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Tom
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Posted 5/19/2009 1:55 PM (GMT -6)

D-

I've just received in the mail and started reading Francis Jacques' Difference and Subjectivity: Dialogue and Personal Identity (1982 in French; 1991 in English by Yale University Press).

I might have hit the jack-pot dude. The mother load.

Tom

Similitude
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Date Joined Apr 2004
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Posted 5/19/2009 7:02 PM (GMT -6)

Keep us abreast of your findings!

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 5/19/2009 10:25 PM (GMT -6)

"It is not good for the man to be alone..."

Ditto to Similtude, man. Keep us posted...

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

"God in Christ by His Spirit empowers, enables, energizes and enacts all Christian behavior and ministry as the dynamic expression of the life of Jesus Christ. Christianity is Christ. Christian living is the life and character of Jesus Christ lived out through the Christian." -James Fowler

Tom
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Total Posts : 10353

Posted 5/20/2009 4:43 AM (GMT -6)

It’s hard to find discussions of Jacques online. But I did find this (pages 60-62) which has a bit about him:

books.google.com/books?id=L_2hhVYbfjEC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=the+views+of+Francis+Jacques&source=bl&ots=43fEdsOFDR&sig=0CCX-iMixSqrVZ3_9QhqArdF7ZI&hl=en&ei=tMATSuXADNPN-QasmIyvDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPA62,M1

I remember the reason why I ordered his book. It was his theory on alterity (the 3rd party constitutive of all personal relations). Up till now it seems to me we feel like the Father-Son relationship pretty much defines ‘personal’ being and that the Spirit somehow is an extravagant display or expression or product of the ‘personal’ love between Father and Son. The third--Spirit--has always been an uncomfortable fit--philosophically speaking. The truth ought to be that you don’t get ‘person’ with just two. But what the third means, in terms of communication (Jacques’ approach is linguistic), is the necessary (i.e., constitutive of personhood) capacity (and exercise of that capacity) to speak with another of a third, to talk 'about' another, to have what "I" and "you" mean to each other determined (in part) by what the third means to each of us and THAT contributing to what we each mean to each other--all the way around. I'm guessing that's where he's going. Not sure. That's where I'd go with it. That suggests that 3rd person referencing (between each trinitarian two) is constitutive of the personal being of each. God is constituted by TALKING (Communicating as a 'self'), by talking TO Godself (to an 'other'), and by talking about Godself in the third person.

VERY interesting. I wonder what he does with this.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/20/2009 4:54:48 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Posted 5/20/2009 2:59 PM (GMT -6)

Tom:
God is constituted by TALKING (Communicating as a 'self'), by talking TO Godself (to an 'other'), and by talking about Godself in the third person.

Remember this, dude?

The Connection
Acrylic on canvas, Age 10

…In one of my visions the word connection was flashing in the colors and details of one allegory that I was immediately able to transform onto the canvas.

The communion, the attention and the action formed the connection between three birds.
One of the birds was calling and communing, the second one was focusing and giving all her attention, and the third was acting and flying to help. The planets in the sky were also forming a ripple effect of the same Connection.

Without the communion, the attention and the action we cannot have a true Connection…

-Akiane

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/20/2009 3:03:35 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Total Posts : 10353

Posted 5/20/2009 3:55 PM (GMT -6)

I don't remember that one, D. And I'm struggling to nail down it's meaning. Did you intend it to correspond to my: speaking to, being spoken to, and being spoken about as constitutive of personal being? If Jacques is right about 3rd person alterity being necessary to personal being, then you know what that means don't you? It means that in God we have BOTH presence and absence, and we have to be very careful about what we mean by absence. I just mean the ability to "speak to an other about another" and (it follows) to "be spoken about." That's a kind of absence definitive of 3rd person alterity.

I don't know what that's got to do with the painting, but are you following me?

T

One Love
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Posted 5/21/2009 1:14 AM (GMT -6)

Tom:
Did you intend it to correspond to my: speaking to, being spoken to, and being spoken about as constitutive of personal being?

Yep. It seemed to me that her idea of ultimate reality dealt with "connection" (which to me deals with "relationship" ), spoke in terms of communication (like Jacques), AND affirmed that without all three, there was no "true Connection" Just pretty similar to me for a 10 year old. No sem training and all that.

***********************************

Tom:
If Jacques is right about 3rd person alterity being necessary to personal being, then you know what that means don't you? It means that in God we have BOTH presence and absence, and we have to be very careful about what we mean by absence. I just mean the ability to "speak to an other about another" and (it follows) to "be spoken about." That's a kind of absence definitive of 3rd person alterity.

It's interesting to me that this is just like the interpersonal dynamic that occurs when a man and woman have a child, forming a family (father, mother, son/daughter) with healthy homeostasis and relationally appropriate intimacy and differentiation. And how, from this, the father and mother can dialogue about the child to each other in the presence of the child with loving transparency...and how each of the parents can dialogue to the child concerning the other parent in that parent's presence with the same transparency.

