Spirit

About the Metaphors of Clothing and Nudity

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After the Fall, Adam and Eve, deprived of their ‘garment of glory’, discovered that they were naked.

Before that, they were clothed with the light of divine glory.

Double light, double splendor, that of being in glory, and that of glory clothing oneself.

That is why, later on, Job and Justice (or Righteousness) could be said to « clothe » each other:

“I clothed myself with Justice and she clothed herself with me”i.

Isaiah speaks of a ‘garment’ that saves and delivers: « For He has clothed me with a garment of salvation and wrapped me in a cloak of deliverance.»ii

The Jewish cabal of the Middle Ages associated the idea of ‘clothing’ with the Shekinah and the Torah.

« The Torah of Creation (torah da beria) is the garment of the Presence (chekinah). And if man had not been created, the Presence would have been left unclothed, like a poor man. Therefore, whoever commits a fault, it is as if he stripped the Presence of her adornment, and this is what Adam’s punishment consisted of. »iii

The Torah herself unfolds like a veil, she is covered with black darkness, and she is clothed with white light.

« See: darkness is the blackness of the Torah [the written lines] and light is the white of the Torah [what is between the lines].”iv

It is by the splendor of her light, by what can be read between the lines, that she is dressed, more than by what she hides.

The Torah can be read, whether in darkness or in light, but the Presence does not reveal or unveil herself. If naked, she would be the figure of exile itself.

« For that is what exile (galout) is, it is the unveiling of the nakedness of the Presence, which is expressed in the verse, ‘Because of your outbursts, your mother has been repudiated’. (Is 50:1) Because of the unveiling of the nakedness Israel has been exiled and the Presence has also been exiled: the Presence is naked.»v

Christianity, too, has considered the metaphor of a garment of salvation and glory.

When one is baptized, one « puts on Christ »vi.

Reciprocally, Christ put on humanity like a garment (« induere hominem »), as wrote St. Augustinevii. Christ was clothed in the divine form (forma dei), and he annihilated himself « taking the form of the servant (forma servi)viii » in order to « clothe man ». « Have you forgotten that it was written about Christ Jesus that before he was clothed with humanity (‘hominem fuisset indutus‘) he was in forma deiix?

Death is a second nudity, after the nudity resulting from the Adamic fall. But baptism is a new garment, which announces and prepares « the garment of immortality ». « Baptism has erased death from the flesh; that which is mortal has dissipated into the garment of immortality ».x

From all this, seems to emerge the idea that Human nature is fundamentally « naked ».

And this very nudity is stripped off, like a used clothe, at the time of death.

For the Greeks whom nudity hardly frightened, and whose beauty they much valued, the body is ‘the clothing of the soul’.

Contrary to Jewish and Christian thinkers, Greek philosophers « impatiently await the moment when the soul puts off this garment to show herself in her nakedness »xi.

But for Paul, nudity symbolizes death. « When death robs us, we become naked in righteousness; in this robbery by death the laying off of the garment, which began at baptism, is finally accomplished. »xii

However, death is the occasion to put on a new « garment », a new « tent », a « heavenly dwelling »xiii.

It is this new garment that represents true ‘life’, a life beyond ‘death’. What is this new garment? It is the spirit.

We will put on this ‘spirit’, at deathxiv.

Paul does not seek death, he wants life. He does not wish just a soul, bound to a mortal body. He wishes to possess something higher than the soul – and for him what is higher than the soul is the spirit, the pneuma.

In this sense, the garment is for Paul an overcoming of the primitive dualism between body and soul, between being clothed and being naked.

The metaphor of the garment thus becomes an expression of the supernatural, of the revelation of a divine reality that transcends the experiences of man’s life.

The water of baptism was already a kind of garment.

Yet we have to put on a second garment, – of glory, more radiant than the one worn by Adam and Eve in paradise.

It will « make the mortal element disappear in the garment of immortality.»xv

This ‘garment’ does not hide and cover, but reveals, illuminates, shines. It is made of glory, light, splendor.

In the beginning, when the Presence appeared, dressed in her splendor, then Word, Thought and Creation came on the great stage of the world. « He wrapped Himself in splendor – the supreme Right of Thought – to create the heavens. In that splendor, the beginning of all light, He created the heavens.» xvi

A passage from the Midrach Rabba evokes this moment of creative splendor, ‘the beginning of all light’, and of all thought:

« Tell me where was the light created? He replied, ‘The Holy One, blessed be He, wrapped himself in it as in a garment, and illuminated the whole world from one end to the other with all its glory. Then he added with a sigh: ‘There is a verse that says it explicitly: ‘You are clothed in splendor and majesty. You are clothed in light’xvii.» xviii

In the first chapter of Genesis, which recounts the first moments of creation, the word ‘light’, אוֹר, ‘or’, is mentioned five times in three of the opening verses (Gen 1:3-5).

These five quotations symbolically evoke the five books of the Torah according to the interpretation of the Midrach Rabbahxix. « God said, ‘Let there be light’xx » corresponds to Genesis. « And the light was » xxi refers to Exodus. « God saw that the light was good »xxii represents the Leviticus. « And God separated the light from the darkness » xxiii points to the Numbers. « God called the light day » xxiv refers to Deuteronomy.

Curiously, in the first chapter of his own Gospel, St. John mimics this repetition, with fifteen evocations of the ‘light’.

He uses seven times the word ‘light’, phôs (ϕῶς), in the first verses.

« Life was the light of men. » (Jn 1:4)

« The light shines in the darkness. » (Jn 1:5)

« He came to serve as a witness, to bear witness to the light. » (Jn 1:7)

« He was not the light, but he appeared to bear witness to the light. » (Jn 1:8)

« This light was the true light, which, when it comes into the world, enlightens every man. » (Jn 1:9)

Then, John evokes ‘light’ again eight more times, in a pronominal, personal or possessive form (in Greek αύτόν), or as the implicit subject of active verbs.

