Różnice słów, czyli głębsza forma myśli

Andrew Louth - Początki mistyki chrześcijańskiej

"Here we come to a particular point which we shall meet in the ensuing pages, the Greek word nous and its derivatives. Nous is usually translated as ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’. Part of the problem is that neither of these words is as rich in derived forms as the Greek nous (they have, most significantly, no verb). But beyond that, the words ‘mind’ and ‘intellect’ and their derivatives (intellection, intellectual, etc.) have quite different overtones from the Greek nous. The most fundamental reason for this is a cultural one: the Greeks were preCartesian; we are all post-Cartesian. We say, ‘I think, therefore I am’, that is, thinking is an activity I engage in and there must therefore be an ‘I’ to engage in it; the Greeks would say, ‘I think, therefore there is that which I think—ta noeta.’ What I think is something going on in my head; what the Greek thinks, ta noeta, are the objects of thought that (for example, for Plato) exist in a higher, more real world. This means that nous and its derivatives have a quite different feel from our words, mind, mental, intellect, intellection, etc. Our words suggest our reasoning, our thinking; nous, noesis, etc. suggest an almost intuitive grasp of reality. To quote Festugière:

It is one thing to approach truths by reason, it is quite another to attain to them by that intuitive faculty called nous by the ancients, the ‘fine point of the soul’ by St Francis de Sales, and the ‘heart’ by Pascal.

By means of nous, Festugière goes on to say, the soul aspires to a knowledge that is a direct contact, a ‘feeling’ (sentiment), a touching, something seen. It aspires to a union where there is total fusion, the interpenetration of two living things.

Nous, then, is more like an organ of mystical union than anything suggested by our words ‘mind’ or ‘intellect’. And yet nous does mean mind; noesis is a deeper, simpler, more contemplative form of thought, not something quite other than thinking."

[Dwa niepełne akapity, kluczowe dla całego dzieła, ze świetnej pracy Andrew Loutha o początkach mistyki (myśli) chrześcijańskiej. Poprawiłem dwa oczywiste błędy z angielskiego oryginału: bezsensowne to noeta na ta noeta (singular rodzajnika określonego na plural )]

Andrew Louth jest angielskim teologiem, emerytowanym profesorem studiów patrystycznych i bizantyjskich na Wydziale Teologii i Religii Uniwersytetu Durham.

Inne prace A. Loutha: