Manoussakis Libre

8/10/2019 Manoussakis Libre

1/13

On the Flesh of the Word

Incarnational Hermeneutics

J O H N PA N T E L E I M O N M A N O U S S A K I S

We have to begin by reminding ourselves of this simple truth: that theWord became fleshit was not the flesh that became word, it was notthe carnal that became spiritual or must become spiritual. Contrary to theusual accusations brought against Christianity, to spiritualize the flesh andits affectations would simply amount to getting Christianity backwardsit

would mean to undo Christianity and worse in its name. Finally, it wouldmean to unravel Christianitys absolutely nonnegotiable claim, the claimby which Christianity stands or falls, that the Word became flesh.

I do not mean to dismiss or ignore the long and various Christian tra-ditions that seek to do precisely this and, what is worse, from within theChurch. But this was because already from the beginning the enemy, so tospeak, was within the Churchs citadel. In fact, that very citadel was erectedby some of the bestafter all they are still standingmaterial: namely,and I am about to point fingers now, Platos sublation and incorporation

of cultic and mythic religion to a new absolute system, though the best ofPlatonists would be rightly offended by the word system here, which,to the extent it incorporated religionorgiastic religion Patoka saysbecame a higher, subtler, more sophisticated form of religion that most ofyou might recognize even today in Christianity.

e question is of course quite old: it goes back to Luthers indignationwith reason (a whore) and even further back to Tertullians famous ques-tion: what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens? Yet, what we havehere, what these initial remarks open for us, is more than a question, it is

F6561 Kearney master.indb 306F6561-Kearney-master.indb 306 10/9/14 1:51:32 PM10/9/14 1:51:32 PM


2/13


a fascinating history of readings and appropriations, or rather, of misread-ings and misappropriations.

We have forgotten that the task we were given was not to turn the fleshinto spirit, the sensible into suprasensiblethat, after all, has proven tobe the easy part and, as we have already mentioned, others were better atitrather, the task we were given was the far more diffi cult operation ofincarnating the spiritual, rendering the suprasensible sensible, which is thesensible thing to do, and, scandal of all scandals, which Kierkegaard nevertired of reminding us, of particularizing the abstract and universal.

e very practice of hermeneuticsretains some of theambiguity discerned here. To be a hermeneut could mean to take Hermesas your guide, to function in place of Hermes, that is, like the god oftranslation. I use this term in the broadest possible sense: to move from

one place to another, to transfer, meta-pherein(the metaphoric is an indis-pensable part of the hermeneutic operation), to render the one by meansof the other, , thus the allegorical, and so on. But fromwhere and to where? Hermes, again, provides us with a clue: Hermes wasbetter known as the guide of the soulsliterally the onewho leads the souls from their carnal dwellings, their somatic tombs, to theplace of the spirits, to the spiritual (and invisible, thus, to Hades).

Hermeneutics, therefore, has a share in the blame for disincarnate ab-straction. In the most literal sense, the process in question is that of textualinterpretation, transferring and translating the flesh of the letter into the

sense of the spirit: to its meaning. us, all too often the hermeneut can be-come blind to the visible, to the word as written sign. And then, the incar-nation of sound and thought must be reversed: what the hermeneut sees iswhat cannot be seen, the invisible or the spiritual. Hermeneuts would readbetween the lines, behind the words, outside the text (hors texte) but neverthe signor, more precisely, what they take to be only a signifier that onemust pass over in a hurry, for a higher place (anagoge), a different place (al-legory), throwing the written word aside (parable), carrying ceaselessly thisprocess of spiritualization, textual rumination, chewing the text but refus-

ing to incorporate it. Hermeneutics can become the reverse of digestion, aprocess of excretion, spitting out, throwing up.On the other hand, take, eat, this is my body. e Word who became

flesh said these words, which appropriately became textand I would liketo remind us that the first theological method, since this is what St. Johnthe eologian does, is not to readthe text but to eatit.

So I went to the angel and said to him, Give me the little book.And he said to me, Take and eat it; and it will make your stomach



3/13

John Panteleimon Manoussakis

bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth. en I tookthe little book out of the angels hand and ate it, and it was as sweetas honey in my mouth. But when I had eaten it, my stomach becamebitter. And he said to me, You must prophesy again about manypeoples, nations, tongues, and kings. (Rev. :)

Take, eat. Id return to this phrase and to the image of eating, digestion,and incorporation.

