Part One. Meditation and Self‐Knowledge in the Western Philosophical Tradition
3. The Honesty of Written Meditation. Modern Subject (Augustine and Descartes)
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3. The Honesty of Written Meditation. Modern Subject (Augustine and Descartes)
Between the Attic situation of Homer and Plato and the situation of Christianity expressed by Augustine and Descartes, a new ontology and a new view of the human have emerged. Human life is no longer embedded in the shared logos of the world as a matter of course but is rather cut off from the truer order of reality by an inborn, original sin. The human world is no longer inhabited by multiple gods, half‐gods, mythological heroes, cicadas and cattle and sheep belonging to a god of order and rationality such as Helios, but has gained the shape of a monotheistic universe. Culturally speaking, we might say that the gathering of a new and more unified self‐awareness emerging with literacy in the Greek culture, has now evolved into a more unitary ontological conception of the world. In any regard, the life of man between the Attic world and the world of Christianity become more unified – or more gathered. Instead of living in constant communication with the surroundings in the broad sense of the word, man has become a subject ultimately being looked at from one omnipotent creator – the God Almighty.
We will now see how Augustine and Descartes use the word meditation to designate paths to restore contact with God or the truthful orders created by Him. These paths cannot be directly compared with contemporary practices of meditation. Neither of the authors outlines technical procedures of meditation as a delineated activity as such,293 and they offer no definition targeting the word directly. Instead, the word is
292 Cf. Wallace, "The Buddhist Tradition of Samatha, Methods for Refining and Examining Consciousness."176.
293 What we have in mind here are practices described elsewhere in Christian contexts, for example, as practices
revealed by Rönnegård when he demonstrates how Plato's and Epicurus's usages of meletē are echoed in the earliest Christian practices of ascetic life. What the Greek and the Christian usages of the words have in common, which is Rönnegård's chief point, is that meletē pertains to a "discursive and concentrative way of digesting and interiorizing a message, to overcome distractions and eventually reach the final goal, whether that be liberty, happiness, virtue or, in Christianity, salvation" (Rönnegård, "Melete in Early Christian Ascetic Texts." 79. italics added.) One early saying from Christian life brought to light by Rönnegård, then, is a story stemming from the earliest sources (400–600 A.D.) pertaining to how meletē describes how a younger brother is set to repeat the words "Son of God, have mercy on me" whenever being approached by a demon. Although the brother does not understand the words, so goes the saying, the prayer is held to have the intended effect, insomuch as the beast would understand the word, and thus keep away from the life of the brother. Other sayings describe how specific psalms and Bible verses are used as objects of the practice of meletē. (ibid. 81.) What goes unnoticed in Rönnegård's cultural study, however, is the
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brought into use more or less discretely, first and foremost in passages wherein the authors describe their procedures of writing and investigation. Augustine and Descartes' meditations are written meditations; they are ways of proceeding into topics of existential difficulty by writing.
Curiously, the word meditation is used in ways linking it not only to the activity of writing but also to the ways the authors expect their texts to be read. That is, when meditation describes the course of actions taken by the writers, it does so in ways appealing to the reader. The written meditations are ways of leading the readers into the topics as they progress. In hermeneutical terms, the word meditation emerges as a kind of application moment. The meditations are where texts and human reality meet, as it were, both for the authors and the reader – it designates the application of the shared text to the singular human situation. In one and the same textural gesture, the word reflects back on the concrete situation of the author striving with the difficulties of the topics, and prospectively towards the situation of the reader. The I of the writer is exemplary: the author represents the human gaze on the world.
