itself from itself, is the voice of being, and is the house of being. One has one‟s being in the speaking of language. This speaking of language, the voice of language, is an articulation out of stillness, silence, and the poetic world; the author disappears and language speaks. The poetic word is somehow speaking out of the things of the world, and one can ask who the voice of being is that can speak this word. The word is originary, as the word both reveals and conceals something, just as the artwork did. The thinking of being discloses through the self-disclosure of language itself. The poetic word is able to announce being itself, and think according to its own voice the meaning of being. The nature of language is shown in being and silence, as being is disclosed. In this way, the poetic word in the announcing of being itself is an “event” of truth, the “happening” of truth. Further, poetic words announce the truth about truth. Language summons and differentiates being and beings. In the speaking of language, there is a holding together of the world and things.750 This is the “dif-ference.” The dif-ference carries with it pain, as in the relation between the one and the many, which is carried out through language; there is an apparent loss of unity in the distinguishing of world and things that occurs, but this duality also signals unity at the same time. As finite and limited as language is, being nonetheless shines forth through it, hinting at a wholeness. Stillness bears the world and endures the world. However, the human is linguistic, and comes into one‟s own through a “presencing” of language, which is the speaking and sounding forth, we can say, of a stillness and quiet, a silence so loud that humans may hear it. Heidegger says that humans are able to speak in relation to how well they listen. Responsive listening involves receiving as well as replying, and is authentic and genuine insofar as it

750 See Heidegger, “Language,” and his commentary on Georg Trakl‟s poem, “A Winter Evening.” See also David E. Klemm‟s “Introduction to Heidegger‟s „Language,‟” Hermeneutical Inquiry: Volume I: The Interpretation of Texts, 135-139. 274 listens to the stillness and holds back anticipation. Hence although the poem may end, the language speaks on, and humans respond by receiving and carrying stillness and silence within. Finally, I want to mention that in his essay entitled “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Heidegger discusses what it is to dwell poetically, and how it is that building belongs to dwelling. This is his approach to illustrate and disclose how language creatively moves within the human being. Language is more than a way of expressing ourselves; language has a way of withdrawing that is not the incapacity for speech, but the silencing, which we oftentimes fail to recognize—or heed. When we dwell, we stay with things, and thus persist through spaces. He explains that “I am never here only, as this encapsulated body; rather, I am there, that is, I already pervade the room, and only thus can I go through it.”751 This inward turn by Heidegger has to do with the relationship between humans and space, between what is thought and spoken. Preserving and presencing the fourfold “of earth and sky, divinities and mortals,” is dwelling; building for Heidegger is “letting-dwell.”752 We have to be able to dwell in order to build. Building and thinking are necessary for dwelling. Dwelling involves ongoing learning and the insight of the homelessness of mortals who dwell insofar as they “initiate their own nature—their being capable of death as death—into the use and practice of this capacity, so that there may be a good death.”753 Dwelling involves remaining with things in such a way that there is a unity of accomplishment by the fourfold. Moreover, dwelling maintains the fourfold in things. There is creativity involved in poetically dwelling, as it primarily involves letting things be and letting things show themselves from themselves as one is faithfully attentive to this happening

751 Martin Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” Poetry, Language, Thought, 155.

752 Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 149; 156.

753 Heidegger, “Building Dwelling Thinking,” 148. 275 and disclosure of truth; this is creative living, and what it is to “be” religious for Heidegger. It is out of the voice of silence that language speaks Being, whether it be in the poetic word or the work of art, where the event of understanding happens “on the way to language,” and where there is infinite disclosure of the meaning of being.754 Authentic life for Heidegger is an intensification of life. There is a possibility for Dasein to live authentically insofar as it lives in the way of understanding itself—being and living for itself more and more continually this way, which is a becoming in the “lived experience of lived experience”—at the reflexive level in terms of hermeneutics.755 Truth is not correspondence between a thought and a percept at this level, rather, truth is an event of the disclosure of the being of something. Things can show forth both their own being and Being that comes from the ground of total meaning. Hence aletheia—“the unconcealedness of beings”—is a happening of truth, which will always remain incomplete; it is an event in the life of being in the world.756

Ricoeur

Whereas with Heidegger, it is in poetic language that language speaks, with Ricoeur, rather than merely employ the terms “word” and “saying,” he brings in textuality, to give us an indication of where language speaks. Texts are linguistic performances that include words whether they be spoken as sentences or written as texts. Texts can be considered to carry an objective standing in that they serve to mediate between our reasoning capabilities, or thinking, and our reality, or being. Hence they can be considered material reality, whether they be in the form of a speech sound or the written impression on the page of a book, and there is an ideality about them as they have

754 See Heidegger, On the Way to Language.

755 See Benjamin D. Crowe, Heidegger‟s Religious Origins: Destruction and Authenticity (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006), 22.

756 Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” 49. 276 structure or form about them. Hermeneutics can be narrowly defined as the “reflexive interpretation of poetic texts.”757 With textuality, there are three levels that culminate in self-reflexive thinking. At the first level, there is a direct reading of the text, or a direct presentation of what is so, or what appears to be the case. At the second level, one attempts to recover in conceptual terms by way of description or explanation, the primary relation that characterizes the naïve understanding of the text. In other words, a direct reading or presentation is only one possible way to relate to the text. At this level, the direct reading can elicit our feelings and observations. One also critically ascertains the structure of the text, which indicates the boundary of an ontological world wherein the reflexive interpreter is positioned. At the third level, there is new subject matter for the reflexive interpreter, as the meaning of being in the aforementioned ontological world is the subject of interpretation. That is, the reflexive interpreter can identify with the initial primary relation, or with a critical relation. The reflexive interpreter realizes that she is not just awareness itself, but that she is a finite, moving subject. The structural analysis designates another dimension of the overall meaning. There is recognition on the part of the “I” of the naïve meaning, the critical disintegration of meaning to one now of immanent signs, and of new meaning that can be opened up through a comparison between them. We also can consider whether our thinking about the reflections about the direct readings of the text carry truth or falsity, are correct or incorrect, etc. The “I” can actualize itself as a unified mark of a subject pole in unfolding a text-world over and against both the text-world that is imaginatively constructed, or an analytically displayed textual structure. Finally, there is a deeper possibility in that the floating, moving reflexive subject through opening to multiple self-understandings can freely judge if one of those self-understandings is a possibility insofar as the text-world so presented provides the context of meaning in

757 Klemm, HTPR, 107-108. The following two paragraphs are based on this work. 277 which the “I” can be the “I” that it genuinely is. It is in this way that the possibility exists for hermeneutics to lead to self-discovery in and through the texts, which is the event of appropriation. Thought and immediacy are held together, and this movement makes possible the anticipatory re-creation of language of Ricoeur‟s second naiveté. The hermeneutical self can adopt imaginative variations through which it potentially can respond to the reality that is expressed in the discourse of literature and poetry, to cite two examples.758 Reason comes together with different modes of being, such as the mode of being of an artwork, or the mode of being of poetic language, as was discussed in relation to Heidegger. Grasping and responding to texts, with all of the possible imaginative variations of hermeneutics, gives rise, for Ricoeur, to the acknowledgment of the multiplicity of meanings in life, and the conflict of interpretations. The self who is posited through effort and desire, and who is engaged in reflection is the ethical “I am,” for Ricoeur. We have seen how reflection has to become hermeneutics, because we can only grasp through signs in the world the activity of our existence.759 Recovery of existential activity becomes the task of appropriating and reappropriating the effort to exist and the desire to be. The abstract “I” gives pursuit of the hermeneutical self. Through self-awareness, there is an ongoing reconciling activity that the self engages in; this is the hermeneutical self of Ricoeur. It is the work of hermeneutics to illustrate that existence reaches expression and meaning through continually interpreting the significations that arise within culture.760 The awareness of the awareness of being with being, or reflexive awareness is a recapitulation of that openness and reflexive recovery that is the second naiveté, which is the critical

758 Paul Ricoeur, “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics,” From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. John B. Thompson, 37.

759 Ricoeur, “The Hermeneutics of Symbols: II,” 330.

760 Ricoeur, “Existence and Hermeneutics,” 22. 278 appropriation of that primordial silence that sublates reflection into reflexive self- awareness.

Schleiermacher In thinking about thinking, the reflexively aware subject is, according to Schleiermacher, the finite “I” in its identity, a unity of thinking and being—a unity of opposites, who in its very being has to unify those opposites.761 Further, in thinking about thinking, we are actually thinking about what it is that inherently separates into both sameness and otherness. He views “thinking as action” that “I” am carrying out, or doing, and whatever it is that “I” am thinking about, or the being as thought through the thinking process.762 Hence thinking about thinking separates into thinking, on the one hand, and being, on the other hand. It is part of the primordial structure of thinking to think about being. Thinking is in this sense a mediating activity between an intelligible form that derives out of the intellectual function of human being, which is referred to as “ideal being,” and sensible content that derives from the organic function of human being, which is referred to as “real being.” Further, we can add the dimensions of space and time to the activity of thinking: It mediates, in turn, between thinking, in the strict sense of the term, as temporal activity controlled through an intellectual function, and perceiving, as the activity controlled through an organic function, which joins spatial content.

Schleiermacher concerns himself with the question as to how it is possible to think the essence of being, or a thing. Essence can be considered as a principle by which

761 See David E. Klemm, “Schleiermacher‟s Hermeneutic: the Sacred and the Profane,” The Sacred and the Profane: Contemporary Demands on Hermeneutics, ed. Jeffrey F. Keuss (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003), 70-72. The following three paragraphs are based on this work.

762 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Dialectic or, The Art of Doing Philosophy: A Study Edition of the 1811 Notes, trans. and intro. Terrence N. Tice (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1996), 41. 279 a being, or a thing, is determined in terms of both sameness and otherness. Being is, first, a being that is similar to all other beings. Second, being is the same or identical to itself, i.e., what appears is the same in terms of its concept. Third, being is other than what are all the other things in the world, i.e., there is a way in which a being or thing specifically differs from all other things. Fourth, being is other than itself, i.e., there is a way in which appearing being or thing differs in terms of its concept. In order to be able to relate the different elements of sameness and otherness in concepts or judgments, all the related elements have to originally share the same primordial ground, which means there has to be “an absolute sameness of sameness and otherness” that allows for the possibility of acts of joining and differentiating sameness and otherness in both concepts as well as judgments.763 The common and primordial ground has to be formulated as a first principle in absolute terms of thinking, in order that thinking be possible. There has to be a “transcendental-logical status” to the first principle in terms of the condition of the possibility of real moments in which the “I” thinks about being; and there has to be a “transcendental-ontological principle” to prevent a collapse in which the otherness of being would think with regard to non-dialectical sameness in terms of the concepts that are used as thinking thinks in terms of real beings. Hence original knowing (ein Urwissen) is, for Schleiermacher, what it is to postulate the original absolute identity of thinking and being—what is in itself insofar as it originates from itself. The first principle as ultimate “must be the absolute identity of the sameness and otherness of thinking and of being in their identity and difference.”764 This is what divine essence is, or the being of the divine—God, for Schleiermacher. This first principle is also Anselmian in that it is that than which nothing greater can be thought. To be sure, the idea of this unknowable, infinite, ultimate ground (Urdenken) of thinking

763 Klemm, “Schleiermacher‟s Hermeneutic: the Sacred and the Profane,” 71.

764 Klemm, “Schleiermacher‟s Hermeneutic: the Sacred and the Profane,” 72. 280 and being is the Absolute, or “God.” It should be noted, too, that in the feeling (Gefühl) of absolute dependence, immediate self-consciousness refers to an original unity of thinking and being in the finite self, which mirrors the infinite ground.

Contemplative Awareness The fifth level of awareness is contemplative awareness. This level adds the awareness of the awareness of the awareness. The awareness is of an instantiated mode of being. In terms of this study, we can say that the awareness is of the mode of capable being. The awareness sees the mode of capable being as the manifestation of being itself, and is, in this case, the activity of actively grasping the mode of capable being. If the manifestation of being is, in addition, seen and understood as a symbol in terms of its givenness, contemplative awareness can call it a symbol of God. For example, take the case of the manifestation of being itself in and through the thinking activity, striking us as a universal phenomenon of illumination—the event in which things emerge from the darkness of unintelligibility and appear in the light of intelligibility as what they really are. If the phenomenon of light takes on symbolic meaning in that way, then we have reinstated the symbol of light as a manifestation of being itself.765 Light can, in this way, become for us a symbol of God. In other words, consciousness at the fifth level has two forms: The first form is an active one, in which we grasp the being of thinking as a manifestation of the mode of being itself. The second form is a responsive one, in which we can respond to this mode of being as something actual in the world—as a symbol of God. Contemplative awareness is capable of unifying and distinguishing the manifestation of being itself and the symbol of God. The criteria for doing so are: 1) The manifestation of being itself and the symbol of God both

765 See The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, ed. Michael Downey, s.v. “Light” (by Barbara O‟Dea). This entry is a good general source for discussion of the ancient symbol of light. 281 intend ultimacy—that than which none greater can be conceived. 2) A symbol of God is distinct from the manifestation of being itself, however, in that it takes the activity of thinking as a concrete particular object in the world to which the viewer responds. In awareness we are assuming the role of what is for Ricoeur suffering, responsive, passive reflection, or we could say interpretation. Ricoeur sees the mode of being as God itself, and the mode of being as symbol. Scharlemann clearly shows how, as with regard to the act of understanding and the mode of being, we understand this mode of being as a manifestation of being itself.766 But we also trust and believe or respond. Key to believing is “responding to” the mode of being as a symbol of God. So then contemplative awareness is capable of unifying and distinguishing the manifestation of being itself and the symbol of God. This notion could be taken into the via negativa insofar as contemplative silence both manifests and defers the symbol of God. It does that through awareness of the “not” or “non-being.” Thus, we are aware that the manifestation of being is not being itself. The symbol of God is not God. The manifestation is not the symbol; this is the last level of entering “not.” Nevertheless, the symbol of God is God, being itself is the manifestation of being itself. “Is” and “is not” combine in contemplative awareness. Contemplative awareness understands an onto-theology that incorporates the critique of onto-theology through awareness of the “not” being brought in from the very beginning.

This discussion has to do with the overcoming of ontology. The work of Scharlemann and Chauvet below completes our discussion of contemplative awareness.

