Exploring Dionysius Called Areopagite: 2019

Friday, August 9, 2019

OFF-BEAT ON-BEAT IN ST. DENYS

OFF-BEAT ON-BEAT IN ST. DENYS

What I notice here/now is in St. Denys a dys between the off-beat (PLEEMMELEES) and on-beat (HARMONIA) <to use this Padre's own words; the off-beat would have to include inter alia the perp's academic forgery; the category self-generalted PLEEMMELEES needs as well to count the number of matters with which the Wholly Man Denys takes issue, finds disagreement. This latter part of the first-mentioned category the-off-beat would include the very way Denys alludes to the Neoplatonists without quoting them, and the way he quotes the "Oracles" (Scripture in the Judeo-Christian tradition) often with great "bending" of terms and "cherry picking" of examples Biblical which would speak to Platonic ideas.

This would include his "hots" for Eroos in over-use than the word Agapee, PRIOR TO WHICH TIME (evidently the 5th century C.E.) THIS WAS TOTALLY NOCHRISTIAN USE, but according to Andrew Louth the ilk of terminology in Plato's SYMPOSIUM. Also "drunkenness" (METHEE) in Denys is a virtue EKSTASIS (which then and now had strong semantics in the domain of "psychosis); and, subsequently, there is some positive evaluation for God and for Disciple in the common sequel to stone-cold-drunkenness, i.e. hang-over (KRAIPULA). . . positive evaluations which in the 5th century of our Era and now 21st century would beckon disfavor and if favored, well qualified favor, or more-likely, dilution.

He proffers mercy-- especially to Pagans with whom the Christians found disagreement-- he chides clerics who "excommunicate" sinners bold enough to seek the Synactic Eucharist-- he disputes with thoses "Christian Positivists" who find literal, not hinted at the transcendental, the Magisteria of Dogmatics and Scripture (and in this is saying what could apply to all who hold Dogma, "The-Revelations" as closed system); he seems completely apophatic toward the Infinities in God as per these hints to which I refer, EXCEPT in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy which dotes on the finitudes of imputed Blessings of Church and Religious Office and Its Rites. . . which are indeed KATAPHATIC in mention directly from what Denys says.

For harmonies in Denys, we have the uninterrupted praise-ecstatic of the "Uber-ness" of Godhead, WOW WOW WOW; except for the sticky Positivism of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy this goes on a n d o n a n d o n; if, when I was a clinical social worker I would guess him to be expressing "overvalued ideas," that is, ideation which keeps repitition with no notice on the utterer's part that such ideation is pathological; THIS SPEAKS TO AN OBSESSIVE PERSONALITY, AT THE CORE OF WHICH PERSON IS ANGST. This obsessive-compulsive tendency is as well noticeable in the great precision with which Biblical arguments are used to express latent-- or overarching-- Platonism.

Of WHAT would this FORM (HARMONIA) be a result? If we can guess by the several "hot buttons" presented, and as well the "hot buttons" of the time, we may conjecture that there may have been in Denys an agitation that by the Magisteria the Church (especially in the East) was wronging, was doing more wrong than Good. The Chalcedonian versus the Monophysite controversies in Denys are "ducked" largely, with both sides in the controversy citing Denys as authoritative (and sometimes as heretical or "bastardly" (NOTHOTIKOS) of no authority). Denys seems to be well-connected to have access as Churchman to the Scriptures (this would not be an easy accomplishment as documents were rarities, and as the Fathers jealously guarded THEIR Biblicism), and of Denys' obvious esteem and access to Platonic works as well. . . hidden from mention because-- as is known to us-- Caesar Justinian had outlawed schools and any teaching of Platonism.

Then this would be the obsessive-compulsion of whom's what would be called now a "moderate liberal," who finds The-Transcendent to be somewhat for which to get ecstatic, to the point of drunken joy, and while I am still puzzled about how to "get hard" (EROOTIKOS) for what for-me is always a LIE, my merriment also considers God's-- and Disciples'-- "hangover" resulting-- an off-beat-in-the-on-beat of Form into which and about which this Subject Denys feels strongly enough to utter a forgery claiming these hetero-doxies as Ortho and Apostolic. I guess Denys felt secure about The-Lie, and indeed (with the help of some quirks in French hagiography about a Denys First Bishop of Paris, from Greece) the forgery lasted numbers of centuries, and is still "good reading" though well-acknowledged to be "bastardly lie" in origin.

Yet comes the point where my own "religiosity" butts into Denys=> to an exaltation, to a True-Belief time, my religious experiences are LIES, and always some Godly Puncture of my ecstasies "gets me right that I am wrong." My puncture is Barthes' PUNCTUM; it is Denys' PLEEMELEES, the off-beat which becomes the "heartbeat" of Denys' ROUTINIZATION OF CHARISMA the-hamony of FORM as Blissed Drunken Hungover OVERVALUED IDEAL "MADNESS." Denys wants to bring this ecstasy about in something of the same way as the Mystery Religions prior and in Proclus or even a little later than the Mysteries in Gnosticism=> indeed one noticeable observation about the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy is that he with other "insiders" has Spirit that should only be expressed to "Catecumens" in corny pictographic (?pornographically-literal?) symbols, WHICH THE ENLIGHTENED HAVE TRANSCENDED AND MAY EXCLUDE OUTSIDERS. Yet for-me, again, the Spirt of Discomfiture of Mysticism, by problem-solving, critcally-thought pursuit until finding me at Naked Truth, the truth naked before me, the Truth-that-I-am-Naked ends the Spirit jailed
and whimpering "I have sinned against The Holy Ghost!"

. . . So are the differences 'twist St. Denys and my-me!

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NOTE!! MUCH DOCUMENTATION FOR THIS WORK ON DIONYSIUS CALLED AREOPAGITE IS HELD IN MY (vernonlynn stephens', sissy's) GOOGLE CLASSROOM ON THIS SUBJECT; SEE THIS H I G H L I G H T E D LINK, PER FAVOUR. . . .

In Dionysius. the praxix of ''community writing,'' which is the practice of publication in which a number of participants

I have spoken of "community writing," which is the practice of publication in which a number of participants in a process of copying, adding (usually) or subtracting material from Ur-Sources to propagate added/subtracted ideas in documentary transmission. This can appropriately be called "redaction" (as I understand the definition in Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary 10th), and it can be called simply "editing." Redaction Criticism is unfortuately merely referent to Bible Redaction and-- predictably with the hardshell evangelicals-- nixed (I suppose as somewhat/something that could offend "true believers").

I want by all means to get-away from the Bible-Bangers who seem blind to the reality that in publication, in any "then" and any "now," are edited quite usually, that is ARE redacted. There are books and articles now about modern redactional work, and I have a goodly number of these in my data folder "Redaction Studies." Some of these are about editing in anncient work-- including yet not restricted to Bible studies-- and I have a variety of texts that speak to a "how" and "why" of redaction. These methods and motivations for edits are to my liking best expressed in an article I have in this folder, that is The Rules of Redaction, Identify, Protect, Review (and Repeat) Eric Bier, et al., in IEEE COMPUTER AND RELIABILITY SOCIETIES, November/December 2009. This doc treats of redaction as it usually signifies in modern editorial work-- as subtracting-/blacking- out material that is "sensitive" in a document, as is the case in the recent Mueller Report and in the publication of health-/HIPPA- related information. Yet my Dictionary (just mentioned) definition that could include ADDING material to a text.

The gist of the Bier et al. article is that redaction is needed when "sensitive information" is in a text. Pertaining methinks to the Corpus Dionysiacum, I think awareness that Denys heavily (and covertly) uses material from Neo-Platonists and Plato himself=> Proclus references stand at 500X, Plotinus references are 91X in these works; Platonic works are given reference 216X. I think one can pay less attention to Bible citations and Patristic citations in the CD for the simpler reason that such reference would be "expected."

