What does "apophatic" mean?

[met]

Going back to apophatism and atheism.?...

There is no pure unsaying, no ultimately purifying negation, even by way of a pure atheism. For it would know what it is that certainly is not. So when pop atheism comes up with the stereotypes of a supernatural Being in a transcendent Heaven intervening arbitrarily, it is presuming the very image of what both early apophatic theologies and late relational ones have negated. There is neither a pure nothing nor a pure something available to the apophatic relation. If such an absolute outside, absolved from relation, exists as being or as not-being, we can say nothing about it—least of all that it “exists.” “Nonbeing could not be except outside Relation.”⁵⁸
[...] "Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement" by Catherine Keller. Scribd.

[Metacrock]

hey met i'll get backninto it

[met]

For Jim, a bit for-topic but here's ....

In a Caputo lecture, his critique on QM's 'Divine Inexistence' concept - first 15 minutes

[met]

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxeTjgo ... E5aVk/edit

Oops, sorry!

[sgttomas]

But what's REALLY interesting (to me) is that this concept is essentially what the science is now saying about US, too: we ourselves are virtual entities. Our "existence" as rational, independent, coherent "selves" ( ie as Cartisian-"I's separate from the environment and capable of independent judgement) has become more and more empirically dubious - even tho it's certain we INSIST, ie that we have plenty of impact on things...

Wdyt? How does this all add up - if at all?

I'm fascinated by this too. I'm probably inventing the memory, but it seems that this realization coincided with the time in my life when I emerged out of dogmatic doubt and began to entertain the notion of faith again, because if I have to even doubt my own coherence then I can't really trust my doubt since the apparent rationality of it hinges on deeper presumptions about my being.

I also think it's a forceful criticism against people who engage in identity politics and people who identify themselves through their pathologies because they consider these things "fixed" or "static" elements of their selves. They have tragically sought the bedrock of reality in a transitory and ephemeral thing. ...it must be incredibly psychologically stressful to maintain that. It's like having faith in your "self". If you have faith in something external and you struggle with maintaining this, doubt is not corrosive to faith but rather an element of it. But if you doubt your very self and you have to struggle to maintain it....that seems like a dark place to be.

Maybe that's a more fundamental motivation for atheists to cling to materialism. At least it pushes off the crisis of faith into something that can be strapped up to appear coherent and static.

Peace,
-sgttomas

[sgttomas]

Perhaps Nietchze was the first atheist thinker to realize that wouldn't work? That without "God", there was no "rational man" either, and reality and society now had to be understood in new terms .... Ie in terms of pure, amoral energies, or a "Will to Power?" ...( or somethin like that, I'm no Nietchze expert) ...

That's how I understood it.

-sgtt

[sgttomas]

I wonder if the loneliness of modernity is due to inherent limits of language. I'm sure some of it is and that we now have the leisure to reflect on its limits. Maybe some of it's also due to the fact that we are no longer connected to others organically. We are, or think we are, "antecedently individuated." The hypertrophied self, where language is a technique to get what we want rather than something we dwell together within, like Heidegger thought.

Watching the movie Koyyanisqatsi for the first time...heck, every time...is a religious experience for me. The Machine laid bare. We have become the machine. This is a vast subject, but I think the statistics on the percentage of the population that lived in rural areas versus urban from 1850 to today is telling. Without romanticizing, the rural is in stark contrast to urban life.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableau ... 2a-eng.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanizat ... ted_States
http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/n ... -2014.html

Peace,
-sgttomas

[met]

. I also think it's a forceful criticism against people who engage in identity politics and people who identify themselves through their pathologies because they consider these things "fixed" or "static" elements of their selves. They have tragically sought the bedrock of reality in a transitory and ephemeral thing. ...it must be incredibly psychologically stressful to maintain that. It's like having faith in your "self"

Yeah, I think I explored similar themes somewhere....

[sgttomas]

Woops! Missed this reply.

Sorry met, I took a blow to the head the other night (literally) and maybe I'm missing the obvious connection? (I think you mean your observation and quotation in the "facebook dialogue recount" thread?)

....btw, I read the exchanges you had with Magritte back in October. He was asking you to reply without using quotations and that really cracked me up.

.....but your quotations are very very apt!!! Why is that a bad things to do!??!? lollolol

Peace,
-sgttomas

[met]

Woops! Missed this reply.

Sorry met, I took a blow to the head the other night (literally) and maybe I'm missing the obvious connection? (I think you mean your observation and quotation in the "facebook dialogue recount" thread?)

Peace,
-sgttomas

Nope, way more extensively, I meant in BS, Book 2 , Mumbai, but perhaps you haven't cracked that one yet? .( I shall add a quote here ASAP showing how the Easternish concept of "no-self" comes up in psychology as a part of trauma theory.)

...btw, I read the exchanges you had with Magrittek back in October. He was asking you to reply without using quotations and that really cracked me up.

ETA - sorry to hear about your taking a blow, btw!

.....but your quotations are very very apt!!! Why is that a bad things to do!??!? lollolol

I know! Magritte is always picking on me!!!!'

....now, just to get even, I shall have to add another quote to that thread - it will be one of Pete Rollins' jokes/stories - -and it should considered for its Foucaldian implications about the nature of "knowledge" - or as Michel would say, pouvoir/savoir