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L. V. Tsypina (Saint-Petersburg)
THE MYSTIC, THE POET AND THE PHILOSOPHER: NICHOLAS OF CUSA, FRIEDRICH SCHELLING AND VLADIMIR SOLOVYOV ON THE SINGLE SOURCE OF INSPIRATION
1
Nicholas of Cusa, Friedrich Schelling and Vladimir Solovyov are not themselves subjects of this preliminary sketch but rather provisional figures of the mystic, the poet and the philosopher. Let us clarify this.
Putting these figures into our discourse, we will consider them primarily as symbols of certain conditions found during the journey to the edge of human possibilities (Georges Bataille). Three modes of such possibilities are conterminous to the anthropological norm, as through them the limit of the experience of living in God, expressing in creativity and understanding in thought is achieved.
Initial characteristics of these conditions reveal the difference of achieving limits and also the difference of „practices of self” guiding to these limits.
Being guided by grace, a saint enters the mystery of a relationship with God, the peak of which is mystical union (Unio mystica) between the lover and the beloved. This contemplative breakthrough to the image of a new being is affected in a holy silence and ecstatic self-perfection.
During a burst of creativity, a genius housels to the inexpressibleness of enigma of the beautiful and gives rise to an image that coincides with the perfection of a pre-image. The logic of existence of the holy art is disclosed this way.
The afterlight of „everything as one” (Heraclitus) is the philosopher’s concern. The tension of the concept (Hegel) reveals a tense and changing reality as the «non-other» of itself. „The philosopher should take shape neither in the material motley nor in the formal emptiness but in the unconditional meaning”1 that is in the reason of the Truth itself.
1 Solovyov V. S. Forma razumnosti i razum istini. Soch. v 2 tt. T. 1. M, 1990. S. 831.
The described differences in the „practices of self” are eliminated by their penetrability. The figures of the mystic, the poet and the philosopher enter the game of exchange and substitution reflecting and completing each other. This becomes possible only because all of them are conductors of the revelation-inspiration-sense-considering and are transparent towards the source.
Having suggested the achievability and invertibility of these states, we can reconstruct the character of the source bringing those three figures into action, as well as conditions of the described practices, i. e. uniqueness (onliness) and boundariness (absolutism).
First, this source is absolute and self-enclosed in its absoluteness in such a way that it contains nothing outside itself. Second, it is therefore the only one and endless. Third, this source is dynamic. Power dimension of its internal life is created by the tension of the essence and appearance (Deus absconditus etredelatus). The modes of the first principle’s appearance keep the power of its essence. This statement has two important implications.
The noesis of such a source creates an epistemological paradox; any knowledge of it arises and increases due to ignorance. The first principle cannot be comprehended by affirmations or negations which can contradict or complete each other. „The intellectual discipline of the nonopposition of opposites”2 is able only to point out the necessity of the first principle and the possibility of its non-intellectual grasping.
Such possibility is based on a doctrine of man as a creature striving for a reunion with the first principle who has the best chance to realize this intention through the intimate part of his soul. The doctrine of hiding, peak or sparkle of the soul (abditum mentis, archa mente, scintilla animae) appears at the crossroad of the two motives. The first one has an anthropological dimension and points out the locus of the first principle’s existence in the soul. The second motive, i.e. the psychological and moral one, concerns the participation of continuous soul in the unity of the source through acts of will and cognition. These acts may be both individual and collective. In the first case, they are a ladder of perfection leading to the first principle. In the second case, they are a chain of
2 Lossky V. N. Apofaza i troicheskoe bogoslovie // Lossky V. N. Bogoslovie i bogovidenie. M. 2000. S. 25.
historical eras transmitting positive experiences, i.e. moral perfection, political ideal and progress of freedom from the past into the future.
Thus, the proposed reconstruction reveals that the metaphysical frame of the described „practices of self” is Neo-Platonism. Its immanent features, the aporia of the first principle, the doctrine of descending and ascending emanations, the dialectics of affirmations or negations, the paradox of the two-way belonging of the soul to the reason and matter, are reproduced through the history of philosophy in more than one way.
Neither «churching» of Neo-Platonism nor its following secularization led to a rejection of this frame. Our aim is to outline a single motive in the unity of the acts of creation and creativity and analyze how it is presented in philosophical theories of Cusanus, Schelling and Solovyov.
2
Nicholas of Cusa regarded creation through the perspective of power using the conceptual dyad of explicatio-complicatio. The strength of a creative art (vis artis creativae) has its source in God’s will. „The will of the creator is the ultimate reason-for-being”.3 Since God the Creator is the absolute maximum or the simplest intellect, his will coincides with the source of all reason. As a manifestation ofthe infinity ofthe maximum, this art is absolute and infinite in itself (ars absoluta et infinita) and expresses intentions of the Creator. Itself rooted in possibility (Posse Ipsum), the divine „I want” contains in a concise way the possibility of God’s being as the Creator and the Saviour. The divine „I can” is a premise of the whole existence, possession and operation, in which „the opportunity to be made (posse fieri) coincides with the ability to make (posse facere)”.4 The universe as a limited maximum (maximum contractum) is a realized possibility of a created being (posse factum).
Man has a special place among creatures. His „middle nature” (natura media), ascended through rationality over all other creatures, though inferior to the angels, enfolds all natures and is able to reunite them with the maximum.
3 Nicholas of Cusa On [Intellectual] Eyeglasses 51 // Complete Philosophical and Theological Treatises of Nicholas of Cusa / translated by Jasper Hopkins. Vol. II. Minneapolis: Arthur J. Banning Press, 1998. P. 815.
4 Ibid.
Cusanus defined man as a „living image of God” (viva imago dei) who is called upon to participate in His creative activity. The „creative force shines in man more than in any other known creature”.5 This is primarily because of the gift of wisdom.
Free will (libera voluntas) is also a „living image” of the almighty power of the Creator. It allows to expand or restrict the ability to accommodate God’s grace. As human mind has the ability to justify decisions of the will, a man is capable of measuring all things. Following Protagoras, Cusanus called the man „a measure of all things”, or according to Hermes Trismegistus, the „second God”. „As God is a creator of real entities and natural forms, so the man is a creator of mental entities and forms of art that bear resemblance to his intellect, as creations of God bear the likeness of the divine intellect”.6 According to Cusanus, human creativity is limited to the sphere of similarities. By operating with assumptions of the mind and similarities of the divine intellect, the man creates science of things out of signs and words. By imitating nature, he creates art whose images are similar to natural forms.
Just as God’s creative intention is not limited to him being the Creator, so the creative capacity of man is not limited to his existence as a „second God”. His intimate part, the „living intellectual light”, directs the man to another kind of creativity, i. e. life in God (deiformitas). In a reverse movement from the creatures to the Creator, man reveals the mystery of a connection (copulatio) between a creator and created nature. Son of God Jesus Christ embodies all the sonships: the absolute sonship of the only-begotten Son in the Trinity, the highest human sonship as his exact image, and an adopted sonship of the man. Hence creation and creativity are united in the figure of the mystic.
3
In The Philosophy of Art, Schelling dealt with the infinite principle which he called God or „the absolute All (das All)”.7 He emphasized
5 Ibid. 1996. P. 1399.
6 Ibid. 1985. P. 709.
7 Schelling F. W. J. The philosophy of art / edited and translated by Douglas W. Stott. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989. P. 24.
that the essence of this principle was „eternal producing”.8 Schelling’s Absolute is impersonal; it is impossible to apply it to intelligence or intention. It is „neither conscious nor unconscious, neither free nor unfree or necessary”. But it is possible to characterize it by traditional philosophical predicates of self-identity, eternity and activity. The activity of the Absolute is to cover the infinite self-actualization, an actualized being and indistinguishable unity of both. As the infinite self-actualizing, the Absolute is an ideality enclosing the fullness of reality; as the infinite self-actualized, it is a reality enclosing the fullness of ideality. Schelling treated reality and ideality as special unities, or potencies.
The eternal nature embodies all that there is in God. Being a print of the world wholeness, it is a unity of three potencies, i.e. light as the self-actualizing, matter as the self-actualized and organism as their indistinguishability. The ideal universe contains the same potencies as knowledge, action and art. Since the Absolute embraces both eternal nature and ideal universe but is „neither of them separately”, it levitates over the real and ideal worlds. It is an absolute identity in which all potencies are dissolved. Philosophy, or „the absolute science of reason”,9 is a perfect expression of the absolute identity. Like God, philosophy levitates over the ideas of truth, goodness and beauty.
Schelling pointed out that God only directly produced ideas of things. Therefore, it is necessary to create a unity of the infinite in finite forms. Only man as a perfect unity of body and soul may become an agent of such creation. His body as a real potency and reason as an ideal potency are united. The immediate cause of man’s creative power is the eternal concept of his own existence in God. As divine creation is the eternal process of applying infinity to a finite existence and following return of a finite existence to its infinity, so action of a genius is repeating this process in the world of phenomena. Therefore, Schelling calls a genius „a paragon of the absoluteness of God”.10
Divine creativity is objectified through art. „The universe is constructed in God as an absolute masterpiece in eternal beauty”.11 Beauty is