I have PDFs alleging forcibly that "community writing" is evident in Denys; Brons has mentioned parts of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and the Letters have (perhaps pious) insertions to the would-be Dionysius-original. There are predictable "pseudipigraphal" texts attributed to Denys-- I have what would seem to be the-majority of these. Then-- referring to "community writing" there are the propagation of Pseudo-Pseudo-Denis TRANSLATIONS, in the West with Hilduin, Eriugena, St. Victor guy, Clowde of Unknowing guy, Boke of Privie Counsel guy, and all those who use Dionysius "in community" in the crabbed way of publication and editorial work ending with the printing press, and now especially with digital-age-publication.

Moreover, with my Critical Edition (Suchla and Heil/Ritter) of the Corpus of St. Dionysius, I can follow textual insertions/substractions in this text transmission, some of which seem to correct glitches in the text from-heretofore, and some PURE efforts to change/"purify" Denys' utterances.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO ME THAT I NEED TO USE THE "EVANGELICAL'S DENIAL" OF REDACTIONS FOR "HOLY," "MAGISTERIAL" METERIAL, AND THIS SEEMS TO DERIVE FROM THE USUAL CLOSED-SYSTEM THAT AN "ORTHODOXY" WANTS, IN THIS WAY, AS WELL, TO "EDIT BY DENIAL" (OF IMPORTANCE, OF VALIDITY) A PRESERVATIVE NECESSITY TO "FREEZE" THE NARRATIVES THAT MAKE THE CREEDS OF THE-MAGISTERIA "FOREVER" AND UNCHANGEABLE. DENYS-- A PROVEN FRAUD IN HIS SOURCING, A PROVEN INNOVATOR IN THE NOETIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE-INFINITE, THE-DARK-OBSCURITY OF TRANSCENDENCE AS AGNOSTIC-- IS NOT SCRIPTURE, IS NOT PER SE A CHURCH FATHER, HAS BEEN DEBUNKED AS AN APOSTLE-- AND
IN SUCH A CASE I CAN DOCUMENT WITH A REAL KIND OF REDACTION-CRITIQUE, EDITORIAL-ANALYSIS, THE "ANYTHING-GOES" OF "COMMUNITY WRITING."

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NOTE!! MUCH DOCUMENTATION FOR THIS WORK ON DIONYSIUS CALLED AREOPAGITE IS HELD IN MY (vernonlynn stephens', sissy's) GOOGLE CLASSROOM ON THIS SUBJECT; SEE THIS H I G H L I G H T E D LINK, PER FAVOUR. . . .

'completeness and wholeness' in DA~CD

'completeness and wholeness' in DA~CD

Consider the null hypothesis that has been given to me by Tan=> a document needs to be considered as a complete whole; let me guess just how far one can go with this in naive reading=>

Let me pick up a piece of paper with writing on it; naively I can despite "fishy" signals perhaps that one and only one writer uttered the text with no revisions; one might begin to wonder about this assumption when the text begins to show sharp differences in seeming sense to be inferred, or even big or average contradictions (nobody could be expected to be completely logical in all points uttered over a "long run" of living!) Other differences, like the handwriting/autograph showing variance in the assumed "complete whole"=> a more emphatic difference coming to the reader's attention might be that a whole language may differ inside the document. Totally different kinds of constent per writ may shift. What would be a worst-case-scendario for obvious plural challenges to the "complete whole" of the text. . .
would it not be a blatant "hodge podge" of challenges to an assumption that a document has unity of purpose, style, "autography"? <I think I could make such a hodge podge document by picking up litter with writing from the sundry wastes and glue them all together into {what would be obviously illogical} a silly doc that-- like the Gordian Knot-- be utterly un-decipherable.><This means, in my way as "silly redactor," that I am taking a "community"/KOINONIA into that writ expressing cacophony. This thought experiment-- easy to replicate empirically-- has what would seem to be a none-but-valid result/conclusion=> the "complely whole" document thesis cannot stand.>

<One should notice in this statement that per the Corpus Dionysiacum I wish to take (in assuming the null hypothesis of Tan's whole-and-complete ass-u-me) that something obvious and termable in Dionysius' vocabulary these jumblings of surds; the very fact is that CD is a collection of inputs in series, first in Denys himself borrowing from NeoPlatonists and Church Padres to one stage of publication; then this Ur-CD being added subtracted textually by subsequent others. With a semi-random sampling into my texts by Suchla/Heil/Ritter, I have noticed that most of the textual variations are for rather redundant expressions, likely with the motive of offering a "good text with good sense"=> there are other texts in the "extended" Corpus-- those suggesting radical digression from the usuals in Denys (that are assumed to be borrowedly origninal with this guy who claims to be Dionysius Areopagite of Acts 17). "Eyeballing" these extant docs, it looks as though the repetition of the matter-- really the false-report by my science from Leo Oppolzer's KANON DER FINSTERNISSE-- of a ?global? eclipse of the sun occuring at the very moment of the death by crucifixion of Jesus. As well, we can count the "Liturgy of Dionysius" which is guessably false production as extant only in L A T I N. . .

I am familiar from other reads of "pseudipigrapha" and "lives of Saints' " hagiography that this kind of jarring awareness of "community authorship" readily applies to Denys and works attributed to him-- usually wrongfully when beyond what are now held to be the Corpus Dionysiacum-- and never as is the case of much writing from ancient times that "the editiorial," "the-forged" hand of some "outsider" has input which is transmitted on-down-the-line until commonly-- even by Catholics-- the entire CD "shooting-match" is pseudo.>

In other words, speaking to the suspect assumption of "completely whole" documents from ancient time, the presentation of "glares" and "misfits"from this assumption will lead us to assume possible validity to my "alternate (chosen) hypothesis of "mixture" not purity of authorship, rather speaking to a practice of editorial work which seems blatant and common PASSIM in ancient and medieval literature. To me now, this kind of assay could become perfectly empirical, for there would seem to be little reason to hold that these "glitches" sundry could not be framed into a solid empirical design.

The "glitches"seem perfectly consonant with PUNCTUMs (Barthes) and "primary reflection" (Marcel) as well as other phenomenological and psycho-analytic work. I could present my "case study" as producing such testable hypotheses of "documentary tampering" counter to Tan's notion that certain ancient texts (the NT) must be regarded as "whole," "complete" with then only shifts of emphasis re different "Gospel-like" holy texts. . .

Previously and to this moment I have found (per Ding-an-Sich case study of Denys) CD vocabulary to relate to these-- mostly modern linguage constructs-- categorical designations. <See prior entries in my writs on the topic upon Corpus Dionysiacum for vocabulary-Greek-in-CD to apply to this work, now seeming to take shape and form!>

vernonlynn stephens sissy

NOTE!! MUCH DOCUMENTATION FOR THIS WORK ON DIONYSIUS CALLED AREOPAGITE IS HELD IN MY (vernonlynn stephens', sissy's) GOOGLE CLASSROOM ON THIS SUBJECT; SEE THIS H I G H L I G H T E D LINK, PER FAVOUR. . . .

DIONYSIUS' WORK READS LIKE AN IMMENSE HYMN, OR ONE LONG HYMN-ECSTATIC AFTER ANOTHER!

I have "spoken-around" the repetitive nature of St. Denys' writing, and abide with the notion that as per "gold standard" in qualitative case study research, intend to use the VERY words of Dionysius to form case-study categories, as categorization is essential for such work, and additionally for the process of content analysis going to establish categories. NOTE HERE= FROM THE LIDDELL-SCOTT (MEGA) GREEK LEXICON, THAT DENYS' USE OF "HYMN" (UMNEEOO) CAN IMPLY THAT WHICH IS SAID OVER AND OVER;

INDEED, DIONYSIUS' WORK READS LIKE AN IMMENSE HYMN, OR ONE LONG HYMN-ECSTATIC AFTER ANOTHER!

