Dr. Eric Perl on Philosophical Mysticism and "Why is there anything at all?"

Dr. Eric Perl of Loyola Marymount University joined us to discuss his recent article, “Into the Dark: How (Not) to Ask ‘Why Is There Anything at All?’” from the book Mystery and Intelligibility: History of Philosophy as Pursuit of Wisdom. Dr. Perl argues that the question "Why is there anything at all?" led philosophers such as Plotinus, Proclus, and Aquinas into the "darkness and silence of philosophical mysticism," i.e., a mysticism founded "on strictly rational grounds."

[@davitchaganava9622]

this channel as a whole is a pure gold. I am Orthodox Christian from the republic of Georgia. its a small country with really old orthodox church. all love to u guys!

[@Joeonline26]

This was great. Perl is such a fantastic communicator of these complex topics

[@dimitriospallis8757]

Well done on this video! Perl is an interesting thinker indeed.

[@quasimodo6940]

Holy cow, Eric Perl on youtube?! Amazing, will give a good listen!

[@阳明子]

Such a fantastic discussion. I have come back to this many times.

[@YehudHalevi]

As Damascius noted however, we can go further even than the first principle, by considering the whole, the all, which encompasses the principle and what is from it. This is ultimately an aporia at the core of the notion of principle itself.

[@ruhdandoujon6310]

It would have been so interesting to have Dr. Perl's opinion on the concept of "causa-sui" in Spinoza which perhaps makes thinkable a God which is not "a first principle" nor "an origin". I think we cannot dismiss self-causation as incoherent and unintelligible in our time without taking the ontology expressed in Ethics into consideration. It may also be that the "self-caused" God of Spinoza is more soothing to the mind , as looking for the "uncaused" God seems , according to Dr. Perl , to "lead into the dark" in an infinite regress !

[@claudiodeheredia212]

Really really extraordinarily wonderful !! thank you Dionysius Circle !! Just one question: Could we take "the good" as fundamntal or do we have to also negate it? Does "the good" necessarily imply relation or could we by any means try to put it as "the absolute"?

[@quasimodo6940]

I remember Perl saying in Theophany that calling the Good, the Good, is to simply say that all things desire it.

[@Robb3348]

In this moment, do you experience your own existing as good? How do you know it's good? Is its goodness (for you) not an un-mediated axiom of truth? What if you had never conceived of not-existing? (whoops, now you just did lol) (or did you? is it possible to conceive of not-existing?) To Plotinus, the "Good" is the last conception of G-d to be relinquished, but relinquish it we must, precisely in order to know It as the non-negatable Good.

[@mudhen9295]

I love Perl's books. Does anyone else get the feeling this is all a very beautiful and slow boat to Taoism? "The name that cannot be named is not the eternal name...Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding."

[@Robb3348]

hello brother, I love Perl's books, too! The second chapter of the Tao Te Ching says, "being and non-being create each other," and this approach to "pairs of opposites" is quite a weight-bearing part of the whole Taoist philosophy. To my mind, this reification of non-being, and putting non-being on an equal plane to being, is an irreconcilable contradiction to Parmenides' and Perl's understanding that non-being simply doesn't exist. I think this very issue is a crucial point of contention between the two philosophies, which requires a lot of attention. That same chapter of TTC has a long list of contraries which are posited as mutually supporting. I could possibly go along with "long and short create each other," but not being and non-being, and not good and evil--I stand on Platonic grounds here. IOW there is no "form of evil," nor a "form of non-being," to speak platonically. "Is" there? And I think how one answers this question ramifies throughout the rest of one's philosophy. Another approach to the same issue would be to consider the difference between "good and evil create each other" and the neo-platonic *privatio boni* doctrine, which, because it refuses to grant evil the status of being correlative to the good, and having a "substantial" identity as good has, describes evil only as the presence of "less good." I think this is a crucial difference between true metaphysical wisdom (Platonism and its descendants) and other candidates for wisdom. Gnosticism and Jung, for example, agree with Taoism, while I have the classical metaphysical tradition, but also Ayn Rand (gulp) on my side (probably because, despite her atheist materialism, she was so Aristotelian). Yet another approach would be to ask oneself, "Can I conceive of the Good without reference to evil?" I say yes. What do you think?

