Mystical Discourses in Philosophy - Essay Example

Divine Bodies: Mystical Dis s in Philosophy Call for a divine is standard fare for all schools of philosophy of religion. However, when it comes to Irigaray's1 view of divinity, the issue can hardly be brought down to usual feministic struggle with metaphysical identities as imposed by patriarchal culture. New interpretations of Biblical studies proposed by Irigaray are of vital importance for contemporary society, which seldom takes into consideration gender when analyzing philosophy of religion. Luce Irigaray is far less concerned with giving certain definitions to the divine, describing its functions or features, than with proving logical necessity for the existence of the divine. From time to time, she does offer interpretations of the issue, at least for the female population; however, not for interpretation itself, but rather as means to realize the depth of the concept in relation to feministic movement. Women have been multiply excluded for centuries in the normal life of society. Going even further then this, monotheistic religions outlawed the concept of female divinity, thus leading to alienation of women on a transcendental level and placing on female population the role of guardians of unethical societies. Luce Irigaray conceives of the divine as the ultimate beginning a society cannot exist without. Divine is not some kind of force, but rather a medium through which women can finally begin to communicate and relate to each other without their will being tied to the will of men. This concept rests on a presupposition, that men have defined own gender to be representative of the whole humanity, from now and on women are sentenced to embody the masculine view of the world. "By reducing matriarchal society to the kind of "Prehistory" that Luce Irigaray identifies as a partial, reductive, and fruitless conception of History. She gives credence to the idea that patriarchy is... the only History possible." (Murphy, P. 1999) In general, the conclusions of Irigaray can be brought down to the following three ideas: in the first place, the masculine image of divine God should be nullified; second of all - the status of a woman has to be equal to the status of divine, as woman is a transcendental being; finally, the divine can be interpreted as a new sexual ethical relationship between a man and a woman. Ideas of Luce Irigaray should be viewed in terms of philosophical concept of libidinal materialism expressed by Georges Bataille2: extreme states of consciousness, violence and eroticism, serve as communicative channel between humans and God, "For Bataille, reason becomes the shadow of a violence that directs itself toward a formless, nameless freedom that he will call "the sacred."" (McConnel, W. 1997) Bataille's primary interest lies in defining the ways this "communication" was produced through religious ceremonies. Luce Irigaray further develops this viewpoint adjusting it to the feministic ideas and treats connection of women with divinity as a genuinely free way of self expression and communication. Luce Irigaray interprets explicit eroticism as a sign of social failure to provide an opportunity for self actualization to women. The major difference between the concepts of divine as expressed by Jalal al-Din Rumi3 and Luce Irigaray is rooted in individualistic and communistic ways of thinking. The psychological thinking of Lucy Irigaray involves around finding oneself, whereas Rumi accepts unconditional submission to the will of God. The goal of human life in terms of Rumi's poetry can de defined as permanent adoration of divinity. Even though both philosophers are attempting to reinvent the identity of a human being by establishing a connection with God, Rumi is doing it through the condition of completeness in which personality and individualism are lost: "is a narrative of connectedness rather than separatism." (Hassan, W. 2002) Whereas Luce Irigarays' writings emphasize individualism the whole idea of feminism is based on. In this case, the views of Rumi are much closer to Georges Bataille then to those expressed by Irigaray, as even though the initial strike of Bataille is freedom of personality, this type of freedom is obtained through an instant connect with the sacred. What should be further noted is that the Islamic religion confronts us with the absence of either female or male God. Islamic theologians, of whom one of the brightest representatives is Rumi, make no judgment about gender, the books are unsexed. Allah has a gender-neutral image simply because divinity is above gender. Sufism identifies the creative aspect of the divinity as being feminine, merciful: "The Prophet said that women totally dominate men of intellect and possessors of hearts. But ignorant men dominate women, for they are shackled by an animal ferocity. They have no kindness, gentleness or love, since animalism dominates their nature. She is the radiance of God..." (Rumi, J.1968) There is no such a notion as the debate over women's ordination in Islam for one simple reason: Islam does not ordain anyone, neither male, nor female. It is interesting to note, that even though the Muslim religion is genderless, the society is quite the opposite, as rights of women are widely violated. However, the problem is not rooted in religious issues, but rather goes from within - socioeconomic and traditional aspects. The idea of