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NOTE!! MUCH DOCUMENTATION FOR THIS WORK ON DIONYSIUS CALLED AREOPAGITE IS HELD IN MY (vernonlynn stephens', sissy's) GOOGLE CLASSROOM ON THIS SUBJECT; SEE THIS H I G H L I G H T E D LINK, PER FAVOUR. . . .

USING DENYS' WORDS FINDING CHARISM TO ROUTINE

elf, the DING-AN-SICH, the-soul as a transcendental-- never as a Kantian Transcendent even though there is banter strictly non-Kantian that emerges in the French existentialists-- for Sartre the projection-into-future of the self. . . for Marcel the transcendent as participation, meeting others. Then, now then also, we have the VERSTEHEN guy Max Weber and his notions of the routinization of charisma. <And it just occurred to me-- with subsequent search-- to find CHARIS- words in Denys; XARIS is mentioned several times; there is too CHARISTEERIOS, "thanksgiving," but connectable to CHARISMA.>

. . . This all jells. What Jaspers calls the lattice-work of OBJECT upon the SUBJECT(IVE), and what Marcel calls BROKEN(NESS), goes toward meeting of another One- a focus of Jaspers as well. One starts with broken and torn raw input-- CHARISMA-- and reaches to routinization. There we have words translatable into Corpus Dionysiacum CHARISTEERIOS (a giving with thanks) and SUNEETHEIA & SUNEETHEES (routine); I want to reach for that charisma the drive beneath the routine of so much philosophical defense of the-unknown, the-darkened, the long-drawn-out-repitition of these infinities, which are apeiric, beyond empirical (scientific) testing.

The SUBJECT is CHARISMA; the OBJECT/FORM is in Denys SUNEE-; there are other Dionysian words that fit in-here=> PLEEMMELEES (off-beat, "absurd" in Plato's CRITO) versus METRON (the-metered); there is DEINOS (the-terrible) versus the EIREENIKOS (the-pacified); there is ASUMMETRIA/ASUMMETRIA (the off-balance) and the SUMMETRIA (the-symmetric), and I think I am just starting to detect what Jaspers calls the-saying-yes and the-the-saying-no to values.

In this mix, we need to do some close looking at the forger in Denys, he as such a "bastard" (NOTHOS), as counterfeiter (PLASMATOODEES, of-one-uttering-PLASMA <fiction> about his "sources" "authorship" to utter his OK Truth (ALEETHIA). In big ways, Dionysius seems to have come to a FORMAL ROUTINE about the unknowables that is a polished, finished productin extant in five books (Divine Names, Celestial Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Mystical Theology, Letters).

I think by these awarenesses that I can get to the old Geezer who holds himself out as Wizard (of like Oz) beneath his long and repetitive UMNOI hymns.

vernonlynn stephens sissy

NOTE!! MUCH DOCUMENTATION FOR THIS WORK ON DIONYSIUS CALLED AREOPAGITE IS HELD IN MY (vernonlynn stephens', sissy's) GOOGLE CLASSROOM ON THIS SUBJECT; SEE THIS H I G H L I G H T E D LINK, PER FAVOUR. . . .

''Reflection,'' Primary& Secondary in G Marcel to Denys

''Reflection,'' Primary& Secondary in G Marcel to Denys

I am reading Gabriel Marcel THE-MYSTERY-OF-BEING in order to reach for a resolution of what seems impoverished in study of the extant-- and likely too the-fake, the forged-- of the Forger Denys himself (like=> Denys whomever likeliest is homo sapiens dangledown)-- that part of my prime study of the CORPUS-DIONYSIACUM (CD) which can tell me about the wee wee wee guy beneath the hidden exaltive words in his text. I am led to think that the-human-element in this case will be least polished, more off-rhythm, off-rhetorical. . . telling of the WHAT WHY of Denys beneath the HOW of fixed ideas (obsessive thought) glittering with the hype of superlatives and infinities. < At this point I have come to wonder-- in the same way that I read David's PSALMS and ask, "Of what are ye trying to convince yourself, Scaredy?. . . That applies to all the PollyAnna in Dionysius; "me thinks his banter in fine is hiding something down-there, in-there. This reflection begins to alienate me from a writer, our Hero of a kind of agnosticism, that now and mehopes temporarily separates me from Denys.>

The French philosophers in the Bergsonian tradition have a "touchy-feely" element in their work-- pertinent to my groping for an answer about this humaine problem-- Marcel the Bergsonian Existentialist especially. He has a chapter in THE-MYSTERY-OF-BEING I on "Primary and Secondary Reflection" that speaks to such disconnects as now I have with Dionysius now; he relates the disruption of a (social, or supra-social) relation as having two phases-- "primary reflexion" as breach of communion with another, "secondary reflection" as that process toward re-unification. < In Marcel's own writ. Pp 97-98top/Réflexion et Mystère=> "Disons tout à fait en gros qu'au lieu que la réflexion primare tend à dissourdre l'unité, la reflexion second est essentiellement récupératrice, elle est une reconquête.">

I think-- it is hunch more that proof-- that those matters which betray the glitches in this polished CD will the-more show me the wimp behind the veil of this "Wizard" (? of Oz ?) from which this drunken transcendental verbiage comes, these ecstasies hanging-over from so much seeming-manic or seeming psychasthenic (obsessive) exaltation. . . These would also reflect Denys' own fumbles toward the secondary reflection-- the punctums leading to these obvious studiums, these assymetries that lead to ". . .of regard to the symmetry of the discourse; and the hiddenness, beyond our
capacity, we have honoured by silence."(Parker's translation, end of "On the Heavenly Hierarchy"). Indeed "asymmetries" occur in CD too, and if I ought to use the very language of Dionysius, I think I can pit the innitial assymetrics of CD toward resulting symmetries. The asymmetries would include such dyses as irritation, disagreement, rhyming (assonance too, and so "clang associations"), repititions as fixed ideas, "over-glow" in style as suggestive of anxiety in trying too hard to make his points. These are the dyses which also are cognate with Barthes Punctum/Studium polarity, with the DEINOS of Antigone and Heidegger's INTRODUCTION-TO-METAPHYSICS, with the Schmürz of Boris Vian's EMPIRE-BUILDERS,
the Wounded who is, as we all are, trying when we are silly and cowboy to "put on the best face we can" in a game of life which requires all players to play-well-and-lose<life, which like the Cosmos ends mortally to Absolute Zero>. These infinitessimals which are endless-puzzle-enough, as new Ste. Thérèse de Lisieux's "littleness," begin with moribund death-prone losers to reach for the IMPOSSIBLE-- INFINITIES which are actually unreachable, impossible, manic ecstasies and doing-drunks included.

vernonlynn stephens, sissy

NOTE!! MUCH DOCUMENTATION FOR THIS WORK ON DIONYSIUS CALLED AREOPAGITE IS HELD IN MY (vernonlynn stephens', sissy's) GOOGLE CLASSROOM ON THIS SUBJECT; SEE THIS H I G H L I G H T E D LINK, PER FAVOUR. . . .

Q OF SUBLIME HYPOMANIA IN DENYS?

<FROM FREUD, GESAMMETLTE WERKE, EARLY, ON "HYSTERIA">

This jibes with the appearance in CD of "clang association" either by end-rhyme (easy to do in Greek, and seemingly designated as a sometime or frequent annoying RHYTHMOS). In translation, the emotional tone is always euphoric (and the book I have about content analysis in mental health--THE-MEASUREMENT-OF-PSYCHOLOGICAL-STATES-THROUG-THE-CONTENT-ANALYSIS-OF-VERBAL-BEHAVIOR by Gottschalk L A and Gleser G C 1969, pp 12-17-- would suggest that even casual analysis can show affect (mood)). And more clearly pointing diagnostically is Denys' positive evaluation of EKSTASIS (in-root like 6X), the "exaltation-word" in Greek (EKPLEETTOO, 1X), and the positive evaluation of drunkenness (METHEE, in-root several times), and "hangover" yes indeed gets positives. These seem like hypomanic or even manic assertions,
yet in reading ON-THE-SUBLIME by Longinus I am led to subtract some of this "diagnosis" as a prospect that "the sublime" so expressed in CD may indeed be a c u l t u r a l artifact of habit.