There seems to be a pretty good analogical experience in the natural fully human (fully interpersonal) family. What do you think?

PS: I like this song...Dedicated to Our Love...

Jesus, your love IS supreme...hear my heart, my Beloved.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/21/2009 1:20:28 AM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Posted 5/21/2009 1:37 AM (GMT -6)

There is something I'm thinking though. Taking this whole thing out...

Is it possible for God to be silent? Meaning...Does Uncreated Presence itself cease to exist if said Presence were to ever stop self-relating through divine speech? I wouldn't want to say that.

Here's what I'm wondering. Meister Eckhart spoke in terms of 3 movements of divinity: Deity, Trinity, and Creation. Trinitarian process...from wiki...

The absolute, unqualified being of the Deity Eckhart also calls unnatured nature. This unnatured nature, however, manifests itself in the natured nature, the three persons. The Trinity is the self-revelation of the Deity (540, 31; 390,12-22). In it God comprises himself. Accordingly, Eckhart attributes to the Father a sort of genesis; only the Deity is absolutely without any progression and reposes everlastingly in itself. The Father was made through himself (534, 17). This self-revelation of God Eckhart designates as a cognition, a speaking, or a demeanor. The Father perceives the whole fullness of the Deity (6,S); or, what is the same, he speaks a single word, which comprises everything (70, 25). He procreates the Son (284, 12); for the Father is father only through the Son. The Son, however, is in everything like the Father, only that he procreates not (337, 3). The essence of the Father is also that of the Son, and the essence in both is no other than that of the Deity. From the pleasure and love which both have for each other springs the Holy Ghost (497, 26). Eckhart leaves no doubt that the entire trinitarian process must not be conceived of as a temporal one, but as a process extending throughout eternity (254, 10). Wilhelm Preger thought that Eckhart's distinction between Deity and God should be interpreted as a distinction between potentiality and actuality.

This is how I tried to Gregify it in this thread...

According to Doc's Trinity and Process, (page 113) there are two types of dispositions: definitional and constitutive. Definitional dispositions are those that defines a things "essence", ie. those aspects without which it couldn't be itself. Constitutive dispositions are those that a thing can possess, but not as inherent to what it means to be that thing. In other words, a existent could either possess or not possess a constitutive disposition with no fundamental change to its "essence". Not so with a definitional disposition.

Here goes nuthin...

Eckhart's "Deity" <=> Uncreated Consciousness eternally grounding the definitional disposition/capacity to be Divine Song/Dance of "I Am (That I Am)"

Eckhart's "Trinity" <=> Uncreated Consciousness eternally actualizing the definitional disposition/capacity to be Divine Song/Dance of "I Am"

And this Song/Dance of "I Am" is NOT actus purus...but is open to contingency. So....

Eckhart's "Creation" <=> Uncreated Consciousness continually (not eternally) actualizing the constitutional disposition/capacity to be Divine Song/Dance of "I Am...Immanuel [Creator God with us]"

Does this make sense, homie? Could be nuthin'...but it makes sense to me.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/21/2009 2:36:29 AM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 5/21/2009 10:31 AM (GMT -6)

D: Is it possible for God to be silent? Meaning...Does Uncreated Presence itself cease to exist if said Presence were to ever stop self-relating through divine speech? I wouldn't want to say that.

Tom: Nor would I. Seem to me self-address (however it REALLY occurs in God) is definitive of God.

D: Here's what I'm wondering. Meister Eckhart spoke in…

Tom: Eckhart. Heh. Here it comes. ;o)

D: …in terms of 3 movements of divinity: Deity, Trinity, and Creation. Trinitarian process.

Tom: On ME’s stuff. It’s an ongoing debate isn’t it? I mean, the EO (popularly understood) criticize the West (and Eckhart after all was a Thomist Dominican, right?) for positing a kind of divine “stuff” (deity) beneath the Trinity and which each of the divine persons participate. This might be what EM has in mind when he says “the Trinity is the self-revelation of the Deity.” That sounds problematically Western to me.

My oversimplification might be too crude. I’m just trying to force the issues to the surface. The East objects, basically saying, there IS NO getting beneath the relations of the three. There’s no ontology in which they each participate. Those relations ARE the stuff of deity. As far as I am from grasping all this, my money is on the EO for now.

The difficulty SOME EO theologicans have faced in their own system is the monarchy of the Father (which Papanikolau himself qualifies when he says we HAVE to say that ‘father’, though in some way on the progenitor’s side of the relationship, nevertheless is determined ‘as father’ by the Son; the point being, you can’t BE a father without a Son. That’s the irreducibly intersubjective thang going on there).

How does ME fit into this?

