une philosophie serait dès lors toujours «platonicienne»

Jacques Derrida. Khôra. Gallilée (1993)

Devrait-on dès lors s'interdire de parler de la philosophie de Platon, de l'ontologie de Platon, voire du platonisme? Nullement et il n'y aurait sans doute aucune erreur de principe à le faire, seulement une inévitable abstraction. Platonisme voudrait dire, dans ces conditions, la thèse ou le thème qu'on aura par artifice, méconnaissance et abstraction, extrait du texte, arraché à la fiction écrite de «Platon». Cette abstraction une fois surinvestie et déployée, on l'étendra au-dessus de tous les plis du texte, de ses ruses, surdéterminations, réserves qu'elle viendra recouvrir et dissimuler. On appellera cela platonisme ou philosophie de Platon, ce qui n'est ni arbitraire ni illégitime puisqu'on se recommande ainsi d'une certaine force d'abstraction thétique à l'œvre, déjà, dans le texte hétérogène de Platon. Elle travaille et se présente justement sous le nom de philosophie. S'il n'est pas illégitime et arbitraire de l'appeler comme elle s'appele, c'est que sa violence arbitraire, son abstraction consiste à faire la loi, jusqu'à un certain point et pendant un certain temps, à dominer, selon un mode qui est justement toute la philosophie, d'autres motifs de pensée qui sont aussi à l'œvre dans le texte: par example ceux qui nous intéressent ici par privilège, et à partir d'une autre situation — disons pour faire vite une autre situation historique, bien que l'histoire dépende le plus souvent dans son concept de cet héritage philosophique. Le «platonisme» est dont certainement un des effets du texte signé de Platon, pendant longtemps l'effet dominant et pour des raisons nécessaires, mais cet effet se trouve touhours retorné contre le texte. 

[...] La réversion violente dont nous venons de parler est toujours intéressée et intéressante. Elle se trouve naturellement à l'œvre dans cet ensemble sans limite que nous appelons ici le texte. En se construisant, en se posant sous sa forme dominante à un moment donné (ici la thèse platonicienne, la philosophie ou l'ontologie), le texte s'y neutralise, engourdit, auto-détruit ou dissimule: inégalement, partiellement, provisoirement. Les forces ainsi inhibées continuent d'entretenir un certain désordre, de l'incohérence potentielle et de l'hetérogénéité dans l'organisation des thèses. Elles y introduisent du parasitage, de la clandestinité, de la ventriloquie et surtout un ton général de dénégation qu'on peut apprendre à percevoir en y exerçant son oreille ou sa vue. Le «platonisme» n'est pas seulement un exemple de ce mouvement, le premier «dans» toute l'histoire de la philosophie. Il le commande, il commande toute cette histoire. Mais le «tout» de cette histoire est conflictuel, hétérogène, il ne donne lieu qu'à des hégémonies relativement stabilisables. Il ne se totalise donc jamais. En tant que telle, effet d'hégémonie, une philosophie serait dès lors toujours «platonicienne». D'où la nécessité de continuer à tenter de penser ce qui a lieu chez Platon, avec Platon, ce qui s'y montre, ce qui s'y cache, pour y gagner ou pour y perdre.

T. S. Eliot: The Last Classic

Happy Birthday, Kamile.

The ideas of the city and of the province are inseparable, and while provinciality is clearly a version of exile, that condition can also exist in the city, just as traces, imitations, relics, parodies of metropolitan culture are to be found in the province. Within the limes or boundaries of empire there will be simulacra of Rome that are not Rome, that do not speak its language or even a derivative language. They are associated with the Ovidian tristia as well as the Virgilian imperium. Hugh Kenner, in a fine essay on the manuscripts, has stressed the Virgilian elements in The Waste Land, saying that Eliot, impressed by Joyce's use of Homer, "may well have had in mind at one time a kind of modern Aeneid." And it has been pointed out that the Virgil of the early poems is not quite the figure represented in Eliot's later essays about him, with their emphasis on his relation to Dante and the Christian world. Aeneas was an exile, and he never did found a city. The cities in which we see him, Troy and Carthage, are cities famous not for the manner of their foundation but for the completeness of their destruction, just as those cataloged in Eliot's poem have been or will be; so that Augustan Rome is an example not solely of a glory to which other capitals may aspire, or with which their ignominy may be contrasted, but also of the apocalyptic terrors Virgil associated with the eternal city and its empire.

