Of course, in fact, "negative theology" means something quite different. Its creators and adherents are not dry pedants who "determine" the essence of God through the logical function of negation, and still less are they agnostics. They have a special, ineffable positive vision of God, and it is only this ineffability of their vision that they formulate in affirming the difference between God and everything else. But if we try to express the positive content of this vision in an abstract logical form, it can have only one meaning. The denial of all positive attributes in relation to God here means the denial of them as particular and derived determinations. God is neither one nor the other, not in the absolute or abstract logical sense, but in the sense that He is all at once, or the primary source of everything. But this means that the logical form of knowledge itself, in which we have everything particular, singular, derivative, is not applicable to God. "Negative theology" is guided by the intuition that the essence of God as the primary source and primary basis of being is superlogical, super-rational, and precisely for this reason imperceptible in the form of any logical definition that makes sense only in relation to the particular and derived contents of being. The meaning of the denial of all positive definitions is to give the impression of the categorical difference between God and all existence accessible to us from earthly experience.

The proximate, as it were, striking, and therefore historically most influential result of this attitude is the perception of the reality of God as something absolutely detached, transcendent of all the rest of the "earthly" reality accessible to us. Consciousness here plunges into some completely new, usually unknown dimension of being, goes into some dark depths that lead it infinitely far away from the usual "earthly" world. There is no need here to consider the usual practical religious result of this attitude, namely, the boundless and immeasurable spiritual detachment to which it leads, and by virtue of which it shows some resemblance to Hindu religiosity. For us, we repeat, only its general logical essence is essential.

That this rejection of God of the logical form in which we think of all the rest, the ordinary, "earthly" content of being, contains a certain amount of truth, is quite obvious. But one must clearly understand what this rejection actually consists in and under what conditions it can really lead to the desired goal. The fact is that with an ordinary, uncritically verified understanding of the meaning of this rejection, we imperceptibly fall into the contradiction noted above. We can now formulate it in this way. Negation in general is the moment that constitutes the logical form of knowledge (as we have seen above: for negation is a way of defining one, particular content in its distinction from everything else). By applying negation to the logical form of knowledge itself, we thus fall into the contradiction that in the very act of this negation we use the very form of knowledge which we reject. Immediately below we will understand the positive, valuable methodological meaning of this contradiction. At this point, however, we must point out what is untenable in it.

Since we try to know the essence of God only through his negative attitude towards all earthly experience and its very logical form, we unwittingly, contrary to our main plan, again subordinate it to this form, transform it into something particular, limited, having everything else outside itself. For negation as such, to whatever it is applied, is precisely a form of rational, "earthly" knowledge.

Therefore, in order to grasp the genuinely transcendent, unconditionally peculiar being of God, it is necessary not to use negation in its ordinary, logical sense, which does not achieve its goal here, but a special superlogical overcoming of the very categorical form of earthly existence. This overcoming is possible only through going beyond the principle of contradiction, i.e., the inconsistency of affirmative and negative judgments. Only in this way do we really rise above all that is particular and subordinate, above all that is "earthly"; Only by embracing and including it do we reach the sphere that rises above it.

The creator of "negative theology" himself understood this well. The true essence of his "mystical theology" consists, as he points out, not in the simple negation of earthly concepts as applied to God, but in a combination or unity of negation and affirmation, which transcends the usual logical form of thought. Although, on the one hand, no positive definitions are applicable to God in their usual sense, but, on the other hand, they are also applicable to Him in a different, figurative sense. For example, it cannot be said that God is "good" in the sense of possessing this quality as something that determines His nature, but at the same time it is possible and necessary to say that, being the source of goodness, He is "super-good"; it is impossible to call Him "existing" in the ordinary, "created" sense of the concept of being, but we must recognize Him as the primary source of all being, "super-existent". "And one should not think that here the negation contradicts the statement, for the first cause, rising above all limitations, surpasses both all statements and all negations." [20]

Let us now apply this consideration to the general problem of reality that concerns us. In what sense are we to call it "incomprehensible," and what really follows from this definition of it, properly understood?

Reality is incomprehensible, since by comprehension we mean the direct perception of the being known in the form of a concept. For reality is in its very essence something different from any particular content caught in a concept; Its essence consists precisely in its concreteness – in the fact that it is a concrete, full-weight, self-sufficient fullness – in contrast to the abstract content, in which the object of thought is defined as something particular by distinguishing it from the "other" and seeing its relation to this other. But when we say that reality is something other than the content of a concept, we must beware of taking this very idea of "otherness" in its ordinary, logical sense; For if we take it in this sense, we would fall into the contradiction just indicated: we would thereby transform reality again into a special concept, i.e., into an abstract particular content (which exists wherever one differs from the other in the ordinary, logical sense).

But how can one have anything in thought at all without having it as a definite particular content, i.e., as an abstract concept? Earlier, at the beginning of this reflection, we started from the assumption that our experience is broader than our thought. This, of course, is quite indisputable, and it is only by virtue of this fact that we can have something at all which does not fit into the form of a concept. But should this experience remain mute, inexpressible, and thus unaccountable, uncomprehensible, absolutely inaccessible to thought? We have at least one factual evidence to the contrary – precisely in the person of art, in particular in the person of poetry as the art of words. Poetry is a mysterious way of expressing that which is inexpressible in another, namely abstract and logical form. But what does this mean? Poetry expresses a certain concrete reality, not decomposing it into a system of abstract concepts, but taking it precisely as such, i.e. in its concreteness. This is possible because the purpose of a word is not exhausted by its function to be the designation of concepts; At the same time, the word is an instrument of the comprehensive spiritual mastery of experience in its supralogical, concrete essence. The fact of poetry testifies to the fact that experience is not doomed to remain mute and uncomprehended, but has a specific form of its "expression," i.e., "understanding" precisely from that aspect of itself in which it transcends abstract thought.

But does it not follow from this that the expression of reality in its concreteness, i.e., in its distinction from concepts, must be the work of poetry alone, and that philosophy, as a purely intellectual comprehension, must distance itself from this task, as clearly exceeding its possibilities? A more attentive and in-depth understanding of this problem leads to just the opposite conclusion. If poetry is the highest, most adequate form of the use of the supra-rational, directly "expressive" function of the word, then it follows (as has long been seen by linguists) that all speech, all use of the word to a certain extent participates or can participate in this nature of poetry, and that the difference between "poetry" and "prose" is not some impassable border, but has only a relative significance. Everything that we call the "expressiveness" of speech is a poetic element in it. True, poetry – in the specific, narrow sense of the word – uses the expressive power of the purely irrational element of the word – the involuntary associations of ideas, images, emotions associated with shades of meaning and even with the very sound flesh of the word, i.e., as if with its "aura". But poetry also includes another element of the expressiveness of the word, which is also accessible to prose speech, namely: concepts and thoughts expressed in words are combined in it in such a way that in their combination their purely rational, abstract meaning is already overcome and concrete reality is expressed precisely in that in which it surpasses concepts and is fundamentally different from them. This is the meaning of what we can call the description of concrete reality, as opposed to its logical analysis. Such a description is therefore accessible to philosophy. [21]

In addition to this general way of describing the superlogical nature of reality, in which the combination of words and concepts provides a kind of hinting, ineffable cognition of concreteness directly in an individual thought, philosophy also possesses a special, peculiar way of overcoming the limitations and inadequacy of abstract knowledge. Namely, by directing thought to the logical form itself, i.e., by surveying the form, scope, and conditions of the sphere of logical rational knowledge as a whole, we can cognize its limitations. In doing so, we use the power of abstract logical knowledge against itself, i.e., against its impoverishing and distorting nature; We use it as an antidote to himself, as if on the homoeopathic principle of similia similibus curantur. [22] By fixing the limitation of the sphere of abstract knowledge, in contrast to it, we indirectly catch the uniqueness of that which goes beyond its limits, namely, reality itself. Thus, in order to take the basic and most essential example, which leads us at once to the desired goal, by grasping the principle of definition in an abstract way through logical distinction and the opposition of one thing to another, we, by comprehending its conditions, thereby go beyond its limits, i.e., beyond the limits of abstract knowledge, and thereby indirectly cognize the concrete reality itself, which transcends it (this is the above-mentioned positive significance of the application of the principle of negation to the logical form of knowledge itself). But the contrast between reality itself and the sphere of rational knowledge, which is seen in this case, will no longer be a logical relation, i.e., it will not be a negation in the logical sense, in which, as we have seen, it constitutes only the world of concepts. This contrast, on the contrary, will itself be superlogical. In this form we shall have indirect knowledge precisely through the medium of ignorance, i.e., the opposition of reality to the sphere of the logically knowable. This is the form of knowledge that the main theoretician of this line of thought, Nicholas of Cusa, called docta ignorantia – wise ignorance.

Thus, the concrete experience of reality is not doomed to remain "mute", inexpressible. Being mentally attainable through "description," i.e., through such a combination of concepts in which the complex of concepts in its unity gives hinting knowledge of reality itself, experience is also indirectly expressible through a potentized form of thought which may be called transcendental thought. In it, thought, directed towards itself and cognizing the general formal nature of the sphere of being of particular, logically determined contents, thereby goes beyond its limits and mentally takes possession of the concrete essence of reality as such, which is beyond it.

True philosophy, i.e., the mental comprehension of the whole as such, being, like all knowledge, directly rational knowledge, i.e., expressed in concepts, in its orientation towards the description of concrete reality and at the same time in its reflective character of the logical comprehension of the logical element of knowledge itself, has the possibility of going beyond the boundaries of abstract thought, intuitively seeing and expressing the super-rational. In contrast to any particular knowledge aimed at abstractly isolated particular material elements of being, philosophy is a rational overcoming of the limitations of rational thought. It is mental life, nourished by the living intuition of super-rational reality and grasping its immediately incomprehensible being.

And this indirect knowledge – knowledge through ignorance – is not at all limited to a general grasp of the super-rational nature of reality. In contrast to the variety of moments constituting the sphere of rational knowledge, we can catch and indirectly fix the diversity of the structure of reality itself. And this same diversity in its concrete manifestations can be the subject of the concrete mental description of reality outlined above.