« She was (ἦν) in the world, and the world was made by her (αύτοῦ), and the world did not know her (αύτόν). » (Jn 1:10)

« She came to her family’s house, and her family did not receive her (αύτόν). » (Jn 1:11)

« But to all who have received her (αύτόν), to those who believe in her (αύτοῦ) name, she has given the power to become children of God. » (Jn 1:12)

What does such an accumulation of repetitions mean?

The light is one, but her shimmers, her glitters, her sparkles, her scintillation are legion.

Light, Or, is unique, but her true meaning is always in potency.

A passage from the Zohar sheds some light (if I may say) on this question, just by replacing the word ‘light’ with another question:

« When the abyssal light unfolded, her clarity gave hold to questioning, although it was still beyond the reach of all that is below. That is why she was called in an interrogative way, she was called Who. » xxv

We also read in Isaiah:

« Lift up your eyes to the heights, and see Who created this. » xxvi

מִי-בָרָא אֵלֶּה

Mi bara’ ellèh.

‘Who’ and ‘that’, these words are in a way ‘naked’, begging for a meaning.

« The words were elusive, for it was impossible to question the ultimate. Wisdom was composed of nothingness, she was so closed and so deep that she could not resist questioning, but no one could grasp anything of her.”xxvii

She was naked, – made of nothing.

She was clothed, – with splendor.

________________________

iJob 29.14

iiIs 61.10

iiiThe Zohar. Genesis. My translation from the French translation by Charles Mopsik. Ed. Verdier. 1981. 23b p. 133

ivIbid. p. 133

vIbid. 27b p. 156

viGa 3.27 . See also Col 3,9; Ep 4,22; Rom 13,14.

viiAugustine. De diversis quaestionibus. 83 q. 73 (PL 40, 84)

viiiAugustine. De diversis quaestionibus. 83 q. 73, 2 (PL 40, 85)

ixAugustine. De anima et eius origine IV, 15 (21) CSEL 60, p. 402

xSaint Basile. Letter to Palladium. PG 32. 1033 b. Quoted by Erik Peterson. On the margins of theology. Cerf. 2015, p.41

xiErik Peterson. On the margins of theology. Cerf. 2015, p. 30

xiiErik Peterson. On the margins of theology. Cerf. 2015, p.56

xiii2 Co 5.1-2

xiv2 Co 5, 3

xvErik Peterson. On the margins of theology. Cerf. 2015, p.57

xviThe Zohar. Genesis. Ed. Verdier. 1981. 15b p. 96

xvii Ps 104:1-2

xviiiMidrash Rabba, 3.4

xixMidrash Rabba, 3.5

xxGn 1.3

xxiGn 1.3

xxiiGn 1.4

xxiiiGn 1.4

xxivGn 1.5

xxvThe Zohar. Genesis. My translation from the French translation by Charles Mopsik. Ed. Verdier. 1981. 30a p. 170

xxviIs 40.26

xxviiThe Zohar. Genesis. My translation from the French translation by Charles Mopsik. Ed. Verdier. 1981. 30a p. 170

Deep Logos and Bottomless Soul

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« Heraclitus »

For at least a million years, man has been using the spoken word more or less skillfully. Since ancient times, its uses and modes of expression have been infinite, from the most futile to the most elevated. The stammering child, the fluent poet, the sure sage, the inspired prophet, all tried and continue trying their own ways and speaking their voices.

With the same breath of expelled air, they generate gutturals from the glottis, fricatives from the pharynx, hissing on the tongue, whistling labials through the lips.

From these incessant sounds, what sense does exhale?

Heraclitus, master in obscure matters, great lord of meaning, once made this sharp judgment:

ἀνὴρ νήπιος ἤκουσε πρὸς δαίμονος ὅκωσπερ παῖς πρὸς ἀνδρός.

« The man is held as a little boy by the divinity, like the child by the man. »i

This both pessimistic and optimistic fragment proposes a ratio of proportion: what the child is to man, man is to the divinity. The observation of man’s impotence in relation to the divine is not dissociated from the natural and expected perspective of a passage from childhood to adulthood.

In his translation of this fragment, Marcel Conche curiously emphasizes speech, although the word logos is clearly absent from the Heraclitus text:

« A ‘marmot’ (a toddler) who cannot speak! Man is thus called by the divine being (δαίμων), just as a child is called by man. « ii

The periphrase ‘A marmot who cannot speak’ is the choice (bold and talkative) made by Marcel Conche to render the meaning of the simple Greek word νήπιος, affixed by Heraclitus to the word ‘man’ (ἀνὴρ).

Homer also uses the word νήπιος in various senses: ‘who is in infancy’, ‘young child’, but also ‘naive’, ‘foolish’, ‘devoid of reason’.

Conche evokes these various meanings, and justifies his own translation, which is periphrastic and therefore not very faithful, in the following way:

« Translating as ‘child without reason’ sounds right, but not precise enough: if νήπιος applies to the ‘infant’ child, one must think of the very young child, who does not yet speak. Hence the translation [in French] by ‘marmot’, which probably comes from ‘marmotter’, which originates from an onomatopoeia expressing murmuring, the absence of distinct speech. « iii

This is followed by a comment on the supposed meaning of the fragment:

« It is about becoming another being, who judges by reason, and not as habit and tradition would have it. This transformation of the being is translated by the ability to speak a new language: no longer a particular language – the language of desire and tradition – but a discourse that develops reasons referring to other reasons (…) Now, from this logical or philosophical discourse, from this logos, men do not have the intelligence, and, in relation to the demonic being – the philosopher – who speaks it, they are like little brats without speech (…) To speak as they speak is to speak as if they were devoid of reason (of the power to speak the truth). »iv

Although this fragment of Heraclitus does not contain any allusion to logos, the main lesson that Conche learns from it is : « Man is incapable of logos for the demonic being ».

