Monday, April 08, 2019

In the Beginning

Starting in 2012, I'm finding far more good material, which, as I said, is slowing me down. Between 2006 and 2011 it was mostly the occasional sentence or paragraph that was worth preserving, but now I'm actually finding whole posts that don't let me down.

Therefore, in order to organize these Good Posts -- or at least know where to find them -- I'm going to republish them. This is more efficient than placing them in the files containing only sentences and paragraphs. There's still an overwhelming amount of information that needs to be pruned, but at least I'll know where to find stuff. It's for my convenience, but feel free to peruse.

This post is about Where to Begin; or rather, where is the so-called beginning:

What's first? And who's on it? Things? Or Principles? Or do they co-arise?

Way before I ever encountered Thomism, I attempted to think through all this on my own. Yes, you could say "needlessly," as it turns out, but not necessarily.

I say this because I'm always shocked at how frequently my own free application of reason ends up in the same attractor as this Thomas fellow. Details may vary -- after all, he couldn't have foretold 700 years of scientific development -- but the broad outlines are similar. Let's say we're in the same school, if different classes. He's long since graduated, while I am definitely a sophomore (or less, depending on how you look at it).

But in any event, we share the same principal. Why? Because the One Cosmos mysthead tells me so:

∞ ... LIFE IS OUR SCHOOL, THE COSMOS OUR TEACHER, TRUTH THE FIRST PRINCIPAL ... ∞

So, in the bOOk, I begin with the question -- the first question, as it were -- of "Where in the world do we begin? Do we have any right to assume that the universe is intelligible? If not, you can stop reading right now and do something else, something that actually has a purpose."

Wait, a footnote, the first one. Let's see what it says. "Bear in mind, however, that if the universe has no purpose, then neither will anything you do instead of reading the book. Therefore, you might as well read the book."

So you see, there's really no way to avoid reading the book. You have no excuse, only pretexts.

Back to the text: "But if the universe is intelligible, how and why is this the case?"

Blah blah yada yada, "Of course we should start our enquiry with the 'facts,' but what exactly is a fact? Which end is up? In other words, do we start with the objects of thought or the subject that apprehends them?"

And hey, "just what is the relationship between apparently 'external' objects and the consciousness that is able to cognize them? Indeed, any fact we consider presupposes a subject who has selected the fact in question out of an infinite sea of possibilities, so any conceivable fact" is bound up with the knowing subject.

So it seems that first things are immediately followed by first questions. That is, humans are uniquely capable of asking questions about the things they first encounter. Knowledge begins with this encounter between subject and object, but doesn't end there, as it does in animals and other atheists.

Rather, human beings may reason about their experience of things -- and, equally important, reason about reason itself. A better name for metaphysics might actually be "meta-epistemology," or "meta-ontology," or something similar, so the accent is on the unavoidably transnatural source and vector of reason.

Metaphysics begins in being, not knowledge. Which is why any metaphysic that begins with science is, in the words of Maritain, "false from the beginning," because science assumes being without attempting to account for it.

To use a construction analogy, science analyzes the building without getting into the question of how it got there or who planned it. Indeed, it cannot even address the question without fatal contradictions, e.g., the absurcular argument of natural selection.

But unlike science, metaphysics is utterly useless, which is another way of saying that it is completely disinterested and hence objective. Conversely, science always assumes a point of view, and more generally, a whole paradigm (usually unexamined).

Now, "useless" doesn't imply "worthless." Hardly. To the contrary, "nothing is more necessary to man than this uselessness. What we need is not truths that serve us but a truth we may serve" (emphasis mine).

My fellow Raccoons, now we're talking: ask not what Truth can do for you, but what you can do for Truth.

"For that truth is food of the spirit.... Useless metaphysics puts order -- not any sort of police order, but the order that has sprung from eternity" into man's otherwise rudderless -- or groundless -- intelligence (Maritain).

To express it poetically but then again literally, metaphysics allows man "to gravitate, head first, to the midst of the stars, while he hangs from the earth by his two legs."

