Lecture series “The New Theology”, Lecture 1.

In Dzhemal’s archive, this cycle of lectures has a different name: “Radical theology”. Lectures were given in the evenings in the premises of the Moscow School №157

Autumn 2004.

Theology as the doctrine of non-identity. I’m going to read a fairly short course. Initially, I thought that this would be an expanded and detailed narration about those elements which, in my opinion, constitute - should constitute — a new theology. But I was told that the course should be reduced to 14 academic hours, that is, seven lectures. And I realized that it is necessary to focus not on the content of the new theology, but on the prolegomena to it, that is, on a fundamental explanation of what it is.

There are a lot of illusions, delusions, aberrations and misunderstandings about theology and misunderstanding about this word. However, until recently — except for the European and Islamic Middle Ages, when theology was the dominant ideological discipline — it was on the periphery of intellectual humanitarian activity and was controlled by a purely professional clerical element, that is, confessional circles, whether in the Christian or Islamic world. And in Islamic world after the conquests of the Mongols (when the great Islamic civilization, the Caliphate collapsed, kalam was rejected and ceased to exist, that is, the intellectual philosophical metaphysical tradition), theology began to be understood exclusively as issues of applied jurisprudence, the solution of practical liturgical ritual issues, which is a distortion of the very concept of “theology”. However, and we will talk about it, a certain regeneration of theological thought took place in the West. The grounds for this regeneration were given by Protestantism — Luther, Calvin, and in a more distinct form, this manifested itself at the beginning of the 20th century, when, after the First World War critically minded and especially gifted Protestant theologians began to ask the question: What is faith in God after faith in all generally valid human values has collapsed? Nevertheless, all this is a historical background: it is, so to speak, a culturological introduction to the concept of theology. What is theology itself? Let us begin with what theology opposes and what it is not. Theology is not metaphysics, and theology is not philosophy. Metaphysics is a basic foundation that stretches back as many millennia into the depths of history as we can see. Metaphysics is actually inherent in the fundamental foundations of human epistemological abilities in general, human abilities for general cognition. To put it more generally, so that it is absolutely clear, it simply coincides with the idea of a pure, unlimited, unclouded infinity.

And this infinity is given to a human — let’s say, not to every human, but to the great “initiates”, meters, gurus, children — to some it is given simply as a gift, because when a human at age of three years old, at five years old, looks at the sky with a clear gaze, he directly experiences the experience of unlimited perception. There is the very fact of unlimited perception — and human has an instinct that his perception is unlimited(At least a sphere: it is also perceived by this instinct as infinity, because it has no frames, no back wall.) Everything presented to him from all sides should be reflected in it, but in practice it is not. But this empirical practice does not interest us, we are interested in what instinct says that perception is unlimited and infinite. And this infinity of perception leads human to believe that the primal reality of his fundamental experience is the concept of the infinite.

Many philosophers, oddly enough, argue that infinity is not given in experience. This is an amazing statement, because a simple look at how perception is constructed in general, even at the primary psychological level, shows that, on the contrary, infinity is just given in experience above all else. The experience of the infinite at the conscious articulated level says the following: in fact, there is nothing finite as such — everything that is the finite is in fact somehow or other a manifestation, an element, a detail, a wave, a swirl, a reduced to the infinite, i.e. identical to the infinite.

The most important thing, who is identical or what is identical to the infinite, is the beholder himself. Metaphysics teaches that there is no me looking at infinity, but infinity is: I am one with infinity. And thus this infinity absorbs me: as if “you are that.” Philosophy says something else, it tries to gain the infinite through the concrete. Philosophy refers to something very specific, but having the character of a universal and in this definite, having a universal character, it tries to find, to grasp infinity, to master it, without disappearing into it. Bring infinity down to earth this is the task of philosophy. In any case, both metaphysics and philosophy are related by will to identity, the instinct of identity. Metaphysics proves that the finite thing disappears into the infinite, is identical with the infinite, but philosophy also strives to prove that the infinite is identical with finite things, that through the finite we can possess the infinite in the direct mastery of the world presented to us or, say, the elements. For example, Thales of Miletus said that “everything is water”, thereby intuiting the nature of the infinite as a liquid fluid homogeneous continuous substance. This is the specificity through which he sought to master the incomprehensible and elusive everything. In this sense, theology is something fundamentally and purely opposite to both metaphysics and philosophy, because theology proceeds from non-identity. Theology is a doctrine of non-identity. And it starts from that moment the one when the Revelation appears, which is absolutely different source of knowledge, a completely different method of obtaining knowledge than contemplation, than vision, than perception than anything the natural man possesses.