D: From the pleasure and love which both have for each other springs the Holy Ghost.

Tom: EO will have something to say about that. Ouch.

D: Eckhart leaves no doubt that the entire trinitarian process must not be conceived of as a temporal one, but as a process extending throughout eternity (254, 10)

Tom: What’s the difference between “a process extending throughout eternity” and a “temporal process”? None that I can see. But let that slide.

D: Wilhelm Preger thought that Eckhart's distinction between Deity and God should be interpreted as a distinction between potentiality and actuality.

Tom: Ahhhh, now you’re talking. And let’s narrow the potentiality here down ever more and differentiate between potentialities whose actuality remain intrinsically definitive of God (the potential for creative self-expression) and potentialities whose actuality are not so definitive of God (the potential to create a non-God universe). I want to say the former (the potential for creative self-expression is constitutive of God, as does Greg). Contra process folk, I don’t think the latter is essential to God.

Having said all THAT. Do you (a) agree with my distinction between potentialities here? and (b) where would you locate this potential in God. I want to be as thoroughly trinitarian as possible, so I’m gonna want to say (be default) that all divine potential rest in the divine inter-relatedness itself and not in any one divine person. I’ll probably want to try to extract a unique contribution to ‘creative potentiality and its exercise’ that each person makes. Hmmm.

D: According to Doc's Trinity and Process, (page 113) there are two types of dispositions: definitional and constitutive. Definitional dispositions are those that defines a things "essence", ie. those aspects without which it couldn't be itself. Constitutive dispositions are those that a thing can possess, but not as inherent to what it means to be that thing. In other words, a existent could either possess or not possess a constitutive disposition with no fundamental change to its "essence". Not so with a definitional disposition.

Tom: Dude, honestly. I wrote what I did above before reading your whole thread. I’m responding as I read through it.

Yep. I’ve been saying this too.

BUT…(and Greg said this is his gig too)…constitutive of God is the definitional disposition to be creative. God doesn’t start being a creative God with the creation of our universe. He’s definitionally creative. But creativity entails contingency. It means bringing contingent states of affairs into existence; i.e., actualizing potentiality. I think God does this definitionally. BUT this doesn’t have to jeopardize creation ex nihilo or the God-world distinction BECAUSE—definitionally speaking—divine creativity JUST IS the divine “dance,” and all dances are movements. I think God “as dance” (to stick with that metaphore, and its’ JUST a metaphore and so a “map,” I know), never repeats the movements. God doesn’t get stuck in a repetitive loop as is the case with any dance we’re familiar with. There’s INFINITE creative potential definitive of the loving relationships that constitute God as trinune. So that’s ONGOING.

D: Here goes nuthin...

(A) Eckhart's "Deity" <=> Uncreated Consciousness eternally grounding the definitional disposition to be Divine Song/Dancc.

(B) Eckhart's "Trinity" <=> Uncreated Consciousness eternally actualizing the definitional disposition/capacity to be Divine Song/Dance.

(C) Eckhart's "Creation" <=> Uncreated Consciousness continually (not eternally) actualizing the constitutional disposition/capacity to be Divine Song/Dance…

Tom: I’m probably cool with A and B. I think how you conceptualize the movement to C so that A/B are definitive of God while C results in a non-God creation which is NOT definitive of God. God’s CHOICE to create is definitive (in Greg’s contingent sense) of God, sure; ALL God’s choices are definitive of God. But the content of the expression, or, let’s say, the “actualization of potential” in the former (A and B) are God while the content/actualization in the latter (C) is NOT God. But your wording in C (you call the content of the actualized potential “I am….” True you manage to get one mention of “us” in there (it’s assumed in Emmanuel). But you know me. I’m gonna slam the hammer down on that baby.

Tom

One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888

Posted 5/21/2009 11:44 AM (GMT -6)

Tom:
Yep. I’ve been saying this too. BUT…(and Greg said this is his gig too)…constitutive of God is the definitional disposition to be creative. God doesn’t start being a creative God with the creation of our universe. He’s definitionally creative. But creativity entails contingency. It means bringing contingent states of affairs into existence; i.e., actualizing potentiality. I think God does this definitionally. BUT this doesn’t have to jeopardize creation ex nihilo or the God-world distinction BECAUSE—definitionally speaking—divine creativity JUST IS the divine “dance,” and all dances are movements. I think God “as dance” (to stick with that metaphore, and its’ JUST a metaphore and so a “map,” I know), never repeats the movements. God doesn’t get stuck in a repetitive loop as is the case with any dance we’re familiar with. There’s INFINITE creative potential definitive of the loving relationships that constitute God as trinune. So that’s ONGOING.

I'd agree.

***********************************

D: Here goes nuthin...

(A) Eckhart's "Deity" <=> Uncreated Consciousness eternally grounding the definitional disposition to be Divine Song/Dancc.

