Introspection of Raimundus Lullus

Akimov Oleg Yur'evich ORCID: 0000-0003-0941-7382 PhD in Philosophy Leading Researcher of the Western Branch of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) 236016, Russia, Kaliningrad region, Kaliningrad, Artillery str., 62 aktula1@gmail.com Other publications by this author

 The work of the outstanding medieval thinker Raimund Lulli (c. 1232-c. 1316), known in Russia according to V.A. Kulmatov since the end of the seventeenth century^{[1, from 187]} mainly through his treatises "Great Art" and "Short Art", in which the thinker is one of the first in the history of the Middle Ages from the position of extreme realism (the identity of being and thinking) tried to prove the existence of God in a logical way (although we are talking about a kind of ontologization and theologization of logic).

It is interesting within the framework of modern philosophical discourse, on the one hand, by the gradual transition from Medieval philosophy to Renaissance philosophy, and on the other hand, by the special personal centrality of the spiritual quest of the thinker.  S. Neretina and A. Ogurtsov distinguish this feature of Lulli's creativity in their work "Paths to Universals", describing it as "an indestructible love for the many-named God who abides before the world" ^{[2, p. 534]}. The thinker tells about this love in the "Book about the Lover and the Beloved" written presumably in 1276.

In our opinion, it is this treatise, in which the religious intuitions of Lulli are combined with a presentiment of a new era, where the leading role will be assigned to the human personality, explicates the creativity of the thinker as a whole, demonstrating his unique "Self". The search and affirmation of "The Very Thing" in the work of Lulli (and precisely in the meaning of the Very Thing that A.F. Losev wrote about) is our immediate goal, a feasible approximation to which will help to reveal the secret of the thinker's personality and his philosophy.

  The approach to this mystery is difficult due to the small number of works devoted in the Russian special literature to the work of Raimund Lulli, which was emphasized by V.A. Kulmatov[ Kulmatov V.A. The logical teaching of Raimund Lulli Autoref. dis. ... candidate of Philos.sciences.–St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 8].  Another problem is that if we consider the work of Lullius exclusively in the context of the assessments of the medieval way of philosophizing based on retrospect and traditionalism that have developed in the Russian special literature ^{[3, p. 9]} (in the book "About the Lover and the Beloved" there is an imitation of Augustine, who had a noticeable influence on the thinker ^{[1, p. 213]}), then the specifics of Lulli's perception of the world, God and man will remain insufficiently expressed.

 The phenomenon chosen in our work for the explication of the spiritual quest of Raymond Lulli is introspection, the features of which should be mentioned separately. Relying on the historical and philosophical reception of this phenomenon (namely, the phenomenon, and not the psychological method that later became widespread), introspection can be distinguished in a broad sense as self-knowledge and in a narrow sense as self-observation, self-perception of the subject. A.A. Dmitriev, considering the evolution of introspection in the philosophy of Modern times in the works of R. Descartes, J. Locke and D. Hume considers that it is connected with the gradual shift of the emphasis of human research from the soul to the body ^{[4, p. 26]}. The author, choosing from a variety of definitions, prefers to designate introspection as a method of "exploring consciousness"^{[4, p. 27]}, speaking not about introspection, but about introspective ability as "the ability to consciously observe the givens that are in consciousness at the current or immediately preceding moment of time"^{[4, p. 27]}. The author emphasizes the conscious and spontaneous nature of introspection, which corresponds to the philosophy of modern times, as if artificially identifying a separate event and its arbitrary and fixed reflection in consciousness in a certain way (using the characteristics of introspection highlighted by A. Schwitzgebel, A. A. Dmitrieva defines it as a mental operation carried out in the first person and giving evidence of consciousness about events occurring in the the moment of introspective observation ^{[4, p. 27]}; this definition of introspection is a generalization by the author of her intuitions in the works of R. Descartes, J. Locke and D. Hume). The author believes that the "discovery" of introspection as evidence of knowledge based on inner contemplation belongs to R. Descartes^{[4, p. 29]}, the rationalization of introspection, expressed in its correlation with external observation, was carried out by J. Locke ^{[4, p. 32]}; criticism of the very possibility of introspection is given in the works of D. Hume.  Considering the features of introspection presented in the philosophy of modern times, A. A. Dmitrieva emphasizes that the emphasis in it is on the knowledge of the outside world rather than on self-knowledge ^{[4, p. 37]}.  The author points out that the most important criteria of introspection in modern times have become the transportability of experience and its autonomous nature; thus, awareness of a certain content serves as a kind of guarantee of the authenticity of its adequate verification; thus, the evidence of self-consciousness, "discovered" by Descartes, was transferred from the inner world of man to the connection of human experience with objects of the external world.

   In the criticism of introspection among modern researchers, the main directions of which are described in the work of A.P. Besedin et al., an important point is the extension of Cartesian doubt to the transportability of retrospective experience as such: thus, Sidney Shoemaker, objecting to the perceptual nature of introspection, its validity by an inner sense, offers a solution when, in accordance with the objective model of perception proposed by him (perception needs an external object) and a broad model of perception (it can do without an external object), the subject recognizes himself unaware of perception or doubts it^{[5, p. 198]}. In the interpretation of A.P.Besedin and co-authors on Shoemaker, any perception meets the following criteria: the presence of a perception organ, the presence of phenomena other than the perception organ, obtaining new facts through the perception of objects, identification of objects through perception, familiarity of perception with the sensory non-relational properties of an object, the formation of perception objects as objects of attention, the conditioning of beliefs by perceived objects, the independence of things or states of affairs from what they are perceived ^{[5, p. 199]}. According to A.P. Besedin and his co-authors, the argument of self-blindness put forward by Shoemaker against the broad model of perception boils down to the fact that the subject can be blind in relation to his mental state ^{[5, p. 199]}. Thus, the autonomous nature of subjective experience is violated, justified by its transportability (transparency for the subject), that is, for confirmation of experience, the subject in certain cases is forced to turn to other subjects, whose experience, in turn, can be doubted and so on indefinitely. A.P. Besedin and co-authors dwell in detail on the position Fred Drezke, who believes that the "problem" of introspection is that it identifies the content of perception with the perception of content^{[5, p. 201]} and therefore introspection according to F. Drezke cannot give an answer to the question: "what allows us to conclude that we have consciousness" ^{[5, p. 21]}.

In our opinion, the way out of this difficulty is to overcome this contradiction by revealing the contradictory nature of this or that objection to introspection. It should be noted that the output in modern theories of introspection, as a rule, is immanent to the semantic field of introspection, that is, the self-legality of introspection is proved as the actual impossibility of abandoning it.

Rationalistic theories of introspection according to A.P. Besedin suggest that in order to show its obvious nature, it is necessary to follow a certain rule^{[5, p. 203]}, for example, Alex Bern gives this rule the following form "if p, that is, a certain concrete mental state, then believe that you are in p"^{[5, p. 203]}; D. Stoljer offers another version of this rule: "if you are in the conscious state c, you will believe that you are in c"^{[5, p. 203]}; according to the simple theory of D. Smithis, "if the subject is in the mental state m, then he has a retrospective belief that he is in m", leading to retrospective knowledge about itt^{[5, p. 204; if we follow this theory, then the subjective belief in the introspective justification of one's own state is an objective proof that this state is true. Proponents of the "theory of acquaintance" defend the purely subjective nature of introspection, in the honesty of D. Chalmers in the presentation of A.P. Besedin understands by introspection "awareness of the subject about the internal state" [5, p. 204]}, for example, we find red according to Chalmers when we pay attention to redness as a phenomenal aspect of experience ^{[5, p. 204]} therefore, the conscious person can separate the experience he is aware of from judgments about this experience ^{[5, p. 205]}.

A.P. Besedin and his co-authors believe that the basis of the above theories of introspection is the ontologization of consciousness^{[5, p. 205]}, which found expression in the "thesis of revelation": "if you are in a conscious state, then you are aware of the essence of this state"^{[5, p. 206]}; thus, the thesis revelation is actually a return to the original understanding of introspection developed by Rene Descartes.  

Summarizing the above review of the specialized literature, we believe that the study of introspection is a movement in a circle. The proof of the validity of this statement we consider the fact that the theories opposing the thesis of revelation: physicalist (claiming that the essence of conscious state c are some physical properties inaccessible to consciousness ^{[5, p. 206]}) and illusionist (believing that mental states of consciousness are a kind of pathways of its neurophysiological states, and therefore they are capable of to deceive the subject by misinforming and disorienting him ^{[5, p. 209]}) are, if we reduce their content from the philosophical-psychological to the purely philosophical and more specifically to the epistemological aspect, a euphemism of the positions of J. Locke and D. Hume.  Moving in a circle is, on the one hand, evidence of the unsolvability of the problem, and on the other, it makes it possible to return to the initial stage of its consideration. If we briefly summarize the features of the introspection exposition in the works of A.A. Dmitrieva and A.P. Besedin and co-authors, we will get a scheme of introspection movement that does not claim to be complete and complete, but has grounds. This scheme, in our opinion, is as follows: introspection is a transition determined by historical, philosophical and other reasons from personality-oriented self-knowledge (as it was with Blessed Augustine Aurelius and Rene Descartes) to introspective cognition of the objective world (J. Locke, D. Hume, I. Kant), and then a gradual return to the inner world of the subject, taken more concretely and, if I may say so, more "finely"; it is not by chance that A.A. Dmitrieva speaks not about introspection, but rather about introspective ability ^{[4, c27]}. In our opinion, the "fragmentation" of consciousness is also connected with this process, which leads to the fact that introspection is more focused on perception than on consciousness, which is due, not least, to the epistemologization of philosophy, when knowledge is considered to the detriment of being and the subsequent instrumentalization of knowledge, when the interpretation of the phenomenon, as a rule, concerns only one side of it;  this is the result of the gradual immanentization of the Absolute, its explication as a human personality, which began in the Renaissance ^{[6, p. 352]}. A.F. Losev, who described this process, considered it an objective trend in the history of thought; accordingly, introspection in philosophy is an objective indicator of this process, and a return back (to the origins of this process in history thoughts) presupposes a different nature of introspection (this is the absolutization of a self-aware personality, but having a different orientation, namely, its planned separation, at the same time assuming its implicitly given correlation with the transcendent principle-God).

The complexity of this process also concerns the complexity of the approach that we are implementing, since the specific forms of introspection that we will touch on are "based" on it, consists in the fact that the introspection of Raymond Lulli and the related introspection of St. Augustine, despite the difference in the epoch and specific details, is at the same time a separation of the thinker's own personality (what can be traced both in Augustine and in Lulli) and its approach to the transcendent first principle;  since Christianity simultaneously presupposes both the postulation of the transcendence of the Absolute and its immanence to the world, associated with the interpretation of the Absolute as a person and man as an image of God, the process of the ascent of the personality to the Absolute and its return to itself, described in the "Confession" of St. Augustine and the "Book of the Lover and Beloved" by Raymond Lulli is the immanentization of the Absolute, gradual shifting of the boundary between the personality and the Absolute towards the personality when postulating the transcendence of the Absolute.

 K.I. Skvortsov, relying on Descartes' correspondence, believed that it was Blessed Augustine who was his predecessor in the discovery of introspection^{[7, p. 21]}. P. P. Gaidenko and V.V. Petrov, describing the inversion of the concept of "nature" in medieval philosophy, showed that the natural (natural) for a medieval person is that created by the Creator, and the artificial is what is created by man himself ^{[8, p. 15]}. In relation to the topic of introspection that interests us, this means that self-knowledge or self-observation (here this distinction is not so important)  artificially, since according to Augustine, descent into oneself presupposes ascent to a transcendent Deity, which a person cannot do on his own and at the same time a person cannot descend into himself without help from above ^{[9, p. 469]}; thus, a contradiction in definition is legalized and has become a maxim of medieval introspection. It is it that sets the problematic field of introspection of Augustine and Lullius - the tension between the personality and the Absolute, which presupposes their rapprochement, which is actually not possible, but at the same time paradoxically possible as mutual communication between two personalities, involving a conversation with God, a dialogue when both sides seem to be at the same locus (place). This rapprochement cannot be explained in a purely logical or epistemological way, it can only be outlined dialectically, as A.F. Losev actually built the history of philosophy into the process of putting forward the Very Thing in the doctrine of the interpretative symbol; therefore, when trying to tell about introspection in the language of European philosophy of modern times, introspection transcription occurs, in which this rapprochement between the thinker and the Absolute, the inexplicable from the point of view of rationalistic metaphysics becomes a movement of consciousness inward, based on the separation of personality; on this basis, Rene Descartes can be considered a continuation of the line of St. Augustine.

An important aspect of this rapprochement is the autonomy of the individual's experience (in this case, it does not matter internal or external), when in order to make a judgment about the ideas developed by the thinker, it is necessary to accept the thinker's experience in its entirety, which means that, for example, the "spiritual ear" ^{[9, p. 689]}, about the discovery of which Augustine says when interpreting the Bible, it is necessary to understand not only metaphorically, but also literally (as the ear of the mind illuminated by the divine light), which implies both acceptance of the paradoxical contradictions, and fixing the dimension of depth that Blessed Augustine spoke about in relation to his own soul, and Raymond Lulli in relation to the relationship between the Lover and the Beloved. Such acceptance of the integrity of the introspection experience in its uniqueness, in our opinion, implies a return to the original meaning of the concept of "introspection", which, if we proceed from the meaning of the prefix intro-inside and the verb spectio-to look, means looking inside. This viewing, which can also be interpreted as penetration into something, is traditionally understood in the specialized literature as penetration into one's own soul. It should be noted that the soul or spirit (here this distinction does not matter much) is understood in this context not as an autonomous consciousness as in modern concepts of introspection related to the philosophy of modern times), but the inexpressible Very Self of the human personality associated with its Creator. 

Looking inwards simultaneously implies moving outwards towards the Absolute (transcendence) and collecting the world to which the soul turns in search of the Creator around itself ^{[9, p. 470]}, therefore, Augustine, studying objects external to the soul, with their help learns the hierarchical order of the world created by the Creator and himself embedded in this order.  For both Augustine and Lullius, the finding of the divine order within the soul (Augustine's connection with the creator and the connection of the Lover and the Beloved in Lullius) is projected onto the order of things of the external world, as if building it after itself. Therefore, introspection can also be considered the penetration of an external observer (in particular the reader) into the inner world of the thinker, at the same time as the thinker penetrates into the depths of his own soul, bringing the external world together. In relation to our work, this means that introspection as comprehension of the personality Itself presupposes grasping (conceptualizing) the details of this comprehension as a personal inner formation of the thinker.  Every detail of this becoming is also introspection by virtue of its correlation with introspection as comprehension of Oneself. 

This comprehension presupposes the observance of the prerequisites necessary to enter the personal world of the thinker and to understand it in an accessible way for the viewer-reader; in our opinion, these prerequisites are described by S. S. Neretina in her work "Augustine: Confession as Philosophizing" and relate both to Augustine's "Confession" and to "The book about the Lover and the Beloved" by Raymond Lulli, since they define the features of medieval philosophizing as such. According to S.S. Neretina, confession excludes psychologism in its form as interpreted by the philosophy of modern times ^{[7, pp. 757-758]}. The author understands introspection as a thinking turning of consciousness inward ^{[7, p. 758]}.

S. S. Neretina raises the topic of integrity, which is important both for the "Confessions" of St. Augustine and for the "Book about the Lover and Beloved" by Raymond Lulli. The world as finite, created out of nothing, finds its true being in God, therefore any concept or thing in this finite world is multi-meaningful (the term by S.S. Neretina), symbolic, since it, pointing to itself, simultaneously points to the Creator of the world ^{[7, p. 764]}, and perhaps this is because the call of the human personality (the eternal search for God) can only be answered by a person who is in the same dialogical space (topos) with her^{[7, c766]}. All this from the point of view of rational knowledge of modern times is a paradox, therefore medieval philosophizing is carried out as if on top of logical categories, that is, categories work in it only by virtue of inclusion in symbolic space, which makes possible an intimate vision of God, about which S.S. Neretina writes ^{[7, p. 761]}.

On the generality of this intimate vision, as well as on the traditionalism generally recognized for medieval philosophizing, when following tradition is perceived as a form of personal expression, the convergence of the personal worlds of Blessed Augustine and Raymond Lulli is based in our work, while Augustine's intuitions as more widely studied and influenced, according to G. G. Mayorov, thinkers of the next generations^{[7, c514-515]}, are, as it were, the initial stage preceding the study of Lulli's intuitions, in many respects close to the problems that became relevant already in the Renaissance, it is no coincidence that V.A.Kulmatov proves the influence of Lulli on Nikolai Kuzansky [Kulmatov V.A. The logical teaching of Raymond Lulli Autoref. dis. ... candidate of Philos.sciences.–St. Petersburg, 1996, c15-16].  It is necessary to note the following detail: both Augustine and Lulli postulate the simplicity of the Deity, although there are differences that we will touch on a little later, but this simplicity is explicated in the imperfect human world, where essence and existence do not coincide with each other as complexity; for this, thinkers need symbolism, when one thing points to another.   

A special moment of medieval philosophizing, emphasized by S.S. Neretina and characteristic of both Augustine and Lullius, lies in the openness of truth, which seeks to master a person; it opens to him, and not he opens it ^{[7, p. 760]}. The discovery of truth is the result of divine revelation, which is not controlled, therefore, the details of this discovery given in the way of thinking of a particular thinker, it is necessary not only to take into account, but also to take for granted, as St. Augustine said, noting that the truth belongs to everyone ^{[9, p. 703]}; proceeding from this, each stage of introspection as the unfolding of the inexpressible personality Itself is an autonomous explication of the truth, and the correlation with inexpressibility, it makes it quite difficult to choose one of the stages of introspection according to the degree of importance. Delineating the factology of Introspection   it seems difficult, therefore, we will first touch on the "external background" of the spiritual searches of Augustine and Lullius (similar moments of the life path), then consider the general moments of explication of the Very personality of the thinkers, then, based on the understanding of the common, we will characterize the differences and proceed to characterize the specifics of the introspection of Raymond Lullius.

R.V.Svetlov, describing Augustine's "Confession", speaks about the combination of rhetorical and intimate moments in it ^{[10, p. 30]}. The rhetorical moment assumes the public nature of the story, and the intimate one indicates that what is being told concerns personal depths. We, for our part, note that there is a commonality of the life circumstances of Blessed Augustine and Raymond Lulli, which influenced the features of their works, although the "Book about the Lover and the Beloved" is not a confession in the full sense of the word.  The common background circumstance was, on the one hand, Augustine's religious conversion from Manichaeism to Christianity, and the conduct experienced by Raymond Lulli in 1265 and influenced his subsequent rejection of worldly life, on the other.  

A.F. Losev, describing the features of the work of Raimund Lulli, notes that "an attempt to reduce the suprasubjectivity of revelation" is important for him ^{[11, p. 115]}.  We are talking about the immanentization of Oneself, which is accompanied in the treatise of Lulli by the experience of the transcendence of the Beloved. It is the comprehension of the Very personality of the Lover as the comprehension of the transcendence of the Beloved that serves for us to define the introspection of Raymond Lulli in the broad sense of the word.  Latent immanentization of the transcendence of the Beloved is a specific feature of the work of Lullius, and the postulation of transcendence is a common moment that unites the work of Lullius, Augustine and other thinkers of the Middle Ages, as if the main line of his development. The rapprochement of Lullius and Augustine along this line is a comparison of the "external" facets of the creativity of thinkers, that is, relatively easily verifiable signs that are characteristic of the "genre" of confession as such; thus, the rapprochement of Lullius and Augustine is situational in this case, creating a common space of interpretation of the creativity of thinkers, and not testifying to their literal commonalities.

     The common moments of Lullius and Augustine's introspection are the return to oneself, which Augustine described as the moment of calling God "I will call You into myself"^{[9, p. 469]}, which is actually an analogue of the call that S.S. Neretina describes (Augustine calls God exactly when God calls Augustine to himself). A similar moment in Lulli (we specifically preserve the probabilistic nature of the statement, in order not to identify the personal worlds of thinkers) can be considered a passage with a story about how the Lover "knocked on the gates of the Beloved with hope and love", and "the divine and human opened the doors, and the lover entered the Beloved's chambers"^{[1, from 204]}. When comparing these fragments, the difference becomes obvious (Augustine invokes God, emphasizing the transcendent nature of this invocation, and Lullius, using the metaphor of entering the chambers, as if shows that God is intimately close to the Lover, immanent to his personality). Continuing the theme of invoking God, it can be noted that invoking entails, depending on the Will of God, either ascension to Him or the silence of God, about which Augustine says "will you always be silent" ^{[9, p. 486]}. In Lulli, a similar moment becomes the doubt of the Lover in the gifts of the Beloved, as a result of which the Lover deprives the Beloved of the gift of Love ^{[1, p. 205]}.

It should be noted that the ascent to God has a transcendent-immanent character among medieval thinkers, and therefore it also becomes a return of the Spirit back to itself, as a rule, associated with suffering from the loss of the presence of a transcendent deity. Augustine says about this "we went to our soul and came out of it in order to reach the land of inexhaustible fullness..... and they returned to themselves"^{[9, p. 615]}. In Lullius, a similar moment is described as the return of the Lover to earth, where he "contemplates the Beloved in torment and sorrow" ^{[1, p. 205]}.

In the works of Augustine and Lullius there are features, on the one hand, bringing their personal worlds closer together, and on the other, demonstrating the peculiarities of thinkers, testifying to the proximity of Lullius to the Renaissance era.  The return of the human Spirit to Itself among thinkers has certain differences. Augustine says about this, "I would not exist if you were not in me" ^{[9, p. 470]}. Lullius remarks about a similar state of the Lover, "the Beloved appeared before the mind's Eye of the lover, so that he would come to himself" ^{[1, p. 209]}.   For both Augustine and Dullius, the personal existence of man is complete only as participation in divine being, the divine presence experienced here and now, but Augustine experiences it as a simple perfect being, pure "trance", which in its realized form is the Very Self of Augustine's personality (as such it is absolutely inexpressible, therefore the thinker expresses his apophatic "You were in me deeper than the depths and higher than the peaks" ^{[9, p. 504]}). Lulli, on the other hand, expresses a similar state closer to sensory perception not only as a statement of simple being, but also as a capture, fixation of this being through the relationship of a Lover and a Lover (it is not by chance that the thinker experienced the influence of Provencal love lyrics); there is a subtle sensual shade associated with the peculiarities of "Great Art", since according to The attributes of God cover the world created by him according to the following model: the active principle (the carrier of power) acts on the passive principle, which perceives this force, and the action of force occurs, which is a combination of the first two elements [Kulmatov V.A. The logical teaching of Raymond Lullia Author. dis. ... candidate of Philos.sciences.–St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 13].

If we consider, in accordance with this model, the content of the "Book about the Lover and the Beloved", an obvious analogy arises: the Beloved is the active principle, the lover is the passive principle, and love is their connection and the manifestation of their unity; thus, in the work of Lulli, there is a paradox of combining apophatics and cataphatics with the emerging medieval natural scientific knowledge, more precisely, with his intuition. Since the Beloved is God, he acts on the Lover, allowing him to love himself or loving Himself in the Lover, since according to Lulli the Beloved has no lack of anything ^{[1, p. 227]}. However, an alternative interpretation of Lulli's work is also possible, when (even in the sense of everyday language) the lover is an active beginning, and the Beloved is a passive beginning. If we use the terminology of S.S. Neretina, then we are talking about ambiguity: in this world, the lover loves the Beloved, sometimes even associating him directly with himself, "You are alone in my loneliness ^{[1, p. 231]}, and in the other world, the Beloved loves the Lover.

According to the content of the "Book about the Lover and the Beloved", it seems preferable that the "power" principle is precisely the Beloved, to whom the feelings and memory of the lover are attracted ^{[1, p. 230]}. However, based on the context of the works of Lulli and the peculiarities of his era, it is necessary to take into account an alternative option. The same applies to the combination of cataphatics and apophatics in Lullius; on the one hand, the thinker directs all the efforts of the mind to know the Beloved, on the other hand, he states his unknowability, which is why the Lover is sometimes so pathetic and unhappy.

This state of affairs, in our opinion, is explained by the greater "density" of the visible real world in Lullius than it was in Augustine's spiritual quest, which creates a difference in the understanding of the integrity of the world among these thinkers. According to Augustine, only God is truly integral, even any infinite quantity in the created world is divisible ^{[9, p. 504]}, even the highest (if it is created and divisible) worse than the whole ^{[9, p. 576]}; for Lulli, the nature of the Beloved is seen as diversity and integrity ^{[1, p. 227]}. According to Lullius, before the creation of the world, the Beloved "arrived in the most diverse forms of being peculiar to Him and the Lover"^{[1, p. 226]}, that is, the plurality of the world is dear to Lulli as well as its unity in diversity (integrity), Augustine emphasized exclusively on unity, the imperfect expression of which is any plurality.  

The tendency of apologizing for the world of this world as unity in diversity (in any case, the statement of its necessity) leads Lulli to a peculiar form of explaining evil as existing in accordance with the power of the Beloved, although it was not created by him ^{[1, p. 227]}. Augustine, in the traditional form of medieval philosophy, interprets evil in the created world as imperfect good^{[9, p. 578]} and understands sin as an ontological violence against human nature^{[9, c591]}. This is explained by the fact that the world according to Augustine goes into oblivion ^{[9, p. 520]}, unfolding from the future, its constantly passing past. For Lulli, however, the world, although the thinker keenly experiences its imperfection, is perfect as created by God, therefore "realizability is more significant in creation, and unfulfillability in the Beloved, realizability corresponds to the plan, and unfulfillability of reality"^{[1, p. 229]}. According to Lulli, God's plan for the world testifies to the perfection of the world, and the non-realization of this plan in reality, which is interpreted by Augustine as a "disadvantage" of creation due to the fact that in it, unlike God, the essence does not correspond to existence, is an indisputable advantage for Lulli, since it contains the possibility of creating a new world, its transformations, perfections; in fact, the thinker religiously, apophatically justifies the idea of progress as an endless improvement, as if the re-creation of the world, its God-blessed remaking. For Augustine, the world, precisely because of its transience, mortality, is given to the Will of God, and its future in God, which in the temporal aspect does not differ from the present, is of little interest to the thinker.

The peculiarity of Lulli, consisting in his intermediate position between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, is also expressed in the fact that he is on the one hand (for example, in the mysticism of light as darkness in God)^{[1, p. 92]}, is close to the Christian tradition, and on the other hand, invests in Christian images and methods of presenting thoughts a personal intention that anticipates the world of the Renaissance; therefore, the world of the Lover is filled with longing for the loss of a Beloved or joy from the upcoming meeting with him, but the very experience of this longing (tears of the Beloved, sorrows from which his love) are of the same value to him as a meeting with a Lover, "The lover devoured his Beloved with the eyes of thoughts, sufferings, sobs and sighs"^{[1, p. 204]}. In a similar situation, Augustine simply states: "I looked myself in the face, as if coming out from behind my own back, where I was hiding ^{[9, p. 595]}, and although Augustine's confession is as internally dramatic as the emphasized sensual confessions of Lulli, but his emphasis lies precisely on getting rid of these sufferings in God, and for Lulli, since he lives in a perfect world created by God, the path of suffering itself becomes sanctified, and the discrepancy between the perfection of the world in God and his own suffering-filled life is the nerve of the thinker's tragedy. At the same time, despite the difference, certain features of the spiritual appearance of Lullius and Augustine are close to each other; this, in particular, is the predominance of reason and memory in a person's spiritual life, when oblivion is guaranteed by the ability to remember. Forgetting the Beloved, the Lover remembers that he forgot him ^{[1, p. 219]}. Augustine also states that oblivion is due to the fact that there is memory ^{[9, p. 633]}.  Memory according to Lullius, as well as according to Augustine, depends on reason and will, and Lullius emphasizes the priority of will in the spiritual life of a person, since it was the will, "rushing to the sky-high heights, told the mind to do it, and the mind of memory" ^{[1, p. 222]}.

From our point of view, Raymond Lulli's intuitions concerning the place of God in human memory deserve special attention. Lulli states that God lives where the laws of where are overcome^{[1, p. 222]} and further in the same fragment adds that the Beloved lives in my memory. Paradoxically, we are talking about a new person, whose memory is called an existential topic by the modern researcher of medieval philosophy A.S. Gagarin in the article ^{[12, p. 65]}, while the researcher, modernizing the medieval philosophical discourse, talks about the immersion of a medieval man in the recesses of his own self^{[12, p. 64]}. In another of his works, A.S. Gagarin, actually confirming the words of Lulli, says that the phenomenological topic of the inner man of the Middle Ages is a horizon, not a place ^{[13, c223]}, that is, we are talking about utopia, a place that does not exist, both Lulli and Augustine are homeless on earth, they combine in if we consider them in the terminology of A.S. Gagarin, solitude and isolation as forced loneliness ^{[14, p. 148]}.

In the context of our work, Maxim Lullia about the place of God in human memory is interesting from the point of view of the already mentioned dialectic of active and passive principles in the relationship of the Lover and the Beloved. In our opinion, we are talking here as well as in other cases about the paradoxical ambiguity of Lullius. Memory, which in earthly conditions is a passive beginning (it is commanded by the will and reason in the heavenly world, and maybe in the conditions of progress and in the true earthly world) becomes the dwelling of the Beloved, paradoxically passing into the will-mind-memory triad in the first place, as well as the Lover passively/actively striving for the Beloved. In this context, Lulli's statement becomes clear that the Lover "looked into Himself as into a mirror to see His Beloved in It and into the Beloved as into a mirror to see Himself in it"^{[1, c236]}. In this fragment, Lulli testifies to such a degree of closeness that demonstrates the absolute immanentization of the transcendent Deity (the experience of his transcendence as an immanent human personality), which is almost not typical for Augustine, who in the "Confession" with the most "intimate" descriptions emphasizes the transcendence of God. Such an experience of the transcendence of the Deity can be explained by the influence on Lulli of the chivalric novel and love lyrics, which A.S. Gagarin calls milestones of introspection ^{[14, p. 153]} or the interpretation of confession as a form of a personal diary ^{[15, p. 92]}. However, in accordance with the personal and religious context in which "The Book about the Lover and the Beloved is written, in our opinion, we are talking about a symbolically given introspection.

To prove this thesis, it is necessary to recall the definition of the concept of "symbol" given in the work of A.F. Losev "The Logic of the symbol", according to which the symbol is understood as the identity of the denoted and the denoting, which results in a meaningful as a qualitatively new unity. A. F. Losev believed that the symbol is a generalization that goes beyond itself, indicating on the set of facts for which the symbol is a principle, a model, a model, a law ^{[16, p. 253]}. In order to show the applicability of this definition to the specifics of the personal world of Raymond Lulli, it is enough to point to his description of the features of the relationship between the Beloved, the Lover and Love, where the thinker says that "above Love is the Beloved, he descends, below the Lover, he rises, and Love is a fluctuation between them"^{[1, with 226]}.

Love-oscillation is an eternal symbol, for which the signified is the Beloved, and the signifier is the Lover, respectively, Love is their identity, but not static, but dynamic and alive, that is, it is not a logical definition, but the living Very Self of Love, fixed in this definition; since the world of Lulli (created by God perfect) assuming the ambiguous and paradoxical nature of symbolism, then the signified and the signifier can change places, and then in the work of Lulli, an introspection of a purely human self will be carried out, which even in its "trance" points to itself. There is no reason to assume that this inversion was carried out by the pious Christian Raymond Lulli, but its possibility must be taken into account, in any case, it is the symbolic nature of introspection that makes it possible to emphasize the fluctuation of Love, its mutual transitivity between the Lover and the Beloved, identification with both of them and non-identification with either of them both separately and together, since such Love between God and man is impossible in its possibility, therefore, "essence and being are drawn to each other, but they cannot reach" ^{[1, p. 205]}, and reason compares inferiority with perfection ^{[1, p. 207]}. It is possible to detail, thus, the definition of introspection given in this work by Lulli as the comprehension of the Very personality of the Lover as the transcendence of the Beloved in the symbolism of love, expressed in the search, loss and meeting of the Lover and Beloved each other.

The symbolic detailing of the personality Itself concretizes abstract and detached definitions of the Self, at the same time complicating and posing them as a problem, thereby transferring them into an absolutely personal dimension. Therefore, the "Book about the Lover and the "Beloved", in contrast to Augustine's "Confession", towards the end of which begins a description of the life of Augustine a Christian interpreting the Holy Scriptures, ends with a description of how self-knowledge put a person in prison and condemned him to eternal punishment ^{[1, p. 338]}, although according to traditional Christian concepts, transcendence self-knowledge should lead a person out of prison, or rather lead him through it to the eternal Divine Light, as a result of which the transcendence of Lulli can be considered unfulfilled; at the same time, he discovered what the outstanding philosopher M. K. Mamardashvili would later call "human in man" ^{[17, p. 8]}, which is not guaranteed by anything, but it guarantees everything by itself, allowing a person to live in a world whose God has disappeared into the infinite distance, which is what it is   the eternal introspection of the sufferer Raymond Lulli.