<FOR CLARIFICATION, I HAVE READ CARL WERNIKE'S GRUNDRISS-DER-PSYCHIATRIE, Lesson 15, pp 145-153 on "überwerthigen Ideen,"and as may need my repitition to this point of study, I have the Englished GENERAL-PSYCHOPATHOLOGY of Karl Jaspers, as well as an amount of psychiatric PDFs on overvalued ideas, perseveration, idees fixees, to reinforce a sense that such ideation is a SERIOUS SYMPTOM, but not too specific for any mental disorder;
more to the point here, however, is my fairly solid learning that PHENOMENOLOGY is what I am interested-in per this study, and our Jaspers only says that his psychopatholical phenomenology refers clinically to CONTENT, where as pure and noetic phenomenology is cocerned but with FORM.

. . . Therefore my assaignment seems to be=> reach for the PHENOMENOLOGY OF FORM IN DENYS; yet when I regard this prospect, I must also factor in my own personal experience with seeming manic (or schiz) manias and hypomanias, and my fixed ideas and-- especially-- fixed ideas that (as Wernike and Jaspers proffer) couple into DELUSION(s).>

SELAH

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NOTE!! MUCH DOCUMENTATION FOR THIS WORK ON DIONYSIUS CALLED AREOPAGITE IS HELD IN MY (vernonlynn stephens', sissy's) GOOGLE CLASSROOM ON THIS SUBJECT; SEE THIS H I G H L I G H T E D LINK, PER FAVOUR. . . .

THE FORM OF DENYS' COGNITION IN ''COMMUNITY WRITING''

THE FORM OF DENYS' COGNITION IN ''COMMUNITY WRITING''

The discipline called redaction-criticism is-- just according to Wikipedia-- a way of studying editorial influence in the Bible; while I have at hand evidence that redaction studies appear in a variety of non-theological articles and some books, the brief and concise overview that the pertinent Wiki has about Biblical redaction-criticism does apply well to my topic for independent study-- the multi-layered redaction of the "Works of St. Denys" (Dionysius called Areoopagite, the Corpus Dionysiacum). As well, the (mostly Evangelical) criticisms of redaction for the Bible are applicable=> I simply and without side-reference or the same with closest readng of "Denys," CANNOT TELL WHO-IS-THE-REAL-REAL-DENYS versus WHO-AIN'T-DENYS-BUT-INPUT-TO-"HIM."

Koch says that-- and proveably says-that-- the Denys-at-hand borrows heavily from Proclus; Brons finds redactions from other parties in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy and the Epistles; moreover, there is a substantial side-hagiography (much like the genre/Gattung "lives of the saints") holding in centrality the Denys I think I am studying. IT IS MY STRONG IMPRESSION THAT THE-WAY-OF-PUBLICATION IN TIMES PRIOR TO THE GUTENBERG PRESS, AND ALSO WITH CONSIDERABLE INPUT FROM ORAL TRADITION,
"COMMUNITY WRITING" WAS THE NORM, WITH INNOVATIONS AND IMPROVEMENTS TO HAVE COME FROM ALL-THE-EDITORS-- CONSPICUOUSLY TRYING TO MAKE THEIR INPUTS BLEND INTO NOTICE-LESS-NESS FOR THE READER.

Inevitably, though, there are plain tangents in the content of the "community additions"=> in the same way that Denys forges falsies about being groupie for St. Paul at Areopagus, the groupies on Denys himself (he MUST"VE been a guy, with only one tangential mentioning woman-kind) just lie about matters that-- again like the Lives of the Saints-- go haywire in content. I know of no better way-- off the cuff I say now-- to follow these disparate trails of fictive ideation, one could say confabulation, than to do so with "associative anamnesis" for the whole bunch, kit-and-kibootle. In this regard, per se in the Corpus Dionysiacum at my attention, it is blatant that who-should-be the real-Denys-down-in-there REPEATS HIMSELF, WITH REPITITIONS LARGELY IN THE SUPERLATIVE ADJECTIVIAL MODE OF EXPRESSION; this to my read-- the always "high/hyper" affect suggests mania, and indeed his mention of EKSTASIS is a recognized level of mania, just above euphoria. <I just looked in Woodhouse English-Greek to learn that the word for "exaltation" as excitement in Greek is a form of EKPLEETTOO that appears, too, in the CD at Letter 7,1080D-- the "amazement" for the Babylonians, a word like exaltation that can mean "becoming-psychotic."> The associative anamnesis of this narration in Denys keeps at expressing the same idea of super-duper-reality, such repitition could be called either obsessive, ruminative, or perseverative (one needs to be careful with the last term which is generally some report of something "neuro" in a communicant). The blatant copyists assuming Denys are rather unimaginatively copying the plethora of works in the pseudepipigraphal idiom, <WHICH IS AN OLD TRADTION, RIGHT OUT OF THE ANCIENTS IN HELLENIC AND SEMITIC PLACES; TRULY THOUGH I WOULD NOT BE WISE-- FOR THE TWO "PADRES" AND BIBLE-BELIEVERS AS MY AUDIENCE-- TO BREACH ANY CRITICISM OR DOUBT OF SUCH "MAGISTERIA." For the Padres-so-called, their expressed creeds are apparent "closed systems," and under such condition it would be lost on my part to "raise these defensive hackles" that would enivitably be raised when "The-Holies" are questioned.>

Yet more to the other hand of this discourse, I should strive as good phenomenologist-inspired-worker to not describe the associations present in these several documents called Denys', but in the spirit of phenomenologist psychiatrist Karl Jaspers TO DESCRIBE THE FORM OF THESE MENTALISMS, NOT THEIR (USUALLY PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL) MENTAL CONTENT. <This Jaspers' GENERAL-PSYCHOPATHOLOGY/ALGEMEINE-PSYCHOPATHOLGIE, in the Englished version at page 134 indicates that "rumination" is indicative-- in "comprehensive picture" as "compulsive in the wider sense, where the main characteristic is the feeling of subjective complsion and the content is indifferent (formal compulsive thinking)," versus a second type where " 'something alien'is added and the contents acquire strong affective tone..." compulsive beliefs-- the patient is compelled to consider something true although he is convilnced it is not.">< I have some modern psych lit (PDFs) that suggest that manics/positive-thinkers/feelers-with-say-as-much-as-you-can "stop rules" in cognition can be so "perseverative.">< Page 135, bottom, this Jaspers=> "These compulsive beliefs need to be distinguished from three other phenomena, that is from delusion, from over-valued ideas and from normal doubt...With over-valued ideas belief is strong, the topic itself is the only thing that matters and the psychic life is nomal and unchanged so far as the individual himself is concerned, whereas in compulsive belief he considers his belief to be morbid.">

SHELAH

vernonlynn stephens sissy

MY CULTURE SHOCK @ DENYS

What once was near-total admiration of St. Denys has turned somewhat, for the ecstatics he esteems are none of mine, none of my thrills, and none of what appears to be his social position. . . He has knowledge of the Bible-- OT and NT and Apostolic Father writs-- that rivals mine; he must have been in that nanoscopic clique of people with access to the scriptures that would put him in the uttermost high elite, probably the elite of the monkly Fathers; the ECCLESIASTICAL HIERARCHY I S "positive theololgy," with apophatic (negative) theology as a kind of mooning about a God whom Dennys tells us is hinted-at in the CELESTIAL (and ECCLESIASTICAL) Chain of Being; this mooning he says is like drunkenness (and hangover). This is an "insider's view"=> peons and catecumens KEEP OUT. . . From this, I have more a sense of alienation than endearment, yet

This is MY sense of shock, it is, in fine, a kind of culture-shock FOR I AM PROUDEST THAT I AM WITH THE BOTTOM DREGS DROPOUTS HAVE-NOTS, THE WHITE-TRASH all mixed with the Black (of whom one no longer daresay "trash" after the Black). The elites bother me, and Denys speaks with no other voice of station than as what Bernie Sanders calls "the 1%" meaning that the democratic value we can usually have as Americans and little-d democrats have of putting "the people, the wee-people" at the top of the social and inverted pyramid IS NOT PRESENT in Denys.

