On the contrary, since Jesus calls the bread and wine, which he distributes to all, his body and blood given for them, the unification is no longer merely felt but has become visible. It is not merely represented in an image, an allegorical figure, but linked to a reality, eaten and enjoyed in a reality, the bread. Hence the feeling becomes in a way objective; yet this bread and wine, and the act of distribution, are not purely objective; there is more in the distribution than is seen; it is a mystical action. A spectator ignorant of their friendship and with no understanding of the words of Jesus would have seen nothing save the distribution of some bread and wine and the enjoyment of these. Similarly, when friends part and break a ring and each keeps one piece, a spectator sees nothing but the breaking of a useful thing and its division into useless and valueless pieces; the mystical aspect of the pieces he has failed to grasp. Objectively considered, then, the bread is just bread, the wine just wine; yet both are something more. This "more" is not connected with the objects (like an explanation) by a mere "just as": " just as the single pieces which you eat are from one loaf and the wine you drink is from the same cup, so are you mere particulars, though one in love, in the spirit"; "just as you all share in this bread and wine, so you all share in my sacrifice"; or whatever other "just as" you like to find here. Yet the connection of objective and subjective, of the bread and the persons, is here not the connection of allegorized with allegory, with the parable in which the different things, the things compared, are set forth as severed, as separate, and all that is asked is a comparison, the thought of the likeness of dissimilars. On the contrary, in this link between bread and persons, difference disappears, and with it the possibility of comparison. Things heterogeneous are here most intimately connected.
-- Hegel, The Spirit of Christianity, p 249
Something I have thought about: is this the longing for the overcoming of metaphor (what Derrida might call a kind of dream of full presence), or is the metaphor itself a disenchanted relic?
No comments:
Post a Comment