Grace II

Posted on May 11, 2009
Filed Under Philosophy | 5 Comments

DC62A21A-40CF-422A-B245-B8D9C96E3BC6.jpgOK, sorry for the delay. We’re renovating our factory. So everything is taking three times as long to do while painting is going on.

Last time I introduced the topic of Grace in terms of a secular Grace. The basic idea is that of grace as an undeserved grace. (I’ll try to keep the two concepts separate by capitalizing Grace from God versus a secular grace) My own view is that grace is “essentially” that which exceeds any system and its abilities and erupts into the system thereby expanding it.

One metaphor Derrida uses is that of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem. For any axiomatic formal system there will be some statements recognized as true or false that can’t be shown true or false in the system. Therefore to understand those statements “in truth” we must expand the system. Now it’s important not to push this metaphor too far, but roughly for Derrida this expansion of the system is quite important. I think it ends up being grace.

For Derrida this eruption is necessary even to have stability. (i.e. truth as normally conceived) That’s because meaning is “essentially” tied to the ability to be grafted into different contexts. So my ability to speak of a pen now must be repeatable into a new context — say some discussion tomorrow. This means that truth’s stability is not something static but rather is what remains stable through changes of context. This means that it is “upheld” by these eruptions. (i.e. for truth to remain truth it must be re-given as truth)

It follows for Derrida that for truth to be truth it must paradoxically be open to a kind of failure. That is the risk of chaos (of failure) is necessary for the stable to be stable. That sounds odd, but makes sense if you think about it. What Derrida is really saying is that the immanent world about us depends for its existence upon absence. We experience things as true (Being as Truth in more Heideggarian terms). But that true depends upon an absent substrate. That is because of the grafting into new absent contexts. But also because the very notion of understanding is tied to signs which also has a kind of absence. (The absence of the sender, the separation of the sign from what is signified, etc.)

We never just experience raw sense data, as the empiricists would have it. Rather we always experience things as something. That is I experience my keyboard as a keyboard. It’s partially wrapped up with linguistic meanings but also practices, and quite a lot else.

Secular grace, in this scheme, is thus the gift of being able to experience things as something. For any thing there is that added feature where it is given to me. That gift is grace.

Now Adam sees Derrida as saying something useful but doesn’t think that Derrida can say anything positive about grace. That is grace is always what can’t be explained by the system and thus is spoken of in terms of absences, excess, rupture or the like. What Adam wants to do is explain grace also in terms of what is already in the system.

I should hasten to add that I don’t buy Adam here. That’s for two reasons. For one, the system is already a given. So I think there is a temporal issue here. Derrida, I would argue, has no trouble talking about the system as given positively. It’s just that this positive giveness is already dependent upon something absent. To the degree Adam wants to deny this I think he’s just wrong. I think the positive depends essentially on the absent. It’s not that the positive isn’t there. For absence to even make sense there must be presence. It’s just that presence is itself complex

Adam wants to say Badiou offers a solution here. I’m reading Badiou right now (and Adam is kindly offering help reading it). We’ll see how that works.

My own view is that metaphorically secular grace is the recognition we are dancing on the edge of a precipice. Beside us is an abyss. Grace is what keeps us from falling into the abyss. (Thus the painting above)

Related posts:

  1. Speculative Grace
  2. What I’m Reading
  3. Grace
  4. Musings on Matter
  5. Doubt, Reasons and Imitating Mathematics
  6. Derrida and Object Oriented Philosophy

Comments

5 Responses to “Grace II”

To add to the above, an other issue in Derrida related to Adam’s critique is that we can’t easily discern what is in the system versus what is out of the system. Thus we can’t tell what is already immanent versus what is given. (And, as I said, the temporal issues in maintaining such a distinction are themselves problematic)

I suspect here we have a secular parallel to a common religious issue. For the religious (ignoring for the moment Calvinists or certain Muslims for who everything is done by God) one can be confused about what acts are divine intervention, which are coincidence, and which are done by people. (And sometimes an act might be all three)

In terms of the secular grace of Derrida one can suggest we can’t tell what is a present grace (or new eruption) from what is already part of a system. I should note that Derrida is of course playing on Heidegger’s famous distinctions of authentic versus inauthentic Dasein. That is a person who is open to things showing themselves versus trapped in what is given by those around them. (Das Man in Heidegger speak) He is also playing with Heidegger’s notion that things become present to me (what he calls present-at-hand) only because of the conditions of practices, what he calls ready-at-hand.

I’ll talk more about that Heidegger background next.

Interesting. Kind of makes me think on the LDS terms of “eternal progression” and the concept of grace as given in D&C 93, as a progression from one state to an ever higher state of grace.

I wonder if God really knows what a “fullness” of grace is, as in knowing all its aspects, or if he knows the key principles and that is what matters (I suppose that is dipping one’s foot into the ‘does God know the future’ concept)?

I’m thinking from your explanation that I would agree with Derrida on this. I have a truth to the level that I’ve discovered it, yet many key things I’ve yet to receive. My testimony of the gospel is very different than it was 33 years ago when I was converted, yet it is in some ways still the same foundation. So it is with my views of science, etc.

3 Michael Dorfman on May 14th, 2009 9:50 am

Clark: My own view is that grace is “essentially” that which exceeds any system and its abilities and erupts into the system thereby expanding it.

Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to view grace as the axioms of the system? In other words, that which is given? The fact that the axioms necessarily incomplete and allow undecidable propositions would still imply the irruption that you speak of– but (in my opinion) it would lessen the tendency to mystification of that which is given.

Clark: My own view is that metaphorically secular grace is the recognition we are dancing on the edge of a precipice. Beside us is an abyss. Grace is what keeps us from falling into the abyss

I’d argue that a) the abyss is is also part of the “given”, and b) we do all fall into it, sooner or later– and until we do, our days are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

That ends up being the debate Adam and I have. (Although he sent me an email suggesting he may be coming around to my point of view) The point I tried to make in the above with Derrida is to suggest that what is given rather than the givenness (i.e. the transcendental conditions enabling the given) is key. That’s because (to use the metaphor) the axioms of this system were themselves given in a prior eruption.

I don’t think this leads to a mystification. (That Derrida is skeptical of such mysticism seems clear in such works as “Apocalyptic Tone” (forget the exact title and am too lazy to look it up) I think the mystification tends to come because one has become so abstract one has lost sight of the things themselves. i.e. one forgets what one is talking about.

As to your second point that’s quite interesting. I’m thinking the abyss almost by definition can’t be given. But I’m suspecting we mean something different by the abyss. (Or by givenness)

I’ve long thought that one way to consider Derrida vs. Heidegger is to see that Derrida is speaking more broadly than phenomenology. i.e. towards being of beings in the sense of what sustains them ontically rather than ontologically. So perhaps that’s where you are headed?

5 Michael Dorfman on May 15th, 2009 10:50 am

Once again, I’d recommend Häggland’s “Radical Atheism” as the best reading of Derrida on these matters. I think the mystification comes when attempting to view “what is given” as a positive thing, which is what the language of grace implies.

I think the abyss is given: that we are all exposed to death and annihilation is as axiomatic as the fact that there is a “here” here. Naturally, “Aporias” is the key reference here.

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