ABSTRACT
In our primal scene, Augustine praying and weeping over what he loves when he loves his God, love is given. Love is taken as a fact. The question is, what does he love? That he loves precedes the what. He starts out with the love of God, the love of what is going on in the name of God, in order to understand what he already loves. This is love seeking understanding, amor quaerens intellectum. How is he, how are we, to understand our love? How to think or give a name to what I love and desire with a desire beyond desire? That is the question we have been pursuing, or better, by which we are pursued. But just how are we supposed to go about answering this question if, as we have maintained, we are up to our ears in the secret, where the secret is, there is no Secret, no Big Theory of Everything? (We have no Big ToE.) That, replies love, is no excuse! Even if, especially if, this is a question that cannot be answered it would be all the more urgent—in the interests of love—to come up with a response! If I ask “what” is this or that, that requires an answer. But when presented with a fact, I am forced to respond, no matter what! No matter what the what!