Scharlemann When we are engaged in the act of understanding, we do not merely see the words on a page, but rather, our mind attempts to grasp the meaning that is carried through those

766 Cf. Scharlemann, The Being of God. 282 words, Scharlemann explains.767 For example, when we engage in discourse that is intelligible, and hear the word, “rose,” within this context, we have an understanding that while the word is different than the object, it has to do with the object, and in this respect is of, and connected to the object. It is precisely this connection of “being-of,” while at the same time, “not being,” that constitutes a symbol. Words and things are linked together without collapsing the difference between them. Our everyday reality of the world as perceptible as well as intelligible, as Scharlemann says, is dependent upon maintaining a difference between meaning and the referent—that is between what the text or something says, and what the text or something refers to or is about. This distinction is integral to our engagement in the reality that is the world as something “out there,” so that that reality can be delineated from what are subjective states of mind. In acknowledging the work of Karl Daub, Scharlemann explains that the word “God” is a sign or pointer in that it carries the sense of not being ”I,” and “not-this.” In this way, “God” carries the meaning of the negative that we can instantiate upon both subject and object through the very saying of that word. It is in this way that a word can instantiate a negation by turning

the subject by which it is spoken or the object to which it is applied into a sign of the subject‟s or object‟s own otherness. God appears as the otherness that can be at the place where any subject or object is. Like the words I, this, here,…the word „God‟ always has a referent because the very naming of the word creates a referent out of the thing upon which the „not,‟ the intended otherness, is made manifest. In actual talk, one cannot say the word I without becoming the one so named, and one cannot say the word this without making something the object referred to. Similarly, one cannot say „God‟ without becoming or indicating the otherness that appears in the negation of the subject or the object or both. „God‟ refers to the otherness that is manifested upon the speaking subject or the object spoken of or both. In this way, the word God is the reality of God, just as the words I and this are the realities of the subject and the object. But they are those realities potentially—the word I, because of the meaning it bears, makes it possible for a subject to come to be at all, as the word this does for an object. So

767 Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections, 48. 283

the word God makes it possible for a subject or an object to be the sign-reality that is God‟s presence, the other that is there in the naming….the meaning and the referent are so intimately fused that the meaning makes the referent and the referent appears only with the meaning.768 Further, the referent with regard to the word “God” is given in two ways. First, the referent is given through whatever it is that is instantiated in the actual pronouncing of the word—that is, the subject and/or object can become the sign of whatever is not the subject and/or object, in addition to other than what is the otherness that exists between those subjects and/or objects. Second, the referent is given in language considered as a phenomenon in the very word as word itself. Hence the word “God” has a double referent. It can refer to an “I” or a “this” whereat otherness appears, as well as refer

to the other word (namely, the word word) for the word God, or to that as what God is God. „God is God as the word‟ asserts that „word‟ (or language) is the way in which God is the deity God is (namely, as not being God, that is, as other than the word God.) God is God, then, as what is other than God doubly (as the word word and also as the word God); for the otherness that appears upon a word, which is always a pointer-to, is the same as the otherness as which God exists.769 Scharlemann says that to include time and negation into deity when thinking about the relation of “God” to being is an opportunity to think in a new way what has not been able to be thought. This is a retrieval in terms of a symbol of an existent deity, “and of its attendant conception of the being of God when God is not being God.”770 It is by using this formula, he says, that an object characterized by believing is translated into an object characterized by understanding. Hence a “language of believing” is translated into a “language of understanding.”771

768 Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections, 49.

769 Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections, 50.

770 Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections, 51.

771 Robert P. Scharlemann, “The Question of Philosophical Theology,” Being and Truth: Essays in Honour of John Macquarrie, ed. Alistair Kee and Eugene T. Long (London: SCM Press Ltd, 1986), 16. 284

Finally, Scharlemann distinguishes between “ontological,” “religious,” and “theological” texts. An ontological text includes the thought-sense and is the world signified by that sense. A religious text is similar to an ontological text except the unity of meaning is between that of an image, rather than a thought, and the world that is signified by that image. A theological text can be either an ontological or a religious text—one that is overturned such that it is not what it is or it is what it is not.772 This threefold distinction can be understood in the statement, “The rose is pink,” in terms of sense (what the statement says—that the rose is pink), reference (what the statement is about—the rose), and, what the statement is generally all about—that the rose is the rose it is as the pink thing there). Scharlemann adds this third aspect to round out Ricoeur‟s work on the first two aspects—that of sense and reference. Now, when this threefold distinction is brought to a person, (Scharlemann uses Dasein) then we can say, “I am this one here.” He explains that what the statement says is the unity of the subject “I” and the place as “here.” What the statement is about is the person who is making that statement. Finally, what the assertion or statement is “all about is the mode of being expressed in the statement that I am myself as what is here—I am I as „here.‟”773 What the text is all about has to do with “being as,” he explains. And further, “being like” is the phrase Ricoeur uses to designate the unity between being and nonbeing in his theory of metaphor. Metaphor, according to Ricoeur, is a rhetorical process in which discourse liberates the power of fiction in order that reality can be redescribed.774 Through the employment of “is” in the metaphorical process, “is” at once signifies “is not” and “is like.” Scharlemann explains, however, how when

772 Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections, 57.

773 Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections, 58.

774 See Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello (London and New York: Routledge, 1977). 285 employing Ricoeur‟s metaphorical theory to biblical parables, the subject of what is a metaphorical predication has to be “shown for what it is before it can be shown as like something else, it must designate something, so that we know what we are talking about and what we are comparing to something else.”775 Scharlemann explains Gadamer‟s reticence about using the term “metaphor” with regard to poetic literature. Scharlemann therefore introduces what he thinks to be a more accurate way of depicting that unity of being and nonbeing so characteristic of constructed poetic worlds in the phrase “being…as not.”776 That is, there is an overturning in the poetic or theological text such that it is not what it is or it is what it is not.

Chauvet We come finally to revisit the work of Chauvet. When we think about language as an “ontophanous”777 human reality in Chauvet‟s terms, freely consenting to the practice of openness in everyday existence, then we learn in humility to recognize by virtue of our continual displacement by the other, what we so richly receive in terms of

775 Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections, 58.

776 Scharlemann, Inscriptions and Reflections, 59.

777 See Elbatrina Clauteaux, “When Anthropologist Encounters Theologian: The Eagle and the Tortoise,” Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, eds. Philippe Bordeyne and Bruce T. Morrill (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2008), 163 and 164n22. 286 the largess of human reality bestowed—what we simply “cannot give ourselves.”778 Our genuine presence includes an awareness of absence.779 Chauvet explains that

The concept of „coming-into-presence‟ precisely marks the absence with which every presence is constitutively crossed out: nothing is nearer to us than the other in its very otherness…; nothing is more present to us than what, in principle, escapes us (starting with ourselves).780 Chauvet‟s work has to do with symbol and sacrament within a particular religious context of Roman Catholicism. Initially, I want to present Chauvet‟s notion of the functionality connected with symbol. This presentation is followed by a more extensive discussion of sacrament. In particular there are three aspects of sacramentality to explore in connection with his work—otherness, making present what is absent, as referred to above, and the disclosure of material existence that happens in humans through the natural order and situatedness within a socio-historical context. Symbol performs a primordial function for language. This statement is not meant in instrumental terms insosfar as there is information conveyed “about the real,” but rather, it is information conveyed “of the real,” on which a “form” of a “world” is bestowed by “rescuing it from its natural state by placing it at a distance; not primarily a function of naming or distributing labels, but of summons or challenge, of coming-to-

778 See Patrick Prétot, “The Sacraments as „Celebrations of the Church‟: Liturgy‟s Impact on Sacramental Theology,” Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, 35. See also Bruce T. Morrill, “Time, Absence, and Otherness: Divine-Human Paradoxes Bonding Liturgy and Ethics,” Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, 151n40. Here Morrill, in commenting on the moral philosophy of Edith Wyschogrod, explains that “the temptation to think that we know entirely who the Other is, that we can „write off‟ that person, for whatever reason, as unworthy of our efforts, betrays what Wyschogrod calls the „category mistake‟ of thinking that our language directly applies to (represents) the Other.”

779 See Bruce T. Morrill, “Building on Chauvet‟s Work: An Overview,” Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, xviii. Morrill makes this comment with regard to the work of Louis-Marie Chauvet. See Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 404. Finally, see Clauteaux, “When Anthropologist Encounters Theologian: The Eagle and the Tortoise,” 162. 780 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 404. 287 presence; not primarily a function of representation of objects, but of communication among or between subjects.”781 It is the symbolic about language that enables what is real to speak. It is, Chauvet explains, “speaking for human beings because speaking about human beings, and even speaking „human beings.‟”782 That humans speak is because of the symbol that, in the first place, “has made them human beings.”783 Symbol discloses “the primary dimension of language,” which is its vocation, to make reality significant; and “its reality is to be immediately a metaphor” for the entire existence of a human being.784 But symbolic experience is insufficient lest it dissolve into imagination, as it requires cognition and re-cognition so that discourse may emerge. And, when discourse emerges, so, too, do silence and being issue forth. With regard to sacramentality, first, Chauvet says that when one speaks about God, inevitably one is speaking about humans; and that when one speaks of the relation of humans to God, inevitably one is speaking about the relationships of humans, one to the other.785 We have seen how in Ricoeur‟s hermeneutics of the self, the reflexive structure of the self has otherness inscribed within itself, in its very being: I am the same as myself. However, I am also different from myself. There is an otherness about myself that I am always relating to in the being of myself even as I am part of the world. I am also always open to and relating to other selves who are also part of this world. Otherness is a structural feature of the being of the hermeneutical self that I am. Chauvet says that in the process of “becoming-subject,” we recognize others to be just like us in that they, too, have otherness about them. At the same time, there has to be a process of

781 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 121.

782 Ibid.

783 See Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 121n10.

784 See Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 123n14.

785 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 504. 288 learning to consent to this otherness about all of us. I therefore have to hand myself over to myself “ by and for the Other.”786 We can see the reflexivity at work here: I do not hand myself over to the Other. First, I have to hand myself over to myself in order, in turn, to hand myself over to the Other. Hence human autonomy is not full autonomy, as we are always already beholden to otherness as part of our constitutive structure. Second, Chauvet explains that “The corporality constitutive of human beings is the place of God.”787 That is, what is most spiritual comes forth in what is most corporeal. An “arch-writing” being through sensible materiality is the real mediation of word. And, it is the “arch-symbolic” locus of the body where the truth of the subject comes into being. Symbolism, according to Chauvet, means that we are unable ever to finish the thinking process that we are engaged in. However, the impossibility of completion is precisely what enables us to think; this difference that thinking is, is what allows us to live; this is, according to Chauvet, “the bread of absence [that] nourishes us.”788 Chauvet speaks in symbolic terms of the passage of “God” through language, and of the presence of the absence of “God.” A theological act as such can come to the truth through a transitive way that the symbol opens up. Statements are characteristically marked as a “sign of contradiction.”789 A thing can be said in an open space of that which separates as well as links through language. Further, the Word is expressed in a categorical imperative that includes life as well as action, and privileges justice and mercy in recognition of others. Third, there is a movement from discourse, which, in turn, passes to the body in the disclosure of our material, earthly being. That is, the body that is our desire, inclusive

786 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 506.

787 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 531.

788 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 533.

789 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 535. 289 of history and society, becomes the locus of a disclosure about “the truth of our word.”790 The body is the locus where “God” can be recognized in the fashioning of a language in which the mystery can be heard. If not the only place, sacraments are the primary, genuine places where the affirmation of both world and body as locus of “God” is verified, Chauvet says. These affirmations find “primordial symbolic expression.” Sacraments are “events” insofar as they push into what is symbolic, and are characterized both by language and symbol. The relation between “God” and humans can be characterized as one of otherness insofar as both “God” and humans are in a mode of being that is open.791 Finally, in terms of the incarnate Logos, he discusses the idea of “God” whereby the manifestation of “God‟s” self occurs as “God” in the very act of “refusing to be God.”792 The implications of this act in terms of speaking about “God” are that of a humanity about the divine—“God,” which, in turn, entails letting humanity be spoken in accordance with “an essentially transitive way of thinking;” this is sacramental grace for Chauvet.793 Hence there is dialectical movement between making present an absence, which is the divine depth of all of reality, and a recognition of what is and should be present through disclosure of material existence and being, if not in perfection, then more and more through a natural order about things. To conclude, contemplative awareness holds together negation, absence, and presence, as well as language—discourse and silence. Contemplative awareness holds the depth of meaning in consciousness amidst silence. When contemplative awareness accompanies the practice of contemplative silence, then we can appropriate the meaning of silence that is embodied “now.” All five levels of awareness are actualizable

790 Ibid.

791 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 544.

792 Ibid.

793 Ibid. 290 possibilities and ingredient in the phenomenon. By appropriating contemplative silence, we can recreate authentic human dwelling.

291

PART IV:

AN INTERPRETATION 292

INTRODUCTION TO PART IV

Thus far in the study, I have addressed what the practice of contemplative silence is (Part I), and how the practice is possible (Part II and Part III). Having described it, I explained hermeneutical, phenomenological, and historical contexts for the possibility of the practice. In the third and final part of the study, I want to address the following questions: First, I ask, What does the practice mean? I propose that the meaning of the practice is the transformation. I further pose the question, Are those transformations real? Second, I ask the question, Does the transformed consciousness exist? The interpretive responses to these questions comprise Part IV and Chapter Six, which includes the seventh and eighth steps of the argument. I interpret transformation in a two-fold way: First, I reinterpret Ricoeur‟s four “I can‟s.” Second, I interpret texts of the Carmelite tradition as performances of the transformation of reflexive consciousness inasmuch as they constitute at once spiritual transformation and contemplative action. In working with both Ricoeur and primary texts of the Carmelite tradition, I want to illustrate how the actualizable possibility of the transformation of reflexive consciousness is a part of ordinary human reality, and that inasmuch as it is an ethical and spiritual task, it warrants explanation and interpretation. A case is therefore made for the possibility of transformation. As part of the interpretive part of the study, I show how the transformations have been actualized using the language of the Carmelite tradition.