It may be that after his conversation Eliot read Virgil by the light of Dante, and in a long tradition of interpretation which included the pax Augusta and the idea of Christian Empire. He developed his rich and complicated idea of the classic on this basis; he settled for a vernacular and provincial Catholicism (the Reformation, too, was a sort of exile) as the world had settled for vernacular versions oft he classic. But in so doing he did not forget the metropolitan terrors, nor that what the province took from the metropolis — images of the center entertained at the periphery, pride in partaking of the values of the urbs antiqua, and the classic authority — it repaid with the inescapable idea of exile; the more so now that the modern metropolis was itself deviant from the central image of Rome, and so itself an exile.

The sense of perpetual exile, doubtless in its orgin origin very personal, is thus associated with a religion and with a theory of history and culture; and we can see that the St. Louis and Boston, the Paris and London of the poetry ar logically connected with the idea of the classic, and of the more or less perpetual exile of literature from the classic. It would be hard to discover a poet or critic now living who shared these views, or held to any that even slightly resembled them; they are more likely to say to the classic "I banish you." And that is why we may think of Eliot as the last classic, at any rate until some new civilization should construct its own idea of the classic, and its own canon.

So here we confront yet another form of exile. Eliot was conscious of it, so often meditating the classic, so suspicious of its apparent opposite, the romantic, with which he nevertheless had such interesting relations. The more extreme modernisms were programmatically anticlassical, and Eliot knew and was affected by them. Later varieties assumed some connection between classicism and oppressive political prescription, in short, between classical and fascist order. With many aspects of these modernisms, though of course not with all, the early Eliot had a wary sympathy; they coexisted with a classicism he would not abandon, however its political implications might be deplored. The times seemed to insist on so many conflicting tendencies: the reconstruction of the past, the destruction of the past; the modernism of Dada that destroyed, or of Surrealism, associated with psychoanalysis, with what Hulme called "split religion", and a classicism that deplored everything that had happened in the world since the Renaissance. Both were of the city, the city of the political emblem of civility and the classic, but also the immonde cité of Baudelaire; a spiritual desert, yet the symbol of the urbs aeterna. In consciously holding together, as metoikos, these diverse ideas of an ideal eternity and a decadence in time, Eliot was unique among modern poets — and again an outsider, an exile from easy opinion, banished and banishing, honored and deplored.

Frank Kermode. T. S. Eliot: The Last Classic. in An Appetite for Poetry. HUP (1989)

Dilige et fac quod vis

Keeping the Law 

Disciples asked the maggid of Zlotchov: "In the Talmud we read that our Father Abraham kept all the laws. How could this be, since they had not yet been given to him?" 

"All that is needful," he said, "is to love God. If you are about to do something and you think it might lessen your love, then you will know it is sin. If you are about to do something and think it will increase your love, you will know that your will is in keeping with the will of God. That is what Abraham did."

Yehiel Mikhal of Zlotchov. in Tales of the Hasidim (Martin Buber ed.), Olga Marx (trad.) Schocken Books (1947)

Quando Deus falava Persa

Nor is Allah referred to as 'Our Father, who art in heaven', because, as a truly transcendent deity, he must transcend gender as well. The God of Islam encompasses both traditionally 'male' attributes such as those of generation and domination and 'female' attributes, such as those of loving-kindness and nurturance. Allah is called 'He' only because of the nature of the Arabic language, which assigns make or female to all nouns and pronouns. Indeed, it is probably not coincidental that so much mystical poetry in Islam has been written in Persian, a language with no gender markers to convey unintended theological limitations.

V. J. Cornell. Tawhid: The Recognition of the One in Islam in Islam: A Challenge for Christianity. SCM Press (1994)

Distinções

[Estrangeiro] De facto, meu caro, fazer todos os esforços para separar tudo de tudo o resto não se limita a ser antes de mais algo que destoa, mas ainda por cima é a obra de alguém totalmente desprovido quer de música quer de filosofia.

[Teeteto] Então porquê?

[Estrangeiro] Separar cada coisa de tudo o resto é a forma mais segura de fazer desaparecer todo o falar, pois se há fala em nós isso deve-se ao entrelaçamento de ideias umas com as outras.