In this vein, I now see that what Roland Barthes calls "Punctum" is identical to (in this case, his) culture-shock. I may have my very own or very underclass American culture-shocks, which reveal more of my value systems than this forger Church Padre. . . or the community of "Intertexualists" really beneath this text, and all the other co-texts uttered by these who would claim to be the Convert Dionysius Areopagite storied in Acts 17.. . I l have a good number of these "extra-corporal" inserters to the Corpus Dionysiacum, and while I am aware that THIS IS COMMUNITY WRITING OF THE SORT COMMON TO ANCIENT AND HELLENISTIC AND PATRISTIC TIMES, the "Real Dionysius" of the CD is not-- per se-- a person that would do more in the way of sympathetic understanding, PERSONALLY than annoy-- it has to be the case that my

CULTURE SHOCK only means that I am oblique, culturally, to the WELTANSCHAUNG of Denys and all-the-Denyses which but and only affords me to QUESTION ther QUESTION (to use the phrase of R. G. Collingwood) WHICH BELIES THE TEXT WHICH ANSWER FOR THESE VARIOUS DENYSesn pose, supposedly for my belief a priori of criticism in any case. . . for all these imposters. My questioning "null hypothesis/hypotheses" likely are just few of all the potential nulls that TOTAL AND FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONING could bring to bear on these topics, all fraudulent by modern academic standards, but which seem to have been persuasive to "someones" along the paths of cultural preservation.

My "slice" of ongoing perceptions about the "process in the Black Box" that comes to me given this varigation of plural Denyses and the "one" presumably beneath the one who took Proclus-- not at Proclus' word-- but as Denys' word-insertion, and on and on editorially ever after. My hypotheses-- I repeat-- are just some of the postulates that could be asked, AND I AM NOT NOW WELL-DISPOSED TO PROFFER OR SEEK ALL OF THEM ;-).

SELAH

vernonlynn stephens sissy

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Toward Portrayal, Valences ~DA

Toward Portrayal, Valences ~DA

RKJ TAN "DEFINING (AS FUNDAMENTALIST ANTI-REDACTION-CRITIC) THE SET

Defining the Set. . .

=> Wisely done, one should not portray "too too statistically" the found valences of Denys, positively-expressed, and by valence-hidden/crypto; almost no readers but the few stats-savants will balk at such dominance. Moreover, the data are descriptive, thus more nominal than showing magnitude. A listing of probable findings may "do" better than any presented array of numbers. "Defining the set" in terms may please "Good Reader" might best present the conclusion, and as several "loops around" the "setting" CD are thus a descriptive "triangulation" . . .

But what or how may we might make of a combination of several such "loops" be accomplished as-statistical? THE CONTENT OF THE LOOPS MAKES THE SET; THINK ABOUT USING THE MULTINOMIAL TEST WITH CATEGORIES=>
Type
Aschematic
Antitype.. .
<all of these tri-partitions-names have utterly Greek roots, could-too just use their Greek Ur-expressions.>. . .

which would seem "a leg up" on the structure-finding I was taught in "sociological theory" (Professor Michael Endres) and here include the silly typological imputations of Claude Levi-Strauss. <Endres grated on me by the assertion ASSUME STRUCTURE, THEN GO OUT AND FIND IT!" The Endres' method for structural-functionalism was the method of "Religious" (believe first a propostion, then find it hard-as-thou-canst!) and those whomever other who do not follow logical inferential procedures. Yet, given the "Good Reader" reference, I SHALL HAVE TO R E A L L Y JUSTIFY WHY I IMPOSE THIS MORE-COMPLICATION; IT MAY BE THAT THE STATS (IF DO-ABLE) WOULD BEST BE KEPT UNPUBLISHED, OR-- GIVEN THE ACADEMIC CONTEXT AND NEED FOR QUALITY-SCHOLARSHIP-- BE PLACED AS AN APPENDIX AT THE END OF THE "WORK-DISSERTATED."

P.S. See notes by Gabriel Horn-- in French-- describing Denys' frequent mention of EROOS as "violent."

Notes Jotted in Stream-of-Consciousnessly-Aware re St. Denys

Q'
uestions/Uncertainties/strangnesses in Dionysius Areopagite

^Eroos \/Platocitations > poem in preface to Mystical Theology ^ "darkness" ^ hints of tolerance of pagans ^ citation and knowledge ofBible <probability of access to a fine Greek library ^probable upper status (cf Everett Rogers) ^proximate to time of closing/outlawing Athens Plato School, gradual demise of Neoplationic education ^probable Plato and Plotinus and Proclus and Iamblicus and Damascius books (from ? library?) ^skirting problems with Monophysites Nestorians Chalcedonians ^strong persuasion (cf Gunter Bentele "Offentichliches-Vertraun. . .") as ? "propaganda"? ?what hints of the interpersonal transcendence (cf. Buber and Marcel)(maybe Hierotheus? Author of "Elements of Religion"~Proclus?Personae of Carpos/ Timotheus/Titus/John-Divine/Polycarp/Gaius as per ones with whom DA=familiar, by projection? ?potential phoniness in oooohing aaaaahing about the Infinite (unfelt ever by me!) ^drunkenness, intoxication, hangover =Trinity as mascarading Plotinine/Neoplatonic triads (being, proceeding, returning)? ?no apophasis exactly in "Ecclesiastical-Hierarchy" Q about how unlike modern Church sacramentals compared to now? Q regarding the "Ding an Sich" Hermeneutik of Ecstasy, lemme see where bodily he gets these magestic feelings, again from feeling Infinities? Q re motive for plagarism (outlawed, risking in Classical and Hellenistic and Patristic times-- IF CAUGHT ;-{ (maybe sensing need for "not innovating on Old Old Story of Jesus, Paul all")^ Using Rodney Stark's method, and the work of Bentele and Astrid Funck (seemingly experiential from Ostdeutschland Werbun/Propaganda) to ACCURATELY describe DA as tendentious and uttering from a persuasive-- more than objective-- frame of reference...

vernonlynn stephens, UofL sissy

Denys, the train of thought is repetitive, as to the point of IDEE FIXE

I just finished another read of Divine Names; the Ekstrom Library at University Louisville is evidently closed (inter-session schedule at end of first summer session, it seems), and reading anew for unmissed or more-necessary-for-repitition parts.

I hearken to "associative anamnesis" (Felix Deutsch), which method in narrative analysis (in the first instance, of oral, presented speech) would tell us of the inner associative processes of a person. Should we employ this method with Denys, the train of thought is repetitive, with no small amount of redundancy in ideation, almost to the point of IDEE FIXE. (See Freud GESSAMMELTE-WERKE as this is sign of hysteria). Denys keeps repeating in wee thematic variations on the same meaning, and loves the superlative use; he is (I think like Plato) also fond of passive participles to show action. (Freud seems to think that IDEE FIXE is a fore-symptom covering some deeper problem-of-consciousness.) The overuse of similar cognitive material, then, may mask some difficulty or struggle of an inward-kind.. . if Denys is SO SO SURE of the things are saying in what amounts to several long "diatribes," why does he have to BELABOR what seems so naturally easy to him? What is the exact thing that HE WANTS HIS 'AUDIENCE' NOT EVER TO SAY OR THINK? The method that just by this announces itself would be to craft the oppositional propositions to these DA theses so heavily repeated.