Textual evidence for the transformations are brought to bear. A further deepening and understanding of the meaning of capable human can transpire in the ongoing practice of contemplative silence. If we keep in mind Ricoeur‟s concern with continuous action, and an understanding of the capacity for movement in mediating between fallibility and capability in hermeneutical existence, we see, too, how human expression can become more dynamic. 293

In the Conclusion of the study, the ninth and final step of the argument is presented. I discuss contemplative awareness in relation to the manifestation of the mode of capable being that is contemplative silence. This manifestation is both a courageous act, and a creative art, of poetically presencing our human solidarity. I discuss the summoned self who is the unitive way, and is the key to the actualizable possibility of the transformation of reflexive consciousness. Language and symbol provide for the possibility of the transformation. The theory of discourse and the capable self, who is capable of being summoned and responding, come together as a contemplative discourse emerges. Finally, the theological implications of the manifestation of the mode of capable being are explored. When contemplative awareness accompanies the practice of contemplative silence, the meaning of a silence embodied in the here and now can be appropriated through the hermeneutical endeavor. In appropriating the meaning of silence, human intermedial being as finite, embodied freedom, recognizes in understanding the relation between silence and language within the Word, that it has an infinite capacity to transcend itself by carrying meaning, making new meaning, transcending old meaning, and holding conflicting meaning in ambiguous, creative tension. Contemplative human reality, that is, the mode of capable being who lives hermeneutical existence, mediates between fallibility and capability. In understanding the relation between fallibility and capability, hermeneutical existence as such can be seen to be a form of spiritual and ethical maturity.

An Interpretation of Contemplative Human Reality: An Intermedial Way of Being on the Way The presentation of the spiritual itinerary, of the threefold path to the divine, and the five levels of awareness ingredient in the phenomenon, which culminates in contemplative awareness, completed the explanation of capable human. We can now 294 ask, What does the practice of contemplative silence mean for the capable human? The meaning of the practice is the transformation. The practice of contemplative silence is the means and end of the transformation of reflexive consciousness. To understand the meaning of capable human is to understand the transformation that transpires. I want to address the term “transformation,” and present its meaning as understood by one theologian, before proceeding further. Bernard Lonergan interprets transformation in terms of what happens to a subject and his or her world in his work entitled Method in Theology. He refers to this transformation as being a kind of conversion (metanoia), which as lived is existential, personal, and intimate, but is not deemed so private that it is considered solitary. Persons are, after all, part of myriad communities of discourse, in overlapping public and private spheres. Transformation as conversion has communal dimensions, and in this respect has the possibility, in passing from generation to generation, and from a culture milieu to that of another, of becoming historical.794 Lonergan says that it is a prolonged process and not simply a development or series thereof; it involves a change in course as well as direction. Something new emerges at all levels of human existence. The transformation as lived affects consciousness and the intentionality of consciousness. Lonergan explains that “It directs his gaze, pervades his imagination, releases the symbols that penetrate to the depths of his psyche. It enriches his understanding, guides his judgments, reinforces his decisions.”795 Understood in this way, transformation is a spiritual and ethical task. There are four kinds of transformation, according to Lonergan, which are: 1) psychological transformation, 2) moral or ethical transformation, 3) intellectual transformation, and 4) religious transformation. Lonergan is primarily concerned with

794 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 130- 131.

795 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 131. 295 moral or ethical transformation, intellectual transformation, and religious transformation, and understands them to be an integrated part of a holistic transformative process whereby a person becomes an authentic human being. Transformation coincides with a living religion.796 First, psychological transformation has to do with maintaining mutuality between consciousness and the unconscious. Lonergan says that everyone is subject to biases that can block and distort intellectual development. Unconscious motivation is one such bias. Second, moral transformation has to do with moving beyond the value of truth per se to values in general. He explains that “It sets him on a new, existential level of consciousness and establishes him as an originating value.”797 The devotion to truth is taken up into moral transformation so that there may be an intentional response to all values. Now the pursuit of the truth is more secure, meaningful, as well as significant because it is set within this richer context. Further, “Moral conversion changes the criterion of one‟s decisions and choices from satisfactions to values.”798 One is no longer driven by the satisfaction that comes from a need for control, and the desire to fortify the ego. Third, intellectual transformation involves an ongoing commitment to the search for the reality of what is through the process of understanding. With this kind of transformation, there is an understanding of the distinction between the immediacy and experience of the sensory world, and a world that is “mediated by meaning.”799 Here, truth is attained through cognitional self-transcendence, which happens by not becoming

796 William Johnston, “Arise, My Love…”: Mysticism for a New Era (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2000), 39.

797 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 242.

798 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 240.

799 See Lonergan, Method in Theology, 238. 296 too attached to words in order that new meaning can be made, and by moving toward a reality that the words are pointing to—a universe filled with being. Fourth, with religious transformation a person is grasped by what is ultimate concern.800 We can ascertain the influence of Tillich on Lonergan‟s thought, as he readily acknowledges. Religious transformation is a “falling in love” or “being-in-love” with and for the Word incarnate, and with what is the ultimate in truth, goodness, and beauty, which involves a “total and permanent self-surrender without conditions, qualifications, reservations.”801 Further, a “religiously differentiated consciousness” involves an apprehension in two different modes that are both mediated by meaning—a commonsense mode actively functioning in the world, and a mystical mode that passively withdraws interiorly.802 The summit of transformation is being-in-love. Being-in-love is a holistic approach in that exteriority and interiority are increasingly integrated. Lonergan devises transcendental precepts as a way to articulate what it is to be an authentic human being, and which is, therefore, a theological methodology. The transcendental precepts are as follows: 1) Be attentive, 2) Be intelligent, 3) Be reasonable, 4) Be responsible, and 5) Be in love.803 The first three precepts have to do with intellectual transformation. The fourth precept has to do with moral or ethical transformation. And finally, the fifth precept has to do with religious transformation. For Lonergan, to be in love is to be in love with the ultimate. He explains that

The transcendental notions, that is, our questions for intelligence, for reflection, and for deliberation, constitute our capacity for self- transcendence. That capacity becomes an actuality when one falls in love. Then one‟s being becomes being-in-love….once it has blossomed forth and as long as it lasts, it takes over….From it flow

800 See Lonergan, Method in Theology, 240; 106.

801 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 240.

802 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 273.

803 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 231. 297

one‟s desires and fears, one‟s joys and sorrows, one‟s discernment of values, one‟s decisions and deeds….Being in love with God, as experienced, is being in love in an unrestricted fashion. All love is self-surrender, but being in love with God is being in love without limits or qualifications or conditions or reservations. Just as unrestricted questioning is our capacity for self-transcendence, so being in love in an unrestricted fashion is the proper fulfillment of that capacity.804 This love is the love that leads to wisdom for Lonergan; it is formless and empty knowledge, hence an unknowing.805 Further, it coexists with scientific knowledge, and even though it surpasses it, it does not attempt to suppress it or even contradict it. It serves to enrich it by adding the dimension of depth to it. Johnston says that “wisdom is the crowning gift of the theological enterprise.”806 The humble mind continually seeks after what is “That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power,” which is synonymous with the idea of God.807 We are now in a position to interpret and even reinterpret the transformation of reflexive consciousness. Before doing so, however, let us turn to Ricoeur for some final wisdom and instruction on textual interpretation in order that we might set out on the path.

804 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 105-106.

805 Johnston, Mystical Theology: The Science of Love, 84.

806 Johnston, Mystical Theology: The Science of Love, 85.

807 Johnston, Mystical Theology: The Science of Love, 86n22. 298

CHAPTER SIX:

UNDERSTANDING THE MEANING OF CAPABLE HUMAN

The first task of this chapter is to complete our discussion of Ricoeur‟s theory of discourse. In order to accomplish this task, we must address the move from speaking to writing and the written text. There are two points that Ricoeur makes evident with regard to textual language. First, meaning is exteriorized, but separated from the event of discourse. We no longer have access to the original event. This is precisely where hermeneutics comes into play insofar as the alienated meaning has to be freshly appropriated through the event of understanding. Ricoeur explains that “Inscription [of meaning] becomes synonymous with the semantic autonomy of the text, which results from the disconnection of the mental intention of the author from the verbal meaning of the text, of what the author meant and what the text means.”808 It is in this way that the text can transcend the finite horizon of the author. Although there is no longer the coinciding of authorial intention and textual meaning, it can become newly inscribed through the hermeneutical process. Furthermore, Ricoeur places a premium on what the text means “now” as opposed to what was meant when the author originally wrote it.809 Second, discourse carries dual meaning. Ricoeur makes a distinction (in terms of utterer‟s meaning and utterance meaning), with regard to the concept of meaning, which he is able to interpret in two different ways because of the subject-object structure of discourse; it is a mirroring, too, of the dialectic of event and meaning. Meaning is subjective insofar as it has to do with what the speaker means and has the intention of saying—the utterer‟s meaning; and, meaning is objective insofar as it has to do with what a sentence means in that in the textual sentence, a noun-verb conjunction yields an

808 Ricoeur, IT, 30. My emphasis.

809 Ibid. 299 utterance meaning.810 Within the objective sense of meaning, i.e., the utterance meaning, which is within the inner structure of the sentence itself, a reference is made back to a speaker‟s intention, i.e., the utterer‟s meaning, by means of grammatical procedures, or “shifters.”811 There is no objective meaning in personal pronouns such as “I”—the only function of this shifter is “to refer the whole sentence [back] to the subject of the speech event,” that is, to a speaker who is the “I.”812 There are other shifters, i.e. grammatical bearers that refer the discourse back to the speaker, as well, such as verbs in the present tense, and accordingly refer to what is “now” a speech event and a speaker.

Ricoeur also includes here adverbs that have to do with time and space, and demonstratives. These are all ways for discourse to make reference back to the speaker. There is, then, a dialectical relation between the meaning of discourse and the event of discourse. Also, there is a nonpsychological interpretation, that is, a semantic definition of the speaker‟s intention, or utterer‟s meaning. As Ricoeur explains, “No mental entity need be hypothesized or hypostazised. The utterance meaning points back towards the utterer‟s meaning thanks to the self-reference of discourse to itself as an event.”813

Furthermore, there are differing elements that constitute the structure of discourse in the text as opposed to the situation of shared conversation in living speech. While in the case of living speech there is a shared horizon, a shared world between two subjects, with the text there comes into play a new dimension to the dialectic between event and meaning. The text now takes on subjectivity, whereas before subjectivity resided with the speaker. With the text, there is no shared horizon of a world, so that that world has to be worked out by the interpreter. There is a further issue for the interpreter/respondent

810 Ricoeur, IT, 35.

811 Ricoeur, IT, 12-13 and Klemm, HTPR, 77.

812 Ricoeur, IT, 13.

813 Ibid. 300 insofar as one has to figure out “how” one “ought to understand the event of the disclosure of meaning,” given that there are no bodily gestural or phonic clues to draw from.814 This is where the objective structure of the text (wherein the code has to be figured out), becomes important to discern as one goes about the process of actualizing meaning. It is in this way that the text assumes the role of subject in relation to the reader/interpreter. The gap or distance that exists between the inscription of meaning from the written text, and the existing isolation and separation from the original event, sets the stage for the disclosure of language—for the depth and power of language to renew and refresh through its creative capabilities. Ricoeur explains that “The inscription of discourse is the transcription of the world,” which is not a reduplication, he says, but its metamorphosis.815 We have the capability to participate in the re-writing of reality, to participate in “the revelation of a real more real than ordinary reality” or, the augmentation of reality.816 Finally, it should be noted that the characteristic quality of the text is the appearance of structure, which makes of discourse “a work.”817 The text can grasp 1) understanding as a mode of knowing, but it will not grasp 2) understanding as a mode of being. Thus, Ricoeur wants to 1) interpret the text, and 2) understand the text in terms of sense (what it says) and reference (what it is about). He is, in his philosophical hermeneutics, engaging in a fundamental enterprise of commenting upon a text. The steps of the hermeneutical arc unfold in five steps: 1) initial understanding (As one transfers the meanings of signs, one translates them into a first reading characterized by openness, which is a naïve understanding, and the conviction of accepting the text.) 2) structural explanation (This could be semiotics, and

814 Klemm, HTPR, 81.

815 Ricoeur, IT, 42.

816 Ibid.

817 Klemm, HTPR, 82. 301 is a critical objectification.) 3) sense and reference (This has to do with what the text says and what the text is about.) 4) ideological critique (One bends back on the interpretation to take into account a distortion so as to account for being unaware of ideology.) and 5) assessing and evaluating (One asks what is significant and important about the text, so that the text may be critically appropriated.) In following this process, we move from conviction through critique to critical appropriation. With critical appropriation, self- understanding occurs. A text can transform the reader insofar as subjectivity is transformed. What Ricoeur is doing is calling attention to the need to think about thinking insofar as we can gain an understanding of the principles underlying what we are doing. Worlds appear in the text, so we must understand a philosophy of language and the different kinds of texts. We also have to think about the aesthetic and ethical use of language. In addition, while Ricoeur presupposes that we have to think about what it means to be human within language, in laying out a systematic dynamic of thinking, he is saying that there are many different theoretical starting points, and there is, therefore, a conflict of interpretations.

As we move further into Chapter Six and consider what the transformation of reflexive consciousness entails, it should be noted that Ricoeur‟s interpretation theory is born out of the conviction that in a definite suggestive sense, the human person “is language,” and because writing is considered the fulfillment of language, in laying out the principles that pertain to textual meaning, there is something that may be disclosed that points not only to human being, but to being as well.818 For Ricoeur, capable human being has to do with linguisticality, and our capacity to express our selves, our being, in discourse. If we follow Ricoeur here, then we must acknowledge the important role that silence plays in relation to discourse, something Ricoeur never did. To Ricoeur‟s interpretation theory—his hermeneutical theory, and his philosophical

818 Klemm, HTPR, 26. 302 anthropology, therefore, let us add silence. That is, the human person is silence as well as language. We are now positioned to move to the next step of the argument.

The Reflexive Transformation of Capable Human Through the ongoing integrating activity of the practice of contemplative silence, there is a reflexive transformation of capable human in understanding Ricoeur‟s four “I can‟s.” Now, “I” can speak silence, “I” can practice contemplative silence, “I” can tell stories of the practice of contemplative silence, and “I” can invoke personal responsibility by practicing contemplative silence. These are four different ways of explaining and interpreting the practice of contemplative silence. This is the seventh step of the argument. Let us proceed to a discussion of the “I can‟s.” First, “I” can speak silence. When “I” speak silence, I am actually giving voice and life to silence; therefore, it is not the negation of utterance. It is a silence that is intentional and self-conscious. It gives voice to silence, but the silence is saying nothing, on the one hand, but yet is not a saying nothing, on the other hand. It is also saying not nothing. The acting and suffering capable human, just as she is capable of speaking and being able “to do things with words,”819 is capable of speaking silence and being able to do things with silence. Ricoeur says that he launches the notion of capacity by means of the capacity “of being able to say things,” so that he can confer an extension onto the idea of human action.820

That is, by characterizing a self in terms of a capable human being, who in turn recognizes herself in her capabilities, a reflexive turn to be sure, acting is the most fitting concept to describe this approach in terms of a philosophical anthropology.