Platão. Sophista 259d9-259e6 Tradução minha

{ΞΕ.} Καὶ γάρ, ὠγαθέ, τό γε πᾶν ἀπὸ παντὸς ἐπιχειρεῖν ἀποχωρίζειν ἄλλως τε οὐκ ἐμμελὲς καὶ δὴ καὶ παντάπασιν ἀμούσου τινὸς καὶ ἀφιλοσόφου.

{ΘΕΑΙ.} Τί δή;

{ΞΕ.} Τελεωτάτη πάντων λόγων ἐστὶν ἀφάνισις τὸ διαλύειν ἕκαστον ἀπὸ πάντων· διὰ γὰρ τὴν ἀλλήλων τῶν εἰδῶν συμπλοκὴν ὁ λόγος γέγονεν ἡμῖν.

Proselitismo e a Rota da Seda

It is only possible to bring things or discoveries to China, while it is impossible to bring faith.
Perhaps that is the way it is because the Jesuits brought their faith to China on sea trade routes?
Perhaps they needed to look for special routes – perhaps routes of faith?
After all, it’s said that Khan Buddhism was brought to China by one man.
On foot.

Undinė Radzevičiūtė. Fish and Dragons. Jayde Will (trad.) 2013.

Curso da Vida // um poema do Hölderlin

Curso da Vida

Tu querias algo maior, mas o Amor empurra
nos para baixo, o sofrimento curva-se violentamente,
Mas não é em vão que nosso arco
Se vira para lá donde veio.

Para cima ou para baixo! ou já não impera na noite sagrada,
Onde a muda Natureza a sucessão dos dias medita,
Já não impera nas profundezas do Orco
Uma Medida, uma Lei?

Por isto passei eu. Pois jamais, como os Mestre mortais fazem,
Vós, Celestes, Vós que Sois Sempre,
Que eu tenha sabido, com precaução
Me haveis guiado no caminho certo.

Tudo o Humano põe à prova, dizem os Celestes,
Para que, poderosamente nutrido, aprenda a dar graças por tudo,
E compreenda a liberdade
De partir para adonde deseja.


Friedrich Hölderlin. Tradução minha.

Lebenslauf

Größeres wolltest auch du, aber die Liebe zwingt
All uns nieder, das Leid beugt gewaltiger,
Doch es kehret umsonst nicht
Unser Bogen, woher er kommt.

Aufwärts oder hinab! herrschet in heiliger Nacht,
Wo die stumme Natur werdende Tage sinnt,
Herrscht im schiefesten Orkus
Nicht ein Grades, ein Recht noch auch?

Dies erfuhr ich. Denn nie, sterblichen Meistern gleich,
Habt ihr Himmlischen, ihr Alleserhaltenden,
Daß ich wüßte, mit Vorsicht
Mich des ebenen Pfads geführt.

Alles prüfe der Mensch, sagen die Himmlischen,
Daß er, kräftig genährt, danken für alles lern,
Und verstehe die Freiheit,
Aufzubrechen, wohin er will.

Sinal da Cruz

§1

»Βαδίσωμεν,» ἔφην, «ἐπὶ τὸ τῆς Ἰλιάδος Ἀθηνᾶς τέμενος». Ὁ δὲ καὶ μάλα προθύμως ἀπήγαγέ με καὶ ἀνέῳξε τὸν νεών, καὶ ὥσπερ μαρτυρόμενος ἐπέδειξέ μοι πάντα ἀκριβῶς σῶα τὰ ἀγάλματα, καὶ ἔπραξεν οὐθὲν ὧν εἰώθασιν οἱ δυσσεβεῖς ἐκεῖνοι πράττειν, ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου τοῦ δυσσεβοῦς τὸ ὑπό μνημα σκιογραφοῦντες, οὐδὲ ἐσύριττεν, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνοι, αὐτὸς καθ' ἑαυτόν· ἡ γὰρ ἄκρα θεολογία παρ' αὐτοῖς ἐστι δύο ταῦτα, συρίττειν τε πρὸς τοὺς δαίμονας καὶ σκιογραφεῖν ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου τὸν σταυρόν.

Juliano o Filósofo. Carta XIX. Tradução minha.