In other words, in the Upanishadic formulation, the universe is a tree with its nonlocal roots aloft and local branches down below. Therefore, in the bobservational formulation,

history is a chronicle of our evolutionary sprint from biology to spirit, in which we first climb down from the trees of eastern Africa and then up the metaphorical Upanishadic tree....

Thus, we start our journey 'out on a limb' and soon find ourselves 'grounded,' but eventually find a radical solution to our troubling situation, arriving at the root' of the cosmos" ("radical" being related to the Latin "root").

UPDATE SEVEN YEARS LATER: This is all another way of expressing the Christian formulation, i.e., Creation-Fall-Redemption within the larger Divine-Cosmic circle of exits-redditus. I suppose it would be correct to say that the Incarnation allows humanity as such to participate in the trinitarian alphOmega.

6 comments:

Dougman said...

"This post is about Where to Begin; or rather, where is the so-called beginning:"

The word
From One who spoke, to the one who hears.

The first angel in heaven was the Morning Star I think (?)


Dougman said...

For us humans, and Anonymous commenters, it was The Word, the Truth and G_D.

Anonymous said...

For us humans each successive regeneration has muddied the waters more, but we're still in the same stream of consciousness and this game of cat and mouse we're involved in with our maker we initiated it and it goes on ~
Genesis Chapter 3


22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
I dare say the good folk at CERN weren't thinking of this when they did this ~ It’s been over half a decade since scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) managed to capture what they believed was the elusive “God Particle” that would help tie together a few loose ends in our understanding of particle physics. It’s called the Higgs Boson and its discovery was a momentous occasion, but it also presented a few more questions that researchers desperately wanted to answer.

Gagdad Bob said...

I can't comprehend our fallenness in any other light than the metaphysical fact that existence is necessarily separated from being.

I would be happy to be corrected, but I can't wrap my mind around the notion that all this trouble is because of a bad choice by our "first parents." That's a mythopoetic way of conveying a metaphysical truth. I like how Schuon expresses it:

--"According to the Bible, the forbidden tree was that of the discernment between “good” and “evil”; now this discernment, or this difference, pertains to the very nature of Being; consequently, its source could not be in the creature; to claim it for oneself is to wish to be equal to the Creator, and that is the very essence of sin; of all sin. Indeed, the sinner decides what is good, counter to the objective nature of things; he willingly deludes himself about things and about himself, whence the fall, which is nothing other than the reaction of reality

--Manifestation is not the Principle, the effect is not the cause; that which is “other than God” could not possess the perfections of God, hence in the final analysis and within the general imperfection of the created, there results that privative and subversive phenomenon which we call evil.

--existence means not to be God and so to be in a certain respect ineluctably in opposition to Him

Anonymous said...

All existence is God; it cannot be otherwise, on the established agreement that there is but One Cosmos.

So when you say "existence means not to be God" that is false, however I know what you mean. We (humanity) are a different organelle or formation distinct from the main body of God, although of course existence is part of the One Whole.

"Opposition" to God is self-play, an internal drama. Presumably God allows the drama for some purpose, I have theorized for entertainment, the blog author opined it is God's need for expression.

On a different note, be alert for any mention of "CBD" in the media, or perhaps you have encountered or use already. Cannabidiol use is spreading like wild-fire in our population. Huge fortunes are there to be made, but the main point is, the hemp plant is making its bid to have an even more significant impact on humanity than it already has. CBD causes a head change which is so mild the user feels completely normal. However, CBD head space is not the same as normal; the impact will radiate into all areas of the culture. A few clicks and a credit card number brings chunky, resinous hemp buds to your mailbox, legal in all 50 states. The vendors are chronically sold out.

Van Harvey said...

"Metaphysics begins in being, not knowledge. Which is why any metaphysic that begins with science is, in the words of Maritain, "false from the beginning," because science assumes being without attempting to account for it."

Yep, a point that I'll soon be stepping up the annoying regularity of my making it. Especially to the economically minded, who take 'trade' or 'my choice' as being the first principles of their worldview.

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