Isabela Vasiliu-Scraba
THE TWO ASPECTS OF
NAE IONESCU'S METAPHYSICS
"Nae Ionescu restored the imperial tradition of the philosophical teaching, which means the rigorous thinking of one's own issues and not the thinking from others' books [...] That Nae Ionescu was the professor best loved and with the biggest number of students is owed precisely to this detail: he taught the young how to think and encouraged them to think over their personal problems."
Through his novel understanding of
metaphysical concerns (in his opinion, of a strictly individual nature) as
counterweight for missing salvation, Nae Ionescu outlines the general framework
of his metaphysical outlook that he was to detail on his last lecture.
"Each person carries a dead
monk in their soul," had written Nae Ionescu on the margin of a photograph
taken in 1933. It is the sentence by which the philosopher expressed, in a most
suggestive way, the generally human need for metaphysics, as he saw it, as a
restlessness of the human conscience in its attempt to overcome time and space.
As regards "salvation through
culture," that is salvation "by breeding culture," we create
works that outlive space and time (a philosophical stand that was to be backed
up-in his writings-by Constantin Noica), Nae Ionescu said that this is "a
magic-pantheistic stand, not a Christian one."
He points out strongly enough to the
personal nature of metaphysical preoccupations, which does not mean, at any
time, the individual's isolation from the community they belong to. At a first
stage, Nae Ionescu defined metaphysics as a "total and mature outlook on
existence." To the one who manages to reach a "superabundance" of their being, failing though to
save themselves through holiness, their subsequent existence will be then a
"fall into the human condition." It is the starting point for an
attempt at "totally and harmoniously understanding existence," having
reached the required maturity to approach, from a personal perspective, the
issue of metaphysics. However, that does not mean that one will be able to
devise, on their own, a "final metaphysical solution."
This kind of pretentions, Said Nae
Ionescu, are only raised by "scientific philosophers" who fancy they
"possess final solutions," unable though to be convincing enough.
Because "scientific philosophers" are always left with something they
cannot explain satisfactorily, something that spells "precisely the
distance from their solutions to the final solution they claim to have mapped
out." Through their own essence, metaphysical solutions can be but
relative, which does not mean that one could decree some metaphysical
"relativism." Were they final, Nae Ionescu said to relax his
audience, then "we should have not the history of philosophy but the
history of the philosophers' errors." Which cannot be accepted. This leads
to a particular situation in which, even searched from the outside,
metaphysical solutions should be attached the feature of being "absolute."
This is the case with the history of philosophy.
With his fine spirit, Nae Ionescu
remarked that the historians of philosophy tend to fail noticing that there is
a particular situation about their domain. They make the error to extrapolate
this particularity of the history of metaphysics to the specific field of
metaphysics. Or, one cannot claim from metaphysical solutions something that is
alien to their essence. They are supposed to meet certain standards, somewhat
more accesible: to be coherent, unitary, organic, harmonious, and, above all,
devoid of inner contradictions.
The truthfulness or falseness of a
metaphysical solution cannot be judged, as we cannot judge their rather
peculiar posture Because metaphysical solutions, in their essence, are not
simply "relative," resulting in experience, but they are
"relative under specie eternitatis."
Dealing with causality "through
freedom," the "scientific philosophers" speak of an
"ultimate cause" as if we reached the end of a chain of causalities.
But it is not in this way that God is cause, said Nae Ionescu. Because He is a
"different kind" of cause.
That is why the generalization
process of passing to the limit, to the absolute, "is an operation even
more false than the most anthropomorphic imagination of God," said Nae
Ionescu. In order to better illustrate the thoughts that were carrying him
towards this "different kind" of cause, the philosopher resorts to
Plato, who "said that God is what logic expression is." Put somewhat
similarly, this Platonic assertion can be found in the dialogue Parmenide. To
Plato, God (the Supreme Good) is the Supreme Knowledge, the Truth, "real
speech," for the simple reason that the "real speech" is about
"what is." Nae Ionescu explains this by drawing a parallell between
Plato's opinion and an excerpt from the Old Testament. He points out to his
students that the statement "I am who I am" in the Old Testament is
about the same thing about which Plato was speaking," referring to the
Supreme Good. As opposed to the "measure" evinced by Plato when
writing about the highest form of the being, in the Old Testament there is more
"vehemence." In one way appears Plato's assertion "God is what
He is," which, notes Nae Ionescu, does not say how He is , only that He
is. In an altogether different way appears the assertion in the Old Testament,
that could be rendered as follows: "there is no more that can be said
about Me, except that 'I am'. I am through Myself."
According to Nae Ionescu, "the
being as such", as it is illustrated by the line in the Old Testament, is
"more than the highest form of the being." Which, at a superficial
glimpse, may sound like a paradox.
However, on his last lecture, Nae
Ionescu did not limit himself at presenting, to his students, metaphysics as a
"total and mature outlook on existence." Because such a solution to
his metaphysical restlessness, that we shall call "Ulysses'
metaphysics," calls for the experience of a life lived through hardships
and suffering.
Nae Ionescu was to do something
more, that was why he was the darling of so many students after all. He was to
simply go back in time and imagine himself side by side with his students,
presenting for them what we shall call "Achilles' metaphysics." That
was built as a sequel to the same meditation theme that had bothered him since
the early years of his university career: "love as an act of
cognition."
Taking things a little farther, we
wouldn't risk getting too remote from the subject of the Iliad and Odyssey,
asserting that Homer had himself practiced just this kind of two-featured
metaphysics, dealing both with the meaning (transfiguration) of an untimely
ended life, and with the meaning of a human life that enjoyed more years of
personal experiences. Did Nae Ionescu follow Homer by this? Of course he did, but
to the same extent Plato did. Because Plato did not hesistate to also include
in the noble traits of the human soul that passionate trait,
"thymikon", responsible for Achilles' bravery in battle.