Expressing the Inexpressible in Lyotard and Pseudo-Dionysius
Bearing Witness as Spiritual Exercise
By (author) Mélanie V. Walton
Publication date:
28 August 2013Length of book:
326 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739183410
Testimony demands the witness to demonstrate her knowledge—that knowledge that she must have by the fact of being a witness to something, even if this something exceeds the possibility of expression by any means amenable to verification. Expressing the Inexpressible in Lyotard and Pseudo-Dionysius: Bearing Witness as Spiritual Exercise rigorously studies the inexpressible expression provoked by two illustrative examples: the silenced testimony of the Holocaust survivor, in Jean-François Lyotard’s The Differend, and the religious faithful, in Pseudo-Dionysius’ The Divine Names. Though coming from vastly different philosophical moments, the methods used by Lyotard and Dionysius prove to dissolve the apparent heterogeneity of postmodernism and Neoplatonist Christian mysticism and open radical new lines of dialogue. Mélanie Victoria Walton critically evaluates each thinker and tradition, rethinks witnessing, testimony, sublimity, and apophaticism, and then engages them together to forge a new reading of silence and eros. The resulting insights will be especially valuable to students and scholars of Continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, theology and religious studies, medieval studies, and Holocaust studies.
“Mélanie V. Walton explains why the paradoxical search to do justice to the inexpressible is central to Lyotard’s later work. This demonstration places him at the heart of contemporary discussions in ethics and law about justice for those who cannot speak of the harm done to them. She does so on the basis of thorough and original research, with the added brilliant flourish of situating the debate in relation to Neoplatonism and the problems of knowledge of God.”