[@mudhen9295]

@@Robb3348 That's all well-stated but, no, I can't really imagine any mind-concept (like the Good) without reference to other concepts. Platonism endlessly separates the real from the unreal, who can keep track of all that? I'm more inclined to just grant non-being. In a vacuum, matter spontaneously emerges from nothing and returns to nothing or non-being. I think of non-being as like zero --- a condition of the being of number. No zero, no numbers, but zero is nothing. Non-being is a condition of being, and so on. I also reject Aristotle's idea that nothing comes from nothing. Greek metaphysics of this sort seems to me to be lost in questions about causality that are only interesting if one thinks the cause of something can only be a discrete something else. That's a lonely metaphysics of separation. In my homespun theology, God/Tao is reality itself. God, in my view, loves people by becoming them. Our separation from God/Tao is thus an illusion born of a deep confusion about identity and causality.

[@Robb3348]

@@mudhen9295 Hi, I like your way of thinking, and I think I basically understand it, even if I don't share it. As for Platonism separating the real from the unreal, I would encourage you to read Perl's book "Thinking Being" (available online to read for free). In his pellucid prose, he explains how Plato is not the dualist he is usually made out to be. The Forms do not exist in a separate, non-physical world, but are the elements of intelligibility found in the sense report. Your philosophy reminds me of Badiou; have you read him? He is a kind of transformed Platonist in one sense, but he takes "the empty set" (the void) as the ur-non-reality of non-existent existence. The idea that "nothing comes from nothing" is an intuitive realization, whose force is in its tautological obviousness. It goes back to Parmenides' crucial insight. I think the fundamental difference between that insight and your guiding premise comes down to the idea of "polar opposites," found very crucially in both Heraclitus and Taoism. I followed this philosophy for decades, then slowly found my way over to (broadly speaking) ur-Platonism, and Perl was the main impetus for my finally being able to feel comfortable there. Are Being and non-being really inseparable and (as the Taoists say) "mutually arising"? Is non-being an existent thing? I thing-k not. ;) But I find more common ground with you when you say "God loves people by becoming them." I agree! And we're both God, so... But what's the relation between this God you refer to, and the vacuum?

[@mudhen9295]

@@Robb3348 We are definitely fishing in the same waters.. I agree that Plato isn't a dualist in the sense of positing a collection of "forms" separate from incarnation. I do think he is a dualist in the sense of opposing the real to the unreal. A little Zen may help. Huang Po: "If only you will avoid concepts of existence and non-existence in regard to absolutely everything, you will then perceive the Dharma...Away with your dualism, your likes and dislikes. Every single thing is just the One mind." Reality (or God/Way) is not defined against an unreality or vacuum. God/Way is empty -- and overflows. Thus the vacuum/void isn't ontologically discrete and the overflow has no separate being of its own. In short, it is an infinitely intimate universe. So...try not to kill anything. 🙂

[@Robb3348]

@@mudhen9295 To say, as you do here, that "Reality is not defined against an unreality or vacuum," is quite profound, and is the essence of what I'm trying to say to you! So we agree? There is nothing to contrast Being with, and no need for there to be any such thing; there is not even a thingified "nothing" to contrast Being with. This is really an insight into thought and language. Thought always asserts the existence of something; to think of a thing is to think of it as existing, even if you say "a unicorn doesn't exist," you're first positing the concept of an existing unicorn, then negating it. "Nothing" isn't there to be thought; to use the word "nothing" is a misleading misuse of language, an excrescence of signification, a disallowed "move" in the sense of a chess move, not a "well-formed sentence" in the linguistic sense, even though it sounds legitimate. So the next level is to ask, "Does negation exist?" KWATZ!!!

[@ElectrickSoundz]

Learning is fun too

[@koffeeblack5717]

"They [analytic philosophers] are unable to understand the question"-Precisely why I abandoned contemporary analytic philosophy.

[@MysterMalik]

Even if they understood it, the answer doesn't exist, it can't be known or supported by evidence.

[@阳明子]

@@MysterMalik Is logical argumentation not considered some form of evidence?

[@PeterStrider]

The answer to the mystery why scientists and analytical philosophers are so unable to even grasp the meaning of the question is answered I think by Iain McGilchrist and his exposition of the hemispheric bifurcation of brain focus. The left hemisphere prioritises analysis, reductively breaking down reality into ever smaller particles. This is exceedingly useful for science (and analytic philosophy) but needs to be balanced by the right hemisphere which grasps reality as wholes. The scientist a d analytic philosopher have over developed their left hemispheric attentional focus to the virtual exclusion of right hemispheric perspectives. The logic of reduction is a left hemisphere strength. We need to help them to engage their right hemisphere and to conceive aspects of being which are unifying, living, holistic, experiential. Something akin to Zen koans to shake their perspectival habits. Intriguingly the paradoxes of Russell and Godel which should have alerted the scientific community to the fact they are on an inadequate and incomplete pathway to knowledge of reality, are simply ignored. I really appreciate this interview with Dr Perl and his writings. I would love to see him engage with Dr McGilchrist's work as it might illuminate his appreciation and understanding of the difference of actual thinking of modern compared with ancient thinkers (who were much more balanced in their hemispheric attention)

[@ThisDoctorKnows]

@@PeterStriderGood points. Thanks!

[@ALavin-en1kr]

The problem is ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. When that is solved we will see and understand the ‘top down’ perspective of religion as opposed to ‘the bottom up perspective of Darwinism and materialism’. Consciousness; mind; magnetism; electromagnetism; electricity; elements. Materialism starts in the mid-nineteenth century with the elements and posited evolution from the bottom up. There was little to no understanding then of the finer forces and the role they played in the origin and evolution of what we experience at the elemental; physical level. I would disagree that God cannot be something. The perspective in Eastern religion and philosophy is of God as: Consciousness; Existence; Bliss. We share in two of these but not the latter yet; sense experience substitutes for that. Today in philosophy there is ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. Consciousness is the key; Consciousness being all there is as: Consciousness: fundamental; Mind; elemental, emerging with quantum events; the material or physical; elemental also emerging with quantum events. Consciousness; Mind; Forces: Elementals. We should start at the beginning which is not the elements; there was no quantum, no space,, no mind no anything at the beginning. The Bible has it right; although in the metaphoric language of religion. ‘In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ Consciousness; Mind; Word; Vibration and manifestation according to prototypes based on Consciousness: Mind; Thought and Expression. God’s thoughts are things. Fourteen versions of the human to a uniquely human prototype (Let Us create man in our image) in a universal cycle, from the perspective of higher age religion and philosophy. Do not fall into the trap of materialism. A wizard threatened to banish Merlin to the earth. We do not want that to be our fate. The physical is our coat, it is not our life, our energy, our souls; the individualized sparks that came from Cosmic Consciousness which has been called God. We should push back against the unconscious; mindless; materialism that is always trying to raise its ugly head. Today in the form of eliminative materialism; the latest version of atheistic materialism. Whether we believe in Satanic forces or not, we can understand that it is important to avoid another ism taking over minds and causing untold harm, as with materialistic communism. To avoid suffering we have to be fully conscious; mindful and push back against the constant attempts of materialism and its proponents to control the narrative and the confusion, suffering and darkness that comes with that perspective. In addition, next in the pipeline is trans humanism. So be fully conscious, read the philosophy of the ancients before the dark age dimmed human intelligence. Avoid the false prophets of materialism, they can only do harm as they are far, very far, from the truth or of comprehending the nature of Reality.

[@MightyTastyGuitar]

amazing conversation. thank you.

[@exquofonte]

Hi guys, I agree with Perl. My question is, why do people constantly say that Aristotle taught against Plato's essential teaching on the forms? Is this an issue of translation? Texts being misattributed to Aristotle? Something else?

[@Robb3348]

In my fallible and revisable understanding, if one take Plato's doctrine as positing a literal "other-worldly" dimension as the dwelling-place of the Forms, then that contrasts with Aristotle's position that the forms only exist in particulars. But Perl's much more sophisticated position is that the Forms are forms of Intelligibility itself, and that sense-impressions do have intelligibility (though not pristine in that that they are forms of matter, which involves some torpor and unclarity). So it isn't so much a matter of this-worldly material forms vs. the "heavenly" (spiritual) Forms, as it is simply a matter of Intelligibility per se, no matter where one finds it. Read Perl's "Thinking Being" for a great exposition of all of this.

