The Identity
of Dionysius Areopagite. A Philosophical Approach.
One of the authors that is mentioned
most often and is also brilliantly commented upon by
Sergei Averintsev in his “Poetics of the Early Byzantine
Literature” is Dionysius Areopagite. This is no
coincidence. Dionysius, or better Pseudo-Dionysius, as
he is called by the Russian philologist in accordance
with the contemporary scholarly convention, has
influenced profoundly the spirituality, theology and
philosophy in the East and the West, and still
represents an intriguing challenge to them.[1]
On this occasion I would like to
present a new, philosophical approach to the question of
Denys’s identity and - let me divulge in advance my
hidden agenda – help him get rid of the prefix Pseudo-,
and this without underplaying the pseudonymity by
invoking literary conventions of antiquity or by pushing
him back to the Athens of the first century. This idea –
the novelty of my approach – would most probably not
have been admired by Denys, because the novelty sells
today; the author of Corpus areopagiticum
displaces us to the spiritual words where the greatest
value is the antiquity itself (although, to be honest,
he was an extremely daring innovator himself in many
regards) – perhaps, he would have liked the epitheton
“philosophical” because it was not without a reason that
Ioannes Scotus Eriugena called him divinus
philosophus.
I do not want to go into an attempt
to define philosophy itself on this occasion, or to
determine what makes a certain thought a philosophical
one. I merely want to stress with this adjective that my
approach to the question of Denys’s identity will not be
committed to the scientifically-historical method, but
to the sensitivity to – I hope – a different, alien,
“crazy” horizon called by Denys himself alétheia,
the truth. In his Divine Names he says:
»The man in union with truth knows
clearly that all is well with him, even if everyone else
thinks that he has gone out of his mind <exestekós>.
What thay fail to see, naturally, is that he has gone
out of the path of error and has in his real faith
arrived at truth. He knows that far from being mad, as
they imagine him to be, he has been recued from the
instable and the constant changing movement along the
multiform variety of errancy and that he has been set
free by simple and immutable stable truth.« (DN 872D
-873A)[2]
With a philosophical approach I
shall challenge the fundamental presuppositions of the
scientific approach to history that resides in this
“multiform variety”: the entire field of history, the
common time in which the historical event is inscribed,
the basic network of space and time where our historical
imagination finds it self-evident what identity is. If I
may, I would like to ask you for something difficult. A
philosophical approach demands the power of the
abstraction of everything that is self-evident – and
this precisely because of the openness to alétheia.
It has been said that Bertrand
Russell once asked Ludwig Wittgenstein to admit that
there was no rhinoceros in the room.[3]
When Wittgenstein refused to believe this, Russell
looked under the table and said that he was sure that
there isn’t one. Wittgenstein was devastated. I beg you
all now, do not push me into that kind of devastation.
Try to forget for a moment what such a self-evident
identity in the history is – and attempt not to turn
your eye to the past listening to my weird
deliberations.
History and the agapic
hermeneutics
Who was in fact Denys? This question
with its distinction between the name and facts, the
truth and fiction apparently directs towards history. I
will try to argue here that the appearance is just an
appearance: this question introduces us into ontology.
Scientific recourse to the history without the radical
ontological turn proves to be here – and also everywhere
else – an “errancy”, if I may use Denys’s term. The
awareness of ontological dimension of this question
demands a new, still undeveloped but necessary
hermeneutics where we allow the other of the history to
speak without putting the answers concerning the
fundamental questions of being into his mouth.
The claim for a philosophical
suspense of the common horizon of understanding the past
when trying to understand a text and its author does, of
course, evoke the well-known topics of the contemporary
hermeneutics and its heroes, e.g. of H. G. Gadamer and
Paul Ricoeur, but I do not want to apply here the
loci communes to the question of Denys’s identity.
My intention is here to make quite a different move. The
fundamental concept of the modern hermeneutics derives
from – if you allow me to simplify here – the interplay
of two different horizons, and this fusion of these
horizons allows the creative modification of our own
understanding. I am convinced that the very
pre-supposition of the co-related horizons hides away
from us the ontological pre-suppositions, in which we
inscribe both horizons, our own and that of the other.