(B) Eckhart's "Trinity" <=> Uncreated Consciousness eternally actualizing the definitional disposition/capacity to be Divine Song/Dance.

(C) Eckhart's "Creation" <=> Uncreated Consciousness continually (not eternally) actualizing the constitutional disposition/capacity to be Divine Song/Dance…

Tom: I’m probably cool with A and B.

Sweet. Thought you would be. Cool. :-)

****************************

Tom:
I think how you conceptualize the movement to C so that A/B are definitive of God while C results in a non-God creation which is NOT definitive of God. God’s CHOICE to create is definitive (in Greg’s contingent sense) of God, sure; ALL God’s choices are definitive of God. But the content of the expression, or, let’s say, the “actualization of potential” in the former (A and B) are God while the content/actualization in the latter (C) is NOT God. But your wording in C (you call the content of the actualized potential “I am….”

I don't disagree with the bolded part. I'm just speaking theocentrically. In (C), God sees Godself as Creator of the created order. The Eternal "I Am" self-relates as "I am Immanuel" as a contingent expression of his creative potential that brings forth non-divine reality from his divine energies.

***********************************

Tom:
True you manage to get one mention of “us” in there (it’s assumed in Emmanuel). But you know me. I’m gonna slam the hammer down on that baby.

Of course.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 5/21/2009 12:25 PM (GMT -6)

Ha!

D: In (C), God sees Godself as Creator of the created order. The Eternal "I Am" self-relates as "I am Immanuel" as a contingent expression of his creative potential that brings forth non-divine reality from his divine energies.

T: Is that all God sees?

T

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 5/21/2009 1:17 PM (GMT -6)

I think Jacques is really gonna help me both to see some new things and to articulate them better. I can't say anything now, but I know myself--new pieces of the puzzle are migrating into place. Eventually I'll be able to express it. You'll definitely feel like I'm more inside of how you view intersubjectivity, viz., how the 'you' as a personal other is part of the structure of me as a personal 'I'. I wanna get past his chapter on the Trinity and then will try to say something about the book. It's NOT an easy read 'cause the translator wanted to stick as much as possible to the French, so it reads like a translation. That slows me down. But at the same time I think he's going to find a way for me to rest comfortably in personal distinction in union AND yet freely in a way you haven't been able to offer me.

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/21/2009 2:53:22 PM (GMT-5)

Tom
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Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353

Posted 5/21/2009 2:50 PM (GMT -6)

Tom: If Jacques is right about 3rd person alterity being necessary to personal being, then you know what that means don't you? It means that in God we have BOTH presence and absence, and we have to be very careful about what we mean by absence. I just mean the ability to "speak to an other about another" and (it follows) to "be spoken about." That's a kind of absence definitive of 3rd person alterity.

D: It's interesting to me that this is just like the interpersonal dynamic that occurs when a man and woman have a child, forming a family (father, mother, son/daughter) with healthy homeostasis and relationally appropriate intimacy and differentiation. And how, from this, the father and mother can dialogue about the child to each other in the presence of the child with loving transparency...and how each of the parents can dialogue to the child concerning the other parent in that parent's presence with the same transparency. There seems to be a pretty good analogical experience in the natural fully human (fully interpersonal) family. What do you think?

Tom: Yeah, Jacques uses the family as an analogy too. Yeah. But it's not so much (as you describe) "speaking to each other about a third IN THE PRESENCE OF that third." It might be a bit more radical than that. As Jacques describes it: "Absence is one more form of personal existence: it is 'presence elsewhere'."

I was thinking of this tonight. Do we ever see prayer addressed to the Spirit in the second person in the NT? We don't see people conversing WITH/TO the Spirit. Interesting. Not saying it's wrong. Just saying there may be some theological insight here we're overlooking.

Tom

Post Edited (Tom) : 5/21/2009 2:54:19 PM (GMT-5)

One Love
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Total Posts : 13888

Posted 5/22/2009 8:09 AM (GMT -6)

Tom:
It might be a bit more radical than that. As Jacques describes it: "Absence is one more form of personal existence: it is 'presence elsewhere'."

Maybe it's a Background/Foreground reversal type thing. Like this...from one of my favorite artists right now...Alex Grey

It's called InterBeing. I think you can see why. :-)

James Loder uses the Background/Foreground idea lots in his concepts in The Knight's Move. Like the optical illusion Vase vs Faces thing...can't have one without the other, even though one seems to be an "absent presence"...

Analogically, I'd say the two faces could be Father and Son and the "Interbeing" would be the Holy Spirit.

Make sense?

PS: Check out Alex Grey's "Cosmic Christ" on his website. Friggin AWESOME!

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

"I love, therefore I am in I Am. God is my life."

Post Edited (One Love) : 5/22/2009 8:19:31 AM (GMT-5)

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