III. Nine Disputatio on the Horror of Theology

III. Nine Disputatio on the Horror of Theology

In Medieval Scholasticism, disagreements or confusions on a given topic were often vetted through the disputatio, or disputation. Sometimes the disputatio would be tightly regulated, as when two scholars would debate an agreed-upon topic. But on other occasions the disputatio could be about any topic, about "whatever" -- in this case they would be referred to as disputatio de quodlibet. Such intellectual free-for-alls were often quite spontaneous and associative. These "whatever" disputatio could also be written down, in which the author would engage in a disputatio with him or herself. It is in this spirit that the following essays-in-miniature are presented. Each deals with the way supernatural horror mediates between life and death, often by evoking some concept of "life-in-itself" that hovers between the domains of science and religion, biology, and theology -- it is in this in-betweeness that one discovers supernatural horror as a way of thinking about life beyond either the subjective (life-experience) or the objective (life-science) definitions. 

The question that runs through these disputation is the following: what if "horror" has less to do with the fear of death, and more to do with the dread of life? Not a very uplifting thought, that. Nevertheless, death is simply the non-existence after my life, in a sense akin to the non-existence before my life. These two types of non-existence (a parte post or after my life, and a parte ante or before my life) are mirror of each other. This is a sentiment repeatedly voiced by Schopenhauer: "For the infinity a parte post without me cannot be any more fearful than the infinite a parte ante without me, since the two are not distinguished by anything except the intervention of an ephemeral life-dream." 

If horror -- as we've been discussing it -- is a way of thinking the world as unthinkable, and the limits of our place within that world, then really the specter that haunts horror is not death but instead life. But what is "life"? Perhaps no other concept has so preoccupied philosophy, with such divergent opinions on what is or isn't the essence of life. After thousands of years of philosophical inquiry, we can be pretty sure that we will never arrive at a definitive and final answer to the "what is life" question. And yet life, as lived, constantly throws the question back at us -- the most immediate is the least understood. In addition, "life" is not really a philosophical concept. Philosophers talk endlessly about metaphysical concepts such as "being," "substance," or "existence," whereas "life" seems to slip by the wayside, not quite a primary metaphysical concept, and yet more than its scientific or religious definitions. In fact, "life" is interesting for philosophy precisely because of the way it seems to be nestled between its scientific and religious definitions, both of which steer towards human life, the life-for-us.

1. After-LIfe

Ever since Aristotle distinguished the living from the non-living in terms of psukhē (𝜓𝜐𝜒𝜂) -- commonly translated as "soul" or "life-principle" -- the concept of life has itself been defined by duplicity -- at once self-evident, and yet opaque, capable of categorization and capable of further mystification. This duplicity is related to another one, namely, that there are also two sides to Aristotle -- there is Aristotle-the-metaphysician, rationalizing psukhē, form, and causality, and there is Aristotle-the-biologist, observing natural processes of "generation and corruption" and ordering the "parts of animals." 

Despite the voluminous output of Aristotle's natural philosophy of life, there is relatively little about death -- or, for that matter, the afterlife. But what comes "after life"? Is it death, decay, decomposition, or is it resurrection and regeneration? Is it, in biological terms, the transformation of the living into the non-living, from the organic life of molecules to non-organic matter? Or does it involve a theological re-vitalization of the resurrected, living cadaver? In either case, the after-life bears some relation to the "during life" and the "before life," and it is precisely the ambiguity of these relationships that has shaped the debates on mechanism and vitalism in the philosophy of biology, as well as the earlier debates in Scholasticism on the nature of creaturely life. 

There is no better guide to the after-life than Dante. The life or the after-life in the Commedia is a political theology, at once rigidly structured and yet coursing with masses of bodies, limbs, fluids, fires, rivers, minerals, and geometric patterns of beatific light. In particular, the Inferno gives us several concise statements concerning the life of the after-life. In the seventh circle, Dante and his guide Virgil come to the "burning desert," upon which a multitude of bodies are strewn about. Among them Dante and Virgil come across Capaneus, one of the seven kings who assaulted Thebes and defied the law of Jove. Capaneus lies stretched out on the burning sand, a rain of fire descending upon him, while he continues his curses against the sovereign. As Virgil explains, Capaneus is one of the blasphemers, grouped with the usurers and sodomites for their crimes against God, State, and Nature, respectively. But, as with many of Dante's depictions in the Inferno, there is no redemption, and the punished are often far from being penitential. Their tired, Promethean drama of revolt, defiance, and blasphemy goes on for eternity.

It is easy to read such scenes in a highly anthropomorphic manner. But each individual "shade" that Dante encounters is also associated with a group or ensemble that denotes a category of transgression, and this is especially the case of Middle Hell. Upon entering the gates of the city of Dis, Dante and Virgil are first encountered by a horde of demons, and then by the furies. Once they are able to pass, they come upon a "landscape of open graves," each one burning and holding within it one of the heretics. The scene is depicted with great drama by Gustave Doré, who, following the prior example of Botticelli, presents the heretics as a mass of twisted, emaciated corpses emerging from their graves. Along the way they also encounter a river of bodies immersed in boiling blood (watched over by a regiment of Centaurs), as well as the "wood of suicides," in which the bodies of the damned are fused with dead trees (watched over by Harpies). Within many of the circles, Dante encounters nothing but multiplicity -- bustling crowds (the Vestibule of the Indecisive), a cyclone of impassioned bodies (Circle II, the Lustful), a sea of bodies devouring each other (Circle IV, the Wrathful), dismembered bodies (Circle VIII, the Sowers of Discord), and a field of bodies ridden with leprosy (Circle VIII, the Falsifiers). The life-after-life is not only a life of multiplicity, but it is also a life in which the very concept of life continually negates itself, a kind of vitalistic life-negation that results in the living dead "citizens" of the City of Dis.

Perhaps, then, one should begin not by thinking about any essence or principle of life, but by thinking about a certain negation of life, a kind of life-after-life in which the "after" is not temporal or sequential, but liminal.