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BOOK ONE: God and HIS Being or Metaphysics
- University of Wisconsin Press
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31 BOOK ONE GOD AND HIS BEING OR METAPHYSICS A BOUT God we know nothing. But this not-knowing is a not-knowing about God. As such, it is the beginning of our knowledge about him. The beginning, not the end. The not-knowing as end and outcome of our knowledge is the fundamental idea of “negative theology,” which demolished and discarded assertions that had been found about God’s “attributes” until there remained only the negation of all these attributes as God’s essence; God could no longer be defined , therefore, other than by his totally indefinable nature. This way that leads from a found something to the nothing and at the end of which atheism and mysticism can shake hands is not the one we are taking; we are instead taking the way leading from the nothing to the something. Our goal is not a negative concept, but a most positive one. We are seeking God, as we shall later seek the world and man, precisely not within a one and universal All, as one concept among others; if we wanted this, then of course the negative theology of Nicholas of Cusa or of the man from Königsberg1 would be the only scientific goal; for then the negative would already be fixed as the goal at thinking’s point of departure; one concept among others is always negative, at least in its opposition to the others; and if it claims to be unconditional , then science can only deal with an unconditional—nothingness . But it is just that presupposition of the one and universal All that we have renounced. We are seeking God, as we shall later seek the world and man, not as one concept among others, but for itself, dependent upon itself alone, in its absolute factuality —if the expression is not misleading—precisely, that is, in its “positivity.” That is why we must put the nothing of the soughtafter concept at the beginning: we must get it behind us; for ahead of us lies a something as a goal: the reality of God. In the first place then, God is a nothing for us, his nothing. From the nothing to the “something,” or, more strictly: from the nothing to what is not nothing—for we are not seeking a “something ”—there are two ways, the way of affirmation and the way NEGATIVE THEOLOGY 1 Kant. THE TWO WAYS PART ONE: BOOK ONE 32 of negation. The affirmation, that is to say of what is sought after, of the not-nothing; the negation, that is to say of what is presupposed, the nothing. These two ways are as different from each other and even as opposite to each other as—well, as precisely Yes and No. Likewise, the results that are reached do not converge in a sort of identity with that which was previously called the “sought after,” but they are different among themselves —once again like Yes and No. The Yes applies to the notnothing , the No to the nothing. To affirm the not-nothing is to posit an infinite—like affirmation that takes place through negation : to negate the nothing is to posit—like all negation—something limited, finite, determinate. So we see the something in a twofold figure and in a twofold relationship to the nothing: on the one hand, it is its inhabitant, and on the other hand, it escapes from it. As inhabitant of the nothing, the something is the entire plenitude of all that is—not nothing; in God, therefore , since for the moment we know nothing else besides him, it is the whole plentitude of what “is” in him; but as an escaped prisoner who has just broken out of the prison of the nothing, the something is nothing other than the event of this liberation from the nothing; it is entirely determined by this its unique experience; in God, therefore, to whom, at least for the moment , nothing can happen from the outside, it is entirely and only action. Endlessly, then, the essence springs up from the nothing; in a sharp delimitation the action separates from it. For the essence one asks about the origin, and for action about the beginning. For good reasons, we are not for the moment going beyond these purely formal definitions; we do not want to anticipate. But what has just been said will already become somewhat clear if we consider, just for the sake of comparison, the reverse process , the passage...