the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

further proof for Weigel’s theory that knowledge comes from the subject and not the
object. 310
As for the knower, Weigel subdivides natural cognition into three types of
perception, the oculo Carnis (which, despite being called an eye, actually includes all five
senses), the oculo rationis and the oculo mentis. 311 The oculo Carnis is even further
subdivided into sense perception 312 and imagination, which is simply sense perception
when the object in question is absent. The three eyes of natural cognition are
hierarchically arranged, such that the oculus rationis is above the oculo Carnis, because it
can perceive the inner being of things rather than limiting itself to exteriors, and above
the eye of reason is the oculus mentis seu intellectus. 313
Weigel identifies the “eye” as the seat of a person’s identity (here Weigel does not
mean the physical/outer eye but rather the inner eye) rather than the body, presumably
because Weigel uses the word to refer to the higher cognitive faculties. To take Weigel’s
example, a blacksmith is who he is because of his knowledge of metalworking, not
because his hands are capable of working metal. 314 If the seat of identity is the (inner) eye,
the body becomes incidental, and thus, because identity has no anchor in the physical
310 Weigel, Griff, 85.
311 Ibid, 25.
312 And, of course, sense perception is yet again subdivided into the five senses, which are arranged
hierarchically: touch, taste, smell, hearing and vision.
313 What the powers of the various eyes are is less important than their arrangement, (proceeding from a
weak and crude eye that perceives only exteriors or concrete details all the way up to the most subtle and
attuned eye that perceives invisible things, the innermost being of things, and abstract ideas) which follows
the same pattern as all creation in containing the lower within the higher. The imagination “encloses and
includes” the five senses, reason encloses imagination and the five senses and so on, which for Weigel
means that the higher power can perform its perceptive tasks without the help of the lower one. In fact, the
lower powers only interfere with the workings of the higher one, and should be “quietened”if one is to
perceive more accurately with these higher eyes. Ibid, 31-33.
314 Weigel, Griff, 45. More precisely, a smith is a smith because of his inborn knowledge of metalworking.
Though Weigel does not discuss this explicitly in the Griff, presumably the fact that talents and abilities
vary from one person to the other (despite having the same epistemological heritage by virtue of having the
same indwelling God) is due to which parts of it have been ‘reawakened’ by training or studying.
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