untitled

ERNESTO LACLAU

is a determination that implies the negation of what differs from it, whereas God is the
negation of the negation. As such, Oneness, being a nonattribute that involves no differ-
ence and, therefore, no negation, is the only thing that we can predicate of Him.

Oneness is purer than goodness and truth. Although goodness and truth add nothing,

they do nevertheless add something in the mind: when they are thought, something

is added. But oneness adds nothing, where God exists in himself, before he flows out

into the Son and the Holy Spirit.... If I say that God is good, then I am adding

something to him. Oneness, on the other hand, is a negation of negation and a denial

of denial. What does ‘‘one’’ mean? One is that to which nothing has been added.^3

If we call God ‘‘Lord,’’ or ‘‘father,’’ we are dishonoring Him, because those names
are incompatible with Oneness—a Lord requires a servant and a father, a son. So ‘‘we
should learn that there is no name we can give God so that it might seem that we have
praised and honored him enough, since God is ‘above names’ and is ineffable.’’^4
It seems apparently necessary to conclude, with Dionysius Areopagite, that ‘‘the cause
of all that is intelligible is not anything intelligible.’’ This paves the way for the mystical
way, thevia negativa.God is

not soul, not intellect,

not imagination, opinion, reason and not understanding,

not logos, not intellection,

not spoken, not thought,

not number, not order,

not greatness, not smallness,

not equality, not inequality,

not likeness, not unlikeness,

not having stood, not moved, not at rest.^5

And so on. What we are presented with here, through all these negations, is a certain
manipulation of language by which something that is ineffable gets expressed. This is a
generalized tendency within mysticism: a distortion of language that deprives it of all
representative function is the way to point to something that is beyond all representation.
In some primitive texts, such as those related, for instance, to Merkabah mysticism, this
effect is obtained by giving each organ of the body of the Creator, in their descriptions,
such an enormous length that all visual representation becomes impossible. As Gershom
Scholem points out: ‘‘the enormous figures have no intelligible meaning or sense-content,
and it is impossible really to visualize the ‘body of the shekinah’ which they purport to
describe; they are better calculated, on the contrary, to reduce every attempt at such a
vision to absurdity.’’^6 In a highly intellectualized discourse such as that of Eckhart, the

PAGE 138

138

.................16224$ $CH5 10-13-06 12:34:43 PS