Now we have seen, briefly, that at least one endemic processes of herme-neutics as such is a movement from the concrete and the particular to theuniversalto turn the body of the text into a theoria. It is no accident thatthe great Christian hermeneuts were also the great ascetics. ink of thefather of Christian hermeneutics, the one who systematized the allegorical

interpretation of the Scriptures, the great Origen. at Origen has also adeficient Christology is extremely telling, but that is perhaps of interestonly for the theologians. For now I will call attention to the connectionbetween monasticism and the spiritual reading of the Scriptures, which,at the same time, allows us to add a third common characteristic, theirdistance from the Eucharistic site.

A reference to some radical tendencies within the Reformed Churches ishere unavoidable: the privilege of the Word of God (sola scriptura) over theEucharistic presence of the Risen One, which becomes only a memorial,is an example of the connection we seek to establish. Perhaps even more

pertinent (but I am afraid more obscure as well) would be the example ofHesychasm, an example of Orthodox spiritualitys radicalization, wherethe Eucharist becomes sometimes entirely secondary, overtaken by the pri-ority given to the efforts in achieving inner purification and illuminationby means that are individual (individual prayer, fasting, practicing certainbodily postures, etc.) and thus lie outside the Eucharistic site of the eccle-sial community. e privilege of hesychia(stillness, silence), fundamentallygnostic in its provenance, forgets that in the beginning was not silencebut the Word, the, whose eternal utterance creates the world in

all its noisiness. Let no one, then, despise the noise of the World lest hedespise the Word that resounds through it.Language (and ultimately the Logos) is the background to any silence.

Giving priority (chronological or otherwise) to silence is to fall prey tothe Gnostic/Origenistic/Neoplatonic temptation. Could silence even havebeen perceived (to make now a phenomenological observation) withoutthe anterior experience of language/music/noise? Or to put it otherwise:what comes firstmovement (language) or rest (silence)? Here, I think,the allegiance between Neoplatonic stasis(rest) and Gnostic sige(silence) is



4/13


quite telling, and decisive for this discussion.Buddhism culminates in si-lence (e.g., the silence of Vimalakirti). Given the disembodying tendenciesof Buddhism,this is all the more reason to be suspicious of any emphasison silence. Similarly, we are not surprised by the priority given to silence inHeideggers analysis of Dasein (itself one of the most disembodied philo-sophical constructions out there), since, for Heidegger, not only is silenceprior to discourse, indeed its possibility, but also higher than language, in-sofar as conscience speaks solely and constantly in the mode of silence.Yet, does not Psalm : (Be still, and know that I am God) instruct usto be still or silent? e stillness to which this Psalm refers to is an episte-mological stillness (and know . . .), that is, only the stillness of man, sothat he may be able to perceive ever more acutely the Logos of God.

e Spirituality of the Body

I will use an example from a classic of Christian spirituality, St. Augus-tines Confessions, in which, even a reader as astute as von Balthasaris notexempted from seeing a process of mystical ascent, ultimately not muchdifferent than Plotinuss, instead of an exemplary case of carnal hermeuticson which the language of the text so stubbornly insists.

In employing the language of the Scriptural parable of the prodigal sonin almost every turn of his narrative, St. Augustine not only Christianizesthe Neoplatonic structure of descent (katastrophe) and ascent (epistrophe),around which the Confessionsas a text is organized, but also alters it in away that is decisive for incarnational hermeneutics. In our reading, weshould be able to discern St. Augustines criticism of the hegemonic pri-macy of vision and, as a result of that critique, the emergence of the al-ternative process of incarnating the spiritual. us, we will add to the twoconversions around which conventional readings of the Confessionsusuallystructured themselvesthat is, the conversion of the mind (in Book VII)and the conversion of the heart (in Book VIII)a third one, that hasremained undetected so far, namely the conversion of the flesh, or better

yet, the conversionto the flesh. us, I offer this reading as an example ofwhat Richard Kearney has recently called a carnal hermeneutics.St. Au-gustines narrative suggests such a descent into the bodily in two maincases: . by the reversal of the traditional hierarchy of the senses, wherebyhe places vision at the lowest end and gives priority to touch, as visionsvery opposite, insofar as tactile intimacy necessitates the annihilation ofdistance on which vision operated;and . by the consistent and constantemployment of the parable of the prodigal son that would allow him toplace a newly discovered emphasis on the flesh.



