Referential Bodies and Signs: Problems with the Nietzschean-Derridean Interpretation of Augustine

At the beginning of his monumental and still productively controversial work on medieval literature and thought, modestly entitled A Preface to Chaucer, D.W. Robertson Jr. asserts that a post-romantic view of the Middle Ages must be oblique to its central cultural features. Robertson points out that the modern reader, however multi-culturally sensitive in a synchronic dimension, almost always imposes contemporary aesthetic standards on medieval literature; in other words, it has become commonplace to discern romantically based oppositions within medieval thought. For instance, the perceived opposition between the Church and paganism during the Middle Ages, just one example of the dualisms which are imposed upon medieval texts by contemporary interpreters, is based on the romantic ideal of authenticity, in which authenticity is most likely to be realized by one’s being a “rebel against convention”: post-romantic criticism, “which envisages the artist as a man in dynamic opposition to the conventions of his society, who synthesizes or resolves the tensions thus produced in his art, has sometimes turned medieval artists directly into romantic rebels.”[1]

We could see Friedrich Nietzsche as the culmination of the romantic spirit Robertson identifies. Its lineage, however, begins with German Idealists such as Schlegel and comes to fruition in a conceptual opposition between the Christian and the pagan, privileging the classical (namely Greek) over the medieval. The subverting strategies of Jacques Derrida follow directly within this tradition, imposing on medieval thought an opposition between the full presence of the logos and the fallen mediation of the sign.[2] If Nietzsche and Derrida are representatives of a post-romantic view of the Middle Ages, their opposite number for medieval-Christian intellectual culture would have to be Augustine, in as much as it is the latter who, more than anyone else, charts the course of the early medieval conception of being. Accordingly, by considering Augustine’s philosophy directly in relation to the general charges levelled by Nietzsche and Derrida against the Middle Ages, we find ourselves in a position which almost obliges us to call into question the ‘Nietzschean’ view of medieval-Christian thought. In particular, does medieval thought really constitute a “despising of the body,” as Nietzsche would insist? Similarly, does a medieval-Christian relation to the sign necessarily involve a denial of mediation or the physical component of the sign, as Derrida would have it?

When one reads Augustine on his own terms, in contrast to the post-romantic view of him briefly described above, one does not find a conception of being defined in terms of binary opposites. Rather, his conception of being is hierarchical, analogical, and referential. Augustine’s notions of existence involve an affirmation of the entirety of being, not a denial of it. This conception also applies to the Augustinian notion of the nature of the sign.

Referential Bodies

Like most post-romantic interpretations of the Middle Ages, Nietzsche’s assertion that the fundamental disposition of the Middle Ages constituted a “despising of the body” requires itself the imposing of a binary opposition on medieval thought. The most obvious opposition Nietzsche imposes is that between the spirit and the flesh, or between the intellectual and the bodily. Let us consider the following as merely one instance of many (too many to cite here) in which Nietzsche considers Christianity to be a denial of the body: “[Christian ideals] despised the body: they left it out of the account: more, they treated it as an enemy. It was their delusion to believe that one could carry a ‘beautiful soul’ about in a cadaverous abortion.”[3] In this statement, Nietzsche assumes that within a Christian frame of reference the flesh is to be hated, opposed, or forgotten so that the spiritual can be experienced directly. Nietzsche sets up this sort of opposition in relation to Augustine because he assumes that Augustine has adopted this oppositional structure from Plato: “These have mastered Christianity: Judaism (Paul); Platonism (Augustine); the mystery cult (doctrine of redemption, emblem of the ‘cross’); asceticism (– enmity toward ‘nature,’ ‘reason,’ ‘the senses’–the Orient–).”[4]

It is important to realize, however, that although Augustine’s thinking is in many ways Platonic, his primarily Christian leaning forces him to abandon many of Plato’s central precepts. One of the notions he is forced to leave behind is that of the opposition between a realm of intellectual abstraction and a realm of the physical. In other words, Augustine is unable to adopt a strictly Platonic dualistic stance because this dualism does not accord with the fundamental view of reality which Christianity presumes. Rather than this Platonic dualism, Augustine’s Christian conception of reality is hierarchical: “Hence he gave existence to the creatures he made out of nothing; but it was not his own supreme existence. To some he gave existence in a higher degree, to some in a lower, and thus he arranged a scale of existences of various natures.”[5]

This Christian hierarchical conception of being precludes a dualistic apprehension of reality in which the realm of the physical is disparaged to the benefit of that of the spiritual. Augustine actually points out that the mistaken belief that Christianity necessarily entails a despising of the body may be a result of a misreading of the words of St. Paul: “Those who seek to do this perversely war on their bodies as though they were natural enemies. In this way they have been deceived by the words, ‘The flesh lusteth against the spirit: and the spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary to one another’ [Gal 5:17].”[6] Augustine explains that what is meant by the Pauline passage is that the spirit desires to overcome the evil “habit of the flesh,” not the flesh itself: “not that the body should be destroyed, but that its concupiscence, which is its evil habit, should be completely conquered so that it is rendered subject to the spirit as the natural order demands.” The natural order, then, is free of the strife which could be mistakenly attributed to St. Paul. The war of spirit and flesh occurs only within the context of evil or sin – where the natural order is upset. Also, the relation of spirit to flesh is not that of two opposed forces: “The spirit does not resist in hate but in a desire for dominion, because it wishes what it loves to be subjected to something better; neither does the flesh resist in hate but because of the fetters of habit in which it is involved inveterately by the law of nature as an inheritance.” The relation of spirit and flesh, as Robertson points out, is that of “a rider and a spirited horse.”[7]