"Vamos ao templo de Atena Ilíada", disse-me ele, abriu-o e guiou-me com muito entusiasmo até ao interior. Como se estivesse a dar testemunho de algo mostrou-me todas as estátuas intactas, e tudo isto sem jamais agir da maneira que os ímpios [i.e., os Cristãos] costumam agir quando desenham sobre a sua testa descrente aquele seu sinal, e sem silvar, também isso contrário deles. Isto porque a teologia deles consiste exclusivamente dessas duas coisas, silvar face aos espíritos e desenhar a cruz na testa.

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§2

οὗτος ἡμῖν δέδοται ἐπὶ τοῦ μετώπου, ὅν τρόπον τῷ Ἰσραὴλ ἡ περιτομή · δι'αὐτοῦ γὰρ οἱ πιστοὶ τῶν ἀπίστων ἀποδιιστάμεθά τε καὶ γνωριζόμεθα. οὗτος θυρεὸς καὶ ὅπλον καὶ τρόπαιον κατὰ τοῦ διαβόλου. οὗτος σφραφίς, ἵνα μὴ θίγῃ ἧμῶν ὁ ὀλοθρεύων, ὥς φησιν ἡ γραφή. Οὗτος τῶν κειμένων ἀνάστασις, τῶν ἑστώτων στήριγμα, ἀσθενῶν βακτηρία, ποιμαινομένων ῥάβδος, ἐπιστρεφόντων χειραγωγία, προκοπτόντων τελείωσις, ψυχῆς σωτηρία καὶ σώματος, πάντων κακῶν ἀποτρόπαιον, πάντων ἀγαθῶν πρόξενος, ἁμαρτίας ἀναίρεσις, φυτὸν ἀναστάσεως, ξύλον ζωῆς αἰωνίου.

João Damasceno. Exposição da Fé. Capítulo LXXXIV. Tradução minha.

Este [sinal] na testa foi-nos concedido da mesma forma que a Israel foi concedida a circuncisão. É por ele que nós os crentes nos distinguimos dos descrentes. Ele é um escudo, é uma arma, é um troféu contra o Demónio. É um selo para que o Destruidor jamais nos toque, como diz a Escritura. É ele o ressurgir daqueles que caíram, o sustento dos que se mantém de pé, o bastão dos doentes, a vara dos pastores, o trazer pela mão daqueles que voltam para trás, o destino final daqueles que avançam, a salvação da alma e do corpo, o talismã contra todos os males, o patrono de todos os bons, a destruição do pecado, o rebento da ressurreição, a árvore da vida eterna.

---

§3

A partir de [10:58]

Theologia e Etymologia

John [Damascene]’s Christology, and the nature of his response to Monophysitism has, however, long been the subject of misunderstanding, a misunderstanding created by Friedrich Loofs (following on from the presentation of Christology by certain Protestant scholastic theologians), and popularized in the English.-speaking world by Maurice Relton. This misunderstanding is the doctrine of enhypostasia, the notion that the human nature of Christ is ‘anhypostatic’, and finds its hypostasis in that of the assuming Word, so that the Word, by becoming incarnate, accomplishes an ontological process known as ‘enhypostatization’. The error underlying this is very simple, and also typical of the etymologizing style of theology of the first half of the twentieth century, according to which words, and their supposed etymologies, had a kind of life of their own. But in fact, as Brian Daley has argued, the adjective enypostatos is not formed from the preposition en plus an adjective formed from hypostasis (suggesting the idea of being inward to a hypostasis); it is rather the simple adjective from hypostasis, the prefix en affirming the qualify designated by the root, in contrast to the prefix an, which denies it (cf. emphonos/aphonos, enylos/anylos, entimos/atimos): enypostatos, therefore, means ‘real’, and anypostatos ‘unreal’, or sometimes, more precisely, possessing (or not) concrete reality. There is no mysterious process of ‘enhypostatization’.

Andrew Louth. St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Thought p.161. OUP (2002)

A arte da Bizantinística

Averil Cameron. Byzantine Matters. (2014) Princeton UP.

Recognition of the agendas lying behind many individual artworks designed to expound and claim their various versions of orthodox doctrine, and their capacity to enunciate complex theological themes in visual terms, has been part of the move among Byzantine art historians toward a highly contextual exposition and away from stylistic analysis. To be a Byzantine art historian at this juncture requires a highly sophisticated theological awareness combined with the deployment of complex and often obscure theological texts. And since so much Byzantine writing of this kind remains imperfectly edited or is even unpublished, this means that they must be philologists, theologians, and liturgists too.