Ok, this is in response first to your post on Imaginary Equilibrium and then into something else I wanted to start writing about. She starts to talk about renunciation later in the "Decreation" section - two helpful quotes -
"There exists a "deifugal" force. Otherwise all would be God."
"Renunciation. Imitation of god's renunciation in creation. In a sense God renounces being everything. We should renounce being something. That is our only good.
We are like barrels with no bottom to them so long as we have not understood that we have a base."
Alright, firstly, deifugal - dei is Latin for god and -fugal comes from the Latin word meaning to flee. Think centrifugal - a force that spins from the center. It is important though to note that the force originates in the center, it proceeds from it to the outside. With that said then, my understanding of her concept of God's renunciation is that in order for God to create, He had to renounce being everything.
"God could create only by hiding himself. Otherwise there would be nothing but himself...." (Gravity and Grace p.38)
Maybe you noticed The Creation of Adam looming above... let me explain. In Italian, this section of the Sistine Chapel is known as The Donnadio - the suffix dio is derived from the above-mentioned dei and the prefix donna- comes from the Latin word meaning to give, think donation. So this image is traditionally understood as the moment when God, alongside a host of heavenly beings, confers to Adam the gift of life. Breath. If you look close though, there is another gift being given, and this serves very well to what I believe Mlle Weil means by renunciation.
"There exists a "deifugal" force. Otherwise all would be God."
"Renunciation. Imitation of god's renunciation in creation. In a sense God renounces being everything. We should renounce being something. That is our only good.
We are like barrels with no bottom to them so long as we have not understood that we have a base."
Alright, firstly, deifugal - dei is Latin for god and -fugal comes from the Latin word meaning to flee. Think centrifugal - a force that spins from the center. It is important though to note that the force originates in the center, it proceeds from it to the outside. With that said then, my understanding of her concept of God's renunciation is that in order for God to create, He had to renounce being everything.
"God could create only by hiding himself. Otherwise there would be nothing but himself...." (Gravity and Grace p.38)
Maybe you noticed The Creation of Adam looming above... let me explain. In Italian, this section of the Sistine Chapel is known as The Donnadio - the suffix dio is derived from the above-mentioned dei and the prefix donna- comes from the Latin word meaning to give, think donation. So this image is traditionally understood as the moment when God, alongside a host of heavenly beings, confers to Adam the gift of life. Breath. If you look close though, there is another gift being given, and this serves very well to what I believe Mlle Weil means by renunciation.
God has given Adam distance, separateness, a will of his own. Before this moment, there was (not factoring in that whole angel thing) one will guiding the universe, but God, in giving us a free will, renounced that right. It is of course disastrous as we have experienced when our will does not line up with his, but this is the choice we were given, or, as she puts it, "We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I'. That is what we have to give to God - in other words, to destroy. There is absolutely no other free act which it is given us to accomplish - only the destruction of the 'I'." (p. 26) And I think it is safe to draw the connection between what she refers to as our power to say 'I' and the gift of free will.
God, as creator, has separated himself from creation - distance is necessary. The apostle Paul says that there is "one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." (Ephesians 4:6) and this is slightly confusing in light of the previously assumed distance and also profoundly beautiful in light of its profound beauty.
"The presence of God. This should be understood in two ways. As Creator, God is present in everything which exists as soon as it exists. The presence for which God needs the co-operation of the creature is the presence of God, not as Creator but as Spirit. The first presence is the presence of creation. The second is the presence of decreation. (He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent. Saint Augustine.)" (p. 38)
How does God exist within all things and yet these things maintain their own identity? How can God exist within me and within you and yet I am not you?
What to do with this? Distance creates language (Lacan) to bridge an unbridgeable distance. The duty of language is to draw connections (see Weil quote below) but connections to what? If God is over all and through all and in all, then should not language be connecting all things over a distance back to Him?
"Everything which is vile or second-rate in us revolts against purity and needs, in order to save its own life, to soil this purity.
To soil is to modify, it is to touch. The beautiful is that which we cannot wish to change. To assume power over is to soil. To possess is to soil.
To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love." (p. 64)
[Je Vous Salue, Marie]
[T.S. Eliot]
[Poetry as lack]
[Transparency]
[Translation as the act of crossing]
[matrices]
This is very articulate, and I want to be careful about viewing God's creation as anything but creation. To compare it and illustrate it for us makes sense, but applying our language to such an act is also perhaps a form of desublimation. If in fact language has the purpose of working against gravity and runs analogous to Grace, we must be careful not to simplify creation as "denunciation" but understand the term as infinitely more than denunciation.
ReplyDeleteI still do not have a complete comprehension of what Simone Weil did believe, but it is starting to sound like reverse theology, where eventually as imitators of God, we must back into him through enunciation and renunciation (neutralization) of all things. And terms like deifugal force and creation through hiding. It is all very stimulating to discuss but Weil's notes about creation seem used primarily to understand her own relationship to God and the World--and less about who God is.
I'm so attached to Weil because so much of what she says sheds much light onto our humanity.
"To love purely is to consent to distance, it is to adore the distance between ourselves and that which we love." (p. 64)
what better way to sum up all of my thoughts about dialogue and between space, and our relationship to Nature, Man and God.
On another note, I think it would be beneficial to hear more of your thoughts on matrices. or at least put up the notes that you already have.