In a second departure from the commonly received meaning for this fragment, Marcel Conche considers that the divinity or demonic being (δαίμων) evoked by Heraclitus is in reality the ‘philosopher’. For Conche, it is the philosopher who is the demonic being par excellence, and it is precisely he who is able to determine for this reason that « man is incapable of logos ».

However Heraclitus certainly did not say: « Man is incapable of logos.»

Man may mumble. But he also talks. And he even has, in him, the logos.

Indeed, if the word logos is absent from fragment D.K. 79, it is found on the other hand in ten other fragments of Heraclitus, with various meanings : ‘word’, ‘speech’, ‘discourse’, ‘measure’, ‘reason’…

Among these ten fragments, there are five that use the word logos in such an original, hardly translatable way that the common solution is just not to translate it at all, and to keep it in its original form : Logos…

Here are these five fragments:

« The Logos, which is, always men are incapable of understanding him, both before hearing him and after hearing him for the first time, for although all things are born and die according to this Logos, men are inexperienced when they try their hand at words or deeds. »v

« If it is not I, but the Logos, that you have listened to, it is wise to agree that it is the One-all. »vi

« In Prayer lived Bias, son of Teutames, who was more endowed with Logos than the others. « vii

In these three fragments, the Logos seems to be endowed with an autonomous essence, a power to grow, and an ability to say birth, life, death, Being, the One and the Whole.

In the next two fragments, the Logos is intimately associated with the substance of the soul itself.

« It belongs to the soul a Logos that increases itself. « viii

« You cannot find the limits of the soul by continuing on your way, no matter how long the road, so deep is the Logos it contains. « ix

As a reminder, here is the original text of this last fragment :

ψυχῇ πείρατα ἰὼν ἰὼν ἂν ἐξεύροιο, πᾶσαν ἐπιπορευόμενος ὁδόν- οὕτω βαθὺν λόγον ἔχει.

Strangely enough, Conche, who added the idea of speech in a fragment that did not include the word logos, avoids using the word logos here, in his translation, though the fragment does contain it explicitly: « You wouldn’t find the limits of the soul, even if you walked all the roads, because it has such a deep discourse.»x

Is it relevant to translate here the word logos by discourse?

If not, how to translate it?

None of the following meanings seems satisfactory: cause, reason, essence, basis, meaning, measure, report. The least bad of the possible meanings remains ‘speech, discourse’xi according to Conche, who opts for this last word, as we have seen.

But Heraclitus uses a strange expression here: ‘a deep logos‘, – a logos so ‘deep’ that it doesn’t reach its ‘limit’.

What is a logos that never reaches its own depth, what is a limitless logos?

For her part, Clémence Ramnoux decided not to translate in this fragment the word logos. She even suggested to put it in brackets, considering it as an interpolation, a late addition:

« You wouldn’t find a limit to the soul, even when you travel on all roads, (it has such a deep logos). « xii

She comments on her reluctance in this way:

« The phrase in parentheses may have been added over. If it was added, it was added by someone who knew the expression logos of the psyche. But it would not provide a testimony for its formation in the age of Heraclitus. « xiii

In a note, she presents the state of scholarly discussion on this topic:

 » ‘So deep is her logos’. Is this added by the hand of Diogenes Laërtius (IX,7)?

Argument for: text of Hippolytus probably referring to this one (V,7): the soul is hard to find and difficult to understand. Difficult to find because it has no boundaries. In the mind of Hippolytus it is not spatial. Difficult to understand because its logos is too deep.

Argument against: a text of Tertullian seems to translate this one: « terminos anime nequaquam invenies omnem vitam ingrediens » (De Anima 2). It does not include the sentence with the logos.

Among the moderns, Bywater deleted it – Kranz retained it – Fränkel retained it and interpreted it with fragment 3. »xiv

For his part, Marcel Conche, who, as we have seen, has opted for the translation of logos by ‘discourse’, justifies himself in this way: « We think, with Diano, that logos must be translated, here as elsewhere, by ‘discourse’. The soul is limited because it is mortal. The peirata are the ‘limits to which the soul goes,’ Zeller rightly says. But he adds: ‘the limits of her being’. « xv

The soul would thus be limited in her being? Rather than limited in her journey, or in her discourse? Or in her Logos?

Conche develops: « If there are no such limits, it is because the soul is ‘that infinite part of the human being’. »

And he adds: « Snell understands βαθὺς [bathus] as the Grenzenlosigkeit, the infinity of the soul. It will be objected that what is ‘deep’ is not the soul but the logos (βαθὺν λόγον). (…) In what sense is the soul ‘infinite’? Her power is limitless. It is the power of knowledge. The power of knowledge of the ψυχὴ [psyche] is limitless in so far as she is capable of logos, of true speech. Why this? The logos can only tell reality in a partial way, as if there was somewhere a reality that is outside the truth. Its object is necessarily reality as a whole, the Whole of reality. But the Whole is without limits, being all the real, and the real cannot be limited by the unreal. By knowledge, the soul is equal to the Whole, that is to say to the world. « xvi

According to this interpretation, reality is entirely offered to the power of reason, to the power of the soul. Reality has no ‘background’ that remains potentially obscure to the soul.

« The ‘depth’ of the logos is the vastness, the capacity, by which it equals the world and establishes in law the depth (immensity) of reality. Βαθὺς : the discourse extends so deeply upwards or downwards that it can accommodate everything within it, like an abyss in which all reality can find its place. No matter which way the soul goes on the path of knowledge, inward or outward, upward or downward, she encounters no limit to her capacity to make light. All is clear in law. Heraclitus’ rationalism is absolute rationalism. « xvii

Above all what is absolute, here, is the inability to understand the logos in its infinite depth, in its deepest infinity.