8 Ibid. P. 99.
9 Ibid. P. 28.
10 Ibid. P. 84.
11 Ibid. P. 31.
a reflection of a divine archetype. Creative individuality of an artist, the eternal concept of which is contained in the absolute, objectifies beauty in a phenomenon. This is a necessary process; when creating a masterpiece, „a genius has no choice, he only knows the necessary and aspires to it”.12 As the genius is an absolute indistinguishability of all possible opposites, a balance of universality and individuality, so his product, a work of art is the absolute harmony of matter and form, a synthesis of nature and freedom. For Schelling, „art remains the sole and eternal revelation”.13 „Philosophy attains the absolute but it only takes a part of the man there. Art brings the whole man to the knowledge of the highest, and that is the eternal uniqueness and marvel of art”.14
4
Vladimir Solovyov developed his original teaching on the absolute principle in his „Critique of abstract principles”. Existing unconditionally, the Absolute is beyond any relationship and it is the only positive ground for any being and knowledge. This statement has two implications. „First, the absolute first principle is free of any being and second, it encompasses any being through its positive power, or creative origin”.15 The Absolute is a positive nothingness (unconditional unity, freedom from being, existing all-being) and the whole (the creative power of being, beginning of plurality, the first matter, or emerging all-being). These two centres of the absolute first principle are everlastingly and totally interconnected.
Solovyov distinguished the Absolute from its being (absoluteness) emphasizing that „all-being is not the wholeness but it possesses the wholeness”.16 Thus, a concept of the second Absolute was coined; the latter justifies any relative, multiple or divided existence. The second Absolute is nature whose sense is wholeness. In man, the second Absolute is restored in its ideal point. This is due to the presence of three
12 Ibid. P. 93.
13 Schelling F. W. J. System of Transcendental Idealism / translated by Peter Heath. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978. P. 223.
14 Ibid. P. 233.
15 Solovyov V. S. Kritika otvlechennih nachal. Soch. v 2 tt. T. 1. M, 1990. S. 703.
16 Ibid. S. 710.
elements, i. e. rationality (idea of the wholeness), freedom (unconditional independence towards both God and his own nature), and materiality (idea of individuality). In man, wholeness as a part of a divine being exists in an emerging state. Solovyov argued this point by studying the sphere of knowledge.
He emphasized that humans recognize or communicate with an object in two ways, externally through empirical and rational knowledge, and internally, through our divine part, i. e. the absolute, or mystical knowledge. This second side of cognition includes elements of belief (an unconditional approval of an object’s existence), imagination (mental contemplation of an object’s essence) and creativity (embodiment of an object’s image into our experience). Our cognition becomes valid only if it comprises those elements, i. e. expresses an inner relationship between man and the world.
For Solovyov it was evident that this duality of human composition, its heterogeneity could not but influence the process of cognition. „Thus, a synthesis of mystical and natural elements that is vital for true knowledge, through a rational element, is not a given of consciousness but a task for the mind”.17 Free theosophy as a synthesis of science, philosophy and theology is designed to solve this problem. It would rise above the facts of experience, ideas of intellect and dogmas of faith.
A condition of true knowledge is „rebuilding of the existing reality”, i. e. free theurgy. This is not a theoretical problem for a receptive, understanding and explaining mind, but a practical one for creative thinking. Paradoxically, Solovyov treated this problem as one of art, moving the question of the implementation of truth into an aesthetic domain. Theurgy, or great art, allows us to establish an organic relationship between the divine, the human and the natural elements of reality, in order to ensure „man’s implementation of divine forces in the real existence of nature”.18
Such universal creativity is linked to individual creativity. It was not without reason that Solovyov recognized as his first aesthetic axiom an involuntary creativity, i.e. the one induced by a highest internal source.
17 Ibid. S. 739.
18 Ibid. S. 743.
„Passivity, pure potentiality of mind and will, is a precondition for real freedom of creativity. The freedom here belongs primarily to those poetic images, thoughts and sounds that freely come to the soul. The poetic soul is ready to accept them. It is free at that moment of inspiration and not bound by anything alien, shameful or contrary to inspiration. It only follows what it contains, or what comes from the area above consciousness that the soul recognizes as something different and highest but also its own”.19 The figures of the mystic, the poet, and the philosopher become so close that they are transformed into a single „Eye of eternity”. Solovyov thus described this process in his poem:
Above white earth a single, single Star burns
And draws one along a path of ether To iself — there.
Oh, why is it so? In one steady gaze
All wonders dwell,
The mysterious sea of all life,
And the heavens.
That gaze is so close and so clear —
Behold it,
You, too, will be measureless and sublime —
Master of all.20
19 Solovyov V. S. Znachenie poezii v stihotvorenijah Pushkina // Solovyov V. S. Literaturnaya kritika. M, 1990. S. 234.
20 Solovyov V. S. The Eye of Eternity // From the Ends to the Beginning. A Bilingual Anthology ofRussian Verse. URL: http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/ index.html (date: 05.05.2012).