5/13


e episodic and fragmented nature of Augustines past life must berhapsodized into a unitya unity, however, that can only come from aunified self. How is the self unified? By its return to the one God. Whatprompts or enables that return? Certainly not space. us, he writes:

Not with our feet or by traversing great distances do we journey awayfrom you or find our way back. at younger son of yours in thegospel did not hire horses or carriages, nor did he board ships, nortake wing in any visible sense nor put one foot before the other whenhe journeyed to that far country where he could squander at will thewealth you, his gentle father, had given him at his departure.

Yet, not by the turning of the mind either, unless it is a mind affected bythe after (meta-noia). We recall again that monstrosity which Augustine

so aptly describes in Book VIII: e mind commands the body and isinstantly obeyed; the mind commands itself, and meets with resistance.Can we reverse this chain of command? Can we say that the body couldperhaps command the mind and that mind would obey? e prodigalsmetanoiathat set him upon the journey back to the paternal house was nota mental, spiritual, or psychological affectation, but physical, as physicaland visceral as hunger can be. e task in the Confessionsis not to spiritu-alize the flesh, but to incarnate the spirit, and in this regard the verticalityof the Greek schema (Platonic and Neo-Platonic) of ascents and descentshas to be abandoned for the sake of a communion between exteriority and

interiority. Yet, as long as hunger is only interior, that is, spiritual, it isnot even perceived as hunger at all. I was inwardly starved of that foodwhich is yourself, O my God. Yet this inner famine created no pangs ofhunger in me.Spiritual hunger remains ineffective. Let us return to theLucan parable:

After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in thatwhole country, and he began to be in need [/egere]. Sohe went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who senthim to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the

pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything (Luke:).

Notice that from all the images that the Gospel could use in order toconvey the state of human misery, the evangelist chose that of hunger. Eat-ing is not only a way of recognizing our dependency to each other and tothe worldso much for the prodigal sons claim to independence!butby eating we assimilate the world into ourselves, we turn that which isoutside inside. ink of this passing from outside to inside and you will



6/13


discover that this opposition is nothing else than the exemplification ofdistance and fragmentation. Ultimately, distance comes down to this op-position between an inside (that I identify with myself ) and everything elsethat is outside me. In eating, however, this wall of separation collapseswhen I am hungry I am really hungry for the Other(following Sartre andLevinas)and eating is one of the ways we have of overcoming the isola-tion that is the result of being scattered beings. Eating declareswillinglyor not, and contrary to all our illusionary attempts to self-mastery andindependencemy dependence on the world, on the cows which provideme with their meat, but also on the grass that fed the cows, on the waterthat fertilized the soil on which that grass grew, and so on. But eating,by contrast, is peaceful and simple; it fully realizes its sincere intention:e man who is eating is the most just of men. A referential totality is

presented in every meal whereby the entire world is eaten. When I eat, I eatthe world. But even more than the world, I eat the labor and the effort, thecare and the artistry of the people who cultivated, prepared, and cookedmy food. No meal is ever solitaryeven if I eat alone in the seclusion ofmy roomevery meal is a public and communal event. A communityestablished and referred to by every bite.

It is also a way that can take place only by means of and thanks to ourbodies. Obviously only an embodied being can be hungry and only anembodied being can eat. Contrary to what one might believe, our bestchance to overcome the fragmentation that human nature imposes on us

is through our bodies. It is our body that abridges the distance that keepsseparating us from others, but it is our body that allows us to be unitedwith Godit is not accidental that we eatthe Eucharist and that that theliturgy takes the form of a meal, such as the meal that the Father offers incelebration for the return of the lost son: Bring the fattened calf and killit. Lets have a feast and celebrate (Lk. :). As it is not an accident thatwe have these gifts on account of the body that Christ took upon Himselfin His kenotic effort to traverse the land of distance that separated us fromHim. In Christ, God is not any more a god who sees (theos) but a god who

touches and can be touched even to the folly of being-eaten. In eating, Imake the world my flesh and my blood, notmy spirit, but I incarnate orrather I incorporatethe original and literal meaning of incorporationthe world that, otherwise, would have remained an abstraction in spiteof its cows, its grass, and its soil. Spiritualization posits a real danger thatseeks to cancel out both the incarnation as well the transubstantiation ofthe Eucharist. Every time one partakes of communion he or she does notchange the host into their body but it changes themin an inverse diges-tion indicative and exemplary of inverse intentionalityinto His body. As



7/13


Augustine was told: I am the food of the mature; grow then, and you willeat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food: you will bechanged into me.e Church is turning the world into Christ a mass ata time. ere is no room here for the spirituality of Gnosis. It is for thisreason that the Church could not compromise with any of the versionsof immortality that classical thought had made available to herneitherthe immortality of the soul alone, nor reincarnationbut insisted uponthe scandalous and paradoxical notion of the resurrection of the bodies.Without a physical body, our experience of the distance that separates usfrom each other becomes permanent. It is in this sense that we read in theparable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus that: between us and you agreat chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from hereto you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us (Lk. :). For

it is only as hell that a human being can experience the absence of com-munion with other beings.

