The Noetic Quaternion: An Inquiry into the Hypervolitional Stratagems of Mór János Kerekes
It is a tenet too often ignored that the obscure thinkers, those whose names do not adorn dusty tomes nor syllabi of learned faculties, sometimes approach closer to the noumenal curtain than their celebrated contemporaries. Of such men, I single out for this brief investigation the elusive Hungarian aphorist and meta-metaphysician Mór János Kerekes (1853–1902), whose principal tract—*A Tudás Negyedik Ága* (*The Fourth Branch of Knowledge*)—was privately circulated in fewer than twenty self-bound volumes during the final decade of his life. Possessing neither disciples nor institutional patronage, Kerekes fashioned for himself a path of solitary gnosis, engaging in a kind of mystical rationalism which, though often veiled in untranslatable idiom and deliberate anacoluthon, may yet yield treasures to the patient philologist of mind.
It is not of his general system, however baroque or sui generis, that I wish presently to treat, but rather of a single, easily-overlooked proposition that lies buried in Section VIII, aphorism 27b of the aforementioned text: “A tudás utolsó rétegében az akarat már nem mozgat, hanem vonzódik a lehetetlenséghez.” Roughly translated, this amounts to: “At the terminal layer of knowledge, the will no longer acts, but is drawn to impossibility.”
This notion, which I shall henceforth refer to as Kerekes’ hypervolitional axiom, obliquely subverts the prevailing notion—proposed paradigmatically by Schopenhauer—that the will is a primordial, blind striving whose objects are only contingently impossible or accessible, and whose essence is in motion.* Kerekes, instead, imagines a plane or layer in the epistemic ontology wherein volition’s nature undergoes not a cessation, but a profound inversion: the will ceases to act and begins to be acted upon, not by a definite object, but by the numinous absence embodied in impossibility—as if impossibility itself were a noumenon of seductive power.
Here we witness a startling shift. For whereas Kantian metaphysics arrogates the noumenon into the realm of unknowability, and Schopenhauer identifies it with the will itself, Kerekes declares that the arcane limit of volition is neither striving nor knowledge, but an affective orientation toward what he repeatedly calls *a lehetetlenség szelleme*, or “the spirit of the impossible.” The metaphysical architectonics of this position demand rigorous analysis.
One must first appreciate that in Kerekes’ schema there exist, not merely two faculties (understanding and reason), nor even three (with the addition of pure intuition, as in some Renaissance thinkers), but four: understanding (*értelem*), rapture (*elragadtatás*), reversal (*visszafordítás*), and hypervolition (*túlakarat*). These constitute, respectively, the grasp of causes, the immersion in pure phenomena, the turning of the self upon its conceptions, and finally the magnetic surrender to the impossible. The fourth, least understood, is neither a mere limit state nor a theological gesture, but an operative faculty—one that functions like a spiritual gyroscope, unable to attain anything save anxiety and unresolvable desire, and yet necessary for the completion of knowledge. It is from here that the noetic quaternion of the title emerges.
This quaternion—a fusion of four distinct operations of mind—suggests a model of cognition that is not progressive but recursive. Kerekes conceives of knowledge not as an accumulation, nor even a dialectical unfolding in Hegel’s sense, but as a spiral descent into an ateleological center: impossibility. In this centripetal model, the fourth faculty is paradoxical—it annihilates the possibility of knowledge while completing it. This argument is rendered with agonizing poeticism in aphorism 31: “Csak amikor semmi sem mozdítható, akkor mozdul meg bennünk minden.” (“Only when nothing can be moved, does everything within us begin to move.”)
What then does one make of this final position? Is it but a form of volitional mysticism? An anticipation of existentialist absurdity? It bears resemblance, no doubt, to certain strains in Lev Shestov, who danced likewise on the precipice of logical inconsistency. Yet unlike Shestov, Kerekes does not appeal to the irrationality of existence as a palliative or a cry, but as a sacred compass. The impossible becomes not a negation but a pole, a north, toward which the mind’s deepest function orients.
One might mistake this for theological eschatology, had Kerekes not been an avowed anti-doctrinalist, whose only use of “God” in the entirety of his work is a sardonic one: “Isten az első lehetetlenség.” (“God is the first impossibility.”)² This aphorism, deconstructive in its apophatic daring, simultaneously affirms and denies the divine by making it the progenitor of the will’s final object. It is, in effect, a kind of spiritual negativism, refracting Plotinian ascent through a nihilistic crystal.
Further implications arise when we consider Kerekes’ place vis-à-vis ethics and aesthetics. If the sublime is traditionally defined (pace Burke and Kant) as that which overwhelms the faculties while affirming them, then Kerekes’ “impossible” sublime is one that nullifies affirmation itself—an aesthetic of the abyss. In ethics, likewise, the hypervolitional subject faces a moral aporia: for to will something known beforehand to be impossible is not merely to hope, nor merely to err, but to engage in an act of metaphysical yearning that transcends utility, virtue, and consequence.³
Indeed, we may detect in this a faint precursor to what later French thinkers, notably Georges Bataille, would call *l’expérience intérieure*—a confrontation with the limit of intelligibility, not through heroic striving, but through passivity, surrender, and sacrilegious paradox. Yet where Bataille delights in transgression, Kerekes suffers it. His hypervolitional subject is not a seeker of ecstasy but a martyr of cognition.
If I may permit myself a final speculation, it is that the ultimate merit of Kerekes’ thought lies in precisely this unresolved tension between knowing and unknowing, between willing and being-willed. He inserts into the heart of metaphysics an epicycle of despair that paradoxically gives shape to insight. Through the enigma of impossibility, he designs a fourth path not only for intellect but for soul.
In our impoverished epoch, in which utility and simplification prevail, may the obdurate opacity of Mór János Kerekes serve as a reminder that the deepest thoughts are seldom those which resolve, but those which deepen the question to the point of quiet lunacy and reverence.
By Martijn Benders – Philosophy Dep. of the Moonmoth Monestarium
language, proto-idealism, hypervolition, metaphysics, impossibility, Hungarian philosophy, apophatic thought
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¹ See: Arthur Schopenhauer, *The World as Will and Representation*, Book II, §23. Schopenhauer defines the will as the innermost essence of the world, positing it as eternal striving without aim, bound by suffering but never seeking impossibility as such.
² Mór János Kerekes, *A Tudás Negyedik Ága* (Privately Printed, 1894), aphorism 46a. Rare manuscript copy held in the Library of Esoteric Letters, Szeged.
³ The resemblance to Kierkegaard’s “knight of faith” is superficial. Whereas Kierkegaard’s figure believes the impossible as part of divine paradox, Kerekes’ subject is drawn toward impossibility without faith, and without hope.