[@Robb3348]

Just as the classic Platonic "move" is to contemplate several beautiful things, and then to up-level one's consciousness to the intuition of Beauty Itself, in which the beautiful things all participate, but which none of them ARE; in the same way one can consider several determinate things, all of which "exist" (determinately), and then move to the intuition of generalized, undetermined Existence Itself in which they participate, but which none of them are. *This Existence Itself is not determinate, not limited, and therefore does not "exist" in the same sense that determinate things do. To think that it does, is a category error, or a confusion of levels-of-abstraction; this is directly relevant to the issue of "univocity of being."* (So, following on Parmenides, not only does non-existence not exist, but neither does existence!!) I take this to be Aquinas' procedure in speaking of ipsum esse. IOW first let's consider, sequentially, the "what-it-is" of a roller skate, a pope, and a porn star, and then see that they all share the predicate of "existing as some determinate thing (what-it-is) or other", and then graduate to the intuition of *"what" existence (the general property, common to the pope and the roller skate, of existing as a what-it-is) ITSELF is*, or the sheer "THAT-it-is"-NESS (wow! what a nominalization!) of each of those instances. I think the core intuition of the (neo-)Platonic tradition is that "THAT-it-is-ness" is not itself a determinate thing, is not itself "an" existent, is not some"thing" of which we can specify "WHAT-it-is." (This is tautologically apparent to thoughtful intuition, is it not? And is not this, in turn, a triumph for so-called "rationalism"?) (Actually, I take this to be the meaning of Heidegger's critique of substance ontology: there is no such "thing", no such "existent," as "that-it-is-NESS.") This is IMHO the key to apophaticism as well as to Aquinas' positing of "ipsum esse," or being-itself, or G-d, which is not itself an existing, determinate thing, or (one could say more startlingly) which does not exist. *God does not exist in the sense that beings exist*; that's the denial of Scotistic univocity. He is not the Greatest Being who rules over other beings, for he is not a being among beings but rather the un-thinged, indeterminate or pan-determinate, source (or condition) of being; "Deus non est in genere" (as Karl Barth said, quoting Aquinas). What's interesting to me is to juxtapose this with Heidegger, who believed that the entire western tradition failed to grasp unthinged being as such, but only beings. I believe, per contra, that the western tradition at its best (and as pellucidly described by Perl) DID understand this, and therefore escapes H's critique of "onto-theology."

[@carrara_joy]

Robb, is Being as such really non-existent in an apophatic sense? When Aristotle starts talking about Metaphysics, he defines it as the science that studies Being as such, Being as such being (I know kkk) the object of intelligence par excellence. If the all-encompassing object that we can witness is Being, than it must be an individual thing - the thing prior to all. I think that the apophaticism is restricted to the One which is beyond Being. There's a phrase from The Cloud of Unknowing saying: "What the intellect cannot graps the will embraces". Would you agree with me? I really liked your comment.

[@Robb3348]

@@carrara_joy Hi Carrara, I hear you, it seems like Being would be the ultimate object of intelligence. Eric Perl is the best expositor of why it's actually not; check out his book Thinking Being (free to read online). What did you think of the arguments I've already made on this issue?

[@carrara_joy]

@@Robb3348, I really liked the parallel you made between Diotima's Ladder of Love and the way to understand Being as such. The thing that I didn't quite agree with was your equating univocity of Being with the One. As far as I understand, Being is said in the same voice in all instances (be the object corporeal bodies, concepts, our will etc) because of Plato's definition of Being in the Sophist as anything which affects another or is affected by another. Since we witness bodies, concepts, our faculties etc, then they are for this very fact real in the same way, regardless of any type of perceptual intensity we might attribute greater to some and lesser to others. When Plato's Parmenides talks about a subject that appears and does not appear, is and is not, he says that about the One, not about Being. In the Republic, Plato says that Good is beyond Being, and Giovanni Reale equates the One in the Parmenides dialogue, the One of the unwritten doctrines of Plato and the Good. Plato even gave a public talk about the Good once and then decide never to talk about the subject again, except with his best disciples. For me, at least, to talk in Saint Thomas' way, in which God is ipsum esse, seems to erase this very importante nuance. In the Bible, there is occurances in Greek of the word 'epiousios' (Super-Substance, Super-Being), which I take to mean the One. God is Being, but is not only Being, but the Good-One beyond Being as well (one cannot think of any being without that being being one, not of one unless as a being, but the distincion is still helpful because the one is not a being nor Being as such, but 'something' even nobler).

[@Robb3348]

@@carrara_joy Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Do you hold, with Duns Scotus, that God "exists" in precisely the same sense as a finite being exists, or do you go with Aquinas in saying that God's existence is only *analogous* to the finite being's existence?