Speaking of hell, it is only the devil who despises the body and every-thing bodily, because he despises the communionwhich the human bodycan effect. His greatest disadvantage is precisely the fact that he is a spirit.He does not need to fast for he abstains from food entirely, nor does heneed to resist the temptations of fornication for he cannot engage in anysexual act at allyet this is precisely the impediment to his repentance:without a body that can feel the effect of hunger, the want that reveals onesdependency and restores ones humility, the devil cannot repent.

is, I believe, explains the systematic and, at times, elaborate employ-ment of the language of hungering, eating, and feasting in the Confessionsthat begins in Book I and extends through Book X, where memory is com-pared to the stomach of the mind.It also sheds some light on a broaderoperation of incarnation set in motion in the Confessions, best exemplifiedperhaps by the assignment of the same key adjective, restless (inquietum/inquieta) in describing both the spiritual longing of the heart and thephysical manifestation of his sexual desire in his youthful erections.edesire for God is not independent from the desire for the other human;

nor is the desire for rest promised in Gods kingdom contrary to the satis-faction that the body seeks. One who has not felt the latter rarely and withdiffi culty would seek the former.

Finally, hunger entails a temporal element. Despite satisfying my hun-ger, in the course of time, I will become hungry again. Hunger and itssatisfaction by eating demarcates the before and after of the bodys time.Before repentances after-thought (meta-noia) there is the after-body(meta-somoia): a body that becomes hungry is a body affected by time. eproof is again in the Scriptural parable of the prodigal son:



8/13


After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that wholecountry, and he began to be in need [] (Lk. :).

e Greek verb employed here to denote a need that is most physical,namely hunger, means primarily to come late, to be too late. implies a lack or want first and foremost in terms of lateness ().e prodigal son was, like Augustine, late (Late have I loved you . . .).is ethical lateness is first inscribed and awakened in the body.

Our desires were given to us by God as a pedagogical exercise in learn-ing how to seek that which is other than ourselves and beyond ourselves;the flesh as a bait, one may say, that, in catching us, might drive us outsideour spiritual selves. In the words of Richard Kearney, the most alimentaryis the most elementary.

Desire and the Eucharist

e confessional opening of the Confessions (where, by confession, oneunderstands primarily praise and prayer) draws attention to the other al-ternative, an alternative that is almost destined to fail with regards to God,namely, language. e problematic of language is introduced by Augus-tines emphasis on the literal meaning of infancy, as his unspeaking stagein life.Language comes as a remedy to a fundamental experience of aprimordial separation, a separation that manifests itself first in the distinc-

tion within/without, inside/outside: I was frustrated in this, because mydesires were inside me, while other people were outside and could by noeffort of understanding enter my mind (quia illae [voluntates] intuserat,

forisautem illi).e first experience of fallenness (trauma) is the separa-tion from others, in terms of a distance in space.Language here, as inFreuds celebrated example of the childs game while uttering alternativelythe words fort/da, becomes the means to cope with and remedy a pain-ful absence. To this one, immediately, Augustine adds a second one: theseparation from oneself, in terms of a distance in time: My infancy has

been so long dead now, whereas I am alive,

he begins in his attempt toremember what cannot be recalled. For what is it that I am trying to say,Lord, except that I do not know whence I came into this life that is but adying . . . I do not know where I came from.e mystery of memory, asit will be fully developed in Book X, is first disclosed through forgetfulness.So I have been told, and I believe it on the strength of what we see otherbabies doing, for I do not remember doing it myself.