We’re starting to understand that for Heraclitus, the Logos cannot be just reason, measure or speech.

The soul (psyche) has no ‘limits’, because she has a ‘deep logos‘ (βαθὺν λόγον).

The soul is unlimited, she is infinite, because she is so vast, so deep, so wide and so high that the Logos himself can dwell in her always, without ever finding his own end in her, – no matter how many journeys or speeches he may make…

No wonder the (word) Logos is ‘untranslatable’. In theory, and in good logic, to ‘translate’ it, one would need an infinitely deep periphrase comprising an infinite number of words, made of infinite letters…

____________

iFragment D.K. 79. Trad. Jean-Paul Dumont. Les Présocratiques. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Gallimard 1988, p. 164

iiD.K. 79. Translation by Marcel Conche, in Héraclite PUF, 1986, p.77.

iiiMarcel Conche, Héraclite PUF, 1986, p.77

ivMarcel Conche, Héraclite PUF, 1986, p.80

vFragment D.K. 1, Trad. Jean-Paul Dumont. The Presocratics. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Gallimard 1988, p. 145

viFragment D.K. 50. Trad. Jean-Paul Dumont. The Presocratics. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Gallimard 1988, p. 157

viiFragment D.K. 39. Trad. Jean-Paul Dumont. The Presocratics. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Gallimard 1988, p. 155

viiiFragment D.K. 115. Trad. Jean-Paul Dumont. The Presocratics. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Gallimard 1988, p. 172

ixFragment D.K. 45. Trad. Jean-Paul Dumont. The Presocratics. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Gallimard 1988, p. 156

xM. Conche, Heraclite PUF, 1986, p.357

xiIbid.

xiiRamnoux, Heraclitus, or the man between things and words. Ed. Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1968, p. 119.

xiiiIbid.

xivRamnoux, Heraclitus, or the man between things and words. Ed. Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1968, p. 119, note 1.

xvM. Conche, Héraclite PUF, Paris, 1986, p.357.

xviM. Conche, Héraclite PUF, Paris, 1986, p.357-359

xviiM. Conche, Héraclite PUF, Paris, 1986, p.359-360

The Thinker

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The Thinker. Auguste Rodin

The Greek word logos means « reason » or « discourse, speech ».

In Plato’s philosophy, the Logos is the Principle and the Word. It is also the Whole of all the Intelligible, as well as the link between the divine powers, and what founds their unity. Finally, it is the « intermediary » between man and God.

For Philo of Alexandria, a Neo-Platonist Jew, the Logos takes two forms. In God, the Logos is the divine Intelligence, the Eternal Thought, the Thoughtful Thought. In its second form, the Logos resides in the world, it is the Thought in action, the Thought realized outside God.

Written shortly after Philo’s active years, the Gospel of John says that « in the beginning » there was the Logos who was God, and the Logos who was with God i. There was also the Logos who was made fleshii.

Does this mean that there are three instances of the Logos? The Logos who is God, the Logos who is with Him and the Logos who became flesh?

In Christian theology, there is only one Logos. Yet the three divine ‘instances’ of the Logos quoted by John have also been personified as Father, Son, Spirit.

For the structuralist philosopher, it is possible to sum up these difficult theses in a pragmatic way. The Logos comes in three forms or aspects: Being, Thinking, Speaking. That what is, that what thinks and that what speaks. These three forms are, moreover, fundamental states, from which everything derives, and with which anybody can find an analogy pointing to the fundamental human condition (existence, intelligence, expression).

Philo, who is both a Jew and a Neoplatonist, goes quite far with the theory of the Logos, despite the inherent difficulty of reconciling the unity of God and the multiplication of His ‘instances’ (that the Kabbalah, much later on, called ‘sefirot‘). For Philo, the Logos is the totality of God’s Ideas. These Ideas act “like seals, which when approached to the wax produce countless imprints without being affected in any way, always remaining the same.”iii

All things that exist in the universe derive from an Idea, a « seal ». The Logos is the general seal whose imprint is the entire universe.iv

Philo’s Logos is not « personified ». The Logos is the Organ of God (both His Reason and His Word) playing a role in the Creation. Philo multiplies metaphors, analogies, drawing from divine, human and natural images. The Logos is creation, engendering, speech, conception, or flow, radiation, dilatation. Using a political image, God « reigns », the Logos « governs ».

Philo’s thinking about the Logos is complex and confusing. A 19th century commentator judged that « a tremendous confusion is at the basis of Philo’s system »v. Allegedly, Philo seems to mix up Logos (Word), Pneuma (Spirit), Sophia (Wisdom) and Epistemus (Knowledge).

Wisdom seems to play the same role in relation to the Logos as the thinking Thought (Spirit) of God plays in relation to the world of the Intelligible. Wisdom is the deep source of this world of the Intelligible, and at the same time it is identical with it.

There is no logical quirk in this paradox. Everything comes from the nature of the divine Spirit, in which no distinction can be made between « container » and « content ».

The Logos is thus both the Author of the Law and the Law itself, the spirit and the letter of its content. The Logos is the Law, and the Logos is also its enunciator, its revelator.vi

The Logos is, in the universe, the Divine brought back to unity. He is also the intermediary between this unity and God. Everything which constitutes the Logos is divine, and everything which is divine, apart from the essence of God, is the Logos.

These ideas, as has been said, have been sometimes described as a « philosophical hodgepodge »; they seem to demonstrate a « lack of rigor »vii on the part of Philo, according to certain harsh judgments.

However, what strikes me is that Philo and John, at about the same historical period, the one immediately preceding the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, and independently of each other, specified the contours of a theophany of the Logos, with clear differences but also deep common structures.

