Rosenzweig, William Franke, and the Secular Value of the Apophatic

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A large part of my work is an attempt to present how certain aspects of religious thinking have value beyond the religious sphere. In particular apophatic theology, I believe, may have profound meaning when interpreted in a secular manner; the apophatic, really, just amounts to an acknowledgment of the limits of rational knowledge, the acceptance of the unknowable and the mysterious, and the profound value and meaning, the positivity, that this understanding can bring to our experience of life. In pursuit of the apophatic I have found the writing of William Franke to be wonderfully enlightening. Below is an excerpt from his work On What Cannot Be Said, from a chapter on the work of Franz Rosenzweig. I have taken the liberty in this excerpt to replace the word “God” with the more general word “Life” in order to present how Rosenzweig’s writing, as with so many apophatic writers, easily transcends religiosity.

“In Part I of the Star, Rosenzweig begins from the fact that we know nothing of [Life], just as we know nothing of the world and nothing of man. To know anything implies grasping it in its totality, and this is impossible. But precisely this nothing of our knowledge is an extremely positive existential fact; it defines our whole way of being and is expressed in everything we experience. The nothing of our knowledge is itself an inexhaustibly rich phenomenon: our knowledge, by telling us nothing, tells the most essential thing about [Life], namely, [its] transcendence of our faculties and therefore of our discourse. [Life] is thus ‘metaphysical,’ a positive fact that we cannot comprehend or properly state. Similarly, the World and Man in their pure facticity transcend rational comprehension. The created world has a positivity and an order that we experience but do not comprehend; we do not see its ground any more than we see the act of Creation. Its Logos transcends knowledge; it is ‘metalogical.’ So also, man in his singular individuality is ‘metalogical’: he is governed by a vital principle- his own individual character- that escapes rational calculation.”

Gotta Get Rhuthmos

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I’ve been reading about a maverick linguist, Meschonnic, who opposed semiotics (which I loathe) and insisted on viewing language as poetics, in particular insisting that rhythm is the most essential aspect of language. Reading further, I discovered that his conception of rhythm is pre-Platonic and more closely aligned with Heraclitus’ way of thinking. I then did a Google AI search, and what came up was damn interesting.

In short, yet another reason to despise Plato’s influence: he even ruined rhythm. What a damn honkey. 

Google AI: Pre-Platonic concept of rhythm: The pre-Platonic concept of rhuthmós (rhythm) referred to a temporary, changeable form of something in movement (from the verb rhein, meaning ‘to flow’), rather than a fixed, measurable pattern. It was an empirical and materialistic concept, as opposed to the abstract, mathematical definition later introduced by Plato.

Key aspects of the pre-Platonic concept:

  • Manière de fluer (Manner of flowing): French linguist Émile Benveniste showed that rhuthmós in ancient Greece meant the “form of the moving” or a “particular way of flowing”. It described how something in flux presented itself to an observer at a given moment.
  • Changeable and Impermanent: The form described was not fixed or eternal, but a transient “disposition” always subject to change.
  • Materialistic: Philosophers like Democritus and Leucippus used rhuthmós to describe the shape or structure of atomic compounds, which were temporary arrangements of atoms in the void. The world was seen as a flow of matter, and rhythm was the instantaneous schema (shape/structure) of these ever-changing forms.
  • Phenomenal Fitness: The term eurhythmy (good rhythm) was used by figures like Socrates (as recalled by Xenophon) in a practical sense, referring to the appropriate or good shape of an object in relation to its user (e.g., a shield that fit a specific warrior well), not an absolute or ideal beauty.
  • Opposition to Platonic Ideals: Plato later reversed this meaning, defining rhythm as “order in movement” and associating it with abstract, numerical, and fixed Forms, which then largely dominated Western thought. Plato was suspicious of the wild, “demonic” power of unbridled pre-Platonic rhythms, which he associated with frenzy and loss of rationality, preferring instead measured rhythms subject to rational discourse (logos).

Nicolas Berdyaev

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I have, since I began my literary and philosophical journey, been drawn to something essential in Russian thinking. Dostoevsky, Chekhov and Lev Shestov are some of the writers I have felt closest to. Now I have discovered Nicolas Berdyaev, a Russian philosopher.

This is the beginning of The Destiny Of Man, published in 1937.

“I do not intend to begin, in accordance with the German tradition, with an epistemological justification. I want to begin with an epistemological accusation, or, rather, with an accusation against epistemology. Epistemology is an expression of doubt in the power and the validity of philosophical knowledge. Thinkers who devote themselves to epistemology seldom arrive at ontology. The path they follow is not one which leads to reality… Man has lost the power of knowing real being, has lost access to reality and been reduced to studying knowledge. And so in his pursuit of knowledge he is faced throughout with knowledge and not with being. But one cannot arrive at being- one can only start with it.”

Derrida’s Alterity

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I feel a lot of sympathy with Derrida’s idea of the “messianic structure of existence.” He describes this as the general idea of an approaching future alterity, a future which, as it is not yet invented, is so different from what we are accustomed to that it cannot even be conceptualized. I have had a sense of something similar for some time, and bring this into much of my work, though I have never had any idea where this sense of a future containing something so radically different comes from, other than the general sense of the Western rationalist outlook being unsustainable. Like Derrida, I believe all we can do is try to break down the current paradigm in order to allow this impossible future to appear.

Here’s what Derrida says:


“I am careful to say ‘let it come’ because if the other is precisely what is not invented, the initiative or deconstructive inventiveness can consist only in opening, in uncloseting, in destabilising foreclusionary structures, so as to allow for the passage toward the other”: