The nature of things

by Newnameelizabeth

Derrida talks about the signified and the signifier. I’m trying to get this straight by contrasting his views to the Platonic one of forms. The signified would be the object, which Plato says is only a shadow of a beyond reality. I think this is also the western view of heaven. That all that is here will pass away and that heaven is beyond and above what we know as reality here. Father Stephen Freeman calls this two storey thinking. But the Orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation of Christ brings heavenly reality to physical form. What we see around us is real, though our (the signifiers as in the ones who describe) perceptions are imperfect. We need to change, or become pure, to comprehend the reality around us. To see the Light in things, as it were. I suppose this would be the process of learning to see the Transfiguration, the Light in things, though how much the nature of their glowing is changed I’m not sure – that may be a time eclipsing issue anyway if all things indeed glow now or later. Then there is the issue of death. Christ’s Ressurrected form, His visible body, changed after He died and was raised. Was the Transfiguration a glimpse into this new state or a gift of sight as to His Divine nature? St. Paul likens our bodies to seeds that must fall to the ground and die in order to be changed into a plant. Yet we can attain this to some extent by dying to our passions in this life.