819 Ricoeur, CR, 94n10.

820 Ricoeur, CR, 94. 303

The employment of reflexivity brings together, to follow Aristotle, being as dynamis, or potentiality, and being as energeia, or act. Hence in this study, I have throughout made reference to the actualizable possibility for something. The notion of acting is therefore positioned with regard to its meaning deriving from the primitive polysemy—the idea of being. Beyond this, however, Ricoeur wants to reach the utterer of the utterance, the one who is speaking—the person who is not substitutable. He says that “The self-designation of the speaking subject is produced in interlocutionary situations where the reflexivity is combined with otherness.”821 We can say here with

Ricoeur, that the silence pronounced by a particular person is addressed to another person, and further, it is, on many occasions, in the form of a response from an other. Self-designation through the force of the illocutionary act in the call from the other receives the attribution not only of one‟s proper name, but the veritable founding in terms of the speaking subject who is capable, through silence, of saying who one is. To follow Ricoeur in Memory, History, Forgetting, this is a silent voice, and not a mute one.822 It is a capable voice because it is not deprived of speech and silence. It understands how to communicate unfathomable depth and mystery through the transforming knowledge that one knows that one does not know—it is an unknowing in humble acquiescence to silence and language within the Word. Second, “I” can practice contemplative silence. With regard to the “practice” of contemplative silence, it is an intentional, deliberate action, and a ritualized action. As such, it is a concrete “thing” in the world, and not just a universal that is conceptualized and theorized. The subject who practices contemplative silence has the capacity to make the practice, which is an event in time, happen in a highly intentional way. The ascription of the practice of contemplative silence as an action to the practitioner

821 Ricoeur, CR, 96.

822 See Ricoeur, MHF, 467. 304 becomes part of its meaning, insofar as there is a relation between the action of practicing contemplative silence, and the monk or agent, for example, who has the capacity to specify himself or herself as the person who is, in fact, engaging in the action. Ricoeur says that there is a binding of what the action is with how the action is accomplished, to who has carried out the action. In appropriating Kant, he says that what is significant for thought is the capacity that one has to begin doing something all by oneself. This ability to practice contemplative silence encompasses all of one‟s fragmentary actions, and confers a certain wholeness, as an integrating phenomenon, upon those actions.

The practice of contemplative silence is a ritualized action. When the monks of the Carthusian Order, for example, come together to pray the Night Office, there is a complexity of interactions that occur. Inasmuch as the monks have made vows to community life, through ongoing participation in the Night Office, and the silence that is part of the ritualized action, they have taken upon themselves and assumed initiative through which they have actualized their power to act; they are capable of acting in such a way. The intentional performances of ritualized action in the liturgical event, as well as in manual labor, transform the hearts and minds of the monks into highly energized fields of personal activity. Now, we can say that instead of speaking silence, one can enact silence through the practice. We see this in the way that the monks not only pray but carry themselves as they walk through the cloister, garden, shovel the snow, or cut wood.

It does not require a cloister to enact silence, that is, to practice contemplative silence. One can enact silence in the midst of the most intense of public activities, by the way in which one is present in a particular context—with thoughtfulness, mindfulness, and intentionality. The enactment of silence can bring forth depth of being through presence. Third, “I” can tell stories of the practice of contemplative silence. In telling these stories, and reflexively talking about one‟s narrated story of practicing contemplative silence, personal identity becomes projected as narrative identity. There is a unity of meaning that can emerge as a result of this configuring process, if we follow Ricoeur 305 here. He refers to this unifying power as “„poetry‟ itself.”823 Ongoing transformation transpires through this dynamic process. In the same way that the plot dictates a mutual genesis that exists between character development and a story told, so the narration of stories about the practice of contemplative silence serves as a means of transformation, insofar as one recognizes new meaning or recognizes oneself in a new way in the stories that emerge; this is an appropriation of the narrative event, and an appropriation of the practice of contemplative silence. One has to be receptive for the event to occur. What one is learning in and through this transformative process, is how to narrate oneself in intentionally appropriating the silence. Ricoeur explains that “Learning to narrate oneself is also learning how to narrate oneself in other ways.”824 Fourth, “I” can invoke personal responsibility by practicing contemplative silence. As mentioned in Chapter Four, the word, contemplative, qualifies the word, silence, by connoting the depth of meaning that is held in consciousness amidst the silence. That one can carry meaning entails the capacity to hold oneself accountable, in terms of responsivity, for actions to the extent of imputing them to oneself. Further, one has to bear whatever is the consequence of one‟s actions, especially in the case of faults and wrongs in which the other person has been harmed or made to suffer. The practice of contemplative silence is one way to invoke personal responsibility in responsively recognizing and holding those faults and wrongs in consciousness, having judged and evaluated those actions as bad (or good), and prohibited (or permitted), and too, releasing them through yet other actions of justice and mercy, and pardon and forgiveness. In moral terms, we are responsible for others, especially those vulnerable and fragile others who fall within the scope of our powers. Ricoeur explains that as far as one‟s powers extend, there is a reciprocal relatedness in one‟s capacities with regard to

823 Ricoeur, CR, 100.

824 Ricoeur, CR, 101. 306 the harmful effects that can occur. He is thinking here in terms of relationships involving spatial as well as temporal proximity—that there be responsibility exercised in just measure. The practice of contemplative silence takes on spiritual and ethical import as it is one way to compassionately be with others whom we have harmed, or even to be with those whom we are unaware that we have harmed or wronged. Insofar as the practice is the means and end of spiritual transformation, one is imputing responsibility for that transformation. The word, “personal,” implies a communal dimension of relationality; there are communities to which one belongs, and to which one is answerable in ethical and spiritual terms. One has the capacity to specify and obligate oneself to carry out this practice. Contemplative awareness can lead to spiritual and ethical activity. There is a manner in which a capable human being manifests ethical and spiritual values in the way that he or she is with others. In the end, all four “I can‟s” can be considered activities of contemplative awareness, and have to do with carrying out daily life with a higher level of awareness and intentionality.

The Dynamics of Carmelite Spirituality: Blazing a Prophetic Path in the Fire of Love The second way in which I interpret transformation is, in turn, by interpreting classic texts of the Carmelite tradition as performances of the transformation of reflexive consciousness, inasmuch as they constitute contemplative action. As a preliminary step in this endeavor, I want to address the topic of Carmelite spirituality. The Carmelite tradition, which takes its name from the mountain range of Mount Carmel, is considered to be a school of spirituality. It is also referred to as a “school of contemplative prayer.”825 The tradition dates back over eight hundred years, to around 1200 or so, when a small group of men formed a religious community in a wadi, „ain es-Shiah on

825 See Keith J. Egan, “Carmel: A School of Prayer,” Carmelite Prayer: A Tradition for the 21st Century, 7-8. 307

Mount Carmel, approximately three miles south of present day Haifa, Israel.826 The original group formed a lay community of penitent hermits, who were the recipients, from Albert, the patriarch of Jerusalem, of a formula of life, somewhere between the years of 1206 and 1214. The formula of life prescribed for its adherents an ascetic life of simplicity, solitude, silence, and prayer. The hermits occupied individual cells that were situated close to a chapel dedicated to Mary. The biblical prophet, Elijah, was considered the first monk and model of the religious life par excellence.827 Soon, there were lay women who associated themselves with the men, although they remained at home to lead a religious life. Eremitic living in Europe was difficult, but eventually with papal approval from Innocent IV, their formula of life was transformed into a Rule (Regula). Hence these friars as mendicants could live in towns, in addition to wilderness areas. By the end of the 13th century, the Carmelites had migrated to such places as Sicily, Cyprus, England, as well as southern France, and established themselves at major university centers such as Cambridge, Oxford, and Paris. The issuance of a papal Bull in 1452, Cum Nulla, officially authorized the Carmelites to allow communities of women affiliates. Solitude and community, or person in community, is the paradoxical hallmark and reality of Carmelite spirituality.828 A Carmelite community is comprised of persons who come together in freedom and responsivity, and desire and love, to live their lives in solidarity with one another and with humanity. The pursuit of intellectual activity and spiritual solitude and silence leads to an integrated life of the mind and spirit for many

826 See John Welch, The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today‟s Pilgrim (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1996), 1. See also Egan, “Carmel: A School of Prayer,” 8. Finally, see The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, s.v. “Carmelite Spirituality” (by Keith J. Egan).

827 Welch, The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today‟s Pilgrim, 54.

828 Keith J. Egan, “The Solitude of Carmelite Prayer,” Carmelite Prayer: A Tradition for the 21st Century, 39. 308

Carmelites.829 The grounding in community life provides the basis for encounter with other persons and the divine. Solitude prepares the way for contemplation. It is a gift that is shared by those who desire to live in attentiveness before the presence of the incarnate Word. Solitude means that one acts in such a way as to surrender one‟s heart to God, which transforms one‟s view of reality. This solitude “has always been for the sake of inner solitude, a habit of deep inner mindfulness of the presence of a loving God. Physical solitude is for the sake of solitude of the heart…for the sake of poverty of spirit, an emptiness to be filled by God‟s love.”830 Love and desire propel the Carmelite in the quest for self-knowledge and knowledge of God, and are characteristic of that which lies at the heart of Carmelite spirituality. Whether it be living in an actual desert or attentiveness to living in the desert inscape of interiority, there is a preference for aridity of environment in order to pursue what is referred to in the tradition as a divine-human love story—a relationship with a mystery that dwells at the heart of human life. Listening and loving attentiveness to this mystery at the heart of existence, and a desire for simplicity and silence are essential in terms of exteriority as well as interiority.

Otherness is meant to be pursued in relational encounter, whether it is the person as other, or the divine as Other. The true self enters reality through self-knowledge, as both Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross testify to through their writings.831 Teresa and John are considered paradigmatic figures for expressing what constitutes authentic human personhood according to the tradition, in that it is “a process of divinization, a participation in the knowing and loving of God.”832 As evidenced in their writings, they believe that graciousness exists at the center of life, an Otherness, which as a

829 Egan, “The Solitude of Carmelite Prayer,” 59.

830 Egan, “The Solitude of Carmelite Prayer,” 41.

831 Welch, The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today‟s Pilgrim. 96.

832 Welch, The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today‟s Pilgrim, 99. 309 transcendent source, nurtures and guarantees one‟s personhood, so that a new identity issues forth. There is a transcendent source of identity in that a person is not the cause of himself or herself, nor does a person completely know and understand his or her own identity. Rather, a person discovers that he or she has been named; it is a knowing by an unknowing, as John expresses it. Personality dysfunction results when one does not center one‟s life on the divine as a transcendent source in terms of identity. Divine love is healing and freeing for the person who waits in hope. The divine, although beyond name and image, is nevertheless pursued through the world that is full of words as well as images, in a natural process. Forms of spiritual life such as prayer, or religious imagery, or even sacramental ritual are central to Carmelite spirituality; nothing can take the place of God.833 Some of the most renowned Carmelite writers draw attention in their writings to the importance of the activity of God in one‟s life, as experienced in contemplation. Contemplative prayer is intended to be a spiritual discipline that liberates a person from any attachments and compulsions, so that the world may be enjoyed “in a non- possessive manner.”834 Human effort is limited, while divine life is not. The world is served through contemplative prayer. To pray is to have an awareness of the divine presence. Prayer and life cannot be separated. The contemplative orientation is a journey within which one will discover the loving presence of God. Human effort cannot access the deepest part of the self that is divine, however. There is an inner depth to human persons that remains inaccessible without divine union. To have a loving heart is to have a heart that has been freed so that it may love God and others; stillness and quiet are requisite. There is awareness and responsivity through prayer to those whose lives are endangered in any way. One should pray without ceasing, according to the tradition.

833 Welch, The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today‟s Pilgrim, 98.

834 Welch, The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today‟s Pilgrim, 97. 310

Poverty of spirit, contemplation, openness to divine transforming love, are all ways in which darkness manifests in the spiritual life of a Carmelite. Also, empathy is valued insofar as rather than issue advice and admonishment, a Carmelite is one who will listen to and accompany another person on the spiritual journey such that he or she is encouraged to be himself or herself. One lovingly serves others. The quality of life in community indicates the authenticity with which one prays. We learn through John‟s writings, for example, that he esteems rather than judges the other members of his community, even when he is treated harshly. There is allegiance to the incarnate Word.

Finally, Carmelite spirituality entails a continuum between human and divine life—life on earth and life after death. Contemplation is a way of learning to see this continuity.

Contemplative Mediation in Carmelite Texts The texts that are interpreted in this part of the study were written by one figure, John of the Cross, who himself engaged in the practice of contemplative silence. In many respects, it can be said that his writings flowed out of this practice; there is an immediacy about the texts as primary sources. The desire for God, the desire for the desire for God, and being in love with God, are inherently a part of the contemplative mediation that comprises the Carmelite textual tradition. We have this tradition to draw from in order to exemplify the way in which the transformation is real. These texts are capable of uttering and are capable of the transformed consciousness that I have referred to. In turning to primary texts of the tradition as expressions of the transformation, we come to an understanding of the way in which transformation has been actualized. The transformation of reflexive consciousness will therefore be interpreted. In elucidating the spiritual transformation in terms of contemplative ethical action, these texts express deep immersion in what is, which opens to uncovering the hidden beauty in life, even in the midst of tragic circumstances. Authentic life is the unitive way of seeing the unity of 311 opposites, which through that very seeing is to transcend them. This is the eighth step of the argument.

John of the Cross The texts of John of the Cross can be considered performances of the transformation of reflexive consciousness. That is, the transformed consciousness exists in his texts, and hence the transformation is real. First, I want to say a few words about the corpus of his work in terms of transformation. Then I consider the poem and commentary on the poem, The Spiritual Canticle, followed by the Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love. This is a cursory reading of these texts. There is a unity about his works considered as a whole, which is illustrative of this transformation in that he employs both symbols of light and dark. Although John is famous for his symbol of nada, nothing or negation—the dark night—this is balanced by his symbol of transformation—the fire of love. They, of course, mutually imply each other. If there is a dark night, then surely the fire of love is burning; the light is brilliant—so brilliant that it is a darkness. And, the flame lights the dark night. The point is that John writes about both darkness and light.

The Spiritual Canticle Contemplative ethical action is carried out in the form of a textual commentary on the poem written for the persons to whom John provided spiritual guidance. A group of Carmelite nuns who were in Beas first read the poem, and responded in awe to the depth of profundity that it contained in its simplicity.835 They wanted some assistance from

John in probing the meaning of the symbols that he used. What evolved out of his spiritual conferences, was the writing of a commentary that cast light on the symbols and their content through an explanation and interpretation of them.

