Per Caritatem

I thank Dr. Salas for his response. He asks the right questions. I would like to address his points before adding my own.

First, it would be helpful, towards several possible ends, to render the question more precise. It would probably help one know just what the essay was saying; it would therefore help one interpret the essay in the broader sense; it would, of course, also help one find more definite faults in the question; and it could help one respond out of one’s established answers for things, whether those established answers are ones from one’s tradition (in any sense of tradition, e.g., philosophical or religious) and therefore shared or whether they are peculiar to oneself, and whether one has a great reflective awareness of what they are or whether one has next to none at all, and whether one holds them on account of reasons or not; etc. The intention of the question, as it was rendered, was to hinder the latter two ends that I have now mentioned, but not at all the former two. Dr. Salas very rightly asks whether the question should be understood as having an epistemic, an ontological, or a phenomenological nature, or all or none of these. The answer to this question is that the intention of the question was to arrive at that frame of primordiality which lies prior to any of these distinctions. I find this place of primordiality, if successfully arrived at, to be the most interesting of frames and the most profitable (in the Socratic sense).

Second, the God intended was primarily the one of which Augustine writes in his Confessions, secondarily the one depicted by the exposition of the image of ascent, thirdly the one that comes to view when that God is taken to be the one about which the exposition speaks (and this one comes to view partially from the body of what convictions and etc. one carries with oneself), fourthly the one that the arc of the philosophia perennis, stretching from the ancient Greeks through the medievals, attempted to speak of, fifthly the one exposited by Hegel, and sixthly whatever one the reader understands by the name—in that order. One could hardly have known everything that I say here from what I said there, but here it is. And as tempting as it would be to view Hegel’s God as a hypostasized rationalism, akin to Aristotle’s thought thinking itself, it is not yet clear to me just how Hegel ultimately intends his system to be taken, much less how I would be justified in taking it.

Third, ascent, i.e., both the notion of ascent in general and the various accounts given for it in the philosophical tradition, was put forward to be judged according the merit found in it. If it itself merits to be taken as a stepping stone, and thus forgotten, so should it be.

Fourth, by speaking of philosophical tradition, I meant to pick out philosophy from religion (and mysticism and spirituality, when these are taken to differ from religion) and the philosophia perennis from philosophy in general. I did not mean for there to be any confusion on this point.
I had hoped that the question would be clarified by the end of the essay. The question itself is supposed to incline one away from conceiving of knowledge of God as something that one has or does not have and cannot come to have. The exposition of the image of ascent was further supposed to incline thought away from an answer that would say that God is known simply by an immediate awareness; what one knows immediately, according to the image, are the things of the world out over which one looks, other human beings, and the affairs in which one finds anxiety and grief. The exposition of the image was also determinately indeterminate with respect to that for the sake of which God was being sought: e.g., so that God would take concern in the affairs that cause one anxiety and grief and make them cease, or make them cease to cause anxiety and grief, or would make the anxiety and grief more bearable, by changing the affairs or changing oneself or both; and this for the sake of oneself being at peace, or to the end of giving one delight, or giving one things that cause one delight; and this in the sense in which God becomes an instrument to one’s ends, or in the sense in which one’s ends are radically changed so as to be line with God’s ends, or in the sense in which one’s ends are rectified with respect to God’s ends; and this in such a way as to change the will (or plan, if you like) of God or in such a way as for oneself to become reconciled to it; and this last in the sense of how one might practice management over one’s life or in a more psychological sense; etc.

Now I will add my own points.

It seems to me, after now having read some of Edith Stein’s writings, that the consciousness of the one who is to be subject to an ascent must be understood as having the following initial structuration. One will be conscious of the goings-on of the world, but one will be somewhat drawn back from them; i.e., one will not be simply conscious of particular goings-on and thus immersed in immediacy, but rather one will be conscious of the goings-on as not delimiting one’s being, as not defining one’s possibilities, etc. This latter form of consciousness does not have a name: it is a perception but seems rather to be either an impression or a feeling. In any case, one perceives that one’s possibilities can be actualized otherwise than in engagement in particular goings-on. That is to say, one has already receded into what is called one’s mind, one’s inwardness, one’s subjectivity, one’s soul, one’s memoria, etc. One is perhaps not able to give an articulation of the class containing the affairs that make up the arena in which one may engage with the world and its goings-on. Likewise, one is perhaps not able to define what else one’s being is besides an agent and patient in the goings-on of the world. The difference, however, is perceptible, i.e., the difference between being an agent and patient, on the one hand, and being something more, on the other. But before one has entirely returned to oneself and closed oneself off completely from the world (but for the perception of it as a class containing various particular goings-on), one perceives oneself to be in a middle-place. This middle place is where one still may act in the world as one did before, albeit one acting now would be a kind of shadow of acting then, but one is still attached to the world and is not severed from it. In this middle-place, one is stepping back from the world. At once, one is being pulled back toward something else, something primordial and causative of the world, and which is more actual than the world; and one is responding to this being pulled back, which being pulled back is a call, and the response is going back. Somehow the metaphors of stepping, pulling, back, and inwardness seem very appropriate.

