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ERNESTO LACLAU

the terms establish between themselves. It is clear that an equivalential enumeration—as
different from a purely additive one—destroys the particularized meanings of its terms as
much as a succession of negations does. I can perfectly replace ‘‘not imagination,’’ ‘‘not
logos,’’ and ‘‘not intellection’’ with the equivalential succession ‘‘imagination,’’ ‘‘logos,’’
and ‘‘intellection.’’ In both cases I would be saying exactly the same thing, for if I have to
concentrate—in order to establish the equivalence—on what ‘‘imagination,’’ ‘‘logos,’’ and
‘‘intellection’’ have in common, I have to drop most of the particularized meanings of
each of these terms, and if the chain of equivalences is extended enough, it can become
the way of expressing something that exceeds the representational content of all its links—
that is, the ‘‘ineffable.’’ The advantage of eliminating thenotfrom the enumeration is that
in that way its equivalential character becomes more ostensible, and its infinitude—its
open-ended nature—becomes fully visible. When I enumerate ‘‘not-A,’’ ‘‘not-B,’’ ‘‘not-
C,’’ and so on, I can incorporateDinto that chain, in the fullness of its positive meaning,
without any further requirement. But if I have the equivalence between the positive terms
A,B, andC, I cannot incorporateDinto that chain without the added requirement of
reducingDto what it has in common with the three previous terms.
So from the previous analysis we can conclude that to say ‘‘God’’ is something differ-
ent from any particular attribute that we can predicate of Him and to say that He ex-
presses Himself through thetotalityof what exists is to say exactly the same thing.^7
Likeness (equivalence) between things is the way in which God—actualizes Himself?
expresses Himself? Listen to Eckhart:

God gives to all things equally and so, as they flow forth from God, all things are

equal and alike. Angels, men and women and all creatures are equal where they first

emerge from God. Whoever takes things in their first emergence from God, takes all

things as equal.... If we take a fly as it exists in God, then it is nobler in God than

the highest angel is in itself. Now all things are equal and alike in God and are God.

And this likeness is so delightful to God that his whole nature and being floods

through himself in this likeness....Itisapleasure for him to pour out his nature

and his being into this likeness, since likeness is what he himself is.^8

Insofar as the experience of the ineffability of God passes through the equivalence of
contents that are less than He, He is both beyond those contents and, at the same time,
fully dependent on them for His actualization. Indeed the greater his ‘‘beyond,’’ the more
extended the chain of equivalences on which His actualization depends. His very tran-
scendence is contingent upon an increased immanence. Let us quote Eckhart again: ‘‘God
is in all things. The more he is in things, the more he is outside them: the more in, the
more out and the more out, the more in.’’^9 As David says in Browning’sSaul:

Do I task any faculty highest, to imagine success?

I but open my eyes,—and perfection, no more and no less,

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