835 John of the Cross, SC, 465. See Kieran Kavanaugh‟s introductory notes. 312

In the texts—both poem and commentary—when one begins to seek the divine, then that is the beginning of the spiritual life. Spiritual life is human life, more specifically, it is fully embodied human life; spirituality and sexuality come together in human life. The text is a religious text insofar as it is an image of a contemplative love story, in metaphorical terms, between the human and the divine. Let us recall from Chapter Five that with a religious text, the unity of meaning is between that of an image (as opposed to a thought), and the world that is signified by that image. The poem is a reworking of the Book of the Song of Songs, and gives voice to its meaning, in terms of the movement of love, or the “ways of spiritual exercise” in the life of a human being.836 In both the poetic text and the textual commentary, the various aspects of the movement of growth in love that comprise the spiritual life are expressed. The spiritual life is a developed relationality with the divine that is inclusive of other humans. Ethical action flows out of, and indeed is, the litmus test for the authenticity of this relationship. The poetic text itself is constructed in deeply symbolic language. The stanzas of the poem are a song whose voice sings of contemplative silence. For its duration, this symphony of love is propelled by movements of love. Moreover, the work has a tripartite structure, or, in keeping with our metaphor, three movements, based on the threefold path. The purgative way is articulated in terms of the self seeking after the Beloved whose absence causes heartache. The Beloved also elicits stirrings of love, as the spiritual journey commences in stanzas 1-12. Whatever impedes and prevents one from growing in love of God must be rooted out at this stage. The illuminative way is depicted in terms of ongoing loving encounters between the self and God, which are coupled with the desire to be completely free of any hindrances that may keep the self from realizing the full flowering of mystical marriage. Spiritual betrothal occurs at this

836 See John of the Cross, SC, theme 1. John explicitly refers to the purgative, illuminative, and unitive here. 313 level. Stanzas 13-21 mirror this leg of the spiritual journey. The unitive way is expressed as the complete, mutual surrender of the human and the divine, and the desire for the beatific vision. This is more commonly referred to as the spiritual marriage in the Carmelite tradition. Stanzas 22-40 are a reflection of this third way. The text beckons the practitioner of contemplative silence/interpreter into its very life, into what are the dynamics of love that transpire between the lover and Beloved, or the bride and bridegroom—between the self and God. In the third part, the unitive part of the commentary on the poem, there is a discussion of the virtues and gifts that God has bestowed on the self who has become aware of them, which include “silent music” and “sounding solitude.”837 This is an event of language and silence. The utterances that express this love are those which evoke silence. There is a stunning simplicity to the syntax that is used. Also, by alternating the syllables in a line, rapid movement is conveyed. Nouns are used at the expense of adverbs and adjectives, as previously mentioned in Chapter One. There is a hidden vision in John‟s work, and in his attitude with regard to language that is congruent with modernity, according to one contemporary interpreter of the texts, Colin Thompson, who explains:

But, as there, for radically different reasons: not that there is nothing, no meaning, no God in a world which can be explained in its own terms, but that human beings cannot grasp what their meaning might be until they have undertaken the harder journey within themselves, which is where the unitive path becomes revealed. Only then can the fragments of knowledge displayed so beautifully in the exterior world find their significance in the larger pattern which comes from knowledge of the self, and in that self, of a hidden God who is knowable there.838 In contemplative awareness, the practitioner/interpreter can hold the different contextual levels of awareness together, which is the unitive way. The interpreter‟s very being as immediate self-awareness is that of understanding the relation of love between

837 John of the Cross, SC, 15; 24.6.

838 See Thompson, St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night, 279. 314 the human and the divine in and through the “utterances of love” that issue forth in the poem.839 The stanzas of the poem are all utterances, albeit metaphorical, of what is understood to be freely flowing divine love. At the second contextual level of being with being as immediate objective awareness, the practioner/interpreter is attentive, open, and attuned to receive “a thousand graces,” as humans have been endowed with them insofar as the human is one of the multitude of creatures of God.840 The interpreter can understand being with being as that which has received mystical, that is, hidden understanding of divine life that is available to anyone who would set out on the journey, or who would desire to intentionally live their own love story with the divine. At the reflective level of awareness, the practitioner/interpreter makes the connection between the divine and human by thinking the concept of love. The judgment that one can establish in interpreting the text is the relational reality of spiritual love— that there is a relational bond of union between the human and the divine. Moreover, the source of everything is this divine love. The textual commentary explains that “The soul says that this bed in flower is hung with purple (denoting charity), because it is only by the charity and love of the King of heaven that all the virtues, riches, and goods flourish, receive sustenance, and give enjoyment. Without such love the soul could not enjoy this bed….”841

Further, this hidden wisdom is given “according to the mode and capacity” of the receiver.842 The text speaks of receiving the fire of divine love through “the touch of a

839 See John of the Cross, Prologue to The Spiritual Canticle, 2.

840 John of the Cross, SC, 5. Stanza 5 reads as follows: “Pouring out a thousand graces,/he passed these groves in haste;/and having looked at them/with his image alone,/clothed them in beauty.”

841 John of the Cross, SC, 24.7.

842 John of the Cross, Prologue to The Spiritual Canticle, 2. 315 spark,” and that “flowings” come “from the balsam of God.”843 At the reflexive level of awareness, in terms of metaphoric understanding, there is similitude between the utterance meaning (the utterances of the poetic text as objective meaning), and the utterer‟s meaning (what the author means and has the intention of saying as subjective meaning). That is, the poetic utterances are like the flowings from God.844 In literal terms, the utterances are not flowings from God. In textual terms, however, the interpreter can construct such a palpable world of the imagination—the world of the text, in Ricoeur‟s terms.

According to Ricoeur, meaning is not given directly; it has to be achieved. The text has an overflow of meaning in that it says more than what can be perceived in the present fulfillment of meaning. In its thinking activity, intermedial being mediates between seeing, which are considered singular representations that arise from our bodily receptivity, and saying, which are general representations that arise from our making the conceptual determinations that are carried out in language through the activity of the transcendental imagination.845

Whereas critical thinking combines the opposites—singular representations in terms of reference, with those universal representations in terms of meaning—religion not only unites but transcends the opposites. In terms of religious capacity as opening to a source of existence, through this power, there is a combining of saying and seeing—the meaning and the reference: “the meaning of religious discourse is itself its real reference in the world.”846 With religious discourse, that which is said is also that which is seen.

843 John of the Cross, SC, 25. Stanza 25 reads as follows: “Following your footprints/maidens run along the way;/the touch of a spark,/the spiced wine,/cause flowings in them from the balsam of God.”

844 See John of the Cross, SC, 25.5; 25.6. See also Kavanaugh‟s introductory notes on SC, 461.

845 See Klemm, “Searching for a Heart of Gold,” 100.

846 Klemm, “Searching for a Heart of Gold,” 107. 316

With the image, there is no reference beyond itself, to what is a perceived world, in terms of there being correspondence between what is the actual image and the perception of it. In terms of religious discourse, there is an augmentation of reality such that an image becomes more real as compared to a perceived world. What is the meaning of a religious image can instantiate its very own being. In terms of Ricoeur‟s theory of metaphor, “when the imagination forms an image of the new predicative congruence, the emergent meaning is not fully objectified but is also felt. The hearer or reader is thereby assimilated to the meaning precisely as she or he performs the predicative assimilation.”847 Hence in addition to grasping a new congruence as seen, it is felt. Further, Ricoeur says that feeling can be considered an intentional structure in second- order terms.848 As he explains:

It is a process of interiorization succeeding a movement of intentional transcendence directed toward some objective state of affairs. To feel, in the emotional sense of the word, is to make ours what has been put at a distance by thought in its objectifying phase. Feelings, therefore, have a very complex kind of intentionality. They are not merely inner states but interiorized thoughts. It is as such that they accompany and complete the work of imagination as schematizing a synthetic operation: they make the schematized thought ours. Feeling, then is a case of Selbst- Affektion, in the sense Kant used it in the second edition of the Critique. This Selbst-Affektion, in turn, is a part of what we call poetic feeling. Its function is to abolish the distance between knower and known without canceling the cognitive structure of thought and the intentional distance which it implies. Feeling is not contrary to thought. It is thought made ours. This felt participation is a part of its complete meaning as poem.849 Reflexive awareness, as we recall from Chapter Five, has to do with the truth about truth, which introduces temporality, or it is reflection on the event of being in the

847 Klemm, “Searching for a Heart of Gold,” 108.

848 See Paul Ricoeur, “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling,” Critical Inquiry 5:1 (Autumn, 1978): 156. Ricoeur follows Stephan Strasser here.

849 Ibid. 317 truth. Ricoeur creates “an image of the event of mediation itself.”850 The event is figured as a grasping that is met by the “unveiling as „overturning.‟”851 This figure of overturning emphasizes time as well as negativity in this event of mediation. Overturning stresses a living temporal encounter between hermeneutical inquiries and an inbreaking of the theological meaning. Overturning accentuates “the disparity and difference between inquiry and inbreaking, whether those of conceptual reflection and symbolic interpretation or those of hermeneutical mediation and divine manifestation.”852 This image of overturning itself can be interpreted in terms of a sign that has a meaning. What the sign says is that “the primordial appears only through the fallen.”853 The sign signifies that there is what Ricoeur refers to as a “split reference: ambiguity in reference.”854 That is, manifestation occurs in two domains. The referent is a life that is refigured in openness to a divine mystery—a transfigured existence. First, with regard to the image of overturning, there is a reversal in that temporal experience is fraught with reversals. This image signifies a mediating process at work that is characterized by a discerning and the producing of new meaning as a result of the insufficiency of the literal meaning. The process at work is in terms of the sentence as a whole, rather than just the word. Through the work of the productive imagination, there is a new assimilation that overturns the prior semantic collapse. This new predicative assimilation is the “act of making a similarity appear where previously only dissimilarity could be seen.”855 The interpreter sees a kinship in and through a difference. Through

850 David E. Klemm, “Ricoeur, Theology, and the Rhetoric of Overturning,” Journal of Literature & Theology 3:3 (November, 1989): 277.

851 Ibid.

852 Ibid.

853 Ibid.

854 Ricoeur, “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling,” 154.

855 Ibid. 318 the metaphoric process, we are given insight as to the primordiality of our temporal existence, as a metaphor serves as a linguistic trace for a temporal schematism of our imagination. Second, Ricoeur‟s image of overturning designates the actual narrative act. It is a signification of a revelational process that involves receiving, as well as being transformed, by an inbreaking of what is new being in and through a world that is projected by a religious text. This is a possibility that informs the heart of a narrative act itself. Being is intended in poetic texts in a modality of the possibility, in that they

(poetic texts) refer by means of redescribing reality. An interpreter can project herself into this possible world. Religious texts, however, overturn the power that poetic texts exercise in projecting the possible. Religious texts project as well as donate an “infinite power of possibility itself, apart from any effort I might make to project a possibility on my own.”856 Religious texts carry an overflow—a superabundance, according to Ricoeur. Contemplative awareness, we recall, holds the depth of meaning of all the levels of awareness amidst the silence. Contemplation for John is transformative living in the presence of God. To say one is contemplative is to say one is becoming human. There is a dynamic of growth at work. The theme of growth in love courses through the third part of the commentary. The text utters that “the soul that has reached this state of spiritual espousal knows how to do nothing else than love….”857 Although one is transformed and participating in divine love, growth in the spiritual life never ceases, and one must always be ready to engage in “the continual exercise of love….”858 The text utters, too,

856 Klemm, “Ricoeur, Theology, and the Rhetoric of Overturning,” 278.

857 John of the Cross, SC, 27.8.

858 John of the Cross, SC, 29.1. 319 that “[God] ever continues to communicate more love….”859 Finally, “lovers cannot be satisfied without feeling that they love as much as they are loved.”860 Hence the practitioner/interpreter is reminded that growth is always necessary. Divine love is the source of human love, and when the human comes to recognize it as such, human spiritual love itself, inasmuch as it is in relation to divine love, is to be celebrated. It should be noted that this divine love is a love that is experienced in the human body. In the text, the body is a conduit for and receives divine love. The significance of the use of bodily imagery is that the idea is not to go out beyond the body, but to live more fully in the body, which is the heart of human spiritual and sexual life. The stanzas of the poem, like the Song of Songs itself, are filled with references to the human body, as discussed in Chapter One, and sexual imagery—the neck, the hand, the breast, the one hair fluttering at the neck, the eyes—all have about them, and are all the gaze of love. The gaze of love is depth—the dynamism of incredible depth of insight and meaning much as the symbols that are used reveal limitless content. Infinite riches await the contemplative interpreter of John‟s texts. Thompson comments that with regard to an erotic reading of John‟s text, “embodied in his poetry and its world of mutual self-giving, tenderness, intimacy and joy, are important insights into the nature of human love: its beauty, sensitivity and mystery, as opposed to possessiveness, abuse and self- gratification.”861

The textual world is not one that escapes the whole of the natural world, but at the same time, it is personal, concentrating on just one small part of the world, as the textual utterances move between these two extremes.862 Hence there is an integration of the part

859 John of the Cross, SC, 33.7.

860 John of the Cross, SC, 38.3.

861 Thompson, St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night, 279.

862 John of the Cross, SC, 463. See Kavanaugh‟s introductory notes. 320 and the whole, the one and the many, the universal and the particular, that provides further textual evidence of the reality of transformation. The imagery of nature is ingredient to the poetic text. Woods, thickets, and meadows, the hill, mountains, valleys, lowlands, rivers and riverbanks, islands, waters, caverns, and love-stirring breezes, time of day—the dawn, and the night—both appear. There are also the forces of nature in the deadening north wind, however, this is paired up with the south wind that ushers in what breathes in the garden—the apple tree, a flowering bed with the fragrance amongst the flowers. Hence there is a unity of opposites displayed in the text. And, it is all of creation that bears the mark—the divine image. But there is always an absence that remains in the presence of the image. This is, after all, a human love story. These utterances are of love sickness, of longing and search, for greater love. Transformation in love in the incarnate Word is the summit of the unitive experience.863 The contemplative seeks the divine who is hidden in the depths of the self.864 The pursuit does not take place outside of the self.865 The image lies within the self. What comes from God is obtained through love.866 Nothing is known but love.867

The inner universe of love is not a retreat from, but an enhancement of human life. Contemplative awareness makes of this world a public one through the sharing of the meaning that is made.