[@carrara_joy]

@@Robb3348, I hold Duns Scotus' univocity of Being, for apophatic (negative) and superlative theology talk about God through denial (God is not Being) and double denial (God is not non-Being, but Supra-Being), so there is no reason to divide cataphatic (affirmative) theology (God is just) from regular statements such as that man is just, since every statement in affirmative theology is inherently provisory.

[@richardlludlow6163]

Hello, I have recently joined your youtube group. I liked the interview with Eric Perl. Can you recommend a way for me as a beginner to read and understand Dionysius. I am well read in philosophy and in the last five years the rich Catholic Western tradition. I have Mystagogy a Monastic Reading of Dionysius by Golitzin. It’s ok. but I would like a book with longer passages of important texts sorted by subjects and then some commentary and analysis. any thoughts? Thanks Richard ludlow

[@Robb3348]

Hello, not sure if you realize that Perl himself wrote a book on Dionysius called "Theophany," which can be found to read online. It is surely the best book on the subject. It emphasizes D's continuity with the "classical" metaphysical tradition (as wonderfully explained in another online Perl book, "Thinking Being"). It does not emphasize the specifically Christian or devotional content of D's thought--only the philosophical.

[@teologen]

Could someone point out exactly where Aquinas says to deny even esse? I'm confident that he would but I can't find it said explicitly.

[@teologen]

Never mind. Just saw it on the screen. Citation from his commentary on the Sentences. I had just listened to it in the car before.

[@peterprochilo4555]

Good discussion. Seems like this reading of The One's relationship to Being has parallel's to Russell's set paradox...

[@mandys1505]

at 10:32 great quote

[@Castorps_Shadow]

Would God be able to be or to be not insofar as he chose to create or to not create? In the first case, he would be the negative principle, in the second, he would be itself (and in itself), as there would be no being conditioned by him.

[@nathanland8246]

1:15:23 - Might be able to signify this in translation by rendering the pronoun “THAT” similarly to the Tetragrammaton in English translations of Scripture.

[@Spookyjordan]

Is this an Orthodox channel?

[@jacob6088]

I am who I am

[@Robb3348]

...and are you also self-diffusing, sharing your "I am who am"-ness with all others, without respect to persons?

[@frederickanderson1860]

After 2 world wars and the 2 atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the holocaust and what can philosophers make any sense of it all; even Bertrand Russell failed despite his logical mathematical brain.

[@Joeonline26]

Russell and all the others in the analytic tradition are fools

[@poimandres]

God is not an intentional object, not an object of experience or consciousness - nor experience or consciousness ’as such’ (as if there ever could be experience or consciousness without content!)

[@jasonshapiro9469]

By anything i mean lip smacking sounds

[@R14-m4z]

These are just silly word games. God can be the proginetor of the material world by virtue of being a) an immaterial transcendent being while simultaneously not being the primordial "force" of its own existence. The primordial force which acts as a kind of progenitor of god itself, can just simply be stated to be a singular universal substance/being that simply predates the creation of our current cosmological existence. It's sufficient to simply state that it is impossible to know how god emerges from this primordial state as it's a ridiculous question to ask in the first place.

[@MikeTooleK9S]

these guys are the scholars of people who died a long time ago and are playing silly word games. I think they are talking about dead people and their philosophies. Those dead people were some cringe ass losers though huh and they bear the responsibility for so much evil in my world today ~by the power pf greyskull

[@R14-m4z]

@@MikeTooleK9S I'm saying that the primordial substance that existed before god emerged from it is unknowable and universal since God itself is "unknowable" from our mere mortal perspective yet is certainly "universal" in a Platonic sense. Any other answer is simply rediculous pontification, or mistaken. God cannot create itself so must either have existed forever, or must be created by something else. However, by stating that god is created by something, this leaves open the door to a solution to the problem of evil as the entities that constitute evil itself are explained as a transcendental counterforce which emerges from this same primordial substance. Out of convenience and a lack of a substantial/reasonable alternative I state this must therefore be the solution.

[@link6891]

Everything you just talked about is a being, and so is not pertinent to the above conversation

[@R14-m4z]

@@link6891 You're just playing obtuse word games at this point.

[@link6891]

@@R14-m4z not understanding what i mean =/= me playing word games