Here Revelation collides with already developed existing metaphysics. The revelation received by the Abrahamic Prophets, the Revelation that came to the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) collided with the space of Hellenism, which expounded in the Koine language — the universal Greek language — universal truths: the truths of metaphysics, the truths of identity, which were formulated for the West by Plato, and for East is the most adequate were expressed in Sankhya philosophy, articulated in intellectual tradition of Brahmanism and Hinduism. In fact, metaphysics, being fundamental interpretation of primary perception, as we have already said, everywhere speaks of the same thing: it speaks of identity, of the reduction of everything finite to fundamental, unlimited, to the fundamental first principle, to what the German metaphysical tradition calls “urgrund”, that is, “the first principle”. And this is what the Revelation faces, which speaks of some principled, transcendent alternative to all perceived existence, which is incomprehensible neither in contemplation, nor in intuition, nor in intellect, nor in the logical construction of reasoning by analogy and so on: it must break into the consciousness, into the intellectual, mental space that is closed to it. That is, the mirror is told that there is something that is not reflected in it, but it is, as it were, introduced there, introduced in a kind of volitional, but at the same time social and propaedeutic way. And there arises an Abrahamic consciousness that there is One who opposes the definition of is, because this definition of ‘is’ is normally applied to visible and invisible things that are somehow posited, given in ordinary, natural being, coupled with the possibility of what characterizes the object being, to which the predicate is attached, that it is realization of a certain possibility. Everything is possible, and everything possible is somehow thought, perceived, or derived from perception. And suddenly, in Revelation, the voice of that transcendent Subject sounds through the messenger, through the transmitter, Who is not associated with the possibility, the statement about Whom is not the realization of the possible, Who is the opposite of everything possible and claims that everything possible has become so through the fact of His opposition and opposition to it. In other words, the One speaks Who is not presented in the normal ontological, metaphysical sense. This moment is a Revelation that collides with metaphysics in a specific historical context, with Hellenistic metaphysics, and causes the need for completely new methods of reconciling this metaphysical Platonic and Aristotelian space with a new radical idea, which is completely insane from the point of view of classical universal consciousness. We have mentioned Plato and Aristotle, who are iconic figures in this case, their very opposition of student and teacher is iconic. I want to draw your attention to the fact that Aristotle became the basic thinker for formulating three “theologies” at once. Yes, oddly enough, one Aristotle formed the basis of three theological schools as a source. This is Judaism, because Aristotle was undoubtedly one of the teachers of the Jewish masters and rabbis — in particular Maimonides. This is Christianity — here is no doubt, as they say. We will not even delve into this, because, from the Holy Fathers of early patristics to Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle is the guarantor of “adequacy, truth and authenticity.” But Aristotle also became a master and teacher for Muslim theologians, and in a very wide range: starting from the western peripatetics (west, Maghreb, Spain is the western kalam), but Aristotle was very important and for the eastern kalam, that is, the one that was formulated in Central Asia, in particular Farabi, Rushdom, and so on. Here in such a wide range of Aristotelian represented by three denominations that go back to the Abrahamic prophetic root.

The point is this: there was a demand for something that appeared with Aristotle outside and against metaphysics. Aristotle was a fully philosopher, and Plato was not only a philosopher, but also a metaphysician. Plato is transitional figure: he is a kind of hinge, which, if you look at him on the one hand, he is a metaphysician and a priest who speaks of the infinite, of the universal, which precedes everything, to which everything is reduced, to which everything returns, and so on. On the other hand, he is a philosopher, in whose view the infinite is grasped through the concrete, through a certain present element of reality. But the fact is that Plato faced a very serious question: here we see a certain thing — here is this thing that we see what it is? The dog doesn’t know that it is a table, he just sees some configuration, some inkblot in space, he doesn’t know it’s a table. We do know that it is a table. But the fact that this is a table is, as it were, fundamental inseparable from it? That is, what sits in him, that table, is it real or do we think it is a table? This is the great question from which realists and nominalists will subsequently emerge. Some believe that the appearance of nominalists means the advent of a new time, that nominalism simply teaches that words and names of things are the subject of “agreement”, the subject of an arrangement. If we agreed that this is a table, then this will be a table. And the realists say that the table itself is a table. But in fact, Plato already has this distinction, who understands a certain difficulty in interpreting what is the subject: a blot, a “Rorschach inkblot” or is it self-sustaining reality. But he makes a choice in favor of the fact that this table is truly a table and a table in a universal way, because the idea that it is a table lives in it and behind it. That is, it is at once a “Rorschach inkblot” presented to our senses, and at the same time a kind of self-sufficient idea to which it belongs and which is controlled.

