If You Strike at God, You'd Better Kill Him

Guissani provides a little map of our cosmic situation -- a cosmograph, as it were -- and it goes a little something like this:

r --> f <-- v

In this schematic r stands for Reason, f for feeling, and v for value: "The object of knowledge, in so much as it interests us (v), evokes a state of feeling (f) that conditions the capacity for knowledge (r)." (I prefer 'sensibility' to feeling.)

With all due respect, I think we can do a little better than this, although I don't know whether I will be able to depict it in a single cosmograph.

First of all, we need to start with O. From O there is a series of declensions (↓) leading to ʘ, (¶), (+), (•), •••(•)•••, (ø), and the outskirts of Ø. Thus, at one end we have the Absoute, the One, the plenum of goodness, O, while at the other end we have the absolutely relative, the løgøs, the nihil of nihilism, Ø. Man is capable of inhabiting any station between these poles.

(That was rude. It just occurred to me that people who have never read the manifestivus will have no idea what those pneumaticons refer to; let's just say the beatific vision, or atman; the intellect, or nous; the vertically and horizontally integrated self; the ego; the fragmented ego riddled with mind parasites; and MSNBC.)

We would then need a hierarchy of horizontal arrows between world ( ) and man (•), signifying the spectrum of -ologies that spreads out from the Logos, as when light hits a prism: physics, biology, neurology, psychology, etc.

There is also a paradigmatic science appropriate to each level, for example, metaphysics vis-a-vis O and physics vis-a-vis ( ).

Extending further down, we could say that contemporary liberalism is the science of Ø. It draws out all the nasty implications and consequences of living in an absolutely relativistic and therefore meaningless world, where essences (including the human individual) are impossible. In the end, their imperfect nonsense always adds up to ‰, or the "bad infinite."

As we've said before, a communist or fascist is just a leftist with the absolute courage of his convictions, willing to go all the way down the infrahuman heilhole without pulling any punches, and dragging everyone else along with him.

Coincidentally, I read something along these lines just yesterday in Pieper's book on The Concept of Sin. You could say that mortal sin (the unforgivable kind) involves willfully turning from O and instead being oriented to Ø

(And if a certain reader's understandable confusion is an indication, Pieper means "unforgivable" in the normal course of events, absent a rather extreme and unprecedented intervention on the part of the Creator combined with the appropriate response on the part of the mortal sinner, which will naturally involve a great deal of pain followed by a lifetime of efforts at re-conciliation toward a hoped-for absolution; this effort does not imply justification by man, but rather, is a spontaneous reflection of a true con-version, re-pentance, and metanoia; but to simply assume forgiveness is itself a kind of unforgivable hubris).

Thus, we cannot necessarily judge individual sins in a kind of hierarchy of severity, as does the positive law, because the identical act takes on a very different meaning if committed with full consciousness of rejecting O and embracing Ø.

For Pieper, this is why we must withhold ultimate judgment, because we simply do not have access to the state of the person's soul when committing this or that sin.

Nietzsche was the most articulate spokes(ø) for Ø, but in the end, he was just a big talker, and there is no evidence that he actually embodied the principles he espoused. He said, for example, "I rejoice in great sin as my great consolation!," but all evidence suggests that his personal life was rather dull and uneventful.

Nietzsche just got a pneumatic kick out of stirring things up via projection into his readers, and was therefore a kind of prototype of today's academics who are so adept at tearing down what it took centuries to build, and then watching as others suffer the consequences of their follies.

For example, black culture lies in ruins because of the toxic ideas of leftist pinheads with lifetime employment. The left couldn't care less about its millions of victims.

O is the ultimate nonlocal Order of things, and is the Reason why we have a cosmos to begin with (i.e., a local order). Pieper notes that the soul falls into disorder as a consequence of sin, which again comes down to turning away from O, which is the nonlocal source and goal (alpha and omega) of the soul's order.

Therefore, sin "establishes itself as pointless, literally relationless activity... sin lacks the element of being ordered to a goal."

But the person, in essence, is always in relationship, as a terrestrial consequence of the Trinity. Therefore, that other great spokes(ø) for Ø, Sartre, claims that "hell is other people" -- which you might say is a consequence of a loveless (because radically monadic) cosmos.

The opposite -- and correct -- sentiment is related in The Brothers Karamazov, when a character asks, "what is hell? I think it is the pain of no longer being able to love."

Pieper might well be describing our orientation to O, the Great Attractor, when he observes that "the inclination of nature is the hidden gravitational pull that is active in each individual regulation of the will. It is the fundamental energy by virtue of which human existence presses toward its intended goal."

Thus it also accounts for evolution, meaning that "we are born not as static entities but as unfinished products, a 'rough draft' whose realization is demanded by that same nature 'by virtue of creation.'" (As we've said before, metaphysical Darwinism is the very opposite of evolution, since it denies any telos to account for meaningful or progressive change.)

Pieper raises the subtle point that "whoever does wrong can never be completely at one with himself." This is perfectly clear if O is the source of oneness, and if sin involves turning from O.

Therefore, sin always redounds to a condition of •••(•)•••, of a self riven by fragmentation.

Conversely, peace and tranquility are subjective byproducts of at-one-ment. This also explains why we can never match the tireless but empty "activism" of the unhappy left. The evil is in their principles, and therefore poisons any consequences a priori.

To put it colloquially: no, we don't actually have to pass the bill to find out what's in it, so long as we know it was made by the skeevy hands of the left. Or in other words, it's pointless to wash your hands in a muddy river.

So -- speaking of Obamacare -- sin is "a kind of disorder... that brings disorder in its wake."

Pieper is careful to avoid the existentialist's error of equating our freedom with the nothingness of Ø. Nor is evil simply an inevitable consequence of our freedom, or we couldn't say that God is the God of liberty.

Rather, for Pieper, it has to do with the residue of nothingness, so to speak, that characterizes our ontological situation. That is to say, "descent from nothing is inherent in every creature," and this is "the deepest ground for man's capacity for sin." Nothing is as nothing does, I guess.

Ironically, this very much comports with Freud's postulate of a death instinct, thanatos, in dialectic with the life instinct, eros. But it also reminds me of that crack about the Father of Lies. When he lies, he speaks his native language, i.e., the language of Ø. Therefore, only satan can be the perfectly consistent liar, one who is even "at one with himself" as a result of turning from O.

Conversely, "whoever reflects on the phenomenon of human failing, keeping his mind open to all its aspects, can expect that the suprarational dimension of the object will finally emerge onto view." O is always situated just over this suprarational horizon, so be good and know that I AM.

Not sure whether I'll be posting in the next couple of weeks. Only if I feel like it, I guess.