gender neutral religion echoes in the works of Luce Irigaray, as this is the initial strike of the author - the acceptance of women into the divine. Marguerite Porete4 "mystically oriented form of post-modern thought is the most suggestive one for rethinking the radicalism of the Divine Mystery as positive Incomprehensibility." (Tracy, D. 2000) One of the most important contributions of Porete is a tractate on perceiving the "self" as the reflection of God. Self is the mirror of the divine, however, in no way can be awarded the same status with the divine. Porete was one of the first writers, who explored divinity in terms of ideas that now are called feminism and, consequently, paid a high price for being the first. Porete concentrates on the issue of trinity: "The first trinity is that of mind, knowledge and love (mens, notitia et amor). The mind comes to know itself and, in that, love itself. The same basic idea underlies the second trinity of memory, intelligence and will (mernoria, intelligentia et voluntas)." (Randall, C. 1994) Porete does not distinguish between the one and the many constitutes of the trinity, but rather emphasizes the expansion of space around and among the parts of trinity. A soul, in accordance with Porete's reasoning, is in the stage of instant questioning own position and relationship to the divine. The state of being one with the divine takes place in an idealized location, where space and language become one and "a specialized spiritual language translates Trinitarian speech Porete's embodiment of theology derives from a time- and tradition-honored perspective." (Randall, C. 1994) The ideas of Porete echo in the works of Irigaray centuries after. The lack of language as mediation between divine will and womanhood result in alienation not only from religion, but also from women themselves consequently. Without the divine dialectic being translated in space, as stated by Porete, the souls and the trinity are not able to interpenetrate. This idea serves as a base for Irigaray to build an argument of inability of women for spiritual self actualization without the new, non-masculine means of communication with the divine being involved. And it is not enough to just eliminate the influence of a "master", as this will not result in going back to authentic communication of women. Both Irigaray and Bataille go on sketching out a theory of eroticism, witchcraft, violence as means of communication with the divine; they define Porete's informational channel between souls and trinity. Porete also defines the channel, even though in this case the channel is spiritual sight: "spiritual sight puns with Porete's topographic notion of "site," for what the soul sees ("l'ame voit") creates a way forward ("voie") for her to attain the divine kingdom". (Randall, C. 1994) The reasoning beneath is the same in cases of both Porete and Irigaray, the difference is only in forms: spiritual sight and language, while both are only the means to obtain the divine. Porete, unlike Irigaray, did not distinguish between masculine and feminine "spiritual sight", she was the one to introduce the very concept itself that was further developed by feministic movement. If one were to ask the interpretation of the divine as understood by Grace Jantzen5, the most probable reply to that question would be pantheism. The divine cannot be reduced to physical world, being immanent and omnipresent the divine is the world itself and all beings within and beyond it. Divinity is brought into the world through us, as we are part of it. Jantzen does not emphasize the transcendence of God and does not separate God and world. If contrasted by the interpretation of divinity by Luce Irigaray, Jantzen's divine is broader, it includes and goes beyond Irigaray's divine: "sensible transcendental is a divine which does not remove us from corporeality, but discovers divinity in the depths of the flesh." (Robbins, B. 2000) Jantzen's divine is all-inclusive makes no distinction between the genders, so the problem raised by Irigaray - women being deprived of the divine beginning is not applicable to the views of Jantzen. However, she raises another, even more complicated problem: the transformation of masculine imaginary, and thus offers a more radical solution. If to choose the view that is most consistent with Irigaray's interpretation of the divine matter, the ideas of Jantzen have to be emphasized. Jantzen synthesizes Irigaray's views and goes further proposing a new imaginary of the religion. She believes that over saturation with death and violence subtends the masculine imaginary. If the current symbolic order is to be ever transformed, it is of vital importance to change this imaginary. Such qualities as sympathy, understanding are attributed to female population, and Motherhood as a way of divine communication among women in Jantzen's philosophy determine the transformation of masculine imaginary. Jantzen restates the argument in a more broad way: the whole object of the belief is male, thus has to be reconstructed, whereas Irigaray takes a more passive position. Jantzen is much more radical, she contradicts Irigaray in that the modern belief has to be based on birth rather then on death (Irigaray, Bataille) as means to re-establish the masculine imaginary; life instead of death through sacrifice is emphasized. Ideology of Jantzen can be further traced to Marguerite Porete: "Jantzen