That is, whoever looks at this table whether it’s a dog, an angel, a person of various cultures and civilizations, a Martian he still has to deal with the table, because there is an idea of a table that lives in heaven in the world of archetypes. Of cause, you won’t go far with such a system of understanding things in the world of contradictions, in the dialectical space. Aristotle was the first to say that a thing is presented to us as a “blob”, and we give it meaning through the work of our mind, through interpretation. According to Aristotle, this table exists only because we humans think it is a table. We have consciousness, we have come to the conclusion that we interpret it as a table. And that’s the only reason it’s a table; if the Martians decide otherwise about the same “blob”, it won’t be a table. Thus, the path is paved here to anthropocentrism, to epistemological anthropology an anthropology built not on the study of human as an ontological object, but on the reduction of anthropology to a cognizing interpretative point, to the center and root of interpretation. That is why it is this approach of Aristotle that has become dominant and fundamental for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But Aristotle remained primarily a philosopher.

In fact, he did not go far from Plato, because ontologism for him still continued to be an imperative, as for all philosophers up to the philosophy of the West, and this is philosophy par excellence; philosophy, which in fact, unlike Chinese, Indian and other philosophies that you can still find, It is the philosophy of identity, which has completely emancipated itself from the domination of the infinite, that is, from the metaphysical priority of the infinite, the philosophy of identity, which increasingly took the principle of the infinite out of brackets. And more and more this identity, which is the dominant feature of philosophy, became empty and unfilled, one-sided. Philosophy entered into the deepest crisis and, ultimately, in the 20th century, as a method of thinking, it collapsed, it collapsed closer to Sartre. Jean-Paul Sartre was the last great thinker who in his intellectual activity stated the end of philosophy. What is this main failure of philosophy, which today for us has indicated the need for a completely new thinking, a new methodology, why we are today engaged in the formulation of theology as an alternative to philosophy? Because for the entire time of its existence — about three thousand years — philosophy has not been able to cope with the distinction between is, which is applied to an object, and is, which is applied to the subject. For example, there is a table (as always, philosophers dance from the table they sit at) but there is also me who sees this table. It is clear that these ‘is’ are not the same. It is clear that I am my own interpreter, a source that is transparent to itself. And I cannot be(exist in the same way) as a certain object that is presented to me. How to interpret the differences in this ‘is’? How to interpret the predicate for the object and for the subject? Philosophy has not been able to cope with this for more than two thousand years. And therefore it was forced to interpret the subject as an invariant of the object. That is, according to the philosophical vision, I am the same object as what is given to me, what surrounds me. In this sense, subject and object are similar to a seal and an impression, that is, they are interconnected, located on the same plane, and the only thing that changes is priority. In other words, in one philosophical school, the object gives rise to the subject, dominates it and, as it were, reigns, the object is a seal that leaves an imprint, and in another philosophical school, the dominant may be the subject. This is how “subjective idealism”, “objective idealism” and so on appear. But in the same row, it is worth mentioning materialism, for which this question is, as it were, in general incomprehensible, because in the system of materialistic monism, the subject as such, with its specificity, practically does not exist. It is as if it does not exist in the system of substantive materialistic monism. Subject and object interpreted as two halves, as different hemispheres of the same. But this is clearly not true. We know very well that we feel very well that the object cannot exist in the same way as the subject: the content of the word is, presented to the subject, cannot mean the same as word ‘is’ for the object! Philosophy couldn’t handle it, and it opened up in Sartre’s last statement that the subject itself is transparent to itself, while the object is completely opaque. But the fact is that when I just said that the predicates of ‘is’ for the object and the subject are not the same, and pointed out that I am transparent to myself, I went, as it were, for Sartre. But this is the first evidence, that is, the possibility of introspection. It is clear that the table is in some way opposed and opaque, and the people who surround me, if I take them for some kind of object phenomena, are opaque and opposing to me. But this is obvious only at first glance, and such a construction easily collapses when I think about the fact that, since the table in its “tableness” is the object of my interpretation, its opacity is illusory. The table is actually transparent, because my interpretation about it, is transparent to me, the mental process is transparent to me, as a result of which I endow it with this idea which I the reason why it exists. And that’s why I see it — it’s absolutely opaque! Why do I see it? Because in the mirror that reflects it, there is a black amalgam, which from that side makes it possible for the effect of reflection to arise, and it is opaque. By the way, Nikolai Kuzansky said this quite ingeniously, who mentioned that God is invisible, because He is part of the eye, He is the condition of seeing, which (this condition) cannot be seen. This is an indication that the mirror sees, because behind it there is that black side, which is directly opposite to the principle of light, the principle of reflection, and only due to this there is a phenomenon of stopping light, the phenomenon of perception. I, the subject, is in fact opaque (contrary to Sartre’s opinion), and the object that I understand as such is transparent, because my understanding is completely controlled by me. Sartre simply took my or his understanding of the object for the subject, he took the transparency of his own interpretation for the subject. Here, at this level, philosophy ends because it fails to distinguish ‘is’ about the subject and the object — two different ‘is’. And it collapses because it gives both properties that are directly opposite to the true ones, that is, it says about white that it is black, and about black that it is white. Since Sartre was a profound interpreter of Heidegger, and Heidegger is the last ontologist, we can say that on Sartre, on his attempt to break through the intellectual crisis that struck systemic ontological thinking, all this sags and collapses.

