The Cup

Reading Tolstoy always ravishes my heart.

He was the Transgressive Transcendentalist par excellence. In the words of Isaiah Berlin, by nature a fox, he believed in being a hedgehog. He recognized the importance of constructing a "comprehensive vision" and yet, at the same time, was too "foxy" to fool himself into believing that, by doing so, he had somehow managed to solve the riddles of existence.

Heidegger was his disciple--announcing this fact, albeit stealthily, no later than Being and Time. But Heidegger shared with his master a capacious genius that refused to be stamped and labeled. This very refusal is an expression of the transcendental impulse. It is, likewise, a gesture towards the "name that is beyond all naming" (the cipher Allah).

The way of the Transgressive Transcendentalist is the way of the few: it is what Kierkegaard termed the willing of "one thing." It is to accept, as Ibn Bajjah declared, the way of the Solitary One (tadbir al-mutawwahid): the endless road, the road of restlessness.

The defining characteristic of this way is the practice of relentless inquiry.

The symbol of this practice is the cup.



The point of filling the cup is to empty it again.