863 John of the Cross, SC, 1.10.

864 John of the Cross, SC, 1.6.

865 John of the Cross, SC, 1.8.

866 John of the Cross, SC, 1.13.

867 John of the Cross, SC, 1.18. 321

Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love This utterance, in the form of a prayer entitled “Prayer of a Soul Taken with Love,” which is written by John, is said to have been a gloss of the exclamation of Francis of Assisi, “Deus meus et omnia,” or “My God and all things.”868 It is a fine example of the unitive way of contemplative awareness, and another performance of the transformation of reflexive consciousness. On the unitive way, one is able to see things in a new way because one sees something as other than it was previously seen to be; there is an overturning of what is seen. However, one does not discard the old meaning. One holds the old meaning, along with the new meaning. One, too, can see things from the perspective of self as other, or the other person, or the Other as divine. In other words, there is recognition of an other. This prayer utterance is an example of seeing creation from the perspective of the divine, as the human self who with contemplative awareness understands itself to be in the presence of God. The final lines of the prayer utterance are as follows:

Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth.

Mine are the nations, the just are mine, and mine the sinners. The angels are mine, and the mother of God, and all things are mine; and God himself is mine and for me….869 Thompson draws attention to these utterances in that contrary to what is considered the conventional use of language, through the repetition of possessive pronouns as well as adjectives, which normally would suggest self-centeredness and

868 See God Speaks in the Night: The Life, Times, and Teaching of St. John of the Cross, ed. Silvano Giordano and trans. Kieran Kavanaugh (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2000), 380. See also Thompson, St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night, 278.

869 God Speaks in the Night: The Life, Times, and Teaching of St. John of the Cross, 380. 322 greed, represent the exact opposite of just that: a certain impartiality and detachment from a desire to possess things for oneself, such that everything is remembered in freedom and appreciated for itself, rather than for what it has and can give in order to fulfill one‟s desires or add to self-esteem.870 He explains that “Language has been undermined, made to say the opposite of what the words appear to mean.”871 This utterance is an excellent example of the unitive way with the holding of opposites in tension, and, as such, of the transformation of reflexive consciousness—and the re-creation of language and silence within the Word.

870 Thompson, St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night, 278.

871 Ibid. 323

CONCLUSION: A RICOEURIAN HYMN TO HUMANITY

The summoned self is the unitive way, and is the key to transformation. Ricoeur explains in his essay on the summoned subject that “contemplation remains a kind of teaching because the discovery of truth is the reading within oneself of innate ideas and therefore of something always already there, but still requiring an inward discovery.”872 The actualizable possibility of the transformation of reflexive consciousness lies in the summoned self, and is part of human reality. Language and symbol give possibility to transformation. The theory of discourse and silence couples with the capable self who is capable of being summoned and responding. In the fullness of time, a Word was spoken and the fallible human being was summoned into a new mode of capable being. This mode of capable being manifests through the practice of contemplative silence. Capable being is summoned to ongoing response to the Word. The mode of capable being continuously interprets the meaning of what it is to be capable being through making and carrying new meanings, transcending old meaning, and holding conflicting meanings in tension, as in nondual thinking. This mode of capable being can be a symbol of God. A contemplative discourse of praise and celebration emerges. This is the ninth and final step of the argument. Through the ongoing transformation of reflexive consciousness, the five levels of awareness are increasingly actualized. Contemplative awareness, which carries the other four levels, can and should accompany the practice of contemplative silence, in order that the meaning of silence can be appropriated “now,” in this present moment, through hermeneutical activity. Contemplative awareness takes place through breathing, as well

872 See Paul Ricoeur, “The Summoned Subject in the School of the Narratives of the Prophetic Vocation,” Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, ed. Mark I. Wallace and trans. David Pellauer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 270. 324 as thinking, acting, and feeling. It pulls these strands together and constitutes an integral attentiveness. Our present awareness is attuned in such a way that through attentive listening through the embodied thinking of silence, we can extend hospitality to and welcome the word of the (textual) other in openness and vulnerability. Contemplative awareness, in carrying meanings, elicits movement in thinking, such that we can engage in the ongoing exercise of rethinking our relational realities in and for the world. The continuous movement of rethinking our relational realities, which can include our relation to the idea of God, is integral to ethical action; we can open to new motivations and intentions for acting in relation to others. Through the practice of contemplative silence, capable being, in understanding the relation between silence and language within the Word, recognizes that it has the infinite capacity to transcend itself. There is awareness of poverty of spirit and emptiness, of utter dependence along with great desire, which correspond to the largess, the depth of contemplative human reality, and the profundity of the Word. Joy and gratitude for the grace of the silence of the Word comes in humble acceptance of finitude. Fallibility and capability, finite freedom and infinite capacity are held together in the summoned self that is the unitive way. The way in which I poetically presence my being with the other is the way of being on the way—it is a contemplative mediation. The way in which I am on the way can transform the humanness of my humanity.

In moving between human fallibility and human capability, there is a deepening awareness of fallibility and capability. They both are held together in tension in the practice of contemplative silence; it is a fragile mediation of depth. The summoned self, in responding to the symbolic mode of capable being mediates between accepting fallibility and opening to capability, insofar as there is openness to new meaning. Contemplative human reality, as lived hermeneutical existence, mediates between fallibility and capability. In appropriating contemplative silence, we can recreate authentic human dwelling in and through our living. 325

Contemplative Discourse: A Song of Hermeneutical Existence In the spirit of Ricoeur who is always probing the mystery of existence, that is, of what it is to be human and the meaning of being human, I shall relate an enigma of hermeneutical existence: let us circle back once again to the epilogue to the epilogue of Memory, History, Forgetting. Ricoeur says that “recognition is…the small miracle of memory…in the silent evocation of a being who is absent or gone forever, the cry escapes: „That is her! That is him‟”873 A moment of recognition. One can think, “Who can say, who can see…who I am?”874 A moment of truth. We can respond with our Yes to life, our Yes to acting and to suffering in the acceptance of all that is which makes us capable of transcending paradox and contradiction, as we understand our manifestation of lived experience in a new way. In changing our relationship to language by recognizing silence we change our relationship to ourselves; in changing our relationship to ourselves we change our relationship to language and silence, and integrally so. A hermeneutics of contemplative silence is an interpretation of contemplative human reality. Contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being in which we have an awareness of the awareness of the awareness of being with being whereby we can constitute and create a shared world of meaning(s) through poetically presencing our being as being with others. Contemplative silence manifests a mode of capable being, one which creates the conditions of the possibility for contemplative awareness. A hermeneutics of contemplative silence manifests this deeper level of awareness— contemplative awareness—as a poetics of presencing our human solidarity, “In which being there together is enough,” in the words of Wallace Stevens.875 We recognize

873 Ricoeur, MHF, 495.

874 Ricoeur, FM, chapter 2.

875 Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (New York: Vintage, 1990), 524. 326 ourselves in a new light as we understand more and more continually so, the responsive words: “There is forgiveness,”876 or “you are better than your actions.”877 We can remember the uniqueness to the way in which the voice proclaims the words of forgiveness, which come from above.878 Ricoeur explains:

It is a silent voice but not a mute one. Silent, because there is no clamor of what rages; not mute, because not deprived of speech. An appropriate discourse is in fact dedicated to it, the hymn. A discourse of praise and celebration.879 A hymn to humanity is sung, and can be sung and sung again: we can continually refer truth claims back to our existence as we strive to live our life with integrity, and in greater depth. Given the Ricoeurian “I can” and our capability, we can, indeed, continue to make meaning out of, and interpret our lived experience—in harmony with the lovely poetic words of the song of songs: “Arise, my love…the time of singing has come…let me hear your voice.”880 Finally, to conclude, the significance of this study is that I have shone a philosophical eye on the practice of contemplative silence. I have done so primarily with the works of Paul Ricoeur, and secondarily, with primary texts of the Christian

876 Ricoeur, MHF, 466.

877 Ricoeur, MHF, 493.

878 Ricoeur, MHF, 467.

879 Ibid.

880 New Revised Standard Version Bible, Song of Solomon, 2: 10-14. See also, Paul Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, trans. Kathleen Blamey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 184-186. Ricoeur remarks that “between the aesthetic and the religious…there is a zone of overlap,” continuing, “one of the richest examples of…overlap of the religious and the aesthetic is, undoubtedly, the Canticle of Canticles.” This poetry contains the verticality of the divine and human relationship, and yet, at the same time, love brings with it reciprocity “that can imply crossing the threshold between the ethical and the mystical. Where ethics maintains the vertical dimension, mysticism attempts to introduce reciprocity; the lover and loved occupy equal, reciprocal roles. Reciprocity is introduced into verticality by means of the language of love and thanks to the metaphorical resources of the erotic.” He also refers to “its capacity to introduce tenderness in the ethical relation.” 327 theological/spiritual tradition. I have structured the study to mirror the threefold path that is the unitive way of this tradition—that is, a way of growing in spiritual and ethical maturity. The study is also structured to mirror Ricoeur‟s hermeneutical path of description, explanation, and interpretation. Hence, Part I was a description of the practice of contemplative silence as a historical phenomenon, using textual testimony and avowal to the practice in telling what the practice is. Part II and Part III together formed an explanation of how the practice is possible. The context was theoretically determined in the first section, in terms of fallibility, fallenness, and capability. The context was religiously determined in the second section, in terms of the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive ways. In so doing, I established a hermeneutical and a phenomenological context, in addition to a historical context, for the practice of contemplative silence. Toward these goals, I explained Ricoeur‟s philosophical anthropology, and his reflection on fallible human being. I also explained his methodological change from reflection to hermeneutics, and his work on a hermeneutics of symbol. I then shifted focus to capable human being. I identified the elements that warrant this shift, including in addition to Ricoeur‟s transition to hermeneutics, his interpretation theory, which included a discussion of expression and discourse, and the relation of silence to discourse using the work of Dauenhauer, and finally the hermeneutical self of Ricoeur with personal, narrative, moral, and aesthetic identities. I also grafted the practice of contemplative silence onto Dauenhauer‟s third irreducible moment of silence. Having constructed capable human who understands the relation of silence to discourse, I turned to the practice of contemplative silence, and explained it as the means and end of spiritual transformation. I accomplished this task by engaging in an analysis of the meaning of the practice of contemplative silence. I also provided two ontic examples of the practice, one Cistercian Trappist, and the other Carthusian, which are representative of the practice as a religious phenomenon. The 328 practice is undertaken in a reflexive space of consciousness that involves a dialectic between silence and language within the Word. In order to understand the transformation, next, I mined the philosophical tradition in order to provide knowledge of the five levels of awareness ingredient in the phenonomen itself as potentialities— immediate self-awareness, immediate objective awareness, reflective awareness, reflexive awareness, and contemplative awareness. Contemplative awareness and the transformation of reflexive consciousness culminates in the idea of the summoned subject with contemplative awareness. Given the consideration of the practice of contemplative silence itself, and the five contextual levels of awareness, all of the elements were in place so that we could understand the meaning of capable human. Part IV addressed the meaning of the practice—the meaning is the transformation. The transformation was interpreted in a two-fold way. First, I reinterpreted Ricoeur‟s four “I can‟s,” in terms of the practice of contemplative silence as a transformative spiritual and ethical activity. Second, three texts of John of the Cross, representative of the Carmelite tradition, were interpreted to illustrate that the transformations are real.

The texts were shown to be capable of uttering, and capable of the transformed consciousness. Finally, I have presented by way of this conclusion, the summoned self as being the unitive way, and the key to the transformation. Fallible human was summoned into a new mode of capable being, which manifests through the practice of contemplative silence. Capable being is what it means to live hermeneutical existence, which is, in turn, a form of spiritual and ethical maturity. One way to think about the nature of the practice of contemplative silence is as an ongoing mediating activity of understanding the relation between fallibility and capability in lived hermeneutical existence. Lived hermeneutical existence lies at the heart of contemplative human reality. Contemplative human reality is the heart of meaning. 329

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abel, Olivier. “Paul Ricoeur‟s Hermeneutics: From Critique to Poetics.” In Reading Ricoeur, edited by David M. Kaplan, 183-96. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. Albano, Peter Joseph. Freedom, Truth, and Hope: The Relationship of Philosophy and Religion in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1987. Anckaert, Luc. “Respect for the Other: The Place of the „Thou‟ in Ricoeur‟s Ethics.” In The Foundation and Application of Moral Philosophy, edited by Hendrik J. Opdebeeck, 37-50. Louvain: Peeters, 2000.

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, translated by and introduction by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1999. Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Arthos, John. The Inner Word in Gadamer‟s Hermeneutics. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009. Barré, Jean-Luc. Jacques and Raϊssa Maritain: Beggars for Heaven, translated by Bernard Doering. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005. Beiser, Frederick C. German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781-1801. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002.

Benedict. The Rule of St. Benedict in English, edited by Timothy Fry. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1982. Berkman, Joyce Avrech, editor. Contemplating Edith Stein. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. Bernard of Clairvaux. Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs I, Volume Two, translated by Kilian Walsh and introduction by M. Corneille Halflants. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1971. ______. Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs II, Volume Three, translated by Kilian Walsh and introduction by Jean Leclercq. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1983.

______. Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs III, translated by Kilian Walsh and Irene M. Edmonds and introduction by Emero Stiegman. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1979. ______. Bernard of Clairvaux on the Song of Songs IV, translated by Irene Edmonds and introduction by Jean Leclercq. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 1980. 330

Bonaventure. The Soul‟s Journey into God; The Tree of Life; The Life of St. Francis, translated by and introduction by Ewert Cousins and preface by Ignatius Brady. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1978. Borden, Sarah. Edith Stein. London and New York: Continuum, 2003. Bourgeois, Patrick L. and Frank Schalow. Traces of Understanding: A Profile of Heidegger‟s and Ricoeur‟s Hermeneutics. Atlanta, Georgia: Editions Rodopi B.V., 1990. Bruce, Scott G. Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism: The Cluniac Tradition, c. 900-1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Buber, Martin. “Dialogue.” In Between Man and Man, translated by Ronald Gregor- Smith and introduction by Maurice Friedman, 1-45. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Burrows, Mark S. “‟Raiding the Inarticulate‟: Mysticism, Poetics, and the Unlanguageable.” In Minding the Spirit: The Study of Christian Spirituality, edited by Elizabeth A. Dreyer and Mark S. Burrows, 341-362. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Caputo, John D. The Mystical Element in Heidegger‟s Thought. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986. Cassian, John. John Cassian: The Conferences, Ancient Christian Writers, No. 57, translated by and annotated by Boniface Ramsey. New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1997. ______. John Cassian: The Institutes, Ancient Christian Writers, No. 58, translated by and annotated by Boniface Ramsey. New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: The Newman Press, 2000. Changeux, Jean-Pierre and Paul Ricoeur. What Makes Us Think?: A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain, translated by M.B. DeBevoise. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000. Chauvet, Louis-Marie. Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Experience, translated by Patrick Madigan and Madeleine Beaumont. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1995. ______. The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, translated by Madeleine Beaumont. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001.