powerfully shows that Marguerite's supposed "heresy" represented her resistance to the male-dominated doctrinal control of the Christian symbolic imagination as well as the male control of the institutional church." (Karafin, B. 2004) Marguerite Porete "seems to represent for Jantzen a kind of feminist mystical-political prophecy in which the injustices of state and church are contested by means that took the form of mystical discourses on the experience of God". (Karafin, B. 2004) If to view the three philosophers in terms of evolution of feministic thought, one should start with Porete and the idea of feminism in the context of fourteenth century France further continuing on to Lucy Irigaray and finishing with Jantzen as the final stage of evolution of feministic theism. The mother-daughter relationship in the works of Luce Irigaray should be given particular attention when attempting to define divinity as it is viewed by the author. Luce Irigaray creates an analogy between the concept of God the Father - Son relationship and the relationship of Mother and the Daughter. Defining the divine, Irigaray uses the concept of divine space that occurs in the mother-daughter relationship that is considered to be sacred. This concept can be traced back to the definition of trinity presented by Marguerite Porete, even though there is no the issue of gender involved; this concept is also rooted in the works of Jalal al-Din Rumi: woman as a source of life, kindness, gentleness attributed to the image of God and, consequently, the type of mother-daughter relationship between God and humans; Grace Jantzen emphasizes the concept of birth rather then violence as divine communication between God and humanity. The concept of divine space formed by mother-daughter relationship, philosophy of sexual difference based on highly ethical relationship of men and women, concept of divinity of women as the source of life, concept of unifying divine that exists for its own sake, divine as a path to self-love and self actualization form a complicated description of divine. Divine can hardly be defined in words for the sake of the definition, the term is understood on practice as applied to various life situations. Religion implies the moral code to be followed and, consequently, the understanding of self and roles of others. However, the female population is deprived of an ability to define itself as such, womanhood has neither subjectivity nor objectivity. Having no access to the divine, a woman has no goal; life is brought down to pointless meandering and can be dangerous for male population as well: "The fact that there is no scene of representation that would allow the female child's accession to subjectivity threatens everyone in the social realm--men and women. The repression of the female comes at a cost to the male--he must repress the guilt that ensues from his denial of his sisters', his mother's, or his wife's full participation in the social realm." (Hansen, J. 2000) Will of a woman is tied to the will of man. For centuries female population was not allowed to even speak the word of the divine during Christian ceremonies until the very recent times, when, finally, religion has begun to listen to the appeal of own logical reasoning. Undoubtedly, this can be considered a step forward; however, when looking at the issue from the point of Luce Irigaray, partial acceptance of women into the sacred is nothing but another act of equalization. Perhaps, the situation is getting even more complicated due to unwillingness of society to accept still new and revolutionary view proposed by modern feministic movement. The cores of religion stay masculine and, even though not explicitly discriminated now, women are still deprived of own identity, as they have no access to the divine. Women need a divine example to which they can relate own identity. Without proper actions taken, the search and speculation will be endless and, unfortunately, pointless. Works Cited Sufi, Quran, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings Sufi, Quran, Miraj, Poetic and Theological Writings. Trans. Michael A. Sells. New York: Paulist Press, 1996. Hansen, Jennifer L. "Our "Salvation": Women's Intervention in Philosophy." Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society 5.1 (2000): 77. Hassan, Wail S. "Arab-American Autobiography and the Reinvention of Identity: Two Egyptian Negotiations." Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics (2002): 7+. Karafin, Brian. "Mysticism and Social Transformation." Buddhist-Christian Studies (2004): 264+. Mcconnell, Will. "Blake, Bataille and the Accidental Processes of Material History in 'Milton." CLIO 26.4 (1997): 449+. Murphy, Patricia. "The Gendering of History in She." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 39.4 (1999): 747. Randall, Catharine. "Changing Places: Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhard and the Question of Perspective." The Romanic Review 85.3 (1994): 341+. Robbins, Brent Dean. "Schreber's Soul-Voluptuousness: Mysticism, Madness and the Feminine in Schreber's Memoirs." Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 31.2 (2000): 117. Rm. First Selection, Poems 1-200 First Selection, Poems 1-200. Trans. A. J. Arberry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Tracy, David. "The Post-Modern Re-naming of God as Incomprehensible and Hidden." Cross Currents Spring 2000: 240. Read More