It is this natural order conceived as hierarchical that we could call the medieval “analogical” conception of being. Augustine provides us with an example of this conception of being in the Confessions:

It was you, then, O Lord, who made them, you who are beautiful, for they too are beautiful; you who are good, for they too are good; you who are, for they too are. But they are not beautiful and good as you are beautiful and good, nor do they have their being as you their Creator, have your being. In comparison with you they have neither beauty nor goodness or being at all. This we know, and thanks be to you for this knowledge. But our knowledge, compared with yours, is ignorance.[8]

In this passage, as James F. Anderson points out, Augustine affirms “the ‘analogy of being’ in respect to creatures and God …. saying in effect that esse is predicated proportionally of creatures and God, in such wise that just as creatures are to their esse – limited, measured, subject to non-esse – so God is to His.”[9] In other words, our wisdom is to God’s Wisdom as our density of being is to God’s Being. Thus, for Augustine, there is no Platonic “beyond being”; nor is there a Neoplatonic “univocal participation” in that which truly is by that which is merely the physical manifestation of the former. For Augustine, rather than participate univocally, that which exists participates analogically, or proportionally, in the attributes of the Divine: “whereas Plotinian participation is ‘essentialistic,’ entailing a ‘univocal’ relationship between the One and its sequelae[,] Augustinian participation is ‘existentialist,’ involving an analogical or proportional relationship between creatures and Creator, bearing precisely upon esse.“[10] There is, thus, an analogy or hierarchy of being, a “great chain of being,” for Augustine, in that everything that exists does so in varying degrees. That which is immutable and eternal, God, is that which truly is, while creation is a progression of things which less and less truly exist:

Also I considered all the other things that are of a lower order than yourself, and I saw that they have not absolute being in themselves, nor are they entirely without being. They are real in so far as they have their being from you, but unreal in the sense that they are not what you are. For it is only that which remains in being without change that truly is.[11]

We assume the infinite goodness of that which truly is, namely God, because we observe that creation is also good in a limited sense. In this way, Augustine’s conception of existence has a referential nature. That is to say, the created world refers to the truth of the Divine; or, in other words, the infinite goodness and immutable being of God reveal themselves through the limited goodness and mutable existence of creation. J. LeBlond calls this belief that the Divine can be recognized in the sensible a “sacramental” view of the universe.[12] This notion of the referential nature of existence, this sacramental view of the universe, is clearly traced to a Pauline source: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen; being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead” (Rom 1:20). In fact, Augustine refers to this passage when asserting, in reference to the phase in his life in which he was a Skeptic, that he should have known that Truth existed because it makes itself known through creation: “And, far off, I heard your voice saying I am the God who IS [Exod 3:14]. I heard your voice, as we hear voices that speak to our hearts, and at once I had no cause to doubt. I might more easily have doubted that I was alive than that Truth had being. For we catch sight of the Truth, as he is known through his creation.” Within a similar context, Augustine also declares that, by “reading these books of the Platonists I had been prompted to look for truth as something incorporeal, and I caught sight of your invisible nature, as it is known through your creatures.“[13]

Reference and Affirmation

In as much as existence is referential, and in as much as everything which exists belongs in the Divine order of things, then nothing is evil in itself. Nothing, not even the body, is to be despised; rather, everything that exists is good and is to be affirmed. However, as with the varying densities of being mentioned above, not all things are good in the same degree. Things are good in as much as they exist; their goodness and their being are of equal measure. What is being referred to here is a common tenet in medieval philosophy from Augustine to Aquinas: the “convertibility” of the good, truth, and being. Aquinas expresses this position well: “being, the true, the one, and the good are such that by their very nature they are one in reality. Therefore, no matter where they are found, they are really one. Their unity in God, however, is more perfect than their unity in creatures.”[14]

Truth and being are convertible in as much as that which exists in the Divine order, that which takes its place in the hierarchy of being, accords with the Divine intention or will. As Aquinas points out, the truth of a thing is its accordance with the Divine mind, with its Divine purpose or intention: a natural thing “is said to be true with respect to its conformity with the divine intellect in so far as it fulfills the end to which it was ordained by the divine intellect.”[15] This sense of truth, as accordance of thing and Divine intellect, as accordance of thing with the end “ordained by the divine intellect,” is the primary sense of truth, for Aquinas: “In a natural thing, truth is found especially in the first, rather than in the second, sense; for its reference to the divine intellect comes before its reference to a human intellect.” [my emphasis][16] This primary sense of truth is also the sense in which truth is defined as the being (or existence) of the thing: “First of all, [truth] is defined according to that which precedes truth and is the basis of truth. This is why Augustine writes: ‘The true is that which is’’; and Avicenna: ‘The truth of each thing is a property of the act of being which has been established for it.’ Still others say: ‘The true is the undividedness of the act of existence from that which is.’”[17] In this way, truth and being are convertible within the philosophy of the Middle Ages. Consequently, in the words of Augustine, “all things are true in so far as they have being.”[18]