The fact that what counts as meditation is fully entangled with literacy for Augustine and Descartes can be seen against the background of the history of the word displayed in the previous section. Augustine and Descartes do not thematize the words medesthai and meletē,294 yet the way they relate meditation and writing, as a matter of course, reflects a hermeneutical continuum in the history of the word with the philosophical tradition. In ways that apparently need no explanation for Augustine and Descartes, meditation and reading are just aspects of the same procedures of truthful investigations. No less profound, however, is the moments of vital challenge and self‐care entangled with the same history of meditation. In Homer's poetic scenes, medesthai is used in contexts wherein Achilles and Odysseus's men are threatened. They must take care of themselves. Otherwise, they will release forces of unknown power and danger. A related imperative evolved in Plato's meletē: the philosophical soul must take care of itself to avoid the moral decay of being an irresponsible soul void of the proper self‐distance of logos. Though the ontological foundation has altered drastically between the Attic and the Christian situation, the moment of existential challenge and self‐care is also prolonged in the meditations of Augustine and Descartes. Meditation is not associable with any other undertaking of everyday life. It concerns issues of vital importance; it is a way the human self cares for itself in a world filled with the potential pains of being on the wrong track – morally, eidetically, and existentially considered.
Strikingly new with Augustine and Descartes (compared to Homer and Plato) is the personal tone of the authors in their written communications with the readers. In ways that are absent in Plato's spokesman Socrates, for instance, Augustine and Descartes often write in a direct speech addressed to the reader. In an open and direct communication with the reader, the meditative quest evolves the tone of an honest and
philosophical‐metaphorical aspects of Plato's meletē. Thus also unvisited is the shift in meaning occurring between Plato's usage of the word, and the ascetic Christian practices which he describes as meletē.
294 In a brief note, Guy Stroumsa relates Augustine's meditation with meletē. Meletē, in the Augustinian context, describes
the personal study of the Scripture as a constant prayer between silence and speech. Guy Stroumsa, "Augustine and Books", in A Companion to Augustine, ed. Mark Vessey (Chichester: Blackwell Publishing, 2012). 156.
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fallible human I seeking knowledge, guidance and even comfort in studying the Word of God (Augustine) or the principles of objective knowledge (Descartes). "[D]ear reader," we read in Augustine's The Trinity,
"whenever you are as certain about something as I am go forward with me; whenever you stick equally fast seek with me; whenever you have gone wrong come back with me[.]"295 As readers, we are invited to "keep up with me, while I am perforce picking my way through dark and difficult places."296 Though less inviting, perhaps, Descartes underlines a similar necessity of accompanying him in the task of clarification. "I seek to be read by none, except those who will be able and willing to meditate seriously alongside of me,"297 we read in the Meditations. "I think myself entitled to reject out of hand and to regard as of no account whatever the judgments passed on my work by those who have refused to meditate along with me and who stick with their own prior objections."298 Inviting or not, participation299 in the written word are crucial to both authors. To be led by the word300 the reader has to come along by his or her own free, human will.
Let us follow the word meditation within Augustine's and Descartes' writings. What forms of subjects emerge around this word? What contours of a human self emerge indirectly through the various challenges being encountered?
aa. Verbum Cordis
As is suggested by the title of Augustine's book, The Trinity, the course of Augustine evolves as a contemplation on the Christian trinity of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Trinity consists of three factors of equal ontological purport. It expresses not a subordination of the Son to his Father, or a subordination of the Holy Word to God, but rather an intrinsic theological belongingness of all three. Meditation, in this context, will come to mean to dwell upon, to seek, find and reveal for the reader how the truth of God speaks in the Holy Word.
Augustine uses the word meditation only once in The Trinity. It appears in the very first chapter of the book, wherein the author (as he puts it) "comes to terms with his readers and outlines his method."301 This context is informative, not only due to the personal contact thus sought to be established between writer and reader but also because Augustine here launches off with a warning of three distinguished errors frequently undertaken by people who seek an understanding of the Biblical God. The first error, we read, is to deduce by analogy the nature of God by means of self‐experienced standards. Perceptual experience
295 Augustine, The Trinity. 1.3.5. / 68.
296 Ibid. 1.3.6. / 69.
297 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from the Objections and Replies. Preface. 8.
298 Ibid.Second Objection. 102.
299 Alluded to here is Gadamer's discussion of participatio, for instance in Gadamer, "Die Aktualität des Schönen. Kunst
als Spiel, Symbol und Fest (1974)." 115.
300 Plato, Phaedrus. 271c–d.
301 Subtext to Chapter 1 in the English version currently being read.
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as such are not the means to understand the nonperceivable yet omnipresent God. In Augustine's words:
the readers cannot "transfer what they have observed about bodily things to incorporeal and spiritual things, which they would measure by the standard of what they experience through the senses of the body or learn by natural human intelligence, lively application, and technical skill. "302
The second error is related, also stressing the inadequacy of direct analogy. Here, the reader is warning of the error of humanizing the nature of God, conceiving Him as a form of human being, which is to say, ascribing to Him "the nature and moods of the human spirit."303 The third error pertains to understanding the human facticity correctly when faced with the altogether superior being of God. The error evolves in the lack of humbleness and acknowledgment of what it is to be a final being. The error is to try to reach the timeless and unchangeable nature of God, we read, as people do when they try to "climb above the created universe, so ineluctably subject to change, and raise their regard to the unchanging substance that is God."304 What all these errors have in common, writes Augustine, is that the people here conceive of God via paths blocking genuine understanding. Too categorically they assert their presumptuous opinions. And, Augustine adds, "rather than change a misconceived opinion they have defended, they prefer to leave it uncorrected."305 In other words, the people inclined to commit the three erroneous approaches to God are not only wrong; they even seem to lack the ability to understand that they do wrong and hence correct their ways of thinking and proceeding into the topics.
In the framework of these normative remarks, meditation – qua intense reading – soon enters as the better alternative to the erroneous paths leading anywhere but to God. Rather than being blocked in understanding by categorical opinions, the person seeking knowledge of God should take up a broad and honest study not only of the Bible but also of the commentary literature.306 That is, to furnish a mind genuinely open to God and the mystery of the Trinity the reader must situate his or her personal study of the Bible within a larger discursive field of other readings. Though not seeking outside the field of faith, the reader should actively challenge his or her opinions, reading literature that not univocally supports the pre‐established opinions but that questions them. To perform genuinely "penetrating investigations" of the Bible, so Augustine puts it, "it is useful to have several books by several authors, even on the same subjects, differing in style though not in faith, so that the matter itself reaches as many as possible, some in this way others in that."307 At the same time, Augustine underlines, the discursive orientation cannot be a mere intellectual exercise. Seeking knowledge of God cannot come unaccompanied by a personal devotion, and an actual self‐scrutinizing pondering on the Word.
302 Augustine, The Trinity., 1.1.1. / 65.
303 Ibid. 1.1.1. / 65.
304 Ibid. 1.1.1. /65.
305 Ibid. 1.1.1. / 65.
306 On Augustine and his intense and committed relationship with books, see Stroumsa, "Augustine and Books."
307 Augustine, The Trinity. 1.3.5. / 68.
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Exemplified by the personal attitude laid bare by the author, then, Augustine expresses how the Word demands an intense and all‐embracing attention towards the law of God, in sustained and devoted meditating on the Bible. Let us read in full the passage from which we have already introduced the first sentence (Section 1):
All I am concerned with is to meditate [meditabor] on the law of the Lord, if not day and night, at least at whatever odd moments I can snatch (Ps 1:2), and to prevent forgetfulness from running away with my meditations [meditationes] by tying them down on paper. […] trusting in God's mercy that he will make me preserving in all truths I am sure of, and that if in anything I am otherwise minded he will reveal this also to me himself (Phil 3:15), either by hidden inspirations and remainders, or by his own manifest utterances, or by discussions with the brethren. That is what I pray for, that is my deposit and my heart's desire, placed in the keeping of one who is a sufficiently reliable custodian of goods he himself has given and redeemer of promises he himself has made.308
We see how citations to specific passages of the Bible make Augustine's text a hermeneutical exposition in a sense of Auslegung. The written meditation situates Augustine's text in the Bible, so to speak; it ponders the Word of God from within the written word. At the same time, we see how meditation signals a practice of holding the author in persona on the path of God. Meditating "day and night" is the adequate path moving with the truth of the Word. Meditation is not a delineated practice to be taken and put away at will, but a way of living. The time of meditation is day and night; the meditator always ponders the Word of God. Meditation, we can say, is the practice of a mind encountering the troubles of human life, seeking a way to stay on the right path. Meditation is not an intellectual activity; it is to follow the heart's desire.
