Negating Negation: Against the Apophatic Abandonment of the Dionysian Corpus

158 Pages·2014·0.995 MB·English

by  Timothy D. Knepper

Negating Negation critically examines key concepts in the corpus N
e
of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: divine names and perceptible
g
symbols; removal and negation; hierarchy and hierurgy; ineffability and a
t
incomprehensibility. In each case it argues that the Dionysian corpus does not i
n
negate all things of an absolutely ineffable God; rather, it negates few things g Negating Negation

N
of a God that is effable in important ways. Dionysian divine names are not
e
inadequate metaphors or impotent attributes but transcendent divine causes. g
a
Divine names are not therefore flatly negated of God but removed as ordinary t
i Against the Apophatic Abandonment
properties to be revealed as divine causes. o
n

Itptwoothfr h eioA‘ltasnei hajbn Dtenepce sgcgo oilotfutoaanhupsltisnu lcesihtlviyttl,y-an iueesb csar idl itiae raonsheenlbnw,adee lo aitfo cnigioflttolvya hi oksosirbatcg zipuritsaaeylau sinb s’onot sioanyrpgn r .nguo pelcmuidt tuevw r ereDaatboetsvhlar ei iopoerlps dieh nmhdcD aeyoaoss nisf lroaoali eaieunnnnzmndsda ey cf ec sotritnhaieheroannrol an isottltguot i noc-eiegsoioorsnpsyitunrt.eiidi pscftnIcsoy niub t oc tasstehonoth lld eeni Cneaoeoos hdfftlem broa,rss uiewng uysnahytdtcelhio.ahs a pa tl Qn if rorpna eiauftrb o cytpoiafaett rj wneinreec(m dc hsepteatoeh sosinlrn nte,oset e teef ratc)n dshnlemopal eia wnmtet othnhtciidvrteeiaihaeasnerm r lrglynyes, T of the Dionysian Corpus
are angels and liturgical action lies beyond either affirmation or negation. i
m
John Milbank, o
t
Research Professor of Religion, Politics, and Ethics, h
y
University of Nottingham D
. K
Knepper sweeps away the assumption that Dionysian metaphysics is n
e
fundamentally apophatic. He offers an intriguing look at the positive p
p
dimensions of divine names in particular, and at the Dionysian cosmos, e
r
as a whole. In doing so, he changes the impact Dionysius has on a
philosophical understanding of God. Sarah Wear,
Associate Professor of Classics,
Franciscan University of Steubenville, Pennsylvania
Timothy D. Knepper is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Drake University,
Iowa, where he chairs the Department of Philosophy and Religion and directs
the Comparison Project.
James Clarke & Co
Timothy D. Knepper
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Negating Negation
Against the Apophatic Abandonment
of the Dionysian Corpus
Timothy D. Knepper
C
James Clarke & Co
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For John
James Clarke & Co
P.O. Box 60
Cambridge
CB1 2NT
United Kingdom
www.jamesclarke.co
[email protected]
ISBN: 978 0 227 17455 5
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A record is available from the British Library
First published by James Clarke & Co, 2014
Copyright © Timothy D. Knepper, 2014
Published by arrangement
with Cascade Books
All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced, stored
electronically or in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without prior written permission from the
Publisher ([email protected]).
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Contents
List of Tables viii
Preface ix
Introduction xi
1 Te Divine Names are Not Names 1
2 Negation Does Not Negate 35
3 Ranks are Not Bypassed; Rites are Not Negated 69
4 Te inefable god is Not inefable 103
Conclusion 132
Bibliography 137
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Tables
1 Te Divine Names of Divine Names 5–13 16
2 Te Logic of apophasis 64
3 terms of afrmation and Negation in the Dionysian
Corpus 66
4 Hierarchical Sciences, orders, and activities 73
viii
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Preface
I
did not begin reading the Dionysian corpus until the second se-
mester of my doctoral program. Having just completed courses in
early Jewish mysticism (with Steven Katz) and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical
Investigations (with Juliet Floyd), i had already determined to write my dis-
sertation on the grammatical techniques and rules of mystical discourse.
But i had not yet decided where to look for such techniques and rules. i had
wanted to work with Nāgārjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. But my advisor
(Wesley Wildman) convinced me that unless i wanted to add years to my
degree, i was better of working in a language i already knew. as with so
many other matters, his advice was sage.
although i read and reread the Paulist Press translation of the Diony-
sian corpus during the remaining years of my doctoral program, the inter-
disciplinary nature of my dissertation prevented me from working all that
closely with the critical edition of the corpus. Tus it was not until afer the
defense of my dissertation that i began chasing down all the occurrences of
certain technical terms in the Dionysian corpus, translating the sentences
in which they appeared. Part of what i discovered in the process was what
so many other Dionysian scholars already knew: the Paulist Press edition
is more paraphrase than translation. But my other discovery seemed rela-