What is even more striking is that, over the centuries, the Logos of the Stoics, the Platonic Noos, the Biblical Angel of the Eternal, the Word of YHVH, the Judeo-Alexandrine Logos, or the ‘Word made flesh‘, the Messiah of the first Christian Church, have succeeded one another. All these figures offer their analogies and differences.

As already said, the main difficulty, however, for a thinker like Philo, was to reconcile the fundamental unity of God, the founding dogma of Judaism, and His multiple, divine emanations, such as the Law (the Torah), or His Wisdom (Hokhma).

On a more philosophical level, the difficulty was to think a Thought that exists as a Being, that also unfolds as a living, free, creative entity, and that finally ´reveals´ herself as the Word — in the world.

There would certainly be an easy (negative) solution to this problem, a solution that « modern » and « nominalist » thinkers, cut off from these philosophical roots, would willingly employ: it would be to simply send the Logos and the Noos, the Angel and the  incarnate Wisdom, the Torah and the Gospel back into the dustbin of empty abstractions, of idealistic chimera.

I do not opt for such an easy solution. It seems to me contrary to all the clues accumulated by History.

I believe that the Spirit, as it manifests itself at a very modest level in each one of us, does not come from biochemical mechanisms, from synaptic connections. I believe it is precisely the opposite.

Our brain multiplies cellular and neuronal networks, in order to try to grasp, to capture at our own level, what the Spirit can let us see of its true, inner nature, its fundamental essence.

The brain, the human body, the peoples of different nations and, as such, the whole of humanity are, in their own unique way, immense collective ´antennae´, whose primary mission is to capture the diffuse signs of a creative Intelligence, and build a consciousness out of it.

The greatest human geniuses do not find their founding ideas at the unexpected crossroads of a few synapses, or thanks to haphazard ionic exchanges. Rather, they are « inspired » by a web of thoughtful Thoughts, in which all living things have been immersed since the beginning.

As a clue, I propose this image :  When I think, I think that I am; then I think that this thought is part of a Thought that lives, and endless becomes; and I think of this Thought, which never stops thinking, never ceases to think, eternally, the Thought that continues « to be », and that never stops being without thinking, and that never stops thinking without being.

iJn 1,1

iiJn 1,14

iiiPhilo. De Monarchia. II, 218

ivPhilo. De Mundi I, 5. De Prof. I, 547

vJean Riéville. La doctrine du Logos dans le 4ème évangile et dans les œuvres de Philon. 1881

viPhilo, De Migr. Abrah. I, 440-456

viiJean Riéville, op.cit.

Logos and Glial Cells

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Originally, the Greek word Logos had two rather simple, distinct meanings: ‘word’ and ‘reason’.

With Plato, the concept of Logos began its extraordinary destiny. The Logos became a Principle. By extension, it was also to represent the whole of intelligible things and ideas, as well as the link that connects all the divine powers, and what founds their unity. Finally, it was to become the Intermediary between man and God.

The Neo-Platonists took up the concept and its rich harvest.

Philo of Alexandria, for example, several centuries after Plato, made the Logos an essential attribute of the God of Israel. In God, the Logos was to incarnate the divine Intelligence, the eternal Thought, the Thought in its eternal potency, the Thought that always thinks, the Thought that can think everything, anything, forever.

For Philo, the Logos could also take a second form, which resided not in God, but in the real world. The Logos was then the Thought in act, the Thought which is realized outside God.

Shortly after Philo, John in turn gave his vision of the Logos, in its Christian interpretation. The Gospel of John says that “in the beginning” the Logos was with God and the Logos was God. And the Logos became “flesh”.

Does this mean that there are three instances of the Logos? The Logos who is God, the Logos who is with Him and the Logos who becomes flesh? Are these verbal nuances, poetic metaphors, or metaphysical realities?

In Philo’s theology, the Logos is double: Intelligence in potency, and also Intelligence in act.

In Christian theology, one may say that there are three kind of Logos, who personify themselves respectively as Father, Son, Spirit.

For the philosopher who always seeks for structures, it is possible to discern a general outline in these various interpretations.

The Logos comes out in three ways, according to what it “is”, to what it “thinks” and to what it “says”.

In theory, Being, Thinking and Saying do converge. But who knows?

These three states are also fundamental states of the human being. And Philo goes quite far in his ternary theory of the Logos, in spite of the putative difficulty that monotheism opposes when one wants to reconcile the unity of God and the multiplication of His appearances.

One way of overcoming this difficulty is to posit that the Logos is the set of all ideas which are ‘living’ in God. All the things that exist in the universe are deemed to derive from an original “idea”, from a « seal ». The Logos is the general seal whose imprint is on the whole universe.i

Divine ideas “act like seals, which when they are brought close to the wax, produce countless imprints without themselves being affected in any way, always remaining the same.”ii

Unlike the Logos of John, the Logos of Philo is not a divine person. It is only the ‘Organ’ of God. It is both His Reason and His Word, — which are manifested in His Creation.

Philo multiplies metaphors, analogies, images, applying them to the divine, human and natural realms. The Logos is creation, word, conception, flow, radiation, dilatation. According to yet another image, the Logos governs, as God reigns.

Philo’s thought about the Logos is quite complex. A 19th century commentatoriii judged that a tremendous confusion was in fact at the basis of Philo’s system, because he indiscriminately mixed up Logos (Word), Pneuma (Spirit), Sophia (Wisdom) and Episteme (Knowledge).

All the difficulty comes down to a simple question: what can one really infer a priori from the nature of the divine Spirit?

Difficult to stay.

Maybe one could start by saying that, in the divine Spirit, no distinction can really be made between what « contains » and what is « contained ».

Consequently, for instance for Philo, the Logos is at the same time the Author of the Law and the Law itself, the Spirit and the Letter.iv

The Logos is the Law, and is also the One who announces it, who reveals it.

The Wisdom of God is the source of the Logos, and it is also the Logos itself. In the same way, the Spirit of God is the source of all the intelligible beings, and it is also their total sum.

