Expressing the Inexpressible in Lyotard and Pseduo-Dionysius: Bearing Witness as Spiritual Exercise

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Testimony demands the witness to demonstrate her knowledge--that knowledge that she must have by the fact of being a witness to something, even if this something exceeds the possibility of expression by any means amenable to verification. Expressing the Inexpressible in Lyotard and Pseudo-Dionysius: Bearing Witness as Spiritual Exercise rigorously studies the inexpressible expression provoked by two illustrative examples: the silenced testimony of the Holocaust survivor, in Jean-Francois Lyotard's The Differend, and the religious faithful, in Pseudo-Dionysius' The Divine Names. Though coming from vastly different philosophical moments, the methods used by Lyotard and Dionysius prove to dissolve the apparent heterogeneity of postmodernism and Neoplatonist Christian mysticism and open radical new lines of dialogue. Melanie Victoria Walton critically evaluates each thinker and tradition, rethinks witnessing, testimony, sublimity, and apophaticism, and then engages them together to forge a new reading of silence and eros. The resulting insights will be especially valuable to students and scholars of Continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, theology and religious studies, medieval studies, and Holocaust studies. Tags: Philosophy, History & Surveys, Post-Structuralism, Modern, Movements EXPRESSING THE INEXPRESSIBLE IN LYOTARD AND PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: What is the Inexpressible Expression? One. Witness and Testimony Prologue to the Problem The Witness and Testimony in Lyotard Heidegger’s Silence Lyotard on Testimonial Narrative Lyotard’s Critique of Heidegger The Witness and Testimony in Pseudo-Dionysius Concluding Remarks Two. Contextualizing Jean-François Lyotard Prologue on Contextualization The Difficulty of Characterization What is Postmodernism? Three. Bearing Witness in The Differend The Differend’s Style and Form The Problem of Bearing Witness Testimony And as Linkage in Gertrude Stein Therapeutic Language Games in Ludwig Wittgenstein Parataxis in Theodor Adorno Authorization of the Addressee in the Cashinahua Concluding Remarks Four. Contextualizing Pseudo-Dionysius The Difficulty of Characterization Neoplatonism Mysticism Five. Bearing Witness in The Divine Names The Divine Names’ Style and Form Witnessing and Testimony Naming Names Subsistence and Participation Good and Light Beauty and Eros Evil and Proportionate Privation Mystical Language and Spiritual Exercise Six. Silence and Eros Introduction to a Last/Further Solution The Symbiosis of Silence and Eros Lyotard on the Possibility of a Just Silence For the Love of God Conclusion: The Expression of the Inexpressible Bibliography Index About the Author