LIKE=>

Evil has being of itself;
The "Names of God" are not hints, but literal.
The finite-- not the infinite-- is where best theology begins, has genesis.
Ecstasy is "bad."
Eroos is "bad."
"Light does not consider/conceal Darkness.
Darkness is "bad."
The Known is "over" the Unknown.
Plato's teaching needs to mention Plato and ?Neoplatonists.
"Purple prose" should not be used.
The Orthodox teaching of the Church permits "innovation Doxic" e.g. "academic forgery" (Cf. W. Speyer and B. Erdman).

< Denys makes much mention of "KRUP-/KRUF- "hiding" in the CD; but these are only-- in a real way-- words he uses in pursuit of pesuasion about his idea of the Unknown Dark beyond epitemic knowns; WHAT IS THE KRUPTOS FOR HIS AIM AND METHOD AND CONTENT FOR "WHAT DENYS HIMSELF HIDES"? He does not seem to reveal excess about himself his biograph his geocentry. Yet an approach like that above-- seeking the questions for which his docs are answers (cf. R.G. Collingwood, in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY (at my attention). These CRYPTOs are not overt per se, but just an amount of "digging," for first troves not after much digging, SEEM FINDABLE OR IMPUTABLE.>

<I do not read much "slant," "either way," from Denys about the Monothelite Controversy; yet it is true that the first mention of DA was in a talk with Justinian-Caesar with Syrian bishops who cited DA as authority for monothelite doctrine. THIS ALSO IS A "CRYPTO-" IN THE TEXT CD. Look for the document said to mention the citation=> Hathaway, Ronald F., cites this as a "Colloquium" under Justinian but there is no text-reference. I read in Hathaway that John of Scytholopolis describes or anylyzes Denys vis a vis the Controversy. Maximus the Confessor a Chalsedonian sees no problem in making Denys a hero=> clearly, then, it would seem that the stress DA places on the "numbe of personalities Jesus has" is not much a "biggie" to him.>

USING DENYS' WORDS FINDING CHARISM TO ROUTINE (Phenomenologically)

USING DENYS' WORDS FINDING CHARISM TO ROUTINE (Phenomenologically)

There is convergence in the p h i l o s o p h i c a l p h e n o m e n o l o g y I read in the modern idiom to apply to my study of Byzantine fibbing theologue Dionysius. What I read in German from Karl Jaspers on the psychology of studying WELTANSCHAUNGEN meshes with Marcel, and Barthes (CHAMBRE-CLAIRE, re STUDIUM/PUNCTUM dichotomy in the semiotics of photos), and of course a little more remotely the ICH-UND-DU of Martin Buber, and-- just about as remotely-- the work of Husserl on IDEAS. One in these studies focuses on the inner-self, the DING-AN-SICH, the-soul as a transcendental-- never as a Kantian Transcendent even though there is banter strictly non-Kantian that emerges in the French existentialists-- for Sartre the projection-into-future of the self. . . for Marcel the transcendent as participation, meeting others. Then, now then also, we have the VERSTEHEN guy Max Weber and his notions of the routinization of charisma. <And it just occurred to me-- with subsequent search-- to find CHARIS- words in Denys; XARIS is mentioned several times; there is too CHARISTEERIOS, "thanksgiving," but connectable to CHARISMA.>

. . . This all jells. What Jaspers calls the lattice-work of OBJECT upon the SUBJECT(IVE), and what Marcel calls BROKEN(NESS), goes toward meeting of another One- a focus of Jaspers as well. One starts with broken and torn raw input-- CHARISMA-- and reaches to routinization. There we have words translatable into Corpus Dionysiacum CHARISTEERIOS (a giving with thanks) and SUNEETHEIA & SUNEETHEES (routine); I want to reach for that charisma the drive beneath the routine of so much philosophical defense of the-unknown, the-darkened, the long-drawn-out-repitition of these infinities, which are apeiric, beyond empirical (scientific) testing.

The SUBJECT is CHARISMA; the OBJECT/FORM is in Denys SUNEE-; there are other Dionysian words that fit in-here=> PLEEMMELEES (off-beat, "absurd" in Plato's CRITO) versus METRON (the-metered); there is DEINOS (the-terrible) versus the EIREENIKOS (the-pacified); there is ASUMMETRIA/ASUMMETRIA (the off-balance) and the SUMMETRIA (the-symmetric), and I think I am just starting to detect what Jaspers calls the-saying-yes and the-the-saying-no to values.

In this mix, we need to do some close looking at the forger in Denys, he as such a "bastard" (NOTHOS), as counterfeiter (PLASMATOODEES, of-one-uttering-PLASMA <fiction> about his "sources" "authorship" to utter his OK Truth (ALEETHIA). In big ways, Dionysius seems to have come to a FORMAL ROUTINE about the unknowables that is a polished, finished productin extant in five books (Divine Names, Celestial Hierarchy, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Mystical Theology, Letters).

I think by these awarenesses that I can get to the old Geezer who holds himself out as Wizard (of like Oz) beneath his long and repetitive UMNOI hymns.

vernonlynn stephens sissy

Q OF SUBLIME HYPOMANIA IN DENYS?

Q OF SUBLIME HYPOMANIA IN DENYS?

Denys impresses me as REPETITIVE, and the "great logic" of which other commentators on Denys speak (notably Andrew Louth et al.) strikes me differently for the reads-- Englishly several times-- Greekly in slow coming once and hither in parts-- the notion of the singsong that emerges strikes me as it would a mental health professional,
as something like idee fixe or "overvalued ideation," or even perseveration. . .

This jibes with the appearance in CD of "clang association" either by end-rhyme (easy to do in Greek, and seemingly designated as a sometime or frequent annoying RHYTHMOS). In translation, the emotional tone is always euphoric (and the book I have about content analysis in mental health--THE-MEASUREMENT-OF-PSYCHOLOGICAL-STATES-THROUG-THE-CONTENT-ANALYSIS-OF-VERBAL-BEHAVIOR by Gottschalk L A and Gleser G C 1969, pp 12-17-- would suggest that even casual analysis can show affect (mood)). And more clearly pointing diagnostically is Denys' positive evaluation of EKSTASIS (in-root like 6X), the "exaltation-word" in Greek (EKPLEETTOO, 1X), and the positive evaluation of drunkenness (METHEE, in-root several times), and "hangover" yes indeed gets positives. These seem like hypomanic or even manic assertions,
yet in reading ON-THE-SUBLIME by Longinus I am led to subtract some of this "diagnosis" as a prospect that "the sublime" so expressed in CD may indeed be a c u l t u r a l artifact of habit.

<FOR CLARIFICATION, I HAVE READ CARL WERNIKE'S GRUNDRISS-DER-PSYCHIATRIE, Lesson 15, pp 145-153 on "überwerthigen Ideen,"and as may need my repitition to this point of study, I have the Englished GENERAL-PSYCHOPATHOLOGY of Karl Jaspers, as well as an amount of psychiatric PDFs on overvalued ideas, perseveration, idees fixees, to reinforce a sense that such ideation is a SERIOUS SYMPTOM, but not too specific for any mental disorder;
more to the point here, however, is my fairly solid learning that PHENOMENOLOGY is what I am interested-in per this study, and our Jaspers only says that his psychopatholical phenomenology refers clinically to CONTENT, where as pure and noetic phenomenology is cocerned but with FORM.