Everything which constitutes the Logos is divine, and everything which is divine, apart from the essence of God, is the Logos.

The Logos is, in all the universe, the image of the divine brought to unity. He is also the intermediary between this unity and God.

These difficult ideas have in fact been described by some hasty commentators as a « philosophical hodgepodge », adding that they showed a « lack of rigor »v on Philo’s part.

But, in my opinion, other conclusions may emerge.

On the one hand, Philo and John, independently of each other, and at about the same time in History, about two thousand years ago, just before the destruction of the Second Temple, clarified the contours of a “theophany” of the Logos, with some clear differences but also deep common structures.

On the other hand, what is still striking today is the extraordinary resilience of the concept of Logos, throughout history.

The Logos of the Stoics, the Platonic Noos, the Angel of the Eternal, the Word of YHVH, the Judeo-Alexandrine Logos, the Word made flesh, the Messiah of the first Christian Church, all these noetic figures are more similar in their absolute analogies than in their relative differences.

For the various sectarians of monotheism, however, the main difficulty lies in reconciling the idea of the unity of God with the reality of his multiple emanations, such as the Law (the Torah), or His Wisdom (Ḥokhma).

On a more philosophical level, the real difficulty is to think a Thought that exists as an absolute Being, but which also unfolds as a living, free, creative Being, in the Universe, and which finally reveals itself as the revealed Word, in the world.

Today, the « moderns » willingly deny the existence of the Logos, or of the Noos.

The Spirit, as it manifests itself in each one of us, is said by the “moderns” to arise only from biochemical mechanisms, synaptic connections, epigenetic processes, in the midst of glial cells.

The brain would multiply cellular and neuronal networks, and even « viral » ones. By their proliferation, the mechanical miracle of the Spirit coming to consciousness would appear.

But it is only a relative miracle, since we are assured that the “singularity” is close. And tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, it is affirmed, we will pass from deep learning AI to the synthesis of artificial consciousness…

However, another line of research seems possible, in theory.

It is a hypothesis that Kant already put forward, in a slightly provocative way.

“Our body is only the fundamental phenomenon to which, in its present state (in life), the entire power of sensibility and thus all thought is related. Separation from the body is the end of this sensitive use of one’s faculty of knowledge and the beginning of intellectual use. The body would therefore not be the cause of thought, but a merely restrictive condition of thought, and, consequently, it should be considered, without doubt, as an instrument of the sensible and animal end, but, by that very fact, as an obstacle to pure and spiritual life.”vi

Pursuing this line of research, purely intuitive it is true, one could conjecture that the brain, the human body, but also all peoples and Humanity as a whole could figure, in their own way, as immense metaphysical antennas, singular or collective, whose primary mission would be to capture the minute and diffuse signs of a supra-worldly Wisdom, of a creative Intelligence.

The greatest human geniuses would not find their ideas simply by the grace of unexpected crossings of some of their synapses, assisted by ionic exchanges. They would also be somehow « inspired » by the emanations of immense clouds of thinking thoughts, in which all living things are mysteriously immersed from the beginning.

In this hypothesis, who is really thinking then? Just synapses? Or the infinite, eternal choir of wise beings? Who will tell?

Who will say who really thinks, when I think, and when I think that I am?

I am thinking a thought that is born, that lives, and that becomes. I am thinking that thought, which never ceases to let itself think, – and from there, intuitively, I pass to the thought of a thought that would immediately precede and dispense with all thoughts; a thought that would never dispense with thinking, eternally.

Who will say why I pass to this very thought, immediate, eternal? Another shot of ionised synapses, by chance excited, finding their way among a hundred billion neurons (approximately), and twice as many glial cells?

iPhilo. De Mundi I, 5. De Prof. I, 547

iiPhilo. De Monarchia. II, 218

iiiCf. Jean Riéville. La doctrine du Logos dans le 4ème évangile et dans les œuvres de Philon. 1881

ivPhilo, De Migr. Abrah. I, 440-456

vJean Riéville, op.cit.

viEmmanuel Kant. Critique de la raison pure. Trad. A. Tremesaygues et B. Pacaud. PUF . 8ème édition, Paris, 1975, p.529.

The End of Judaism

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« I am the end of Judaism »i.

Jacques Derrida wrote this sentence in his 1981 Notebooks.

The context? Starting from a question asked by Saint Augustine: « Quid ergo amo, cum Deum meum amo? », Derrida adapted it in his own way: « What do I love, who do I love, whom do I love above all? I am the end of Judaism. »ii

« What God do I love? « asks Derrida, fifteen centuries after Augustine.

Answer: He loves a « unique » God, – unique as birth, unique as death, unique as circumcision (because it only happens once).

What does Derrida like most of all? Answer: Judaism.

Who does he love above all? His mother, who is dying, and who no longer recognizes him.

His mother represents « the end of a Judaism, » adds Derrida (« la fin d’un judaïsme »).

As for him, he says he is « the end of Judaism » (« la fin du judaïsme »), of that Judaism that his mother embodied, to which his mother gave her face, and which he will not transmit.

The maternal face has now disappeared, although indelible.

« It’s over. »

His own face, disfigured by a viral facial paralysis, affects him, and opens up an unpredictable future for him.

Derrida claims that he is the end of this Judaism, that of his mother. But why does he generalize by saying: « I am the end of Judaism« ?

What allows him to make this assertion, this prophecy? His name Elijah?

After the end of this Judaism, Jacques Derrida wanted to found another one. He says that he will start a new Judaism, a « Judaism out of religion, inherited from his people but detached from them »iii.

He wants to found another religion, and even, through his philosophy, « to rebuild all religions »iv.

Colossal project, amazing idea. Questions quickly come to mind. Is there any analogy between Derrida’s new religion and Christianity?

