The via negativa — the route of negation, knowing by exclusion rather than assertion — surfaces across the depth-psychology corpus in three distinct but overlapping registers. First, it appears as a classical theological and apophatic method: the acknowledgment that ultimate realities (God, Being, the Absolute) exceed every positive predicate, so that honest speech must proceed by denial. Kurtz and Ketcham invoke it explicitly as a spiritual pathway, warning simultaneously of its pitfall in comparative judgment. Armstrong traces the tradition through Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Neoplatonic currents, positioning apophatic theology against Anselm's positive ontology. McGilchrist recovers the logic structurally, arguing that a 'primary act of negation' — divine withdrawal, reciprocal inhibition, the Kabbalistic tzimtzum — is constitutive of creation itself. Second, the via negativa functions in depth psychology as an epistemological principle: Edinger notes that foundational concepts such as 'individual' and 'integer' can only be defined by negation of their opposites. Third, and most programmatically, Giegerich radicalises the route of negation into the very logical form of genuine psychological discourse, demanding an 'accomplished negation' — a negation that negates itself — as the only authentic entrance into the soul's life. Hillman invokes it more briefly but tellingly in the alchemical context, reading the double negative of 'do not act out / do not hold in' as a mercurial via negativa that dissolves both imperatives. The tension among these deployments — spiritual practice, epistemic humility, and dialectical logic — gives the term its considerable generative power within the literature.
In the library
16 passages
The via negativa or 'route of negation,' in which we come to know something by observing what it is not, has its own pitfalls — the dangers of comparison and judgment.
Kurtz and Ketcham provide the corpus's most direct definitional statement of the via negativa, naming it explicitly as the 'route of negation' and flagging its inherent risk of invidious comparison when applied to the distinction between spirituality, religion, and therapy.
Kurtz, Ernest, Ketcham, Katherine, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994thesis
A double negative that suggests a via negativa, a deliteralizing cancellation of both commandments. A mercurial escape from the exhausting oscillation between them.
Hillman reads the alchemical paradox of 'do not act out / do not hold in' as an enacted via negativa — a Mercurial dissolution that cancels opposing literal imperatives and opens a third, imaginal mode of operation.
Edinger's index locates the via negativa as a discrete conceptual entry within his treatment of individuation, signalling its recognized place in the Jungian architectonic of Ego and Archetype.
Edinger, Edward F., Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972supporting
Such a fundamental concept as the individual must be expressed in terms of what it is not, i.e., not di-visible … It seems that in attempting to describe such [realities]
Edinger demonstrates the apophatic principle at work in etymology itself — 'individual,' 'atom,' 'integer' — arguing that foundational psychological concepts are constitutively defined through negation, instantiating the via negativa at the level of language.
Edinger, Edward F., Ego and Archetype: Individuation and the Religious Function of the Psyche, 1972supporting
there needs to be an emptying out, a receptive space so as to make a place for it to live: a primary act of negation.
McGilchrist locates a structural via negativa at the cosmogonic level — the Kabbalistic tzimtzum, Heidegger's Nichts, and neurological reciprocal inhibition all exemplify how creative origination requires a prior, constitutive negation.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
there needs to be an emptying out, a receptive space so as to make a place for it to live: a primary act of negation.
A duplicate passage from McGilchrist reiterating that the creative ground of Being requires a negation — divine withdrawal and receptive emptiness — as its necessary precondition.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
What we need, in fact, is a word unlike any other, not defined in terms of anything else: a sort of un-word.
McGilchrist argues that language about Being requires an apophatic 'un-word' — a placeholder that resists positive definition — instantiating the via negativa as a linguistic-epistemological necessity.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
What we need, in fact, is a word unlike any other, not defined in terms of anything else: a sort of un-word.
A parallel edition of the same McGilchrist passage, reinforcing the apophatic argument that the ground of Being demands linguistic negation rather than positive definition.
McGilchrist, Iain, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
the gatekeeper's 'No!' itself is the entrance … The very 'No entry! Go back!' is the only 'loophole' in the otherwise closed gate. To enter means, as it were, to bathe in the negation.
Giegerich radicalises the via negativa into the constitutive logical form of psychological discourse: negation is not an obstacle to overcome but the sole entrance into soul-work, a permanent 'Last Judgment' that divides ego from daimon.
Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
The opening is in itself the goal. There is nothing additional behind or after it. The opening is in itself heaven and hell. The 'No entry!' … is the constant modus vivendi of psychology.
Giegerich extends his apophatic logic to insist that the negation is not preliminary but terminal — the via negativa as such constitutes the psychological threshold, not merely a method of approach.
Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
Anselm's God was Being, therefore, not the Nothing described by Denys and Erigena. Anselm was willing to speak about God in far more positive terms than most of the previous Faylasufs.
Armstrong maps the historical tension between apophatic theology (Pseudo-Dionysius, Erigena) and Anselm's cataphatic ontological argument, showing the via negativa as a contested boundary within the Western God-concept.
Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993supporting
His mind at last negates God for a Beyond, or at least it seems to find God transcending Himself, denying Himself to the conception.
Aurobindo describes the mind's apophatic movement whereby every positive formulation of the Absolute — Omniscience, Beatitude, God — compels a further negation, enacting the via negativa as the necessary trajectory of metaphysical thought.
It is supposed that it is only through a negation of individual and cosmos that we can enter into the Absolute.
Aurobindo interrogates and qualifies the classical via negativa claim that only through self-negation can the Absolute be reached, proposing instead multiple modes — affirmation, sublimation, and negation — of approach.
The absolute-negative is in itself negative … it is something positive that as such is its own self-negation, it is in itself negative throughout.
Giegerich distinguishes the 'absolute-negative' from simple negation, arguing that the soul's logical life requires a self-negating negativity — a structure that resonates with the Hegelian dialectical deepening of the via negativa.
Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020supporting
What would have been needed … is the … alchemical corruption (i.e., the negative negation) of its old notion … ipso facto the development of a non-positive, negative notion of truth.
Giegerich calls for a 'negative negation' of the positive truth-concept in psychology — an alchemical corruption rather than simple refutation — thereby invoking the via negativa as the methodological standard for a rigorous psychology of soul.
Giegerich, Wolfgang, The Soul’s Logical Life Towards a Rigorous Notion of, 2020aside
To speak the truth: spiritual writers such as Thomas a Kempis … found in that phrase one definition of prayer, for from flawedness flows the need for help.
Kurtz and Ketcham frame the spirituality of imperfection as itself an apophatic spiritual posture — knowing God through the honest confession of what one is not and cannot do — contextualising the via negativa within a theology of human limitation.
Kurtz, Ernest, Ketcham, Katherine, The Spirituality of Imperfection Storytelling and the, 1994aside