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Step 4 of 7~8 min read~29 min left
Pseudo-Dionysius: The Way of Negation
Examine the founding text of Western apophatic theology.
“The pre-eminent cause of every perceptible thing is itself neither perceptible nor invisible. It is neither error nor truth. It is not kingship. It is not wisdom. It is not one. It is not unity. It is not divinity or goodness. Nor is it a spirit, in the sense in which we understand that word. It is not sonship or fatherhood and it is nothing known to us or to any other being. It falls neither within the predicate of nonbeing nor of being. [...] There is no speaking of it, nor name nor knowledge of it. — Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Mystical Theology, Chapter 5 (c. 500 CE, trans. Colm Luibheid) And from Wittgenstein: 'What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.' — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Proposition 7 (1921, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness)”