Hadn’t Christianity already been a kind of first ‘exit’ from Judaism, and perhaps was it not even a project to « re-found » religion?

No and no. Derrida is categorical: « Christianity has abandoned the letter and circumcision ».

Is it worth starting a dispute? In Christian services, the letter is read. The Bible is a reference. The letter is there, literally. As for circumcision, it has not really been abandoned, either. Of course, it is not the foreskin (« orla », עָרְלָה), but rather the heart, eyes and ears that are recommended to be circumcised.

Derrida says he is faithful to the letter and circumcision. But since he wants to found another religion, which would be an « other Judaism » after the « end of Judaism », how will he go about innovating?

Let’s consult his program.

He says we must « re-found religions by playing with them, reinvent circumcision, re-circumcise what is uncircumcising, thwart the re-appropriation of languages by a God-Unity »v.

These formulas call for some comments.

« Re-founding religions by playing with them ».

The metaphor of « play » is curious, even surprising, in this charged context. « Playing » with religion is a dangerous game. Nowadays, a mortal one.

Moreover, where there is only one game, how can we judge what is at stake? What can be based on a game? When a foundation stone « plays », the temple trembles, religion falters.

« Reinventing circumcision. »

In what way is this idea new compared to what the Judeo-Christian Paul already said about circumcision, not of the foreskin, but of the heart?

What more can we invent to circumcise after the sex, the soul, the heart, the eyes, the ears? The fruits of the trees? Atoms? The stars? DNA? Eschatology? Or Judaism itself?

« Re-circumcise what is being uncircumcised. »

Derrida says that circumcision is a unique act, a founding event. How would flesh foreskins « uncircumcise »? Or would « uncircumcision » be only a metaphor, applying not to the flesh but to the spirit? But then isn’t this just Paul of Tarsus’ proposal?

« To defeat the re-appropriation of languages by a One God ».

Again a metaphor of a game. It is no longer a question of playing, however, but of « thwarting God ». Babel’s confusion had indicated a lead. The God « One » had then shown himself hostile to the idea of a « one » language among men.

Why would God – who once allowed the confusion of languages – have « re-appropriated » languages and unified them in the process?

What does Derrida want to thwart in God? Words, language? He plays them, he plays with them, he thwarts them. He is a poet of the word who opens, and who provokes.

« I am the last of the Jews. »vi

Here is Pierre Delain’s comment on the Derridex website: « This sentence, « I am the last of the Jews », Jacques Derrida signs it, and at the same time he mocks it (UTD p101). It must be put in quotation marks. It is the ironic sentence of the one who listens to himself speak, a stereotype, an outrageous statement. By quoting and reciting it, he staged the mockery, he laughed and cried too. From a certain angle where writing is put in abyss, it can be taken seriously. »

The philosopher Derrida wants to have the last word. This is his last card in the big game. The last one was a stunt. « Religious is a fighting sport (especially not for journalists!) ».vii

He is the last thinker, the thinker of eschatology.viii

« The most advanced is the one that keeps the future open. « Always open, even at the last minute…

« I am the last » means, really: « I am the one who opens, again, always. »

ihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0506201121.html

iihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0506201121.html

iiihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0505131252.html

iv Cf. Circonfession, p.206

vhttp://ww.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0710201132.html

vihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0506190802.html « Cette formulation de Jacques Derrida, « Je suis le dernier des Juifs » [avec une majuscule], est reprise des carnets de 1976, non publiés mais cités dans Circonfession (1990). En septembre 1991, elle est rappelée dans une interview donnée à Elisabeth Weber, et enfin reprise le 3 décembre 2000 à l’occasion du colloque Judéités, qui s’est tenu au Centre communautaire de Paris. Elle est donc constamment réaffirmée sur plusieurs décennies. (…) dernier des Juifs, c’est aussi celui qui habite ce qui reste du judaïsme. Le dernier des eschatologistes maintient l’avenir ouvert. S’il annonce la fin du judaïsme, c’est pour en fonder un autre, qui ne serait plus le même. Tout se passe « comme si » le moins pouvait le plus (il insiste sur le « comme si ») : moins tu te montreras juif, plus tu le seras (c’est la formule du marrane). Le dernier des juifs peut être le pire des juifs, mais aussi celui qui garantit la série. Exclu-inclu, dehors-dedans, il n’appartient pas de fait à la culture juive, il est au bord de la série et la débordant. »

viihttps://diacritik.com/2016/03/25/jacques-derrida-le-religieux-est-un-sport-de-combat-surtout-pas-de-journalistes/

viiihttp://www.idixa.net/Pixa/pagixa-0506190808.html « Il n’est pas seulement le dernier des eschatologistes, il est aussi le plus avancé (p91) : « ils n’ont m’ont jamais pardonné d’être l’eschatologiste le plus avancé, la dernière avant-garde qui compte ». Le plus avancé, c’est celui qui maintient l’avenir ouvert, sans horizon. »

Breath, Wind, Spirit in the Veda and the Bible

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There are fundamental intuitions that penetrate minds, elect in them a permanent residence, magnify their substance, and invigorate their dreams.

Some of them transcend ages, lands, cultures, languages, religions.

So, the breath.

This word brings together the air and wind, the breath of life, but also the soul and the spirit.

These three areas of meaning, meteorological, biological, spiritual, combined in a word, create a space of echoes.

They link nature, mankind and the divine with a tight knot.

The Veda and the Bible, separated by more than a thousand years of age and several thousand kilometers, are tied from this knot, too.

The Veda says:

« Tribute to the Breath! Under its watch is this universe.

It is the master of all things.

Everything has its foundations in it.

Tribute, O Breath, to your clamour,

Tribute to your thunder!

Tribute, O Breath, to your lightning bolt,

Tribute to you, Breathe, when you rain! (…)

Tribute to you, Breathe, when you breathe,

Tribute to you when you inspire,

to you when you walk away,

Tribute to you when you approach!

