Miles - Interiority and Henry La Soux

[Guest guest]

Dear Miles

 

 

As we were saying Miles, there is a dynamic relationship between agency (the

reader) and containment (the text) which will always leave meaning open to

interpretation. But I think that the contingency of language is what begins

these debates, which inevitably surround the teachings of those who were

themselves distinctly silent.

 

You know St Augustine has this problem with language, and more pertinently with

the images of the world which constitute reality for us. He thinks that all

things are fallen, and has to explain how we understand the things of the

world, if the scripture is to succumb to the pressure of exegesis and inquiry.

Stick with me on this one, because it leads to Henri Le Saux.

 

Augustine’s sign theory may be summed up by the word interiority or inwardness.

Interiority for Augustine encompasses three interrelated concepts: the inner

self, inward turns or revolution, and outward signs as expressions of inner

things. Correspondingly Augustine’s thought can be seen to establish firstly

the concept of the self as a private inner space. (Confessions 10. 17)

Secondly, he develops the notion of personal revolution and illumination by

which we turn into this inner space to look for God - the theological project

of Confessions: ‘into myself I went [to discover] the unchangeable light of the

Lord.’ (Conf. 7) Thirdly, he develops the conception of both words and sacrament

as outward signs expressing inner realities (De Doctrina Christiana). In

addition, metaphor in De doctrina christiana is itself defined as a kind of

sign where things signified by appropriate terms are usurped by others

signifying something else. (2. 10, 15) For Augustine a spiritual metaphor

allows the usurpation and transformation of the things of the world - which are

carnal [carnaliter] or literal and material - once we reflect on, and

understand, their meaning through the grid of our anagogic reflexivity.

Augustine’s interior world not only contains images of the exterior world, but

also contains the very reality (res ipsa) of intelligible things (C 10. 9, &

10. 12). It is not just a private world, therefore, but the world of eternal

Truth – the realm of the potential – where the soul finds The intelligible

Truth and ultimately the one eternal Truth which is God by turning to the

divine mind (Plotinian Nous) articulated first in De libero arbitrio, though

most commonly cited in Confessions.

 

My point is that for Augustine, we may only understand once we have faith, which

will allow the divine within to illuminate our understanding. And that Logos,

which is within us, is in fact Christ. When Le Saux tried to reconcile his

Augustinian Christianity with those questions posed by Ramana Mahrishi, he

realised that the Self in question, the mode of illumination if you like, was

in fact Christ, and he makes the statement in his letters that the Truth of his

search lays in his realistion that He is Christ. Salvation may only come come

from realising that Self. It is just another perspective, another way of seeing

the problem of interpretation, but

 

There are many forms of crucifixion in our age …

 

David