. . . Therefore my assaignment seems to be=> reach for the PHENOMENOLOGY OF FORM IN DENYS; yet when I regard this prospect, I must also factor in my own personal experience with seeming manic (or schiz) manias and hypomanias, and my fixed ideas and-- especially-- fixed ideas that (as Wernike and Jaspers proffer) couple into DELUSION(s).>

SELAH

vernonlynn stephens, sissy

Q OF SUBLIME HYPOMANIA IN DENYS?

THE FORM OF DENYS' COGNITION IN ''COMMUNITY WRITING''

MY CULTURE SHOCK @ DENYS

MY CULTURE SHOCK @ DENYS

What once was near-total admiration of St. Denys has turned somewhat, for the ecstatics he esteems are none of mine, none of my thrills, and none of what appears to be his social position. . . He has knowledge of the Bible-- OT and NT and Apostolic Father writs-- that rivals mine; he must have been in that nanoscopic clique of people with access to the scriptures that would put him in the uttermost high elite, probably the elite of the monkly Fathers; the ECCLESIASTICAL HIERARCHY I S "positive theololgy," with apophatic (negative) theology as a kind of mooning about a God whom Dennys tells us is hinted-at in the CELESTIAL (and ECCLESIASTICAL) Chain of Being; this mooning he says is like drunkenness (and hangover). This is an "insider's view"=> peons and catecumens KEEP OUT. . . From this, I have more a sense of alienation than endearment, yet

This is MY sense of shock, it is, in fine, a kind of culture-shock FOR I AM PROUDEST THAT I AM WITH THE BOTTOM DREGS DROPOUTS HAVE-NOTS, THE WHITE-TRASH all mixed with the Black (of whom one no longer daresay "trash" after the Black). The elites bother me, and Denys speaks with no other voice of station than as what Bernie Sanders calls "the 1%" meaning that the democratic value we can usually have as Americans and little-d democrats have of putting "the people, the wee-people" at the top of the social and inverted pyramid IS NOT PRESENT in Denys.

In this vein, I now see that what Roland Barthes calls "Punctum" is identical to (in this case, his) culture-shock. I may have my very own or very underclass American culture-shocks, which reveal more of my value systems than this forger Church Padre. . . or the community of "Intertexualists" really beneath this text, and all the other co-texts uttered by these who would claim to be the Convert Dionysius Areopagite storied in Acts 17.. . I l have a good number of these "extra-corporal" inserters to the Corpus Dionysiacum, and while I am aware that THIS IS COMMUNITY WRITING OF THE SORT COMMON TO ANCIENT AND HELLENISTIC AND PATRISTIC TIMES, the "Real Dionysius" of the CD is not-- per se-- a person that would do more in the way of sympathetic understanding, PERSONALLY than annoy-- it has to be the case that my

CULTURE SHOCK only means that I am oblique, culturally, to the WELTANSCHAUNG of Denys and all-the-Denyses which but and only affords me to QUESTION ther QUESTION (to use the phrase of R. G. Collingwood) WHICH BELIES THE TEXT WHICH ANSWER FOR THESE VARIOUS DENYSesn pose, supposedly for my belief a priori of criticism in any case. . . for all these imposters. My questioning "null hypothesis/hypotheses" likely are just few of all the potential nulls that TOTAL AND FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONING could bring to bear on these topics, all fraudulent by modern academic standards, but which seem to have been persuasive to "someones" along the paths of cultural preservation.

My "slice" of ongoing perceptions about the "process in the Black Box" that comes to me given this varigation of plural Denyses and the "one" presumably beneath the one who took Proclus-- not at Proclus' word-- but as Denys' word-insertion, and on and on editorially ever after. My hypotheses-- I repeat-- are just some of the postulates that could be asked, AND I AM NOT NOW WELL-DISPOSED TO PROFFER OR SEEK ALL OF THEM ;-).

SELAH

vernonlynn stephens sissy

Vanneste, in his titled-article, "Is the Mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius Genuine?"

Padre Martiny, Doctor Lugenbill, Greetings!

I just read an article by a Jesuit, one of those thinking "soldiers for Catholicism" here of the usual intellectual keen penetration, this Jesuit Jan Vanneste, in his titled-article, "Is the Mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius Genuine?" which article appeared in a Google Scholar search. This Padre speaks to me about something that-- when I read St. Denys-- I disconnect=> I know that Denys would have us to take-away-from (APHAIROO in Greek DA uses some 20+ times, and the root of APOPHASIS ("denial" "not asserting a proposition") which occurs in DA/CD only five times. Vanneste argues that L E S S from genuine or plausible mystical experience-- personally "owned"-- but rather a rational defense from "baptized Christian" perspective of such mysticism derived from (Plotinian, Iamblican, Proklan) Neoplatonism AND the language of the Hellenic Mystery Cults. Vanneste DOES NOT argue that Denys never really was a mystic, only that his defense is in line with these essentially Greek-culture postulates.

I have agree-- to a point I shall try to present-- that I rather agree with Vanneste; when Denys wants me to feel ecstatic about Infinities-- as unknowable-- I register "zero" on empathetic co-experience; indeed "zero" in math is related to what I understand much about infinities, that is infinity analogous to a mystical experience first-known as 1/0, 0/0, "sideways-eight" of all types taught in high-school algebra. There is a body of work by a math-guy Cantor, who says that in the "transfinite"/infinities there are only two numbers, "ALEPH," first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and "c" which is like "ALEPH" taken to any power/exponential. My EMOTIONAL reaction to thinking about such infinities is rather a dud, certainly nothing mystical.

Nevertheless, still in near-total agreement with Jesuit Vanneste, who argues that "down-there-deep" there are hints of genuine mysticism in Denys rather hides away under the Platonic-with-some-Aristotelian apologia for mysticism per-se. Yet Vanneste does not mention any of these hints. This beckons me to describe linkages to felt-beyond-reason mysteries in DA=> in reporting these linkages I shall methinks have to report other-- mostly more modern-- linkages-literary and "philosophical"=>

{Martin Heidegger-- "that old Nazi who can hardly be forgiven for his destrutive politics," and Sigmund Freud of-off-beat human insight-- speak of the UNHEIMLICH/"uncanny"/Greek-DEINOS/"awful" as embedded in the human HEIMLICH/"homely"/canny; more into this trend of thought, I am aware that the student or admirer of Freidrich Schleiermacher Rudolf Otto (DAS HEILIGE author) finds the fuel of REAL religious experience to be a sense of MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM ET FASCINENS- trembling and fascination-riveting mystery. This seems to link cognitively to also-VERSTEHEN-PHILOSOPH Max Weber in notions that such emotionally charged experiences are of CHARISMA-- a factor that gets hidden away by "routinization of charisma."} SO=>

I am led to believe-- a mysticism mine-- that the common I daresay uniform tendency of folk is to have a "deep down" of strangeness, an-unspoken, a-mystery/mysticism-not-politically-correct-to-discuss yet real, just not public or politic. THIS STRANGENESS OF THE OTHER AND MINE IS MYSTERIUM TREMENDUM, FASCINENS.

{In such a way I am reminded of Roland Barthes CAMERA LUCIDA, a semiotic study of photography having dual aspect-- the "business-as-usual" of (pop) culture, no-surprises, called STUDIUM; this "normality who-cares" at times-- and only deeply personal rapture-- the PUNCTUM, that which "cuts and stabs us as gut-felt."}

STRANGENES #1=> Dionysius graps me sometimes with gut-words like EROOS (occurring 50X in the Corpus-Dionysiacum), lust yearning not even mentioned in the New Testament-- and rarely in the Septuagint; this word and ERASTOS (occurring 14X), and verb forms ERAOO (10X), EROOTAOO (5X) and adjective EROOTIKOS (11X, including adverb variants with -OOS), THAT IS WITH ALL DENOTATIONS OF THE "EROTIC" NINETY TIMES, COMPARED TO MORE-CHRISTIANIZED AGAPEE (8X) AND COGNATE AGAPEETOS (11X) AND ADVERB AGAPEETOS (2X) AND VERB AGAPAOO (13X), WITH SUM FOR AGAPEEs 34X; this means that DA uses the "hot-word"EROO-" ALMOST THREE TIMES MORE FREQUENTLY THAN AGAPEEs.