Against the background of the three errors, the meditator moves towards God not by committing false analogies on the nature of God (first and second error), and not by thinking too highly of himself as a final being (third error). Rather, the meditator moves forward only on the grounds of a humble and heartfelt desire to understand the Word. If God reveals himself in the utterance of the Bible or the more hidden inspirations and reminders, the heartfelt occupation of the meditator is to try to hold on to these truths. Writing complements the reading meditation. Tying the emerging insight down on paper prevents forgetfulness from doing away with the insights.309
The "heart's desire" used in the current passage leads us to a fuller understanding of Augustine's meditation. In our context, the "heart's desire" is interesting because of an apparent relationship to Plato's meletē as a "learning by heart" or "engraving on one's mind."310 Both meletē and meditation put the increasing of self‐knowledge on a par with the reading and writing something within oneself. In the more local context of Augustine, the "heart's desire" is interesting because it links the first chapter of The Trinity
308 Ibid. 1.3.5. / 69. Italics original.
309 The form of Christian meditation, here described in the outset of Augustine, is today reflected in the meditative practice known as lectio divina, or sacred reading. Michael Casey, Sacred Reading; The Ancient Art of Lectio Divinia (Liguori, Missurouri: Ligouri/Trumph, 1996).
310 Critias 113b. Cf. Rönnegård, "Melete in Early Christian Ascetic Texts." 87.
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to the last chapter; more specifically, to Chapter 15.3 discussing the verbum cordis [Word of the Heart].
Though not speaking about meditation in the latter context, Augustine extrapolates here on the nonintellectual form of understanding just indicated by meditation. What the "heart's desire" must gain contact with, we can say, is ultimately the language of the heart. This is an inner language in more than one sense. It is in the human, but ultimately also a language evolving in language. It is in every historically conditioned language of man, yet it is independent of the empirical status of these languages.
In the center of this historically new conception of language311 stand the allegories and parables of the Bible. These allegories, writes Augustine, are the ways God communicates that there is a likeness between Him and man – a likeness that is "an obscure one and difficult to penetrate."312 Crucially, one chief aspect of this difficulty of likeness already evolves in what is the title of Augustine's book. In a crucial sense, the Trinity – and the fact that the Son of God once became human – is impossible to understand for the human being. It is an enigma in the strongest sense of the word. It is an enigma in the form of obscure allegory313 – obscure not by chance, but obscure through and through.
Now, the point of vital importance for Augustine is this: the enigmatic character of God's expressions must neither be rejected nor tried to be "solved" as such (in analogies) but rather affirmed as genuinely unsolvable. The similarities between the human and God evolve in the enigmas themselves.
Thus, instead of seeking for a likeness using schematic or direct comparison between humans and God, the human has to see itself mirrored in the enigma brought to man by the Word.314 Put differently, instead of seeking for a likeness by transferring what one has observed about bodily things to the incorporeal and spiritual being of God, the human has to see the relationship between God and itself mirrored in the impenetrable allegories of the Bible.
The allegories of the Bible are literarily speaking the Word of God, writes Augustine. "The reason why it is called the Word of God is that it conveys divine not human teaching."315 Consequently, the human must not approach the teaching as if it was an obscurely written human teaching. This would be to simplify the teaching of God. Instead, according to Augustine, the human must recognize itself as created in the
The allegories of the Bible are literarily speaking the Word of God, writes Augustine. "The reason why it is called the Word of God is that it conveys divine not human teaching."315 Consequently, the human must not approach the teaching as if it was an obscurely written human teaching. This would be to simplify the teaching of God. Instead, according to Augustine, the human must recognize itself as created in the