tively unique: the Dionysian corpus does not negate all things of an abso-
lutely inefable god; rather, it negates very few things of a god that is only
qualifedly inefable.
Tis book is the culmination of that process. in it i will try to show
you that the “popular” interpretation and appropriation of the Dionysius
corpus is mistaken: Pseudo-Dionysius the areopagite does not abandon
all things to apophasis, and therefore cannot serve as a poster boy for our
(post)modern projects in religious pluralism or anti-onto-theology. Quite
ix
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Preface
the contrary, the Dionysian corpus gives reason for suspicion of such proj-
ects, especially when they relativize or metaphorize religious belief and
practice in the name of absolute inefability.
Tis process of discovery did not of course occur in a vacuum. among
the many thanks that are in order, the frst and foremost goes out to my
former editor, John N. Jones, whose life of kindness and insight was tragi-
cally cut short a year ago. it was John who frst sought out my dissertation,
who eventually encouraged me to write a book on just the Dionysian cor-
pus, and who shepherded me through this process. Not only is this book
unimaginable without him, so also is my maturity as a Dionysian scholar.
afer John, i thank my former students Blake Brown and Michael Scully
for their research assistance with various aspects of this project; Drake Uni-
versity for making possible this research assistance with a Provost Research
grant and an arts and Sciences Research assistantship; eric Perl, Brad
Herling, and Tomas Carroll for their critical feedback of various aspects
of this project; John Finamore for directing my entrée into Proclus during a
research semester; Drake University’s Center for the Humanities not only for
granting me this research semester along with access to Tesaurus Linguae
graecae but also for a research scholar award to support the writing of this
book and for a services support grant to support the indexing of this book;
Wesley Wildman for his guidance of a much earlier version of this project;
Robin Parry for his masterful editing of the manuscript; and my family for
showing me why this book does and does not matter.
Some of the material from some of these chapters appeared elsewhere
frst (although most of it has been thoroughly reworked, and some of it has
been substantively reconceived): American Catholic Philosophical Quar-
terly (“Not Not: Te Method and Logic of Dionysian Negation,” 82.4 [2008]
619–37), Religious Studies (“Tree Misuses of Dionysius for Comparative
Teology,” 45.2 [2009] 205–21), Quaestiones Disputatae (“inefability Now
and Ten: Te Legacy of Neoplatonic inefability in twentieth-Century
Philosophy of Religion,” 2.1–2 [2011] 263–76), and in Logic in Orthodox
Christian Tinking (“techniques and Rules of inefability in the Diony-
sian Corpus,” edited by andrew Schumann, 122–173, Berlin: De gruyter,
2012). But in the case of chapter 3, almost all of this material appeared
elsewhere frst: Modern Teology (“Ranks are Not Bypassed; Rituals are
Not Negated: Te Dionysian Corpus on Return,” forthcoming). i thank all
these publishers for allowing me to draw on this material here.
x
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Introduction
H
ow can that which is absolutely inefable be or do something in
particular? How, for that matter, can it be anything at all? For if it is
or does anything at all, then something can be said of it. and if nothing can
be said of it, then it cannot be or do anything at all.
Tis is the predicament in which recent interpreters of the Dionysian
corpus have found themselves, having to explain the many positive details
of the corpus on the one hand, but wanting to proclaim the absolute and
unqualifed inefability of the Dionysian god on the other. Teir solution,
although varying in grounds and ends, is more or less the same—apophatic
abandonment, the ultimate and complete negation of all things of an abso-
lutely and unqualifedly inefable god.
among these grounds, two general strategies stand out; both, how-
ever, fall short. Te frst consigns the many positive details of the Diony-
sian corpus to the linguistic realm of the non-literal.1 Here, for example,
the divine names of god or ecclesiastical rituals of the church are said to
be metaphors that are not literally true of god or means that are merely
useful at attaining some salvifc goal. Here it is said that god is meta-
phorically predicable as the divine names or soteriologically accessible
through the ecclesiastical rituals, while remaining literally absolutely
inefable. Te second strategy instead relegates the positive details of the
Dionysian corpus to the ontological realm of the non-ultimate.2 Here
the divine names and ecclesiastical rituals are said to pertain only to the
1. examples of this strategy that i will consider below include John Hick, Denys
turner, and Paul Rorem. See my introductions to all four chapters, but particularly those
of the frst three chapters.
2. examples of this strategy that i will consider below include John D. Jones, eric
Perl, and andrew Louth. See my introductions to chapters 2 and 4.
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