STRANGENESS #2=> Diionysius uses the term EKSTASIS-- a word with two edges, good as bliss, bad as madness/insanity/psychosis and words for "hangover" relating to TRUE experilences of the-Godly.

STRANGENESS, other=> WAR POLEMOS as always bringing unified peace (DN 949A), also POLIMEOO (DN 953A); what "smoothss" this (+)-value to war is the notion of equilibrium, as a Godly teleology.

{In other words, "at the front of discourse," Denys is presenting-- as Jesuit Vanneste suggests-- a rational and "intellectualzed" presemtation that MAY NOT refer to an owned mysticism in the sense of the modern "interpersonalism" (Marcel), but in the strangeness that lives in the charisma of every "soul," we can find a "passing-strange" element speaking to an inner UNHEIMLICH of his HEIMLILCH philosophical presentation.It is worded in CD as Routinized discourse about what seems absent in the text, BUT THERE IS A REAL PUNCTURE PUNCTUM RE WHICH HERMENEUTIK CAN "REACH" TENTATIVELY, OR WITH ARTFUL APPROXIMATION.}

vernonlynn stephens sissy

PEACE as the desired want of the ARCHISUNIGOOGOS/Divine

PEACE as
the desired want of the ARCHISUNIGOOGOS/Divine; this seems to be one of the linkages or pathfindings to my present dys regarding how to get to something Transcendent/OUSIOTIKOS as a proper end/TELOS of that excited/yearning Love/EROOS to which-- Denys and Freud agree make the UNHEIMLICH into the HEIMLICH, the Hellish to the Hearth-like;

Divine Names Chapter 11 covers this important topic; I just made a PDF of the entire chapter, with a parallel text from Parker. Divine Names at Migne page 917A (Suchla CD I page 214, Chapter 9), with several wordplays on "equalizing" (ISOS- )by God; as well there are comparable mentions of created Symmetry according to Daele in EH (7X), CH (4X) and DN (2X)-- and as I by a rather hodge-podge approach am poring through DN, these in quicker order of timing "get my attention" (a "rapt attention" at that!)

It would seem at present pre-conclusion that the "Ultimate Concern" for all the "untidy" EROOS is a peace found in equalized symmetry; this would imply that the struggle-for-existence, the aim of "nature red in tooth and claw" would result for the fugitive from such "biology" would be a repose, "let it be," a "KAI SURA SURA," that finds an ultimate end out of jail by blissful rest in A-OK, all is well. This is an A-OK that seems to accept a "reason beyond reason," close to Stoic forbearance, a remaining in a teleological Ultimate awareness of the eirenic, "peace that passes understanding," an EKSTASIS/ecstasy called mad (Ep 9.1112C Migne pagination; Heil page 205 line 2; I just made a PDF for that citation too, using Heil CD2 paralled to respective Parker). This END in madness at equilibrium, peace, ecstasy-of-all-warfare-accomplished (cf. my association to this hearkening to Isaiah  40.2, and toward that citation coming plenary pardon). I must find the ways this PHRONEIN EINEENEE can be attained, a valuable lesson all the way around, yes even to my DING AN SICH.

vernonlynn stephens sissy

"ZUM DING AN SICH"=> THE FOCUS IS ON DENYS

In the back-and-forth of trying connections between WHAT DIONYSIUS IS SAYING, MARCEL IS SAYING, HEIDEGGER IS SAYING, 
 I am now in a back-track, RECOGNIZING THAT THESE ARE REALLY DIFFERENT KINDS OF FRAMING (IN TERMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY) IN PLURAL UTTERANCE.

The point is that-- apart from more-or-less-vague relatedness between the authors, the best linkage possible under any circumstances is to COMPARE, as well (and importantly) to CONTRAST; this can feasibly be done, with validity, but my connection-mental just prior to now, what has to be one-more-intermediate-connection, WAS THAT THERE IS SOME KIND OF (PLATONIC?) TYPOLOGY HERE, OR SAY ARCHETYPE/ANTITYPE RELATION BETWEEN ALL THESE ATTRACTIVE WRITERS' WISDOM.

"ZUM DING AN SICH"=> THE FOCUS IS ON DENYS, NOT THE MODERNS. Denys is a total "optimist" operating on the Platonic model that evil is merely the absence of good=> the PUNCTI, the punctures that stand out in reading the CD is the occasional mention of "hangover" post-ecstasy (KRAIPALEE/KRAIPALAOO=> MT 1033b, EP 9.1113c, the-latter MT 1033c, EP 9.1105B)) verily a feeling that I have "coming down"from my always-falsely-envisioned-ecstasies. Is the "hangover" "dizziness" from METHEE (I have from Thesaurus Linguae Graecae found several such dictionary and text references, see Classroom/Dionysius-Called-Areopagite in my opened Google Doc/Drive account). All the optimism about the beyond-reason Infinities, its glowing pleasure, jams up against "hangover," which over here implies a kind of NOSOS pathology.

Is this an "important" inclusion, or is it merely a flotsam washed up by a productive mind (DA)? In all from this vantage point, Denys has been studiously careful; he uses Christian expressions to speak (from Crypto/hiding) Platonism; KRAIPALEE actually does occur in Luke 21.34, PROSECHETE DE EAUTOIS, MEEPOTE BARUNTHOOSIN UMOON AI KARDIAI EN  K R A I P A L E E  KAI METHEE KAI MERIMAIS BIOOTIKAIS, KAI AIFNIDIOS EF' UMAS EPISTEE EE EEMERA EKEINEE, KJV=> (Words/Logia of Jesus) AND TAKE HEED TO YOURSELVES LEST AT ANY TIME YOUR HEARTS BE OVERCHARGED WITH  S U R F E I T I N G,  AND DRUNKENNESS, AND CARES OF THIS LIFE, AND SO THAT DAY COME UPON YOU UNAWARES." This speaking is about the Coming (Return) of the Son of Man, to be met with prayer and sobriety. If Denys still tries to be/show Christianity in the Ur-mode with Messiah Nazarene, it would still seem that while "surfeiting" is an excess next to (smiles!) "METH INTOXICATION," (here a term that is modern and a linguistic "fish out of water")(but appropriate association with "substance abuse" now!) Bauer Arndt Gingrich say that KRAIPELEE means "both carousing,intoxication," thence "drunken headache, hangover," since meaning "dizziness, staggering" with text "head ceases to function," and mentions citations in Aristophanes, Plutarch, Lucian,Soranus, Aretaeus, Herodian, Isaiah 24.20 (LXX) as well as Luke hereat; also "extravagance in drunkenness and carousing." In all, therefore, the NT one-time mention of KRAIPALEE seems more wrongful and pathological, and OF COURSE Denys tells us in each mention that there is malapropism in attributing such as this term to God.

Four mentions of "hangovering" in the Corpus would not seem much in more than 300 pages of text; but these seem "signal" to me-- that may be my own bias; to compare with other kinds of NOSOS I have taken references from the DN, and in each case a generic NOSOS would seem to be the-least-good from Good Beautiful (God). If this is a non-sequitur in Denys, a real possibility even for careful hu-mans, then take regard; in either assumption that "follows" positive mention of KRAIPALEE or not-so there at this stage of regard be only QUESTIONING. [The use of "semantic domains" per componential-analysis may parse-out clarity re what is meant in these four descriptive words for "hangovering."

vernonlynn stephens sissy