Both experiences, separation from others, namely space, and separationfrom oneself, namely time, are, for Augustine, but two aspects of the same



9/13


condition, namely of the diastemicnature of the fallen creation. Language,then, is grounded in such a condition and it is itself regulated by it. InBook X language is a privileged example of time, for to speak takes timeand one cannot speak but in time. But language also takes space: themeaning of a word is determined by its position in a sentence. And eventhough one can use language to communicate with another, not everyother speaks my language, as young Augustine learns from his painful at-tempts to master Greek.Even among speakers of the same language,language can be the source of misconceptions and misunderstandings,thereby my separation from the Other is emphasized once more. us,the very birth of language is organized by the spatial and temporal inter-play between presence and absencethe need to make present, if only insymbolic form, what is absent.

Phenomenologys original contribution, however, consisted precisely inthe recovery of the absence of the absent, by refusing to substitute it witha quasi-presence (e.g., the image in the mind in the absence of the thingitself, etc.) and by drawing attention to the role that absences play in theintentional life of the consciousness, where every aspect is always giventogether with a prospect and a retrospect, every presence is surrounded byabsences. In short, if consciousness is not limited to the presence of thepresentsomething that would have been consciousnesss deathif it isable to intend what is absent, it is by virtue of an absence or an absenc-ing. us, we can say, together with Ricoeur, that what is language for the

psychoanalyst, intentionality is for the phenomenologist.

e similarity extends further. As in every act of speech there is alwaysan unspoken remainder, so every act of intentionality remains fundamen-tally partial and incomplete. Its partiality is twofold and has to do with themutual embodiment of the thing given and of the intending conscious-ness. For by no act of perception could I ever see a thing in all its aspectsand from all its angles; and, similarly, there could be no consciousness thatis not embodied and thus, by its very embodiment, limited.

e incompleteness of intentionality is so crucial that in Husserls writ-

ings it becomes the criterion of distinguishing between the unreflectiveand reflective consciousness:

A veritable abyss yawns between consciousness and reality. Here, anadumbrated being, not capable of ever becoming given absolutely,merely accidental and relative; there, a necessary and absolute being,essentially incapable of becoming given by virtue of adumbrationand appearance.



10/13


11/13

Notes to pages

. Dante, ... Dante finds it reasonable to suppose that this was the very firstspeaking, because it is the most proper possibility: inking, therefore . . . thatthe first man addressed his speech to God Himself, I say, equally reasonably, thatthis first speaker spoke immediatelyas soon, indeed, as Gods creative power had

been breathed into him. Dante, .... Seducing Augustine: Bodies,Powers,Confessions, with Virginia Burrus and

Mark Jordan (New York: Fordham University Press, ), conclusion, ;Divine Enticement: eological Seductions(New York: Fordham University Press,), esp. chapter , .

. Bailly, .. us in Bailly, . Citing Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes

from the College de France, ed. Dominique Seglard, trans. Robert Vallier (Evans-ton, IL: Northwestern University Press, ), , .

. Bailly, .

. Bailly, .. Miller, citing Georges Bataille, eory of Religion, trans. Robert Hurley(New York: Zone Books, ), , .

. Miller, citing Historia monachorum in Aegypto, , On eon, ed. A.-J.Festugire, Subsidia Hagiographica (Brussels: Socit des Bollandistes, ),; English translation in e Lives of the Desert Fathers, trans. Norman Russell(Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Press, ), .

. Humpty Dumpty to Alice, in Lewis Carroll, rough the Looking Glass andWhat Alice Found ere(London: Puffi n Books, ), : e question is, said

Alice, whether you canmake words mean so many different things. e questionis, said Humpty Dumpty, which is to be masterthats all.

On the Flesh of the Word: Incarnational HermeneuticsJohn Panteleimon Manoussakis

. Patoka, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, trans. Erazim Kohk(Chicago: Open Court, ).

. For a further discussion on this point see my essay e Philosopher-Priestand the Mythology of Reason inAnalecta Hermeneutica(special issue RefiguringDivinity) , , .

. On Gnostic sige(silence), see St. Irenaeus,Adversus Haereses, II. (where heemphatically affi rms that where Logos is, there certainly cannot be Sige).

. See, for example, Slavoj Zizek, e Puppet and the Dwarf: e perverse Coreof Christianity(Cambridge: MIT Press, ), .

. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: SUNYPress, ), [].

. Contrary to Christianitys basic incarnational thrust, a gradual unbodyingbecame the model, not only for asceticism, but especially for mystical theory. . . .It would be good to think back on Augustine, who, while vigorously denouncingthe Neoplatonists lack of Christs descending humility in the Confessions, setsforth in his treatise on mysticism a decidedly ascending modelfrom bodily to



12/13

Notes to pages

imaginative to purely spiritual visionswhich remained authoritative for thewhole period that followed. Von Balthasar, eo-Logic, vol. II: Truth of God,trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, ), .

