First of all, I would say that there is both objective and subjective revelation. Objective revelation consists of, for example, scripture.
But scripture must not only come from a subject, but be addressed to one. Therefore, the subject is both anterior and posterior to the divine message. And we can only decode the divine message on our end because of our similarity to the messenger.
Therefore, I think subjectivity itself is a cosmic revelation -- which shouldn't come as a shock, being that God identifies himself as I AM. In all of existence, there are only two beings who can say I AM: God and man.
In this briefest of sentences, I goes to Ontology (or Being), AM to Existence. Thus, to say I AM is to say that the Subject really exists. It is not just some ideal abstraction, nor just a sum total of local behaviors. It is real, even the ultimate real, i.e., God.
You could also say that I and AM go to transcendence and immanence, respectively. As we all know from personal experience, our I endures regardless of the experiences it encounters. Yet, the I only exists via these experiences. Just as form and substance can be separated only in the imagination, it seems that the same applies to I and AM: you never see one without the other.
Which is again why I find Buber's theology so coongenial, what with his belief that the I-THOU relation constitutes the irreducible essence of reality. What this really represents is an I to I relation, or I AM and YOU ARE. But as a result of the relation, an ontic third is introduced: WE ARE.
And what is the glue that holds the cosmic WE together? In Christian metaphysics it is called love. Thus, love is the concrete expression of a more abstract principle of unity, or mutuality, or intersubjectivity.
Conversely, hate, for example, would represent a denial of the YOU ARE. When we hate someone, it entitles us, so to speak, to treat them as an object, not a subject.
I should add that the other link between I AM and YOU ARE is knowledge or truth. Therefore, another form of denial of the link would be the Lie. The Lie always erodes human community, one more reason to detest the left, which is both the cause and consequence of vicious and foolish lies.
The other day, I heard Dennis Prager say that the older he has gotten, the more he has come to believe that truth is the most important societal value. I agree entirely. If you consider any collective human evil, up to and including genocide, it is always founded upon Lies that permit human beings to commit the evil. Nazism was, of course, evil. But prior to that it was a monstrous Lie. Likewise communism or any other ideology that commits evil in its name.
This makes it a matter of some urgency to understand the Truth of Things. Why, for example, has the United States not only been a benign influence in the world, but repeatedly saved its ass?
Because it comes the closest to being organized around permanent truths of man, truths grounded in the spiritual freedom of the sacred human subject; which is to say, the freedom of the I to determine its own AM, and not be treated like an IT.
Which is precisely what the state must do, since it is an IT, not an I. Millions of Americans, for example, are furious that ObamaCare is treating them like a worthless IT, an object, an insect. Well, what did you expect?
Likewise, how do you expect the IRS to behave? If there is one government agency that excels at treating humans as contemptible objects, it is the IRS.
But this relation is not reversible. That is to say, now that Lois Lerner has been busted for treating conservatives even worse than other cITizens, she takes refuge in the permanent truth of the inviolable I AM that must be protected from the invasive reach of the IT-state.
Ironic? Yeah, like Kim Jong Un getting 100% of the vote in the North Korean election. Who would have guessed?
7 comments:
That seems like it would be close to the definition of psychopathy -- treating a THOU as an IT.
And it would be kind of a new-agey pneumopathy to pervert the I-THOU and treat O as IT.
Or perhaps it is that much of the agey stuff tried to do away with the THOU entirely, so that everything is I...
*new-agey, that is
Well, as I always say, make ontological glue, not war,
baby.
And Bob, haven't you said before that even hate is a kind if love? -L or something?
Excellent. So people who treat themselves as objects, who reduce themselves to their animal impulses on principle, are ... itiots?
Magister said ". ..who reduce themselves to their animal impulses on principle, are ... itiots?"
;-) That's it!
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