In our case, these very pre-supposition are the
following: the universal time, history, identity in the
history, chronological sequence of events etc. The other
paradigm of understanding (that I would like to suggest
here) consists of our ability to radically question our
own ontology which lies at the foundation of this
pre-supposed horizon of the very constitution of the
historical reality – and that not because of the mere
act of scepticism or the phenomenological epoché,
but because of the very self-constructed facticity of
the other in history. The reality of the history does
not demand the fusion of two horizons but the
annihilation of our own horizon and a racial intrusion –
which is in the logical sense in fact impossible - of
the other. The annihilation of the common history, of
the somehow already understood time, already understood
identity – and the thought of that very annihilation.
Such a thought might be called an
agapic hermeneutics. The skill of the interpretation
as the expression of the impossible possibility which is
agápe – the radical openness for the other in
his/her aloneness.
Let me explain what I mean with
this.
The question of history in a philosophical sense is
connected with our ontological understanding of the
absence in time.
How does that which I posit as the modus of being of
beings exists? How do exist beings which are not present
anymore but for which I assume that they exist and
postulate them on the grounds of some other things –
e.g. a text – which enters into the realm of my
sensations and/or spiritual perception. In the
common-sensical of the “past”, in the act of imagination
of the being of something which is no more, I return
this-which-is-no-more to the reality. When I for example
think of the author of the Corpus areopagiticum,
I think of one of those people whom I meet in everyday
life – or whom I met and have already passed away. As
the other of the others. With this return – with my act
of memory – I somehow return him to what he was – what
he was independently of my memory. But if I reflect this
gesture of mine, I see that the absent – despite of the
self-obliterating act of onto-thetical imagination –
remains in itself utterly non-existent. In the act of
historical imagination I am myself bestowing the
existence to the non-existent. Making the absent present
is not changing the way of being, but radically moving
the non-being into being. And yet, this is only one
possibility of thinking history. The other is the
complete opposite. When I really think of the
author of this corpus I think of his hypostacity,
regardless of the fact if I place him in a particular
century on the basis of this or that historical lead. I
think of him as a totality of beings and the only being
itself. He is like me. This is an impossible
hermeneutical act – I disappear in him. I am being
annihilated. The subject of history demands from me the
annihilation. The reality of the historical being is the
paralogical sythesis between these two paradoxes:
between the non-being made present in my hypostasis –
and the hypostasis which demands my annihilation in
order to be understood. The scientific historiography
does not take into account this paradoxical reality
of the historical; it remains only the constant
jotting down and cataloguing the traces that enable this
double jump. If the reflection of the paradox is open to
the being of the historical itself, the historiography
is in the strict sense of the word being-less.
“Above-worldly pulling together of the othernesses”
The table is – I hope not too
cryptically – clean. There is only the text by Denys
left on it. The text that is in us, in me. The text that
is – in me – the expression of the being of the other.
The only being. The text which – regardless of all my
ideas on identity – tells me something which is
completely its own.
The text which faces us is the text
of the author who identifies himself as Dionysius, the
disciple of Paul. In the semantics of the philosophical
styles, in their scientifically historical syntax, this
identification seems impossible. Let us assume for a
moment that the texts as traces of the only Being cannot
be placed in any context. That Dionysius – in other
words – may have known Proclus and other Neoplatonists,
and that, in spite of the fact that he had read them,
those thinkers were not prior to him but were his
contemporaries, enhypostasited in his – the only,
incomparable – time. That all the concepts he used to
articulate his vision are simply enhypostasited in his
Being – and that they at the same time express it.
To put it in a more concrete terms:
let us see what the text itself reveals as the
understanding of the authorial identity. Let’s allow the
textuality of the corpus itself to construct the
ontological identity that it expresses.
First, it seems that Denys attempt
to maintain the identity of individual beings – i.e.