. Richard Kearney, What Is Diacritical Hermeneutics? inJournal of Applied

Hermeneutics(December ), .. is reversal is best illustrated by comparing the two visions (of which only

the first can properly be called so) in VII. . and IX. . . eir multiple andsignificant differences are captured at their culmination: for the first contempla-tion (atemporal and individual) culminates in a vision (et pervenit ad id, quod estin ictu trepidantis aspectus, []), while the second (temporal and communal)culminates in a touch (nunc extendimus nos et rapida cogitatione attingimus).

After this, in the lengthy treatment of the senses that forms the core of Book X,the senses are ranked as follows: touch (X. . ); taste (X. . ); smell(X. . ); hearing (X. . ); and finally sight (X. . ).

. Augustine, e Confessions, trans. Maria Boulding, O.S.B. (Hyde Park, NY:New City Press, ), I. . , p. .. Augustine, e Confessions, VIII, ., p. .. Augustine, e Confessions, III. ., p. .. E. Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (e Hague:

Martinus Nijhoff, ), .. Augustine, e Confessions, VII. ., p. .. Augustine, e Confessions, X. ... Augustine, e Confessions, I.... Augustine, e Confessions, II.... It is of interest to see how this term is used elsewhere in the Scriptures and

especially in the eschatological parables of the Gospel of St. Matthew. In the par-able of the two sons, the father sends his first son to work in the vineyard but herefuses; but later [] he changed his mind and went (Matt. :). Herethe term later is used together with a verb denoting repentance, or changingones mind []. In the parable of the tenants that follows immediatelyafter this one, the term is employed as an indicator of the time the father sent hisown son to the vineyard (Matt. :)a reference to the incarnation, and thusto the eschatological fullness of times.

. Augustine, e Confessions, X. . .. Richard Kearney, What Is Diacritical Hermeneutics? .

. Augustine, e Confessions, I. ., p. .. Augustine, e Confessions, I. ., p. .. Augustine thinks throughout the Confessionsof his relation to God in terms

of distance and proximity. See also non enim pedibus aut spatiis locorum itur abste aut reditur ad te (Augustine, e Confessions, I. .). is phrase illustratesthe movement of the narration in the Confessions: moving away from God andreturning to God.

. Augustine, e Confessions, I. . .. Augustine, e Confessions, I. ., p. .



13/13

Notes to pages

. Augustine, e Confessions, I. ., p. .. Augustine, e Confessions, I. . , p. .. . . . inasmuch as language distinguishes and interrelates presence and ab-

sence (Ricoeur, Freud & Philosophy, ). Ricoeur is thinking here of the

original absence, the absence of the absent mother, which, in Freuds famous ex-ample, becomes regulated byand, in turn, necessitatesthe birth of language(fort/da). See also, ibid., .

. Cf., ibid., .. Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology, (see note

above). Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology(Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, ), .

. Edmund Husserl, On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of InternalTime, trans. John Barnett Brough (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, )and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Donald A. Lan-

des (London: Routledge, ), especially .. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Preface to A. Hesnard,LOeuvre de Freud et sonimportance pour le mode modern(), cited by Ricoeur in Freud & Philosophy,, note . e insight itself is discussed by Ricoeur on .

. Paul Ricoeur, Freud & Philosophy, .. Ibid., .. Ibid., .. e phrase this is my body must be understood (and it can only be

understood) as an erotic declarationmore so, as an erotic performance. isis my body makes little or no sense if one were to approach it as an informativeproposition like Paris is the capital of France. Rather, it is more akin to thesentence I love you. I am indebted for this insight to Fr. Patrick Royannais who

writes: Si vous voulez comprendre quelque chose leucharistie, nimaginez pasque la parole de Jsus rpte chaque eucharistie est une information qui vise dire ce quest le pain, vraiment son corps. Il sagit bien davantage dune dclarationdamour. Lorsque Jsus dit, cest mon corps pour vous, il dit, je vous aime, Ayantaim les siens qui taient dans le monde, il les aima jusquau bout (Jn ) Lerepas eucharistique est nuptial sil sagit dalliance, comme lenseigne Cana, festindes noces de lagneau. Les amants se disent: prends, ceci est mon corps pour toi.

Manoussakis Libre

Documents

Transcript of Manoussakis Libre