Comparación Entre Resultados Experimentales y Numéricos

Kenosis is not a new concept when it appears in the Christian scriptures. Its novelty, there, could only be claimed in connection with its direct attribution to the divine. But is such attribution actually novel? Classical Christianity appropriates much from the philosophy of classical antiquity, in particular that of Plato and Aristotle. Moreover, Christian theology is constructed on a foundation provided by the theology and philosophy of Judaism. As constant historic conversers, and often as antagonists, Western philosophy and theology (both Judaic and Christian) are fundamentally connected, no less with regard to kenosis. Just as this discourse cannot, and need not, restate all that theology has said about the advent of kenosis in Christianity, the same is true of its origins in philosophy and Judaic thought. It is important, however, to acknowledge and outline the kenotic antecedents presented by both, especially those aspects, which, as seen in subsequent chapters, support the application of kenosis to creativity and, thereby, to architecture.

In Philosophy

To speak of emptying and emptiness is to ask of that which is emptied and that which it is emptied of. It is to ask of the container and the contained, of space and things in space, and of the places that things form. Such inquiry is found in Greek philosophy as early as the Pythagoreans, who, as Aristotle later tells it:

“… asserted the existence of the void and declared that it enters into the heavens out of the limitless breath – regarding the heavens as breathing the very vacancy – which vacancy ‘distinguishes’ natural objects … since it is this void that delimits their nature.”35

Some five or six centuries before kenosis appears in the Christian scriptures, the notion of empty space, including its role in relating the heavens with natural objects on earth, is

34 _{This is Moltmann’s description of a kenotic God. See Moltmann, "God's Kenosis in the Creation and}

Consummation of the World," 148.

35

addressed philosophically.36 Like the later Christian concept of a Holy Spirit, the Pythagorean vacancy of limitless breath describes a creative agent, insofar as it delineates or creates the nature of things. Pythagorean ‘space’, portrayed as dichotomous with matter, is associated with ‘air’.37 _{It is void and sometimes referred to as}

“the empty” or, in Greek, kenon, a term derived from the same root as kenosis, and therefore of interest here. Democritus (460-370 BCE) and other Atomists deploy the concept of kenon with increased emphasis, seeing it as the unoccupied or empty space between particles of matter (but not including the matter itself), which allows for movement of the particles. Atomistic kenon is what Edward Casey calls the “strict void,” or “no-place.” Being utterly empty, it lacks “predetermined routes” and therefore has no “places or regions” that might otherwise provide “qualities of its own.”38

Significantly expanding the concept of space – and seeing therein certain qualities of its own – Plato (ca. 428-348 BCE) posits space as “the natural receptacle of all bodies,”39 _{which is itself a quality. As such, Plato’s chōra (literally ‘space’, but from which}

is derived the notion of ‘chorus’, as in that involving singers or dancers) carries with it a sense of boundedness, and that begins to connote the existence of place. This boundedness does not suggest boundaries at which the chora and its happenings are stopped, but thresholds at which it and its happenings become enabled.40 Therefore, chora is often likened to places that enable becoming, places such as room, womb, and dance floor. Chora, however, cannot be seen to possess anything like the same determinacy of bounds that such metaphoric references might imply. Plato describes the chora as “the nurse of all becoming,”41 _{and elucidates its (indeterminate) qualities:}

… it continues to receive all things, and has never in any way whatsoever itself taken on any shape similar to any of the things that enter it; for it is by nature a matrix for everything which is moved and refigured by the things which enter it, and because of those things it appears different at different times.42

36 _{It is no great leap to see the notions of ‘heavens breathing’ (inspiration and expiration), and ‘limitless}

breath’, as prefiguring the kind of ‘spirit’ (discussed in the previous section of this chapter) that would be portrayed as appearing on earth like a “violent wind,” and as that with which the followers of a messiah, said to have been originally created in such spirit, would be “filled” (Acts 2:2-4 NRSV).

