Incomprehensible Certainty: Metaphysics and Hermeneutics of the Image

by Thomas Pfau

Thomas Pfau’s study of images and visual experience is a tour de force linking Platonic metaphysics to modern phenomenology and probing literary, philosophical, and theological accounts of visual experience from Plato to Rilke. Incomprehensible Certainty presents a sustained reflection on the nature of images and the phenomenology of visual experience. Taking the “image” ( eikōn ) as the essential medium of art and literature and as foundational for the intuitive ways in which we make contact with our “lifeworld,” Thomas Pfau draws in equal measure on Platonic metaphysics and modern phenomenology to advance a series of interlocking claims. First, Pfau shows that, beginning with Plato’s later dialogues, being and appearance came to be understood as ontologically distinct from (but no longer opposed to) one another. Second, in contrast to the idol that is typically gazed at and visually consumed as an object of desire, this study positions the image as a medium whose intrinsic abundance and excess reveal to us its metaphysical function―namely, as the visible analogue of an invisible, numinous reality. Finally, the interpretations unfolded in this book (from Plato, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Damascene via Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and Nicholas of Cusa to modern writers and artists such as Goethe, Ruskin, Turner, Hopkins, Cézanne, and Rilke) affirm the essential complementarity of image and word, visual intuition and hermeneutic practice, in theology, philosophy, and literature. Like Pfau’s previous book, Minding the Modern , Incomprehensible Certainty is a major work. With over fifty illustrations, the book will interest students and scholars of philosophy, theology, literature, and art history.

Genres: Philosophy

812 pages, Hardcover

Published June 1, 2022

Reviews

[Adam Carnehl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkably learned book, a wide-ranging book, a vast book . . . Thomas Pfau of Duke University has given us a renewed grammar for encountering images which takes its cue from Plato and Plotinus, the Damascene and Stoudite, Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus, Thomas and Nicholas of Cusa, Goethe and Ruskin, Hopkins and Rilke. All the while, these figures are in continuous conversation with modern phenomenologists: Husserl and Marion, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. But they're also in conversation with a host of other creative people, such as poets (Eliot, Pound), novelists (Dostoevsky, Mann), and painters (Turner, Cézanne). It's surprising to read a book that can offer a serious interpretation of Pseudo-Dionysius' apophatic theology and then turn around and just as competently discuss the evolution of Rilke's poetic stages. To my mind, this magisterial work is another indication of 'how' theology will be done in the decades to come. While at one time, perhaps, various areas of theology were hermetically sealed against one another, and a scholar of Thomas dare not also do serious work in the aesthetics of T. S. Eliot, the times are changing. Theologians such as Pfau are realizing that, even if there's no direct connection between, say, Rilke and Nicholas of Cusa in that Rilke never read him, there are yet deeper, logos-connections between them. In the way Rilke approaches an ordinary object as an extraordinary epiphany, there are remarkable echoes of the past that can also just as seriously be uncovered. Theology, that is, an account of God, is what holds together all of these different thinkers and artists.

Indeed, Pfau's book is his orchestration of a critical conversation between all sorts of thinkers (mostly Christian) who pay attention to the image. The image, that is, and not "art," or "beauty" more generally, but that which gives itself to me in a visual manner, that which appears, which shines, which penetrates my eyes, mind, and heart. Pfau's book is not some kind of historical appraisal of "Christian" images, such as icons, and neither is it a guide to the symbology or interpretation of specific images. It is, rather, a hermeneutic and phenomenological project to uncover what the image proper is and what it does. Therefore, poetry which is produced from images and in turn produces new images in the imagination of readers/hearers, is also on the table, rather than simply aesthetic philosophy or an engagement with only painting.

There are two major difficulties I had with Pfau's work. The first is that, because of its massive length and amount of figures it interacts with, at times it can be meandering. I'm specifically thinking of his chapter on Goethe, "The Symbolic Image," which, at times, became quite repetitive. Pfau's point is about Goethe's sense of intuition, not as an ambiguous and subjective term, but as a way the viewer relates to an image in its self-manifestation. I believe Goethe does have something to offer here, but 80 pages of interpretation peppered with the same sentence,"Goethe's botanical writings have much to offer," was wearying for me. I wish he had examined the German Romantic tradition more broadly here, as I believe Hamann and Novalis in conversation with Goethe would have yielded some more interesting and engaging insights. The other difficultly I had with the work is Pfau's notion of Symbolism as a fin-de-siecle movement. He seems to situate the Symbolist movement as the final gasp of art-for-art's-sake decadence, which I think is a mistake. There is a great deal of difference between Wilde's symbolism and Yeats' or Chesterton's, not to mention the Russian Silver Age's symbolism (painters Vrubel and Nesterov, theologians Florensky and Bulgakov). Symbolism, announced by Symons in the Anglophone world, was a reaction to bourgeois aesthetic values. It sought magic and mystery ("Symbolism") in a world where, after Kant, Marx, and Darwin, metaphysical meaning seemed to be slipping away. To me, some of the most interesting poems and artworks of the last two centuries are from the first decade of the twentieth century, particularly in the world of Russian painting. Also, all of Mahler's oeuvre can be situated in this period between fin-de-siecle decadence and modernism; so could all of the most important early Fantasy novels by William Morris; Symbolism is a fascinating fulcrum in the history of human creativity. It was a period of hyper-creativity, marked by the re-emergence of icons to the West and absolute height of the symphony in Mahler 4-9. Pfau has typically short, disparaging remarks for this ten to twenty year period and I think they're too general and unclear.

This is such an intellectually rich work and Pfau does so much in it that would be time-consuming to adequately summarize ever chapter, especially because each chapter is around 70 pages - a book in itself! But I will try to do just that here, or at least attempt to highlight important definitions and distinctions Pfau makes in each chapter. I'll also include quotations that I found especially insightful.

[Adam Marquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the book’s comprehensiveness, but I was overwhelmed by its volume. I would be very interested in a condensed version.