Similarly, the good and being (and thus, truth) are convertible within medieval thought. As Augustine states, “in so far as we are, we are good” [my emphasis].[19] The good of a thing could be thought of as the thing’s existence in the Divine order. This is what is meant when Augustine says that sin “is contrary to nature.”[20] That is, the good of a thing, like the truth of a thing, can be defined as the thing’s accordance with God’s will. This is precisely how Anselm defines the truth, or goodness, of the will:

[The truth of the will] is only that correctness of the will which we call uprightness [rectitudo]. For as long as Satan willed what he ought to have willed – namely, the end for which he had received a will – he remained in the truth and in uprightness; and when he willed what he ought not to have willed, he deserted this truth and uprightness. So truth in the will can only be thought to be this uprightness, or correctness, of willing –because the truth, or uprightness, in Satan’s will consisted only in his willing what he ought.[21]

The true will, then, is the will which wills what it ought to will; in this way, it is the will which wills the good. Willing what one ought means willing “the end for which he had received a will”; it means that the will accords with God’s intention for that will. Thus, in as much as everything exists within the hierarchy of being or the order which constitutes the Divine intention, everything which exists is true to the extent that it exists; also, everything which exists ought to exist; everything which exists is good: “there is truth in the essence of all that exists, because all things are what they are in the Supreme Truth….[I]f all things are what they are in the Supreme Truth, then without doubt they are what they ought to be.”[22]

The first thing that must strike the modern interpreter of medieval literature and thought, with respect to this convertibility of the good, truth, and being, is what David Lyle Jeffrey calls the “primary affirmation of Being” which it entails.[23] That is to say, the contemporary interpreter, expecting to find a “despising of the body” and a desire to leave the temporal realm “out of the account” within medieval literature, is likely to be surprized when coming across a conclusion like that of Anselm: “if all things are what they are in the Supreme Truth, then without doubt they are what they ought to be.” The modern interpreter, such as Nietzsche, is commonly under the assumption that medieval Christian ideals involve the despising of what is on the basis of what ought to be. Nietzsche himself, as Martin Heidegger asserts, in the process of overturning these medieval Christian ideals as he perceives them, believes that beings “being what they are, may not be despised on the basis of what should and ought to be” [my emphasis].[24] However, the fact is that in contradistinction to Nietzsche’s interpretation, as we have seen, Anselm argues that what is is what ought to be.

This conclusion, that everything which exists is good in itself, is not unique to Anselm.

Augustine’s philosophy, like Anselm’s, entails a “primary affirmation of Being.” In order to demonstrate this, let us turn to a passage in which Augustine, within the context of refuting Manicheanism, asserts that everything which exists is good:

It was made clear to me also that even those things which are subject to decay are good. If they were of the supreme order of goodness they could not become corrupt; but neither could they become corrupt unless they were in some way good. For if they were supremely good, it would not be possible for them to be corrupted. On the other hand, if they were entirely without good, there would be nothing in them that could become corrupt. For corruption is harmful, but unless it diminished what is good, it could do no harm. The conclusion then must be either that corruption does no harm–which is not possible; or that everything which is corrupted is deprived of good–which is beyond doubt. But if they are deprived of all good, they will not exist at all. For if they still exist but can no longer be corrupted, they will be better than they were before, because they now continue their existence in an incorruptible state. But could anything be more preposterous than to say that things are made better by being deprived of all good?[25]

Here we find an assertion that refutes not only the position of the Manichees, but also the Nietzschean position with which we started; in other words, the fact that Augustine claims that everything which exists is good calls into question the Nietzschean allegation that the fundamental disposition of the Middle Ages constituted a “despising of body.” In fact, we can see that despising the body would be quite foreign to Augustine’s mature, post-Manichean, position. How can Augustine, who holds with certainty that everything which exists does so within God’s plan, find fault in any aspect of God’s creation? Augustine himself points out that those “who find fault with any part of [God’s] creation are bereft of reason.”[26] Elsewhere, Augustine comes to a similar conclusion: “Thus no one hates himself. And, indeed, this principle was never questioned by any sect. Neither does anyone hate his body, and what the Apostle says concerning this is true: ‘No man ever hated his own flesh’ [Eph 5:29].”[27]

As well as constituting a “primary affirmation of Being,” the long Augustinian explanation of why everything that exists is good cited above also describes the ontological nature of evil within the order of things. If everything which exists is good, obviously that which is evil must constitute, in some ways, non-esse: “For you evil does not exist, and not only for you but for the whole of your creation as well.” In other words, when things are corrupted not only do they participate less fully in goodness, they also participate less fully in being and truth: “in so far as we are evil, to that extent is our being lessened”; similarly, before his conversion to Christianity, Augustine “did not know that evil is nothing but the removal of good until finally no good remains.” This definition of evil as the non-good, non-being, and non-truth is a logical extension of the convertibility of the good, truth, and being. In the words of Augustine:

[W]e must conclude that if things are deprived of all good, they cease altogether to be; and this means that as long as they are, they are good. Therefore, whatever is, is good; and evil, the origin of which I was trying to find, is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good. For either it would be an incorruptible substance of the supreme order of goodness, or it would be a corruptible substance which would not be corruptible unless it were good. So it became obvious to me that all that you have made is good, and that there are no substances whatsoever that were not made by you. And because you did not make them all equal, each single thing is good and collectively they are very good, for our God made his whole creation very good [Gen 1:31].[28]

Since all things are intrinsically good, their corruption must be caused by an external force. Thus, we must inquire as to the cause of this evil: “Where then does evil come from, if God made all things and, because he is good, made them good too? It is true that he is the supreme Good, that he is himself a greater Good than these lesser goods which he created. But the Creator and all his creation are both good. Where then does evil come from?”[29] Augustine points out that God punishes those who do evil deeds and that this punishment may seem evil to the one who suffers from it. God, then, can be thought of as causing evil–where evil takes the form of “someone [having] suffered something evil”; however, God can never be considered to be the cause of evil deeds per se:

[F]or we usually speak of evil in two ways: first, when we say that someone has done evil; second, when someone has suffered evil…. But if you know or take it on faith that God is good (and it would be irreligious to think differently), then He does no evil. Again, if we acknowledge that God is just (and to deny this would be sacrilegious), then, as He bestows rewards upon the good, so does He mete out punishments to the wicked. To those who suffer them, such punishments are of course evil. Accordingly, if no one suffers penalties unjustly (and this we must believe since we believe that the universe is ruled by Divine Providence), God is not at all the Cause of the first kind of evil, though He is of the second.[30]

With this point of departure, Augustine’s interlocutor then inquires as to whether or not there is “some other cause of that evil which we have found cannot be God.” Augustine’s answer to this question concerning the cause of evil is that “it is no one person but rather each evil man that is the author of his own misdeeds. If you have any doubt of this, take note of our earlier remark that evil deeds are punished by God’s justice. For unless they were committed voluntarily, their punishment would not be just.” Thus, everything which exists is good; however, that which exists can be corrupted, can fall under the sway of an evil man. The evil man is the person in which, contrary to the Divine law, “in virtue of which it is just that all things exist in perfect order”, that which is less perfect (“the lust for power”) rules that which is more perfect (mind or spirit).[31]

However, it is not immediately clear how desire, or the lust for power, would be able to subject the mind to its whims. “Do you think that the power of passion is greater than the mind, which we know has been given mastery over the passions,” Augustine asks his interlocutor. The answer to this question, for Augustine, is a straightforward ‘no’: “For there could be no perfect order if the weaker should lord it over the stronger. Consequently, I feel that the power of the mind must be greater than desire for the very reason that it is only right and just that it should hold sway over desire.” Nothing weaker than the mind has the power to subdue mind; however, that which is greater than the mind would not subdue the mind because of the justice of the former. In other words, “we can be sure that whatever that nature is which rightfully excels a mind adorned with virtue, it cannot possibly be unjust, Consequently, though it were within its power to do so, not even this nature will force the mind to become a slave to passion.” Having eliminated any other possible source for the upsetting of the just order of the mind, Augustine feels “[w]e are faced with the conclusion, then, that nothing else can make the mind the companion of evil desire except its own will and free choice.”[32]

Since that which exists is good in itself, it is not reasonable to despise anything which exists. Even when the flesh seems to be that which prevents us from achieving communion with God, the flesh is not to be blamed. Rather, it is the “evil habit” of the flesh which makes it sometimes unruly and unwilling to submit itself to the spirit or mind. This evil habit, as we have seen, can only be the result of an evil will which corrupts the perfect order. “In view of all this, do you think it is right to blame silver and gold because of greedy men, or food and wine because of gluttons and drunkards, or the feminine form because of fornicators and adulterers?”. In a like manner, Augustine points out that, “the physician puts fire to a good use while the poisoner uses bread for his wicked purposes.” Thus, it is not the things themselves which deserve appraisal; rather, it is the way in which they are used, the wills or intentions which they serve, which should be judged: “in all things of this kind we are to be commended or reprimanded, not because of the nature of the things which we use, but because of the motive in using them and the way in which they are desired.” This notion that it is the will which is corrupt not the thing itself is largely a medieval commonplace. For instance, in the work of John Scotus, like that of Augustine, as Robertson points out, we “should observe that the evil involved in [the] process of perversion does not lie in the object…. It lies in the libido, the cupidity.”[33]

Referential Signs

In On Christian Doctrine, Augustine gives a more complete account of this argument–that things are good in themselves as long as they are not used for evil purposes. Since Augustine is concerned with that “thing” known as a sign in On Christian Doctrine, perhaps this would be a good opportunity to turn our attention to the nature of the existence of signs as it is conceived by Augustine. The difference between things and signs is the first distinction Augustine makes:

All doctrine concerns either things or signs, but things are learned by signs. Strictly speaking, I have called a “thing” that which is not used to signify something else, like wood, stone, cattle, and so on; but not that wood concerning which we read that Moses cast it into bitter waters that their bitterness might be dispelled, nor that stone which Jacob placed at his head, nor that beast which Abraham sacrificed in place of his son. For these are things in such a way that they are also signs of other things. There are other signs whose whole use is in signifying, like words. For no one uses words except for the purpose of signifying something. From this may be understood what we call “signs”; they are things used to signify something. Thus every sign is also a thing, for that which is not a thing is nothing at all; but not every thing is also a sign.[34]

According to Augustine’s description, a thing is that which exists unto itself; a sign, although a thing unto itself, is that which also signifies, refers to, a thing beyond itself. Beyond the mere human conventions of signification, however, all things, like all signs, refer to something beyond themselves. As we have seen, Augustine believes, following Pauline doctrine, that existence is of a referential nature: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Rom 1:20). In this way, creation is God’s Word; creation is the expression of the mind of God. As Jeffrey points out, “whereas we speak with words, God speaks with things, persons, and events, pre-eminently so in the event of the Incarnation”; similarly, he asserts that for Christian tradition “creation is a language, speaking forth the divine chabod.“[35] For this reason, as we have seen, creation must be good. Similarly, if an aspect of creation somehow comes to serve evil purposes, then it is the evil will which is to blame, not the thing itself. These principles, which we have used to delineate the nature of the thing, can also be applied to the sign as it is conceived by Augustine: “Just as I began, when I was writing about things, by warning that no one should consider them except as they are, without reference to what they signify beyond themselves, now when I am discussing signs I wish it understood that no one should consider them for what they are but rather for their value as signs which signify something else.”[36]

The sign, as a human institution, is intended to be used to refer to the thing it signifies. The sign is the expression of the mind of a human speaker: “Conventional signs are those which living creatures show to one another for the purpose of conveying, in so far as they are able, the motion of their spirits or something which they have sensed or understood.” For this reason, the sign is not as important as the thing to which it refers. Thus, one should not dwell on a sign used within an utterance; rather, according to the intention of the one who utters, the receiver should use the sign as a reference to a created thing: “He is a slave to a sign who uses or worships a significant thing without knowing what it signifies. But he who uses or venerates a useful sign divinely instituted whose signifying force he understands does not venerate what he sees and what passes away but rather that to which all such things are to be referred.” To dwell on the sign for its own sake, according to Augustine, would be to “enjoy” the sign: “To enjoy something is to cling to it with love for its own sake. To use something, however, is to employ it in obtaining that which you love, provided it is worthy of love.”[37] The sign, obviously, is to be “used” rather than “enjoyed”, used as a reference to the thing it was intended to signify. It should now be obvious that, from a foundational medieval Christian perspective, the nature of the existence of signs, like that of things, is referential. Let us, then, proceed to a consideration of the Derridean accusation that medieval philosophy, like all philosophy, is “logocentric.”

The concept of logocentrism is not an easy one to pin down; however, it nominally refers to a belief that the “word” – or logos, however it is defined – possesses a plenitude of meaning, that the being of the word, as entity, is presence: “Logocentrism would thus support the determination of the being of the entity as presence.” However, as we have seen, only God possesses fullness of being; thus, only He would possess, in Derrida’s terms, presence. The rest of that which is exists somewhat less fully:

Because He is good, we are; and in so far as we are, we are good….and in so far as we are evil, to that extent is our being lessened. For He is the highest and first being who is altogether immutable and who could say with fullest significance, ‘I am who am,’… In this way other things which are cannot be unless they take their existence from Him, and they are good only in so far as He grants them existence.[38]

The thing, or “entity,” exists only in as much as it has been given a grant of existence: “I looked at other things too and saw that they owe their being to you”; similarly, Augustine believes that “things which are cannot be unless they take their existence from Him, and they are good only in so far as He grants them existence.”. Thus, one cannot say that the thought of the Middle Ages determined “the meaning of being in general as presence“; rather, the meaning of the entity, like the being of the entity, exists only as fully as the entity itself is referred to the intention of the one who grants the existence of the entity. This holds for the meaning of signs as well as things. In other words, the being of the thing exists only to the degree that it accords with God’s intention. Being and meaning, thus, rightfully reside only within this intention. For Augustine, the function of language is as a means of expressing intention, wherein meaning resides not in the word but in the person. The entity, then, like the sign, does not have full and independent being; only the Logos which is God is idipsum. Only God fully is per se.[39]

For Derrida, logocentrism, as well as defining the entity in terms of full presence, also scorns any mediation of that fully present entity: “The epoch of the logos thus debases writing considered as mediation of mediation and as a fall into the exteriority of meaning.”[40] When applied to creation as that which mediates God’s full presence, this aspect of logocentrism sounds similar to the Nietzschean charge that the fundamental disposition of the Middle Ages constituted a despising of the body, or the physical realm in general, in as much as the physical interrupts a direct relation of human with Divine. As we have seen, the referential nature of existence, as conceived by Augustine, and the affirmation of being it entails, refute the accusation that medieval thought detests that which mediates, at least when it comes to things.[41] Derrida also applies this allegation to the medieval notion of the sign. Does Derrida’s accusation hold water in this respect–when applied to the sign as mediation?

A brief consideration of what we have already said should lead us to answer this question in the negative. We have seen that the nature of the existence of the sign, for Augustine, like that of the thing, is conceived to be referential. Although this means that the sign is not to be valued as much as that to which it refers, it also means that the sign is good in itself; the sign is not corrupt or contemptible.[42] Although signs, like all human institutions, are only imperfect copies of the perfect ordering of things, these institutions are useful, even necessary, if used charitably: “they should not neglect those human institutions helpful to social intercourse in the necessary pursuits of life.” Similarly, Augustine implicitly refers to the ancient Greek conception of the “word uttered” and the “word remaining within” – logos prophorikos and logos endiathetos – while explicating the Johannine description of Christ as the Word. In Derrida’s terms, the uttered word would constitute a fall into mediation for the medieval thinker–a fall into that which separates us from the full presence of interior meaning which is the “word remaining within.” For Augustine, however, the uttered word, in this context, is not a “fall into the exteriority of meaning”; rather, this uttered word is the way in which the Divine has made Himself known to us.”[43]

Derrida asserts, as we have seen, that Western metaphysics despises the sign as a fall into mediation. In making this assertion, he is following Heidegger’s claim that the pre-metaphysical experience of truth and being was one in which the unconcealing that constituted the truth of being as aletheia was intimately bound with a concealing. Western metaphysics, then, for Heidegger, has forgotten the necessity of veiling, covering, concealing, forgetting, or obscuring (lethe) within the essence of truth and being as un-veiling, un-covering, un-forgetting, or revealing (a-letheia); in doing so, metaphysics has determined the being and truth of things in terms of their enduring presence. For Derrida, this forgetting of the veiled nature of being manifests itself in an aversion to metaphor, to trope, to literary obscurity. According to Derrida, metaphysics conceives of metaphor, or literary obscurity in general, as a fall into mediation, as a loss of the “proper” or literal meaning.[44] The question we must ask, then, is whether or not Augustine, or the Middle Ages in general, as manifestations of Western metaphysics, conceive of literary obscurity in the terms outlined by Derrida: as an accursed loss that one hopes to recover. The literary obscurity that one finds in the Holy Scriptures is an example of a figurative sign that mediates between the reader and a fully present, literal, or “proper” meaning. And again, within medieval thought, this form of mediation is not despised. The obscurity of Scriptures, and the allegorical reading it requires, mean that the truth that is eventually uncovered is loved all the more: “The more these things seem to be obscured by figurative words, the sweeter they become when they are explained.”[45] Obscurity, far from being deemed the evil which plagues a world that has fallen into exteriority, is considered to be, like rhetoric or eloquence – since obscurity is a type of eloquence – necessary for the teaching of truth.[46] All this attention paid by medieval exegetes to the allegorical meaning behind the obscure figure, however, does not mean that they “neglected the literal sense”; that is, they did not exalt the spirit and despise the letter. As Robertson points out, “condemnations are directed against the letter only insofar as it is taken without the spirit, and not against the letter itself. To use an analogy, medieval authors condemn the flesh, not because they have forgotten that ‘no man hates his own flesh,’ but because they wish to condemn the flesh as it operates without the guidance of the spirit.”[47] Hence, the figurative sign, like the literal sign, is not detested as a fall into mediation within medieval thought.

Nietzsche assumes, as we have seen, that our physical existence is despised within medieval thought. He asserts that during the Middle Ages this physical realm of the “false” was opposed to a spiritual realm of “truth”.[48] In contradistinction to Nietzsche’s assertion, and in accordance with the convertibility of truth and being, this world is true in as much as it is. In a Nietzschean manner, Derrida, in asserting that the medieval Christian relation to the sign is logocentric in as much as it is a despising of the sign as a mediation of the full presence of the entity, is claiming that the sign is detested because it is “false.” Heidegger points out that the “word ‘false’ [Falsch] entered the German language in the early Christian Middle Ages through the Latin falsum. The stem of the Latin word falsum (fallo) is ‘fall’.”[49] (Parmenides 39). It is for this reason that Derrida stresses the fact that the sign is thought of as, from the logocentric point of view, “a fall into the exteriority of meaning”; that is, it is a fall into the “false” world of images, copies, distance, and absence. Derrida asserts that the medieval-Christian outlook on the sign is akin to its outlook on “The Fall”: as a fall into the merely human from the divine, a fall into the merely conventional or institutional from the natural and immediate. The sign’s inevitable obscurity, according to Derrida, is seen as a clothing of existence which prevents a relation with the full and naked presence of being itself. However, as we have seen, the sign’s obscurity is not despised as a “fall” into mediation or considered a “falsity” by medieval thinkers. The sign constitutes a “fall” or a “stumble into erring” only if, and to the extent that, one enjoys it for its own sake rather than using it to discover the intention behind it. Thus, rather than obscuring or covering over being, the sign, when properly used, reveals being.

All conventional signs, whether figurative, literal, or written, reveal the intention of another. In the case of the Holy Scriptures, the written sign reveals the intention of God:

Nor is there any other reason for signifying, or for giving signs, except for bringing forth and transferring to another mind the action of the mind in the person who makes the sign. We propose to consider and to discuss this class of signs in so far as men are concerned with it, for even signs given by God and contained in the Holy Scriptures are of this type also, since they were presented to us by the men who wrote them.[50]

This is the supreme example of why signs are not in fact detested within medieval thought; that is, signs, if attended charitably, can reveal intention – in the case cited, even Divine intention. Thus, signs, like all things, are good in as much as they accord themselves with the just order of things, the just order of things being God’s intention expressed through creation.

In contradistinction to the statements of Nietzsche and Derrida on this matter, signs and things, then, in so far as they are referential, are not despised and are not considered to be a fall into the merely physical or the merely mediated within the thought and literature of the Middle Ages. Only insofar as we can liberate ourselves from this post-romantic prejudice will we be able to have a fruitful dialogue with the thought and literature of the Middle Ages. Through this liberation, by reading Augustine on his own terms, we will be able to see the possibility of affirming beings as a whole and recognizing the beauty in all things.

NOTES:

[1] D.W. Robertson Jr. A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspective. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1962), 10.

[2] It is interesting that Derrida, for instance, conceives of grammatology as an attempt “to repeat the genealogy of morals” (Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974), 140).  Similarly, he states that Nietzsche “contributed a great deal to the liberation of the signifier from its dependence or derivation with respect to the logos” (19).

[3] The Will to Power, translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1967), §226.

[4] Ibid., §214.

[5] The City of God, translated by John O’Meara (New York: Penguin, 1972), 12.2; on medieval notions of hierarchy generally, see A.O. Lovejoy’s The Great Chain of Being and Robertson 7-8.

[6] On Christian Doctrine, translated by D.W. Robertson Jr. (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 1.24.25.

[7] Ibid., 1.24.25; Robertson p. 23.

[8] Confessions, translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), XI.4.

[9] St. Augustine and Being: A Metaphysical Essay (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), 62-3.

[10] Ibid., p. 57.

[11] Confessions VII.11. Armand A. Maurer explains why that which is in time is less truly in being: “Whatever changes is not truly being because it contains an element of non-being; it both is and is not. It is what it is at the present moment, but it is not what it will become in the future. Anything existing in time lacks authentic being; it can better be described as becoming” (Medieval Philosophy, (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1962), 13); see also, Confessions XI.14. For another example of the hierarchy of being as conceived by Augustine, see On Christian Doctrine 1.8.8 – here Augustine considers the order of that which lives in relation to that which is most truly living and is, in fact, life itself.

[12] Qtd. in Robert J. O’Connell, Art and the Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1978), 3. On the referential nature of existence in Augustine and medieval literature and thought generally, see By Things Seen: Reference and Recognition in Medieval Thought, edited by David Lyle Jeffrey (Ottawa: U of Ottawa Press, 1979).

[13] Confessions VII.10; 20.

[14] Truth, translated by Robert W. Mulligan (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952), 9, Q. 1, Art. 1. The assertion that the One is convertible with being, the “univocity of being,” is unique to Aquinas and other scholastics such as Duns Scotus. Thus, in terms of the “common tenets” of medieval philosophy, we restrict ourselves to discussing the convertibility of the good, truth and being.

[15] Ibid., p. 11, Q.1, Art.2.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid., pp. 6-7, Q.1, Art.1.

[18] Confessions VII.15.

[19] On Christian Doctrine 1.32.35.

[20] “On the Spirit and the Letter” translated by P. Holmes, Basic Writings of St. Augustine, edited by Whitney J. Oates (New York: Random House, 1948), Volume I, 461-518.

[21] Truth, Freedom, and Evil: Three Philosophical Dialogues, edited and translated by Jasper Hopkins and Herbert Richardson (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 97.

[22] Ibid., p. 102; see also, Augustine, Free Choice of the Will, translated by Robert P. Russell, in The Fathers of the Church, edited by Roy Joseph Deferrari et al (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1968), Volume 59, 72-241; 1.12.24.

[23] “Mistakenly ‘Logocentric’: Centering Poetic Language in a Scriptural Tradition,” Religion and Literature, 22.2-3 (1990): 33-46, 35.

[24] Nietzsche: Volume I, The Will to Power as Art, translated by David Farrell Krell (New York: HarperCollins, 1979), 160.

[25] Confessions VII.12; see also, Free Choice of the Will 3.13.36-38.

[26] Confessions VII.14; see also The City of God XII.4.

[27] On Christian Doctrine I.24.24; the Ephesians passage continues as follows: “For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband” (Eph 5:29-33).” Elsewhere Augustine again refers to this comparison of Christ’s relation with the Church to that of a husband and his wife (On Christian Doctrine 1.16.15). Christ’s relation with the Church is also compared, interestingly, to that of a head and a body (3.37.55). In neither comparison do we have a binary opposition; rather, according to the just order of things as conceived in the Middle Ages, we have a relation of a superior and an inferior. Thus, we have another instance in which the flesh – in this case represented by the Church (as that which represents the Divine within the temporal realm) and woman (embodying the reproduction of the physical) – is obviously not to be despised but to be subordinated to its superior.

[28] Confessions VII.13; On Christian Doctrine 1.32.35; Confessions III.7; VII.12.

[29] Confessions VII.5.

[30] Free Choice of the Will 1.1.1.

[31] Ibid., 1.6.15; I.8.18.

[32] Ibid., 1.10.20; 1.11.21; for Augustine the “just order” of the mind is “wisdom” (Free Choice of the Will 1.9.19). Thus, when the mind succumbs to desire, it succumbs to folly.

[33] Ibid., 1.15.33; On Christian Doctrine 3.12.19; Robertson 71. Giovanni Boccaccio uses this line of argument to defend the content of his stories:

[T]hese tales, like all other things, may be harmful or useful, according to whoever listens to them. Who does not recognize wine as a very good thing for the healthy, according to Cinciglione and Scolaio and many others, and yet it is harmful to anyone with a fever? Shall we say because wine harms those with a fever that it is evil? Who does not realize that fire is most useful, and even more, necessary to mankind? Because it destroys homes, villages, and cities, shall we say that it is wicked? In like manner, weapons defend the lives of those who wish to live peacefully, and they also (on many occasions) kill men, not because of any wickedness inherent in them but because those who wield them do so in an evil way…. Everything is, in itself good for some determined goal, but badly used it can also be harmful to many; and I can say the same of my stories [my emphasis]. (The Decameron, edited and translated by Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1977), 144-5).

[34] On Christian Doctrine 1.2.2.

[35] “Mistakenly ‘Logocentric'” 37; 43; see also, Robertson 76.

[36] On Christian Doctrine 2.1.1.

[37] Ibid., 2.2.3; 3.9.13; 1.4.4. When we enjoy that which is to be enjoyed in itself, we love charitably. When, however, we enjoy that which should be used, our love is called “cupidity”: “I call ‘charity’ the motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of God for His own sake, and the enjoyment of one’s self and one’s neighbor for the sake of God; but ‘cupidity’ is a motion of the soul toward the enjoyment of one’s self, one’s neighbor, or any corporal thing for the sake of something other than God” (3.10.16).

[38] Of Grammatology 12; On Christian Doctrine 1.32.35.

[39] Confessions VII.15; On Christian Doctrine 1.32.35; 1.35.39; Tractates on the Gospel of John 1-10, translated by John W. Rettig, The Fathers of the Church, edited by Thomas P. Halton et al. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), Volume 78, 2.2.1.

[40] Of Grammatology 12-13.

[41] In order to emphasize the fact that medieval thought and literature embrace mediation, or “middleness”, we should note that Christ himself is embraced as the “Mediator”: “I could not find this means until I embraced the mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ, who is a man, like them, and also rules as God over all things, blessed for ever. He was calling to me and saying I am the way; I am truth and life” (Confessions VII.18); see also, Tractates; On Christian Doctrine 1.11.11, and 1.34.38.

[42] Idolatry, for example, is considered a sin not because the image itself is “bad”; rather, idolatry is an example of the privileging of the image (as sign or thing) over the Divine (Confessions VII.9), which is contrary to the perfect ordering of things.

[43] On Christian Doctrine 2.26.40; 2.25.38-39; 2.39.58; Tractates 1.8.1-3; see also, Aquinas Q.4 Art.1.

[44] See, for instance, Heidegger Parmenides, translated by André Schuwer and Richard Rojcewicz (Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1992), 31-2; Derrida, “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy”, in Margins of Philosophy, translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1982), 207-71.

[45] On Christian Doctrine 4.5.15; see also, 2.6.7; City of God 11.19; and Robertson 16, 53, 62-3. Of course, this is the dominant medieval aesthetic stance as well as an example of what we could call the medieval-Christian approach to the esoteric tradition: from Richard de Bury’s attack on the lovers of “naked truth,” to Pierre Bersuire’s defense of Ovid’s fables (citing the fact that fables can also be found in Holy Scripture), to Dante’s, Petrarch’s, and Boccaccio’s belief that obscurity exists in order to keep truth out of the reach of the “common herd.” Augustine also felt that one of the functions of obscurity is to keep the ignorant in the dark (On Christian Doctrine 2.16.24). On esoteric writing, see Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1952).

[46] On Christian Doctrine 4.2.3; 4.6.9.

[47] Robertson 303.

[48] Twilight of the Idols, “How the ‘True World’ Finally Became a Fable”.

[49] Parmenides 39.

[50] On Christian Doctrine 2.2.3.

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