37

Such identification is suggested by J. Burnet, quoted in M. Jammer, Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1969), 9.

38

E.S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Paperback ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 33.

39

Plato, Timaeus, 50b. Unless otherwise noted, I am using Plato, Timaeus and Critias, trans. D. Lee and T.K. Johansen, Penguin Classics ed. (London: Penguin Group, (1965) 2008).

40 _{This notion of boundary – one generally deployed throughout the dissertation – is that which Heidegger}

refers to and elucidates in M. Heidegger, "Building Dwelling Thinking," in Poetry, Language, Thought (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 152. Specifically, Heidegger states: “a space is something that has been made room for, something that is cleared and free, namely within a boundary, Greek peras. A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its presencing.”

41

Plato, Timaeus: 49a.

42

The ‘quality of its own’ possessed by the chora is not any particular shape or character but the capacity to transform, when and as needed, in order to receive whatever enters it. Hence, while the Atomists contrast matter and space, Plato conjoins them, even while maintaining their distinction. Matter becomes in the receptacle of space, because, as Max Jammer describes it, “a physical body is merely part of space limited by geometric surfaces containing nothing but empty space.”43 _{For their identity}

and existence, matter and space are mutually reliant on this matrix, which is “the generatrix of created things: their mater or material precondition.”44 _{It is important to note,}

however, as both Casey and F.M. Cornford do,45 that this matrix is not, itself, the begetter or creator but rather the medium of creating. It is that which provides “a seat [or situation] for everything that comes to be.”46 _{Thus, in his turn from kenon to chora, Plato’s}

conception of space continues to reveal kenotic insights. Through kenosis – that is, by emptying – room is made for receiving, and, through the active passivity of both, becoming is enabled not only the becoming of the received but also of the receiver. Kenosis is not merely an emptying but all that the emptying effects. The emptied, receptive receptacle is that “in which” the qualities of the creation appear, and, by virtue thereof, so too appear the (always varying) qualities of the receptacle, in the same manner “as fleeting images are seen in a mirror.”47 It is a kind of locus of creat-ivity, creat-ing, and emergent creat-ion; a kind of ‘place’ of unfolding kenosis. Plato’s chora, then, is by no means an empty void. In fact, it is “richly plenary,”48

and that, too, is a quality that corroborates kenotic plenitude.49 Paradoxically, it is by emptying the concept of kenon of its utter emptiness – to posit, instead, chora – that Plato’s work can be seen to open-up the concept of kenosis.

Of equal or greater importance to the unconcealment of kenosis is Plato’s concept of the choric happening, that which ultimately results in qualitative and sensible creation. Although the chora, as matrix, associates itself with matter, it is not material. “Let us not say that the mother and receptacle of what has come into being as visible or generally as perceptible is either earth or air or fire or water.”50 _{Instead, the chora receives and}

transforms such matter and forces, even as it transforms its non-material self in order to

43

Jammer, Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics: 14.

44

Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History: 24.

45

Ibid., 37; F.M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato Translated, with a Running Commentary (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, (1935) 1997), 187.

46

Plato, Timaeus: 52b. (The word translated as ‘seat’, in this version, is rendered as ‘situation’ in Cornford, Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato Translated, with a Running Commentary: 192.) In this sense, Plato’s concept of ‘space’ prefigures the Christian notion of a Holy Spirit, especially when, as seen, the latter’s nature is portrayed not as ‘begetter’, but as ‘the power of the process of begetting’. (See note 20, and surrounding discussion.)

47

Cornford, Plato's Cosmology: The Timaeus of Plato Translated, with a Running Commentary: 181.

48

Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History: 33.

49

See note 33 and surrounding discussion.

50

do so. This transformation – this happening – is one of motion. Motion in the chora is caused by its reception of dissimilar matter, which produces an imbalance of forces and a consequent lack of “equilibrium.” Thus, in the original choric happening,

the nurse of becoming … swayed unevenly in every direction as it was shaken by the forces, and being moved it in turn shook them. And the things that were moved were constantly being separated and carried in different directions … It separated the kinds most unlike each other furthest away from each other and pushed those most like each other towards the same place, with the result that they came to occupy different regions of space, even before they were arranged into an ordered universe.51

According to this, and as Plato goes on to suggest, it could be surmised that once this “winnowing” – or sorting – is finished, such a happening might end in a permanent state of rest. But such is not the case in the chora. Owing to the sphericality of its motion, and therefore a natural inclination “to return on itself,” a kind of compression occurs “in which small parts are juxtaposed with large ones, and the smaller disintegrate the larger, while the larger cause the smaller to combine, and all are carried … to their own region; for a change in size involves a change in the position of their region.” So it is that the bodies are constantly “transforming themselves into each other,”52 _{such that}

“disequilibrium always keeps coming into being” and “perpetual motion” is ensured.53

This vivid description reveals the chora’s constant heterogeneity and indeterminacy, but it also reveals its regionality and, in that, its relationality.54 By way of its regionalising activity, it not only empties and makes-room, so as to gather-in the various parts that come to comprise a region, but also establishes the relationality of each region’s parts – to the point of bodies becoming the other – and, as well, the relationality of diverse and always-changing regions. In so doing, the chora reveals the potential for peri-chor-esis, the invitation and drawing-in to deeply intertwined relationship (discussed earlier in the context of trinitarian theology and interpersonal binding).55 Such revelations say much about Plato’s chora, but they say as much or more about the nature of kenosis, that by which the choric happenings are enabled, animated, and maintained. Kenosis is shown to be an emptying effected by self-contraction, or a re-turning-in on itself. By virtue thereof, it is also clearing, receiving, pluralising, relationalising, transforming, and

51

Ibid., 52e-53a.

52

Note the similarity between this aspect of the choric happening and the aspect of kenosis, presented earlier, in which those engaged kenotically are seen to “partially become the other.” See also note 17 and surrounding discussion.

53

Plato, Timaeus: 57e-58c. In Chapter 7 of this dissertation, I draw on this notion of ‘disequilibrium’ using,

instead, the term ‘dynamic equilibrium’ to suggest a condition of relationality that can be asymmetrical and hierarchical, so as to be effectively powered, yet remain balanced – all by way of constant shifts in the prioritisation of related parts.

54

The notions of choric homogeneity and regionalisation are explored more fully in Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History: 34-36.

55

unending. Moreover, its being all of this is contingent and indeterminate, if not also mysterious. Kenosis shows to be as enigmatic as the matrix it permeates, and perceivable only “in a kind of dream.”56

Just as the Pythagorean concept of kenon (void, as empty space) is advanced by Plato and his concept of chora (space, as receptive matrix), the latter is further advanced by Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and his concept of topos (place, as position in space). And, like Plato’s progression, the detail of Aristotle’s progression is comprehensively analysed and documented elsewhere, not least in the respective works of Jammer and Casey. Of concern here are those aspects of Aristotelian topos that continue to uncover the nature of kenosis. As seen, Plato discusses the choric motion that establishes regions, each of which constitutes some sort of ‘place’, even as he also discusses the movement from region to region as bodies “exchange places.”57 _{In the Physics, Aristotle similarly}

discusses “locomotion” as “change in respect of place,”58 _{but does so from a significantly}

different perspective. Plato prioritises an amorphous but essentially singular receptacle, or matrix. Therein are found various regions consisting of transient and transforming bodies that occupy space (place) specific to them, such that their places move with them. Place is never fixed, and the ‘exchange’ of places is merely the result of bodily transformations that necessitate the occupancy of a smaller or larger ‘place’. Aristotle, on the other hand, prioritises a plurality of places – positions in space – and sees bodies constantly moving between such places, regardless of their size. Thus, it is the fixed-ness of place that allows movement to be discerned, and it is place that transforms according to the transformed size and configuration of what moves to it. Space, to the extent Aristotle considers it, is therefore “the sum total of all places.”59 _{It is not a singular}

structure constituted to maintain plural and diverse complexity, but a unitary primordial structure whose very constitution is such complexity.60 That is an important distinction in itself, but it also reveals another. Plato’s view that the chora is constituted sees its limits being imposed from outside itself (as by Demiurge). His is a distinctly different view to Aristotle’s, in which the limits of topos are immanent,61 or, as he states it, “limits are 56 Plato, Timaeus: 52b. 57 Ibid., 57c. 58

Aristotle, Physics: 208a31-32. Unless otherwise noted, I am using Aristotle, Physics, Books III and IV, ed. J.L. Ackrill and L. Judson, trans. E. Hussey, Clarendon Aristotle Series (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

59 _{As Jammer notes: “In the}

Physics, Aristotle uses exclusively the term ‘place’ (topos)” and, therefore, in a strict sense, “does not advance a theory of space at all,” other than implying its composition as a collection of places. See Jammer, Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics: 17, 23.

60 _{I use the term “unitary primordial structure” from Heidegger’s discussion in}

Being and Time, a term and concept I discuss further in Chapter 7. See M. Heidegger, Being and Time, ed. D.J. Schmidt, trans. J. Stambaugh, SUNY Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, (1927) 1996), 123 (H. 131).

61

This distinction between imposition and immanence is discussed in Casey, The Fate of Place: A

Philosophical History: 55-56. Casey also cites A.N. Whitehead’s suggestion that Plato’s view may invoke both

together with what is limited.”62 _{Such limits – seen as potentiality, not merely restriction –}

are effected in the ability of topos “to contain by surrounding” without being part of that which is contained.63 Place is thus vessel-like but unlike a vessel in its fixedness. Hence place is “a vessel which cannot be moved around.”64

A later Atomist, Epicurus (341-270 BCE), sees all three notions of space – kenon, topos, and chora – as three kinds of the same “intangible substance.” Kenon (void) is “unoccupied space.” Topos (place) is “occupied space … the [stationary] location of a sensible thing in space.” And chora (room), no longer seen as a self-contained matrix, is the room through which bodies “roam,” through which they move to other places. Epicurus is thus able to maintain the Atomist distinction of kenon, accept Aristotelian notions of topos, and emphasise the dynamic of inter-place movement through the chora. In so doing, he portrays space as “giving place and room for everything,” as “the very medium of [atomic bodies’] situatedness and movement, the scene of their multiple occupation.”65 _{Such a portrayal sees relationality in this medium as having both fixed and}

kinetic dimensions, at once connected to and changing places. Despite substantially differing views of void, something like this Epicurean medium is advanced by the Stoics (from the early third century BCE) in clearly physical terms: “an agent responsible for the propagation of physical processes through space,” manifesting as a kind of “tension (tonos) in its active state.” By virtue of this agent, “distant parts of the universe are able to influence each other,” and the cosmos becomes “one field of action” where elements are not so much contained but bound together by “internal cohesion”66 _{(a notion that once}

again echoes perichoresis). In all of these concepts, the resulting dynamic is a highly creative one, one of constant change, in which not only do things change place but place changes as a result, even while remaining identifiable and of fixed location.

The progression of post-Platonic conceptions of space – including distinctions, contradictions, and ongoing questions – does not end here. But even an incomplete outline is sufficient to harvest the essential insights that such developments contribute to a foundational understanding of kenosis. To be, kenotically, is not merely to exchange places (in the Platonic sense). It is not merely to move self and self’s space to a different location, even if as a result of self-transformation. Instead, it is to engage with another place – or what is actually a place of the other – such that self, other, and place are mutually transformed through such engagement. Moreover, it is to invite reciprocal

62

Aristotle, Physics: 212a30.

63

Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History: 55.

64

Aristotle, Physics: 212a14-15.

65

Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History: 83. Notwithstanding this concept’s limitations, Casey joins those who posit that Epicurus – by way of this concept – “explicitly identifies void proper with what we must begin to call space.”