Clark, S.H. Paul Ricoeur. New York: Routledge, 1990. Clauteaux, Elbatrina. “When Anthropologist Encounters Theologian: The Eagle and the Tortoise.” In Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, edited by Philippe Bordeyne and Bruce T. Morrill, 155-170. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2008. Courtine-Denamy, Sylvie. Three Women in Dark Times: Edith Stein, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, translated by G.M. Goshgarian. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2000. 331

Crowe, Benjamin D. Heidegger‟s Religious Origins: Destruction and Authenticity. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2006. Crump, Eric. “Between Conviction and Critique: Reflexive Philosophy, Testimony, and Pneumatology.” In Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, edited by Richard A. Cohen and James I. Marsh, 161-186. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. Dauenhauer, Bernard P. Silence: The Phenomenon and Its Ontological Significance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. Davies, Oliver and Denys Turner, editors. Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. De Behar, Lisa Block. A Rhetoric of Silence and Other Selected Writings. Berlin: Walter de Gruyer, 1995.

Descartes, René. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Lexington, KY: BN Publishing, 2007. Dilthey, Wilhelm. Selected Works, Volume I. Introduction to the Human Sciences, edited by and introduction by Rudolf A. Makkreel. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989. ______. Selected Writings, edited by and translated by H.P. Rickman. Cambridge, London, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1976. Doering, E. Jane and Eric O. Springsted, editors. The Christian Platonism of Simone Weil. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004. Doran, Robert M. Subject and Psyche: Ricoeur, Jung, and the Search for Foundations. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, Inc., 1979. Dornisch, Loretta. Faith and Philosophy in the Writings of Paul Ricoeur. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990. Downey, Michael, editor. The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1993. Driscoll, Jeremy. “Apatheia and Purity of Heart in Evagrius Ponticus.” In Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature, edited by Harriet A. Luckman and Linda Kulzer, 141-160. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999. Egan, Keith J. “Carmel: A School of Prayer.” In Carmelite Prayer: A Tradition for the 21st Century, edited by Keith J. Egan, 7-23. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2003. ______. “The Solitude of Carmelite Prayer.” In Carmelite Prayer: A Tradition for the 21st Century, edited by Keith J. Egan, 38-62. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2003. Evans, Jeanne. Paul Ricoeur‟s Hermeneutics of the Imagination. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1995. 332

Finch, Henry Leroy. Simone Weil and the Intellect of Grace, edited by Martin Andic, preface by Annie Finch. New York: Continuum, 2001. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Philosophical Hermeneutics, translated by and edited by David E. Linge. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1977. ______. The Gadamer Reader: A Bouquet of Later Writings, edited by Richard E. Palmer. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007. ______. “The Relevance of the Beautiful.” In The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, edited by and introduction by Robert Bernasconi and translated by Nicholas Walker, 3-53. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. ______. Truth and Method, 2nd revised edition, tranlated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 2000.

Gerhart, Mary. The Question of Belief in Literary Criticism: An Introduction to the Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur. Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz, 1979. Giordano, Silvano, editor. God Speaks in the Night: The Life, Times, and Teaching of St. John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2000. Gorner, Paul. Heidegger‟s Being and Time: An Introduction. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Graef, Hilda C. The Scholar and the Cross: The Life and Work of Edith Stein. Harrison, NY: Roman Catholic Books, 1954. Gray, Francine Du Plessix. Simone Weil. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 2001.

Gregory of Nyssa. The Life of Moses, The Classics of Western Spirituality, translated, introduction, and notes by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson. New York, Ramsey, Toronto: Paulist Press, 1978. Grondin, Jean. Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, translated by Joel Weinsheimer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Gröning, Philip. Disc 1. Into Great Silence. DVD. Directed by Philip Gröning. Berlin, Germany: Zeitgeist Video, 2005. Hahn, Lewis Edwin, editor. The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. The Library of Living Philosophers. Vol. XXII. Peru, Illinois: Open Court Trade and Academic Books, 1995.

Hall, W. David. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative: The Creative Tension between Love and Justice. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007. Harrod, Howard L. “Interpreting and Projecting: Two Elements of the Self as Moral Agent.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 41:1 (March, 1973): 18-29. Hegel, Georg W.F. The Phenomenology of Spirit (The Phenomenology of Mind), translated by J.B. Baillie. La Vergne, TN: Digireads.com, 2009. 333

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1962. ______. Being and Time, A Translation of Sein und Zeit, translated by Joan Stambaugh. Albany: SUNY Press, 1996. ______. Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999. ______. Discourse on Thinking, translated by John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund and introduction by John M. Anderson. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1966. ______. “On the Essence of Ground.” In Pathmarks, edited by and translated by William McNeill, 97-135. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

______. On the Way to Language, translated by Peter D. Hertz. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1971. ______. Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by and introduction by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1971. ______. “Postscript to „What Is Metaphysics?‟” In Pathmarks, edited by and translated by William McNeill, 231-238. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ______. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Esssays, translated by and introduction by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1977. ______. “What is Metaphysics?” In Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill and translated by David Farrell Krell, 82-96. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Husserl, Edmund. The Essential Husserl: Basic Writings in Transcendental Phenomenology, edited by Donn Welton. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999. ______. The Idea of Phenomenology, translated by William P. Alston and George Nakhnikian and introduction by George Nakhnikian. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. ______. The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, edited by Martin Heidegger and translated by James S. Churchill and introduction by Calvin O. Schrag. Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1964.

Ihde, Don. Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971. ______. Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound, 2nd edition. Albany: SUNY Press, 2007. Irigaray, Luce. Sharing the World. London and New York: Continuum, 2008. 334

______. The Way of Love, translated by Heidi Bostic and Stephen Pluhacek. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. Jasper, David. The Sacred Body: Asceticism in Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2009. ______. The Sacred Desert: Religion, Literature, Art, and Culture. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Jervolino, Domenico. The Cogito and Hermeneutics: The Question of the Subject in Ricoeur, translated by Gordon Poole. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990. ______. “Rethinking Ricoeur: The Unity of His Work and the Paradigm of Translation.” In Reading Ricoeur, edited by David M. Kaplan, 225-235. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. John of the Cross, The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez and revisions and introductions by Kieran Kavanaugh. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1991. Johnson, Michael A. “Creation and Initiative: A Reading of Ricoeur‟s Ethics of Originary Affirmation.” In Humanity Before God: Contemporary Faces of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Ethics, edited by William Schweiker, Michael A. Johnson, and Kevin Jung, 139-172. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006. Johnston, William. “Arise My Love…”: Mysticism for a New Era. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2000. ______, editor. Encyclopedia of Monasticism, vol. 2. Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000. Johnston, William. Mystical Theology: The Science of Love. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1995. Joy, Morny, editor. Paul Ricoeur and Narrative: Context and Contestation. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1997. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason, edited by Mary J. Gregor and introduction by Andrews Reath. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. ______. Critique of Pure Reason, translated by and edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

______. Critique of the Power of Judgment, edited by Paul Guyer and translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ______. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by and edited by Mary Gregor and introduction by Christine M. Korsgaard. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 335

______. Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, translated by and edited by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni and introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kavanaugh, Kieran. “Contemplation and the Stream of Consciousness.” In Carmelite Prayer: A Tradition for the 21st Century, edited by Keith J. Egan, 101-118. New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 2003. Kearney, Richard. “Capable Man, Capable God.” In A Passion for the Possible: Thinking with Paul Ricoeur, edited by Brian Treanor and Henry Isaac Venema, 49-61. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. ______. On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2004.

______. “On the Hermeneutics of Evil.” In Reading Ricoeur, edited by David M. Kaplan, 71-88. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. Kemp, T. Peter, and David Rasmussen, editors. The Narrative Path: The Later Works of Paul Ricoeur. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989. Kenny, Peter. “Conviction, Critique and Christian Theology: Some Reflections on Reading Ricoeur.” In Memory, Narrativity, Self and the Challenge to Think God: The Reception within Theology of the Recent Work of Paul Ricoeur, edited by Maureen Junker-Kenny and Peter Kenny, 92-116. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004. Klemm, David E. “Depth Hermeneutic and the Literary Work of Art: Religious Tradition, Hermeneutic Theory and Nihilism.” In The Sacred and the Profane: Contemporary Demands on Hermeneutics, edited by Jeffrey F. Keuss, 77-87. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003.

______. “Individuality: The Principle of Ricoeur‟s Mediating Philosophy and Its Bearing on Theology of Culture.” In Meanings in Texts and Actions: Questioning Paul Ricoeur, edited by David E. Klemm and William Schweiker, 275-291. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1993. ______. “Introduction to Tillich‟s „The Meaning and Justification of Religious Symbols.‟” In Hermeneutical Inquiry: Volume I: The Interpretation of Texts, edited by David E. Klemm, 157-163. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1986. ______. “Levinas‟ Phenomenology of the Other and Language as the Other of Phenomenology.” Man and World 22 (1989): 403-426. ______. “Philosophy and Kerygma: Ricoeur as Reader of the Bible.” In Reading Ricoeur, edited by David M. Kaplan, 47-69. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. ______. “Ricoeur, Theology, and the Rhetoric of Overturning.” Journal of Literature & Theology 3:3 (November, 1989): 267-284. ______. “Schleiermacher on the Self: Immediate Self-Consciousness as Feeling.” In Figuring the Self: Subject, Absolute, and Others in Classical German Philosophy, edited by David E. Klemm and Günter Zöller, 169-190. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. 336

______. “Schleiermacher‟s Hermeneutic: the Sacred and the Profane.” In The Sacred and the Profane: Contemporary Demands on Hermeneutics, edited by Jeffrey F. Keuss, 61-75. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003. ______. “Searching for a Heart of Gold: A Ricoeurian Meditation on Moral Striving and the Power of Religious Discourse.” In Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought, edited by John Wall, William Schweiker, and W. David Hall, 97-111. New York: Routledge, 2002. ______. “The Desire to Know God in Schleiermacher‟s Dialektik.” In The Otherness of God, edited by Orrin F. Summerell, 92-110. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1998. ______. The Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur: A Constructive Analysis. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1983.

______. “The Rhetoric of Theological Argument.” In The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences: Language and Argument in Scholarship and Public Affairs, edited by John S. Nelson, Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey, 276-297. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. Klemm, David E., and William Schweiker. Religion and the Human Future: An Essay on Theological Humanism. Malden, MA and Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Langsdorf, Lenore. “The Doubleness of Subjectivity: Regenerating the Phenomenology of Intentionality.” In Ricoeur as Another, edited by Richard A. Cohen and James I. Marsh, 33-55. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. Lash, Nicholas. Holiness, Speech and Silence: Reflections on the Question of God. Hampshire and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969. Lonergan, Bernard. Method in Theology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971. Lowe, Walter James. “The Coherence of Paul Ricoeur.” Journal of Religion 61:4 (October, 1981): 384-402. ______. Mystery and the Unconscious: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1977. MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Second Edition. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984.

______. Edith Stein: A Philosophical Prologue, 1913-1922. Oxford and Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006. Mahfoud, Miguel. “Formação da pessoa e caminho humano: Edith Stein e Martin Buber.” Memorandum 8 (2005): 52-61. 337

Mandry, Christof. “The Relationship between Philosophy and Theology in the Recent Work of Paul Ricoeur.” In Memory, Narrativity, Self and the Challenge to Think God: The Reception within Theology of the Recent Work of Paul Ricoeur, edited by Maureen Junker-Kenny and Peter Kenny, 63-77. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004. Marcel, Gabriel. Tragic Wisdom and Beyond: including Conversations between Paul Ricoeur and Gabriel Marcel, translated by Stephen Jolin and Peter McCormick. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Maritain, Raϊssa. Raϊssa‟s Journal: Presented by Jacques Maritain. Preface by René Voillaume. Albany: Magi Books, Inc., 1974. McIntosh, Mark A. Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 1998.

McGinn, Bernard, editor. The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism. New York: Random House Publishing, Inc., 2006. ______. The Foundations of Christian Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, Vol. I of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991. ______. The Growth of Mysticism: Gregory the Great through the 12th Century, Vol. II of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1994. Merrill, Christopher. Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain. New York: Random House, 2005. Merton, Thomas. A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk‟s True Life. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Three, edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996. ______. Cistercian Contemplatives: Our Lady of Gethsemani: 1848-1948. New York: Marbridge Printing Company, Inc., 1948. ______. Contemplation in a World of Action, foreward by Robert Coles. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998. ______. Contemplative Prayer, introduction by Thich Nhat Hanh. New York and London: Doubleday, 1996. ______. Dancing in the Water of Life: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Five, edited by Robert E. Daggy. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997. ______. Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk & Writer. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Two, edited by Jonathan Montaldo. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996. ______. New Seeds of Contemplation. New York: New Directions Books, 1961. ______. The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation, edited by and introduction by William H. Shannon. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. 338

______. The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume Seven, edited by Patrick Hart. New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1998. ______. The Road to Joy: Letters to New and Old Friends, edited by Robert E. Daggy. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. ______. The Seven Storey Mountain. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., 1948. ______. The Silent Life. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1956. ______. Thomas Merton: Spiritual Master: The Essential Writings, edited by Lawrence S. Cunningham, foreward by Patrick Hart, preface by Anne E. Carr. New York and Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1992.

Montiglio, Silvia. Silence in the Land of Logos. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Moran, Dermot. Introduction to Phenomenology. New York: Routledge, 2000. Morill, Bruce T. “Building on Chauvet‟s Work: An Overview.” In Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis- Marie Chauvet, edited by Philippe Bordeyne and Bruce T. Morrill, xv-xxiv. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2008. ______. “Time, Absence, and Otherness: Divine-Human Paradoxes Bonding Liturgy and Ethics.” In Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, edited by Philippe Bordeyne and Bruce T. Morrill, 137-152. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2008.