One is engaged in the world, one comes to be in a middle place—I will now call it the first middle place—where the affairs of the world are seen as comprehended by a class, one is pulled back and steps back from this middle place so as to be more removed from the affairs of the world, but for being aware that they are some goings-on, and one perceives that one is actualizing possibilities that belong to oneself as something more than an agent and patient in the goings-on of the world—I will now call this a second middle place—and one comes to be aware of something else which is primordial and causative of the world. The relation is not immediately clear that is between this something else which is more actual and oneself, in any of the sense of oneself: the agent and patient in the world, the one able to be an agent and patient in the world, oneself as being pulled back, oneself as perceiving oneself being pulled back, and the one going back (or fighting going back and returning to the world, fighting going back and not returning to the world, refusing to leave the world, etc.). It would be quite the inquiry that brings clarity to these relations in a plausible way. But what must be said in order to move the present inquiry forward are a few more metaphors: things can be closer or farther away in one’s consciousness, and one can push these things away or pull them closer, and pursue them or flee them. There was some call that pulled one back from the first or second middle place, and the call relates to the something more of one’s being. To return to the affairs of the world, one would pursue the world. One could flee the goings-on of the world or flee the call. But the primordial something is not the same as the call, although the call relates to it, too, somehow. When the primordial something becomes apparent, then one can pull oneself toward it or pursue it, i.e., in the hopes of coming closer to it. To come closer to it would, according to the hopes, result in better knowing it and its relations to things other than itself. However intensely one becomes aware of the primordial something, this seems to be how one who ascends becomes aware of it. Then one has the resources to make an ascent in the sense of the ascents of which Augustine speaks. Ascent by stages has already happened, in a sense, but not the same steps that Augustine names. His seem somewhat artificial. They seem better designed to lead a reader into an ascent of his or her own than the ones that I have distinguished, but they do not seem original. The demarcations of the steps that he names are too intellectual and too far from originary experience. The key to the difference between his steps and original ones, like the key to the original ascent, is the self: one’s being is somehow between the primordial something and the goings-on of the world, and one comes to know this by perceiving one’s being, and one comes to perceive this by following the concerns of oneself, inclusive of the call; Augustine does not speak of the steps as senses of oneself, but rather, it seems, as things that might belong to oneself and be manifestations of one’s soul but which are other than the thinking self.

In order to ascend, one must exercise possibilities that do not terminate in the goings-on of the world. One must have possession of one’s faculties within the realm of one’s own conscious; the actions that one performs terminate in this realm. This realm, which we describe in metaphors, appears to be sustained by imagination, not least since the metaphors seem to apt. But that which is understood, i.e., oneself and one’s thoughts, and the something primordial and the call, are understood to be not whatever imagistic formalities are in some way attached to them: one might imagine oneself to be a point, and the realm of consciousness a sphere, and one’s “movement” toward the something primordial to be “toward,” etc. And if one becomes aware of the something primordial, then one understands that it is not anything but itself, whereas imagistic formalities admit of some alterity whereby they are more or other than themselves.

It seems rather silly, in a sense, to argue about such things, e.g., that the something primordial must simple because it has no alterity, inasmuch as argument is conceived of as bringing about knowledge, and assent to knowledge, despite opposition to the claim to knowledge. What truly makes knowledge, e.g., knowledge that the something primordial is not anything but itself, to be knowledge is that one becomes aware of that which one is to know. And ascent is just that: becoming aware, in the direction of what is revealed to be the something primordial. There is nothing freer of its sort, and to try to compel belief about something is fundamentally to set up a mood improper to awareness necessary for the belief to be knowledge. The alterity of another person attempting to convince, or of another’s belief that one is supposed to believe or refuse to believe prevents the stretching of one’s awareness along the stretch of one’s being across its various senses. One must, it seems, as the books of the Platonists warned Augustine, withdraw into oneself. The concentration of selfness in the realm of consciousness, and the (non-forcible) expulsion of alterity, is a precondition for the recognition of the something primordial. According to traditional Christian accounts of ascent, the something primordial is the wholly other, i.e., God.

If it is true that people of other faiths or spiritual persuasion or of no faith experience the something primordial as not determinately other than themselves, then one should desire to take account of it, and it seems as though this is what happens, although if it must be said that these people have a determinately other experience than those of people who experience ascent in the traditionally Christian sense, then so be it. If it is true that the something primordial revealed in ascent is the God of the philosophers, and the God of the philosophers cannot be worshipped, then there would be further reason to believe that the appellation of the something primordial as wholly other depends on revelation in the religious sense, e.g., Christian. But these are matters of faith and reason, which have never been ones to resolve themselves terribly easily. As it appears also from Augustine’s accounts of ascent upon reading the books of the Platonists, knowledge of the something primordial as revealed in ascent, especially if it is not revealed as wholly other in the way that it is said to be in Christian accounts, does not seem to convict one of offense against a personal God or invite one to a union of persons with a personal God. In the second of the two accounts of ascent after reading the Platonist books, Augustine speaks of being weighed down, but this has a rather moralistic tone rather than one very genuinely indicative of offense or invitation with respect to a personal God. In the first of the two, the incommutable light speaks to Augustine, and this indicates a personal character to the something primordial, as I am calling it, but this voice seems to be a particular grace superadded to the nature of ascent, elevating and perfecting it, as it were.

When I asked what causes one to ascend, I surmised on the basis of the Confessions that it was a desire for the changeless enjoyment of beauty. Among these further points which I have been making, I have spoken of a being-called and of an actualizing of one’s possibilities, while one is possession of one’s faculties, such that the possibilities terminate in the realm of consciousness rather than the goings-on of the world. There is also the sense in which, about ascent, it must be said: it happens. It is the freest of its sort of becoming aware, and its sort seems to be thinking that is allowed to run as fast as the thinking self can, and alterity is a boundary that slows thinking’s run. Perhaps there is no other becoming aware of its sort thus defined, but by it one comes to know God, it is said. It is a God, however, unless these remarks have omitted something very important, that is not a personal being that one can offend or be personally united with. If God is personal, as, e.g., Christianity says, then the personal character of God must come to be known in some other way than by ascent, e.g., by revelation through a prophet or in the person of that God incarnated, and then directly or by verbal communication from those who themselves come to know directly.

Before saying anything more, I will wait for additional comments.