also that of his own. In his explanation of God’s name
“Peace” he writes:
»'How is that everything wishes for
peace?', someone may ask. 'There are many things which
take pleasure in being other, different, and distinct,
and they would never freely choose to be at rest.'' This
is true, assuming that what is meant here is that being
other and being different refer to the individuality of
each thing and to the fact that nothing tries to lose
its individuality. Yet, as I will try to show, this
situation is itself due to the desire for peace. For
everything loves to be at peace with itself, to be at
one. and never to move or fall away from its own
existence and from what it has. And perfect Peace is
there as a gift, guarding without confusion the
individuality of each, providentially ensuring that all
things are quiet and free of confusion within themselves
and from without, that all things are unshakably what
they are and that they have peace and rest. If all
moving things wish enver to be at rest but aim always
for their own appropriate movement, this too is because
of a wish for that divine Peace of the universe which
keeps everything firmly in its own place and which
ensures that the individuality and the stirring life of
all moving things are kept safe from removal and
destruction. This happens as a result of the inward
peace which causes the things in movement to engage in
the activity proper to themselves.'« (DN 952B-952D,
trans. C. Luibheid, p. 123)
Despite the God-given yearning of
all beings for the identity with themselves, the corpus
emphasizes the other eros which is in the marked
opposition to the first one: the eros to return to one’s
own origin and to unite with it. Many textual references
could be made here, suffice it to quote here the famous
passage from “The Mystical Theology” where the author
describes Moses’s ascent to Mount Sinai:
»But then (Moses) … renouncing all
that the mind may concieve, wrapped entirely in the
intangible and the invisible, belongs completly to him
who is beyond everything. Here, being neither
onself 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.« (MT
1001A, trans. C. Luibheid, p. 137)
This unification is for the author
of the corpus the possibility: the possibility
which could or could not be put into realisation. He
does not, however, let any doubt concerning the fact
that he, as a link in the hierarchical chain, is heading
towards this union. That he does not speak about it as
about something that is exterior to his experience but
as about something which is his most intimate message. I
see in that the articulation of his own self-constructed
being. The only being. gígnesthai, “becoming”,
which is being referred in the prayer, is not an
optional alternative, but the path form the less-real to
the more-real and towards Reality itself.
What happens to the human identity
on this path? Let us listen to the text again: “being
neither onself nor someone else …”. The subject of the
description of the ecclesiastical, celestial and divine
landscapes which lead to the union does not have a fixed
identity – precisely because it is the subject of
narration and at the same time the subject heading
towards union. Someone who in the ideal sense of the
word “completely belongs to the one who is beyond all
realities”.
In such a changed horizon there is
no unified field of history any more, if we are able to
open to the experience which is expressed in Denys’s
texts in such a way which causes us to renounce our own
ontological presuppositions. The subject of
periégesis – theological descriptive narration -
places us - by annihilating us as subiectus unionis
- into the world where our common-sensical or
scientifically historical theories of identity do not
apply any more.
The fact that the author as the
subject of union is not himself or someone else enables
him to become in the mystical inversion himself and
someone else.
This inversion has in Denys’s world,
in his expression of his own experience of being its
(meta)ontological foundation. Let us listen again to the
text “On Divine Names”, although we might get confused
again by “the excesses of the stylistic exuberance” of
the author, “who was really unable to utter even one
simple word” (S. S. Averintsev):
»And so all these scriptural
utterances in holy way celebrate the supreme Deity by
describing it as a monad or henad, because of its
simplicity and unity of supernatural indivisiblity, by
which unifying power we are led to unity. We, in the
diversity of what we are are pulled together in one and
are led into god-imitating oneness, into a unity
reflecting God« (DN I, 4, 589D, ibidem, trans. C.
Luibheid, p. 51).
The otherness is in Denys’s view
undoubtedly what gives me the identity, what tells me
apart form the other other. How are we to understand
this mysterious com-plicatio of the othernesses
in “god-imitating oneness, into a unity reflecting God«?
Undoubtedly, this “com-plication” is the disappearance
of the othernesses which constitute the identity of
beings, separated from their origin. Istvan Perczel
argues that this is the case of a “cut and clear
heretical origenism”
[4] and
refers to the fourteenth anathema of the Fifth
ecumenical council. But such a claim is to rash.
Here Denys uses Platonic
terminology, there is not doubt about it. But with what
intention? The entirety of his works clearly show us
that this “oneness” does not mean the demise of the
radical difference which separates all creation from its
Principle. The radical destabilisation of the identity
is taking place beyond the metaphorics of the fusion as
new identity. Drawing from his own spiritual experience,
Denys in his own way and using his idiosicratic
terminology articulates the doctrine about deification,
théosis, which is one of the most fundamental
messages of the Eastern Church.