Mother Teresa. Come Be My Light: The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta,” edited and with commentary by Brian Kolodiejchuk. New York: Doubleday, 2007. Muldoon, Mark. On Ricoeur. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, Inc., 2002. Neyer, Maria Amata. Edith Stein: Her Life in Photos and Documents, translated by Waltraut Stein. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1999. Opdebeeck, Hendrik. “Ricoeur‟s Institutional Mediation of Freedom.” In The Foundation and Application of Moral Philosophy: Ricoeur‟s Ethical Order, edited by Hendrik J. Opdebeeck, 51-63. Louvain: Peeters, 2000. Origen. The Classics of Western Spirituality, translated by and introduction by Rowan A. Greer. Preface by Hans Urs von Balthasar. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1979. Palmer, Richard E. Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969. Pellauer, David. “At the Limit of Practical Wisdom: Moral Blindness.” In Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, edited by Richard A. Cohen and James I. Marsh, 187-201. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. 339

Perrin, J.M. and G. Thibon. Simone Weil as We Knew Her, translated by Emma Craufurd and introduction by J. P. Little. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Peters, John Durham. Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. ______. “‟The Root of Humanity‟: Hegel on Communication and Language.” In Figuring the Self: Subject, Absolute, and Others in Classical German Philosophy, edited by David E. Klemm and Günter Zöller, 227-244. Albany: SUNY Press, 1997. Pétrement, Simone. Simone Weil: A Life, translated by Raymond Rosenthal. NewYork: Random House, Inc., 1976. Petzet, Heinrich Wiegand. Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger, 1929- 1976, translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly and introduction by Parvis Emad. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Picard, Max. The World of Silence. Preface by Gabriel Marcel. Wichita, Kansas: Eighth Day Press, 2002. Plato, Charmides. In The Collected Dialogues including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, 99-122. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989. ______. Republic. In The Collected Dialogues including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, 575-844. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989. Pöggeler, Otto. Martin Heidegger‟s Path of Thinking, translated by Daniel Magurshak and Sigmund Barber. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 1991.

Posselt, Teresia Renata. Edith Stein: The Life of a Philosopher and Carmelite, edited by Susanne M. Batzdorff, Josephine Koeppel and John Sullivan. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2005. Prétot, Patrick. “The Sacraments as „Celebrations of the Church‟: Liturgy‟s Impact on Sacramental Theology.” In Sacraments: Revelation of the Humanity of God: Engaging the Fundamental Theology of Louis-Marie Chauvet, edited by Philippe Bordeyne and Bruce T. Morrill, 25-41. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2008. Prudhomme, Jeff Owen. “The Passing-By of the Ultimate God: The Theological Assessment of Modernity in Heidegger‟s Beiträge zur Philosophie.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 61:3 (August, 1993): 443-454.

Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works, The Classics of Western Spirituality, translated by Colm Luibheid, with Paul Rorem. New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987. Putti, Joseph. Theology as Hermeneutics: Paul Ricoeur‟s Theory of Text Interpretation and Method in Theology. San Francisco: International Scholars Publications, 1994. Rasmussen, David M. Mythic-Symbolic Language and Philosophical Anthropology: A Constructive Interpretation of the Thought of Paul Ricoeur. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971. 340

______. “Rethinking Subjectivity: Narrative Identity and the Self.” In Ricoeur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, edited by Richard A. Cohen and James I. Marsh, 57-69. Albany: SUNY Press, 2002. Reagan, Charles E. “Binding and Loosing: Promising and Forgiving, Amnesty and Amnesia.” In Reading Ricoeur, edited by David M. Kaplan, 237-248. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. ______. Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. ______. Studies in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1979.

Ricoeur, Paul. “Approaching the Human Person.” Ethical Perspectives 1 (1999): 45-54.

______. A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection & Imagination, edited by Mario J. Valdés. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. ______. “Can Forgiveness Heal?” In The Foundation and Application of Moral Philosophy, edited by Hendrik J. Opdebeeck, 31-36. Leuven: Peeters, 2000.

______. Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, translated by Kathleen Blamey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

______. Essays on Biblical Interpretation, edited by and introduction by Lewis S. Mudge. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980.

______. “Ethics and Human Capability: A Response.” In Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought, edited by John Wall, William Schweiker, and W. David Hall, 279-290. New York and London: Routledge, 2002.

______. Evil: A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology, translated by John Bowden and introduction by Graham Ward. London and New York: Continuum, 2007. ______. “Existence and Hermeneutics.” In The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, I, edited by Don Ihde and translated by Kathleen McLaughlin, 3-24. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974.

______. “Explanation and Understanding.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by Kathleen Blamey, 125-143. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.

______. Fallible Man, revised translation by Charles A. Kelbley and introduction by Walter J. Lowe. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986.

______. Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, translated by and introduction by Erazim V. Kohák. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966. 341

______. “Freedom in the Light of Hope.” In The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, I, edited by Don Ihde and translated by Robert Sweeney, 402-424. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974.

______. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, translated by Denis Savage. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970.

______. History and Truth, translated and introduction by Charles A. Kelbley and foreword by David M. Rasmussen. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965, 2007.

______. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976.

______. Living Up to Death, translated by David Pellauer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009.

______. “Love and Justice.” In Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action, edited by Richard Kearney, 23-39. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1996. ______. Memory, History, Forgetting, translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. ______. “Naming God.” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 34:4 (1979): 215-227. ______. “Narrated Time,” translated by Robert Sweeney. Philosophy Today (Winter, 1985): 259-272. ______. “Narrative Time.” Critical Inquiry 7:1 On Narrative (Autumn, 1980): 169-190.

______. Oneself as Another, translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992. ______. “On Interpretation.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by Kathleen Blamey, 1-20. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ______. On Translation: Thinking in Action, translated by Eileen Brennan and introduction by Richard Kearney. New York: Routledge, 2006. ______. “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by John B. Thompson, 25-52. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.

______. “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Hermeneutics.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson, 89-101. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ______. “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics.” Studies in Religion (1975): 14-33. ______. “Philosophy and Religious Language.” The Journal of Religion 54:1 (January 1974): 71-85. 342

______. “Preface to Bultmann.” In The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, I, edited by Don Ihde and translated by Peter McCormick, 381-401. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974. ______. Reflections on the Just, translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. ______. “Religion, Atheism, and Faith.” In The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, I, edited by Don Ihde and translated by Charles Freilich, 440-467. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974. ______. “Religious Belief: The Difficult Path of the Religious.” In A Passion for the Possible: Thinking with Paul Ricoeur, edited by Brian Treanor and Henry Isaac Venema, 27-40. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.

______. The Course of Recognition, translated by David Pellauer. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2005.

______. “The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation.” Philosophy Today 17 (1973): 129-169.

______. “The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection: I.” In The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, I, edited by Don Ihde and translated by Denis Savage, 287-314. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974.

______. “The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection: II.” In The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, I, edited by Don Ihde and translated by Charles Freilich, 315-334. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974.

______. “The Human Experience of Time and Narrative.” Research in Phenomenology 9 (1979): 17-34. ______. The Just, translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. ______. “The Logic of Jesus, the Logic of God.” Criterion 18:2 (1979): 4-6. ______. “The Memory of Suffering.” In Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, edited by Mark I. Wallace and translated by David Pellauer, 289-292. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. ______. “The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling.” Critical Inquiry 5:1 (Autumn, 1978): 143-159. ______. “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by Kathleen Blamey, 144-167. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ______. “The Problem of the Foundation of Moral Philosophy.” In The Foundation and Application of Moral Philosophy: Ricoeur‟s Ethical Order, edited by Hendrik J. Opdebeeck, 11-30. Leuven: Peeters, 2000. 343

______. The Reality of the Historical Past. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1984. ______. The Rule of Metaphor, translated by Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello. London and New York: Routledge, 1977. ______. “The Summoned Subject in the School of the Narratives of the Prophetic Vocation.” In Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, edited by Mark I. Wallace and translated by David Pellauer, 262-275. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. ______. The Symbolism of Evil, translated by Emerson Buchanan. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967. ______. “The Task of Hermeneutics.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by John B. Thompson, 53-74. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ______. Time and Narrative, Vol I, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. ______. Time and Narrative, Vol. II, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1985. ______. Time and Narrative, Vol. III, translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1988. ______. “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation.” Harvard Theological Review 70:1-2 (January-April, 1977): 1-37.

______. “What Is a Text? Explanation and Understanding.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson, 105-124. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ______and André LaCocque. Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies, translated by David Pellauer. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1998. Ritivoi, Andreea Deciu. Paul Ricoeur: Tradition and Innovation in Rhetorical Theory. Albany: SUNY Press, 2006. Safranski, Rüdiger. Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, translated by Ewald Osers. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Sawacki, Marianne. Body, Text, and Science: The Literacy of Investigative Practices and the Phenomenology of Edith Stein. Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997. Scharlemann, Robert P. “Being Open and Thinking Theologically.” In Hermeneutical Inquiry: Vol. II: The Interpretation of Existence, edited by David E. Klemm, 259-271. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1986. ______. The Being of God: Theology and the Experience of Truth. New York: The Seabury Press, 1981. 344

______. “The Being of God When God Is Not Being God: Deconstructing the History of Theism.” In Inscriptions and Reflections: Essays in Philosophical Theology, edited by Robert P. Scharlemann, 30-53. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1989. ______. “The Question of Philosophical Theology.” In Being and Truth: Essays in Honour of John Macquarrie, edited by Alistair Kee and Eugene T. Long, 3-17. London: SCM Press Ltd, 1986. ______. “The Textuality of Texts.” In Meanings in Texts and Action: Questioning Paul Ricoeur, edited by David E. Klemm and William Schweiker, 13-25. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. Dialectic or, The Art of Doing Philosophy. A Study Edition of the 1811 Notes, translated by and introduction by and notes by Terrence N. Tice. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1996. ______. Hermeneutics and Criticism, translated by and edited by Andrew Bowie. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ______. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, translated by and edited by Richard Crouter. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. . ______. The Christian Faith, edited by H.R. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart. London and New York: T&T Clark Ltd., 1999. Schweiker, William. “Paul Ricoeur and the Prospects of a New Humanism.” In Reading Ricoeur, edited by David M. Kaplan, 89-108. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. ______. “Starry Heavens and Moral Worth: Hope and Responsibility in the Structure of Theological Ethics.” In Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral Thought, edited by John Wall, William Schweiker, and W. David Hall, 117-142. New York: Routledge, 2002. Shannon, William H. and Christine M. Bochen and Patrick F. O‟Connell, editors. The Thomas Merton Encyclopedia. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002. Sharkey, Sarah Borden. Thine Own Self: Individuality in Edith Stein‟s Later Writings. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010. Sharr, Adam. Heidegger‟s Hut. Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 2006. Sheldrake, Philip. The New Westminster Dictionary of Christian Spirituality. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005.

Signer, Michael A., editor. Memory and History in Christianity and Judaism. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. Simms, Karl. Paul Ricoeur. New York: Routledge, 2003. Springsted, Eric O., editor. Simone Weil. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1998. 345

Stein, Edith. An Investigation Concerning the State. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 10, translated by and edited by Marianne Sawacki. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2006. ______. Essays on Woman, Revised Second Edition. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 2, translated by Freda Mary Oben. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996. ______. Finite and Eternal Being. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 9, translated by Kurt F. Reinhardt. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002. ______. Knowledge and Faith. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 8, translated by Walter Redmond. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2000. ______. Life in a Jewish Family. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 1, translated by Josephine Koeppel and edited by L. Gerber and Romaeus Leuven. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1986. ______. On the Problem of Empathy. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 3, translated by Waltraut Stein. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1989. ______. Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 7, translated by Mary Catherine Baseheart and Marianne Sawicki and edited by Marianne Sawacki. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2000. ______. Potency and Act: Studies Towards a Philosophy of Being. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 11, translated by Walter Redmond and edited by Dr. L. Gelber and Romaeus Leuven, O.C.D. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2009. ______. The Hidden Life: Essays, Meditations, Spiritual Texts. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 4, translated by Waltraut Stein and edited by L. Gelber and Michael Linssen. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1992. ______. The Science of the Cross. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 6, translated by Josephine Koeppel. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 2002. ______. Self- Portrait in Letters: 1916-1942. The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Vol. 5, translated by Josephine Koeppel and edited by L. Gelber and Romaeus Leuven. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1993. Stevens, Wallace. The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. New York: Vintage Books, 1990. Stewart, Columba. “Introduction.” In Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature, edited by Harriet A. Luckman and Linda Kulzer, 1-16. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999. Taylor, Mark C. After God. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. Teresa of Avila. The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Volume Two, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1980. Thérèse of Lisieux. The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Third Edition, translated by John Clarke. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1996. 346

Theunissen, Michael. The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Buber, translated by Christopher Macann and introduction by Fred R. Dallmayr. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1984. Thompson, Colin. St. John of the Cross: Songs in the Night. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003. Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology, Vol. I. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1951. ______. “The Meaning and Justification of Religious Symbols.” In Hermeneutical Inquiry: Volume I: The Interpretation of Texts, edited by David E. Klemm, 165-171. Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1986. ______. Theology of Culture, edited by Robert C. Kimball. London and New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 1959. Treanor, Brian and Henry Isaac Venema. “Introduction: How Much More Than the Possible?” In A Passion for the Possible: Thinking with Paul Ricoeur, edited by Brian Treanor and Henry Isaac Venema, 1-21. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. Turner, Denys. The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Van Den Hengel, John W. The Hermeneutics of the Subject of Paul Ricoeur. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1982. Vanhoozer, Kevin J. Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: A Study in Hermeneutics and Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Van Leeuwen, Theodoor Marius. The Surplus of Meaning: Ontology and Eschatology in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1981. Venema, Henry Isaac. Identifying Selfhood: Imagination, Narrative, and Hermeneutics in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur. New York: SUNY Press, 2000. Wall, John. Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Wallace, Mark I. The Second Naiveté: Barth, Ricoeur, and the New Yale Theology. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1995. Weil, Simone. Waiting for God, translated by Emma Craufurd and introduction by Leslie Fiedler. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

Welch, John. The Carmelite Way: An Ancient Path for Today‟s Pilgrim. Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1996. Westphal, Merold. “Ricoeur‟s Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Religion.” In Reading Ricoeur, edited by David M. Kaplan, 109-127. Albany: SUNY Press, 2008. Wilkinson, Iain. “Thinking with Suffering.” Cultural Values 5:4 (October, 2001): 421- 444. 347

Williams, Robert R. Hegel‟s Ethics of Recognition. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1997. ______. Recognition: Fichte and Hegel on the Other. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. Yannaras, Christos. On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, edited by and introduction by Andrew Louth and translated by Haralambos Ventis. London and New York: T&T Clark International Ltd, 2005.