That is why we need a completely new, I would say, fundamentally new method of thinking, which will not be philosophical or metaphysical, but at the same time will solve the same “last questions”. So where does theology come from? Theology comes out of a crisis. We have now pointed to the crisis of philosophy, but this is a cultural crisis, a culturological one, because in this case philosophy is a kind of disciplinary thing, it illustrates the nature of the crisis. Thus, Sartre’s example shows us the following: the nature of the crisis lies in the fact that one thing is assumed, but in fact another is taking place; in some sincere, true, open way one thing is assumed, and fundamentally this assumption explodes, because it itself contains dialectical substitution, dialectical incompatibility with itself. This is a characteristic of the crisis, and it is revealed to us at the cultural level. However, theology proceeds from the fact that the crisis is inherent in reality itself at the most primary level, because this reality is presented to us as one, but secretly it is something completely different. The primary crisis, which we can point to and which is the deepest, is no longer a philosophical or cultural crisis.

It goes back to the most primary perceptual sphere, which forms metaphysics. So, if I see the infinite, if I am such a pure child who, with an unclouded eye, comprehends the limitlessness of his perception and the limitlessness corresponding to this perception, which can fill this perception, then I believe that since this is infinity, there is nothing but it, and therefore, naturally, everything is identical to it.

But perception itself is possible only if there is a distinction! The fact is that if there is no such black amalgam from the back side of the mirror, if there is no such point of opposition, then there can be no phenomenon of meeting, the phenomenon of perception. If there is no other, then there is no this either, then infinity simply could not live as some kind of experience, as a perception, as an experience. But let’s say this is an illusion, and I actually exist only as a kind of aberration, as a kind of ignorance, as a kind of avidya, as the Hindus say, or jahiliya, as the Arabs say. And that is the only reason I believe that I am different from infinity, but at the moment of my perception I am really different, otherwise I could not perceive it. After all, even Plato teaches us about what happens in a genuine moment of ecstasy. So, as long as there is this experience, there is also an ontological distinction: I am not identical to the perception of this pure infinity, and then such infinity is not infinite. If it allows itself to be perceived by a certain point within me, that is not infinity itself, and at the expense of that it perceives that, and if the infinity allows this point to be — this means infinity in[fact is in] a quotation marks. But we proceed from the fact that all reality is rooted in the infinite.

