Can we even talk about transcendence?

OK….so this week’s readings were undoubtedly (from my perspective) the hardest to follow. The nature of apophasis is such that attempting to define it verbally (or at the very least, explicitly) is counter to the notion of apophatic logic itself. As I understand it, apophatic logic entails trying to reach a conclusion or confirm a hypothesis through negation. This negation is, as I see it, akin to a process of elimination whereby one arrives at an answer by saying x,y, and z are not true, and hence implicitly hinting at what the answer must be. As Sells writes, “Ibn Arabi's apophatic logic is contained in particularly condensed form in the statement that "Nothing is more universal in its distinction than the lack of distinguishing station." (105) I think I understand the gist of this argument: anything that is stated as positively true (when discussing transcendence) has an opposite and is thus not universal. This is summed up by Sell as he concludes that “the effort to affirm transcendence leads to a continuing series of retractions, a propositionally unstable and dynamic discourse in which no single statement can rest on its own as true or false, or even as meaningful (3).”

I’m not sure I agree with this idea, though. It seems that the advocates of apophatic logic are trying to justify their use of apophatic logic by using apophatic logic. It seems rather circular (or perhaps even a false dichotomy). Let me try clarifying that a bit…

The idea that one can qualify transcendence by not talking about transcendence is based on the idea that using language to describe transcendence is inherently flawed. OK…fine, let’s assume we cannot verbally describe what transcendence is and how to get there through affirmative statements. But does this mean we can get to transcendence by not talking about it? Why are the only two ways to reach transcendence to describe what it is and to describe what it is not (this is why I mentioned the idea of a false dichotomy)?

Perhaps any description of transcendence, either affirmative or dissenting, is inaccurate because transcendence is not something that has anything to do with language. Perhaps transcendence is only reached through action. Remember our previous readings on knowledge and action? I’m starting to see how the argument in favor of action as the only relevant component in reaching the highest good makes a lot of sense when we talk about (or don’t talk about…) transcendence, particularly if transcendence is synonymous with the “highest good”.