The Breath covers the beings,

like the father his beloved son.

The Breath is master of all things

of what breathes and what doesn’t….

Man inhales, exhales,

being in the womb.

As soon as you animate it, O Breath,

he is born again. »i

Wind, rain, thunder, lightning are only signs, they denote the Master of the universe.

Signs also — the spirit and soul of man, and the love of the Breath for the creature.

The Book of Genesis says:

« And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים ( Ruah Elohim) moved upon the face of the waters. »ii

« And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (neshmah); and man became a living soul. (נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה nephesh hayah).»iii

The Hebrew text uses three different words to mean the « wind » (ruah) of God, the « breath » (neshmah) of life, and the living « soul » (nephesh).

If we open dictionaries, we notice that the meanings of these words circulate fluidly between them.

Ruah: « Breath; wind, air; soul, spirit ».

Neshmah: « Breath of life, soul, spirit. »

Nephesh: « Breath, smell, perfume; life, principle of life; soul, heart, desire; person ».

It is important to underline the intimate union of their meanings. These three Hebrew words come together in a symphony.

Philo of Alexandria writes in his commentary on Genesis:

« The expression (« He breathed ») has an even deeper meaning. Indeed, three things are required: what blows, what receives, what is blown. What blows is God; what receives is intelligence; what is blown is the soul. What is being done with these elements? There is a union of all three. » iv

Usually the wind blows and disperses the dust. Here, the wind gathers the dust, gives it breath and makes it live.

The Veda and the Bible breathe the same breath, the same wind blows, the same spirit shapes the same knot of life.

i AV. 40.4.1-2;8;10;14

ii Gen. 1,2

iii Gen. 2,7

iv Legum Allegoriae, 2, 37

The Metaphors of Monotheism in India, Israel and the West

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The philosopher must travel among the nations, following the example of Pythagoras.

« Pythagoras went to Babylon, Egypt, all over Persia, learning from the Magi and priests; it is reported that he also got along with the Brahmins. »i

No people, no culture, no religion has a monopoly on knowledge. Under the appearance of their multiplicities, we must seek a deeper, original unity.

In the Vedas, Agni is « God of Fire ». Fire is an image. It’s only one of his names. Agni is the Divine in many other aspects, which its names designate: « Agni, you are Indra, the dispenser of good; you are the adorable Viṣṇu, praised by many; you are Brahmānaspati… you are all wisdom. Agni you are the royal Varuṇa, observer of the sacred vows, you are the adorable Mitra, the destroyer. »

Agni embodies the infinite multiplicity and profound unity of the Divine. Agni is in the same time innumerable, and the only God.

The religion of the Vedas has the appearance of a polytheism, through the myriadic accumulation of God’s names. But it is also a monotheism in its essential intuition.

The Vedas sing, chant, invoke and cry out the Divine, – in all its forms. This Divine is always Word, – in all its forms. « By the Song and beside it, he produces the Cry; by the Cry, the Hymn; by means of the triple invocation, the Word. »ii

Agni is the divine Fire, which illuminates, it is also the libation of the Soma, which crackles. He is one, and the other, and their union. Through Sacrifice, Fire and Soma unite. Fire and Soma contribute to their union, this union of which Agni is the divine name.

The same questions are still running through humanity.

« Where is the breath, the blood, the breath of the earth? Who went to ask who knows? « asks Ṛg Veda.iii

Later, and further west, the Lord asked Job: « Where were you when I founded the earth? Speak if your knowledge is enlightened. Who set the measures, would you know, or who stretched the line on her? (…) Tell us, if you know all this. On which side does the light dwell, and where does the darkness dwell? » iv

There is an instinctive familiarity, a brotherhood of tone, an intuitive resemblance, between a thousand years apart.

The ancient Hebrews, dedicated to the intuition of the One, also sought and celebrated His various names. Is this not analogy with the multiple names and Vedic attributes of the Divinity, whose essence is unique?

When God « shouts » three times his name to Moses’ address « YHVH, YHVH, EL » (יְהוָה יְהוָה, אֵל), there is one God who pronounces a triple Name. Three screams for three names. What does the first YHVH say? What does the second YHVH mean? What does the third name, EL, express?

Christianity will respond a thousand years after Moses to these questions with other metaphors (the Father, the Son, the Spirit).

A thousand years before Moses, verses from Ṛg Veda already evoked the three divine names of a single God: « Three Hairy shines in turn: one sows itself in the Saṃvatsara; one considers the Whole by means of the Powers; and another one sees the crossing, but not the color. »v

The three « Hairy » are in fact the only God, Agni, whose hair is of flame.vi

The first « Hairy » is sown in the Soma, as a primordial, unborn germ. The second « Hairy » considers the Whole thanks to the Soma, which contains the powers and forces. The third « Hairy » is the dark being of Agni (the Agni « aja », – « unborn »), a darkness that God « passes through » when he passes from the dark to the bright, from night to light.

For the poet’s eye and ear, this ‘triplicity’ is not a coincidence. Millennia pass, ideas remain. Agni spreads the fire of his bushy and shiny « hair » three times, to signify his creative power, wisdom and revelation. From the burning bush, Yahweh shouts his three names to Moses to make sure he is heard.

The figure of a God « one » who shows Himself as a « three », seems to be an anthropological constant. The same strange, contradictory and fundamental metaphor links Aryan and Vedic India, Semitic and Jewish Israel, and Greek-Latin and Christian West.

iEusèbe de Césarée. Préparation évangélique, 4,15

iiṚg Veda I, 164,24.

iiiṚg Veda I, 164,4.

ivJob, 38, 4-19

vṚg Veda I, 164,44.

viOne of the attributes of Apollo, Xantokomès (Ξανθόκομης), also makes him a God« with « fire-red hair »