“Our redemption is possible only
through our deification” is written in “Ecclesiastical
Hierarchy” (EH 376 A). And then: “God came to us in his
love towards humanity … and assimilated us to himself as
fire” (EH 393 A). Ysabele de Andia in her article
“Mystères, unification et divinisation de l’homme selon
Denys l’Aréopagite”[5]
comes to the following conclusion: “The new perspective
brought by Hierarchies is the deification. The very aim
of the hierarchy is to unify and deify intellects, human
and divine… The deification is the participation in
Divine life and the transmission of this life is enacted
in rites which are hierarchical and symbolical at the
same time.” [6]
In one of the crucial passages in
the “Ecclesiastical Hierarchy”, which speaks about this
process of deification in the ecclesiological and openly
Christological context, we find again the expression
“pulling together”, sýmptyxis, com-plicatio
which we have already met in the explanation of Divine
names:
»Indeed the Wold of God teaches
those of us who are its disciples that in this fashion –
through more clearly and more intellectully – Jesus
enlighghtens our blessed superiors, Jesus who is
transcendent mind, utterly divine mind, who is the
source and the being underlying all hierarchy, all
santification, all the workings of God, who is the
ultimate in divine power. He assimilates them, as much
as they are able, to his own light. As for us, with
that yearning for beauty which raises up upward (and
which is raised up) to him, he (Jesus) pulls togeher all
our many othernesses, thereby making our life,
disposition and activity something one and divine, and
bestowing on us the power appropriate to a sacred
priesthood.«(EH 1, 1, 372A-B, ibidem, trans. C.
Luibheid, p. 195-96).
Besides unification with the Origin,
the deification, the participation in the divine life
has the feature of the mutual union, the community,
koinonía. “The com-plication of othernesses” in the
process of deification enables also the mutual
unification of beings that are on their way towards
deification, without introducing any kind of chaos which
would replace taxis, order. And yet, we should not
mitigate the radicalism of Denys’s thesis. Although
Perczel wrongly connects Denys’s doctrine with
origenism, his claim nevertheless reveals the radical
atopical, displaced understanding of identity in Denys’s
discourse on deification. This radically understood
theosis with an a-topical identity of the subject of
deification allows the author of the corpus to take over
the other name which is neither fiction nor historical
reality, but the writing from the factually experienced
prolepsis of the eschatological koinonía.
This destabilisation of identity in
the intimate, paralogical “logics” of deification
implies the evacuation of the text itself written
by the subject of théosis. Usually, the
verification of that what is written is sought in the
experience of the writer. Denys’s unhistorical
self-identification, grounded in his ontology of
deification which annihilates our own ontology,
withdraws this certitude.
If Denys is not Paul’s
disciple, then he is Paul’s disciple in the very
experience of being deified – which happens on the level
of identity which transcends every historical
ascertainment of identity. When God is pantónymos
and anónymos, when he has all names and is
whithout any one, then the person, who is experiencing
the deification, is ontologically entitled to take over
any name. Also the name »Denys, the pupil of Paul«. And
yet, he remains utterly without a name - and in the
gesture of writing, being alien to every historical
identity, he invites reader into that very same mystical
être sans papier.[7]
[1] I'm
alluding here above all to the very interesting exchange
of thoughts on apophaticism between J. L. Marion and J.
Derrida that started with Marion’s chapter on Denys in
his Idole et distance, Paris 1977 and lasted
untill Derrida's death; for still ongoing scholarly
dissensus on Denys cf. A. M. Ritter: Dionysius
Pseudo-Areopagita und der Neuplatonismus (im Gespraech
mit neuerer Literatur), in: Philotheos 4 (2004),
pp. 260-275.
[2] I'm
quoting (although sometimes slightly modified) C.
Luibheid's translation of Denys's texts
(Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The Complete Works.
Translated by Colm Luibheid, foreword, notes and
translation collaboration of Paul Rorem, preface by Rene
Roques, introduction by J.Pelikan, J.Leclerq,
K.Froehlich. London, 1987), p. 110.
[3] Cf. B.
McGuinness: Young Ludwig, Oxford 1988 (2005), p.
89.
[4] Denys
l'Aréopagite et Symeon le Nouveau Théologien, In:
Deny l'Aréopagite et sa posterité en Orient et en
Occident. Actes du colloque international, Paris
21-24 septembre 1994, ed. by Y. de Andia, Paris 1997, p.
347, footnote 20.
[5]
Orientalia Christiana Periodica 63 (1997), pp.
273-322.
[6] Y de
Andia, op. cit., p. 322.
[7] Some
far-reaching implications of such understanding of
Denys's identity will be presented in the introduction
and commentaries to my forthcoming Slovene translation
of the Denys's complete works.
