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WEB 4 - ARCHIVE
Commentary 3 - Triads Intro 3 |
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Darkness of
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Way of Theosis Psychological method Prayer of the heart
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RELYING ON APPEARANCES The fact that language shapes thought has formed a basis for this translation. The way in which certain words are translated determines how we understand how people once thought. This is important because, in the Western translations of this work that have been available until now, not only nous but certain other Greek words have been given multiple meanings. There were obviously good reasons for these variations: for example, they would fit more easily into modern thought. Yet they also seemed to produce certain confusions in the reader. As we worked on this text, it began to appear that in the Triads these confusions were in fact greater and more significant than is generally recognised. Indeed, it began to appear that the confusion themselves, once understood, were showing us one of the most important conclusions to be drawn from the text: the conclusion that our contemporary thought is different from that of the first Christian millennium in ways that may be of great significance to modern humanity. The divergence in meaning began to appear to be the direct product of a deeper divergence between two very different ways of seeing the world. This difference crystallizes in the way we see the world. It gives the world a very different appearance in the mind. Under the influence of the normal contemporary Western world-view, the different ways in which certain things appear are taken as if the things themselves are different. Different appearances are mistakenly seen as ‘different things,’ in direct contradiction to the philosophical idea that these differences are not real, but only ‘differences in appearance.’ Such philosophical insights, which helped to shape our civilisation in the past, have little influence over people today. They count for little in a ‘celebrity culture.’ Thus different translations of the word for a ‘single’ thing lead to its appearing as many different things. This works one way with nous. It now most often appears in translation not as the knowing core of reason but as the everyday thoughts which are its coinage but not its value: its form but not its meaning. It begins to appear as if, in some way, this difference in appearance represents a breakdown, a narrowing, in our ability to understand – not only a limitation in our ability to understand the book, but also in our ability to understand experience. Further enquiry suggests that this was evidence of a conceptual fragmentation symptomatic of a widespread general deterioration in the use of the human mind, and even to suggest certain reasons for this deterioration. It appears more than possible that modern problems such as ADI, (Attention Deficit Disorder,) might directly result from this. In the Greek of Palamas’ time, attention is an action of the nous. |
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