Paper short abstract:

The Ars Inveniendi Veritatem, a combinatorial method of contemplation developed by medieval philosopher and theologian Raimundus Lullus can be understood as a paradigmatic religious form of artificial habit, and contribute to the understanding of religion as a social, embodied practice and exercise.

Paper long abstract:

The 14th-century philosopher and theologian Raimundus Lullus developed a combinatorial system of thought, an Ars inveniendi veritatem, consisting in the intertwinement of absolute principles, namely divine attributes, with logical categories, questions, subjects, virtues and vices. Devised as a contemplative and evangelical Ars, Llull stressed the importance of 1) learning how to produce questions and answers in accordance to its rules and principles, and of 2) imaginatively translating the process and product of the Ars into examples and metaphors accessible to the broadest audience. The Ars' spiritual logic pursued the coordinated movement of intellect, memory and will toward God's presence in the Creation, and can be understood as a paradigmatic religious form of an artificial habit.

The Ars, as a technological innovation in its historical context, serves to reorient the manner in which philosophical and theological thought is approached and organised: its principles stem from Islamic logic and dialectic, and from combinatorial devices of intermediation between the divine and the humane, such as the za’irjah, a divination instrument attributed to 13th-century Sufi Abu Al-Abbas Al-Sabti from Maghreb. A dynamic, practical and processual understanding of contemplation shines in Lullus' method, for the Ars is a process of homificatio that results from reading and applying its principles, to which the artist must habituate in order to disseminate them in word and deed.

The aim of this presentation is twofold: first, to describe the Ars inveniendi veritatem as a technological medium of relationship with the sacred focused on the active, practical actualization of the finite, humane essence through combinatorial, imaginative "poiesis". Second, to reassess religion primarily as a social, embodied practice and exercise in connection with similar contemporary poetic and philosophical proposals (from Anne Carson to Pierre Hadot or Pier Aldo Rovatti).