Transformation : John of the Cross in dialogue with Ludwig Wittgenstein on the meaning of silence and darkness

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to bring into conversation two authors to discuss transformation although they come from different eras and backgrounds. At first sight, the Spanish Carmelite reformer, John of the Cross, and the Austrian philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, do not seem to be possible partners, yet both authors make us aware of our limits, and stress the need of a radical therapeutic change in our way of looking at things. Although they intend different transformative processes – John describes a spiritual inward journey of purification from sin and disorderly attachments, while Ludwig avers a change in the way we speak by his distinction between what can be said and what can only be shown – they agree that they are dependent on an absolute will, and that to live happily they have to abide to this mysterious will. In both authors, the process of transformation reaches silence at the limits of language and thought. Yet, for John, this occurs through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and requires divine grace that changes the human person ontologically while, for Wittgenstein, transformation takes place on the ethical level, in how one lives the absolute values experienced in silence through personal effort. A dialogue is, thus, created between John’s dark night of the soul, which is an experience of God’s absence, and Wittgenstein’s pregnant silence that communicates what is in itself unsayable, between the secret love through which God and the human soul give themselves to each other in hiding and Wittgenstein’s understanding of religious belief that involve intense passions and feelings. The thesis also discusses how the two conceptions of transformation can be extended to society to achieve their total fulfilment, thus developing a culture of wondering at the Absolute and of experiencing the Ineffable.