ABSTRACT
The social hierarchy of feudalism was just one imperfect symbol of the real distribution of divinely ordered essences; an enclosed and completed cosmic structure. Creation was a ‘downward’ movement in which everything which existed potentially came actually to occupy its specific place in the universe.1 ‘Mirroring’ God’s nature, man’s soul (though not his body, which remained rooted in its earthly place) aspired to the reverse movement, ascending the ladder of being reunited with its Creator.2 It is the very fixity of material things which allows human subjectivity-in overcoming the body, which is the resisting medium to its own symbolic actuality-to rise above itself. Transcendence is the real goal of life constrained by feudal relations.