And if this infinity is limited, and this limitation is proved by the fact of our perception of it, then we meet with a colossal fundamental crisis and look for ways to justify this infinity, which allows itself to be comprehended and thus at the moment of this comprehension is already (logically!) not infinite. If we have recognized that there is such a fundamental crisis, then further logic leads us to the fact that this crisis manifests itself at all levels. That is, this is a crisis of Being, this is a crisis of consciousness, and this is a crisis of human. The crisis of being, the crisis of consciousness and the crisis of human represent a kind of fundamental triumvirate of substitution, which dominates everything: the perceptual and mental operation. It permeates both metaphysics and philosophy. It permeates both metaphysics and philosophy. For what is philosophy, if not an attempt to “heal” this crisis, to justify it, to “bypass” or “go around”. We have already said that the whole history of Western philosophy, which, by definition, is also a vector and a will to identity with the infinite, is nothing other than taking the infinite out of brackets. And the whole history of philosophy is a “healing” of the fundamental crisis of this infinity.

And if metaphysics, if clerical thinking “cures” infinity from us (that is, we are told: the fact that you exist is an illusion, samsara, aberration, this is avidya, because the infinite is, but you are not), then philosophy says the opposite: we are, but the infinite is not. But at the heart of both lies the will to identity. Identity with what? In this sense, philosophy comes to deconstruction, comes to postmodernism, to tragic convulsions when it refuses to continue being cognition of anything, because cognition itself is absurd and impossible. But this is a problem of philosophy itself. Our task is to get out of postmodernism, our goal is grandiose to overcome postmodernism in the cultural sense. There is only one way to overcome postmodernity is to get out of the “society of the spectacle”, out of virtuality, out of a dilemma in which there is either infinity and we, who are limiting it (that is, turning infinity into a bad joke), or we, identical to some empty end, on which nothing seems to stand. Theology begins with the fact that there is a point within us that is fundamentally not identical to ontology, not identical to what is described by the word ‘is’, it is a point of discrepancy with nothing, which, strictly speaking, from a logical point of view, from an ontological point of view does not exist.

There is No inside us, and this very non-existence, which does not exist, exists not in an abstract conditional way (then it is a virtual non-existence: if it does not exist, then there is nothing to talk about), but this non-existence, which, being postulated, moves to the center of everything that exists. This center is located in our heart. This is the point to which the predicate ‘is’ cannot be applied. This is the point that connects us with the principle of the Subject, the transcendent and the unconditional, which, therefore, also turns out to be pure absence. But this is not just an absence in the atheistic sense of the word. Atheists say there is no God. And by the way, “There is no God” is a very rich phrase. If, for example, this is claimed by an agnostic who is absolutely indifferent to whether there is [God] or not, then this “God does not exist” is a kind of reminder that the world is empty of meaning, that the chaotic law of random numbers, Brownian motion, rules in it, and that at the same time such emptiness and such Brownianism have no boundaries. In other words, the agnostic means that everything is homogeneous and infinite: there is no alternative to nonsense. Another thing is when the phrase “There is no God” is said in the most intense way. This may also include negation.

This may also imply the denial of gods who are not true, but such a statement can also serve as an indication of the negative nature of the True God. Let me remind you that Nikolai Kuzansky spoke of a “hidden God”, a God who is part of the eye and therefore invisible. To use the term Deus absconditus is not quite correct in this case, because Nikolai Kuzansky was a Neoplatonist, and he could not completely free himself from ontological hypnosis. Thus, “hidden” for him means “existing, but as if covered with something.” So, the amalgam, which is located behind the mirror, also exists it is not visible, but it is there. If we go further and say that in general no predicativity in the existential plane is applicable to this point, which is absolutely not identical to anything and does not fall into the sphere of the possible, then we will come closer to the footprint in the sand, which suggests a foot. But it is not there — so the footprint suggests a leg that is not there! It is an active, blatant, defiant, tense No that is presented to us. Here, relatively speaking, the meeting between Robinson and Friday takes place. He sees the proof that there is someone who does not exist, precisely through the emptiness of this print — only we are talking about a print in the heart — and this print of absolute non-identity with everything is within us. I cannot say that theologians have not come to similar thoughts to some extent before: I mentioned that the researches of Protestant theology in this direction are quite interesting.