Did something similar occur with the cosmos -- coincidentally, around the same time, or during the 16th century? While the Reformation begins in about 1520, they say the scientific revolution commences a mere 23 years later, in 1543. It makes one wonder if these two world-historical events aren't linked in some deeper way -- as if they're just bubbles on the surface of a much deeper continuum. Or discontinuum, as it were.
Unity. Now, this is something we insist upon, at every level and in every subjective modality and objective discipline. If this weren't the case, then neither this blog nor book would be called One Cosmos. The oneness is there, irrespective of whether we apprehend it or not.
And indeed, everyone short of the psychotic or demented apprehends it, at least on an implicit basis (and speaking as a psychologist, both psychosis and dementia are characterized by a painful psychic fragmentation, whether violent or passive, that can no longer be synthesized).
Another way of saying this is that everyone begins with an absolute, even if they pretend otherwise. Few people arrive at this realization in a straight line, and many people just call the oneness "God" and let him figure out how he is possible. Which is fine. A proper religious practice provides one with the means to articulate, approach, and assimilate the One.
In my case, I suppose I first arrived at it (i.e., the realty and not just the word) in several works by a philosopher named Errol Harris, in books such as The Reality of Time, Formal, Transcendental, and Dialectical Thinking: Logic and Reality, and the Restitution of Metaphysics (which I really ought to sell, since used copies are going for $329.13). I notice that he also has a title called One World or None, which looks to be political, in a bad way. Nevertheless, the title is sound, for either there is One Cosmos or there is none.
Why none? Because if there is no real oneness, no underlying order, then everyone is living in his own private Idaho, with no conformity or adequation to a real reality. Indeed, this is the modern and postmodern cosmos which we have inherited from Kant on down. Not coincidentally, it is the same cosmos we have inherited from Luther, who, not unlike Islam, demoted the intellect to a willful and pride-infused challenge to God and scripture. For example,
Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.
Or, to be fair to Luther, he was at times on both sides of the issue, but that is going to happen once you have severed the underlying unity of faith and reason. Prof. Wiki:
Some scholars have asserted that Luther taught that faith and reason were antithetical in the sense that questions of faith could not be illuminated by reason. He wrote, "All the articles of our Christian faith, which God has revealed to us in His Word, are in presence of reason sheerly impossible, absurd, and false," and that "Reason in no way contributes to faith.... For reason is the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things."However, though seemingly contradictorily, he also wrote in the latter work that human reason "strives not against faith, when enlightened, but rather furthers and advances it," bringing claims he was a fideist into dispute. Contemporary Lutheran scholarship, however, has found that Luther rather seeks to separate faith and reason in order to honor the separate spheres of knowledge to which each applies.
So, separate or unified, one or many, syntheses or fragmentation? I think he wants to have it both ways in order to deny the dire implications of his epistemology, for if you deny the intellect, then to what or whom is scripture addressed? And why should we believe it? If we say "yes" to it, then it can only be with the will, not the intellect. Sad!
We're venturing far afield here. Back to unity. I haven't glanced at these books by Harris in a number of years. Let's cut to the chase and examine some of my crusty old notes to myself, as these are usually a good indication of what really stuck out for me. Examples:
--"The primordial nature of God is the ordering principle of wholeness."--"Only the present has a vertical dimension through which floods being, consciousness, life, eternity, etc."
--"Biology embodies life; life presupposes wholeness."
--"The moment of eternity is the universal ordering principle which constitutes the processual flow into the serial structure of time."
--"History is the time it takes for humans to explicate humanness in its wholeness."
--"The reality of time establishes the reality of a whole which is nontemporal."
There's a lot more, but you get the idea. Or, if you don't, the idea is wholeness. Without it you have no idea. Literally. For without wholeness, any idea will reflect just a fragment of the intrinsic partness of things, so it will be reduced to Just Your Opinion, Man. That's how we descend from the lofty Idea of a University to the laughty reality of 36,000 grievance studies departments.
Now, why do I bring all of this up? Because just before this post got underway, I read one little line in Exercises in the Elements that reads as follows: "All understanding of the individual thing is dependent on understanding the whole." In short, this post was essentially a riff on that single sentence. Out of one bull, so much... fodder!
But how does this work, exactly? What is its Principle -- which surely must be the Mother of all Principles? For Pieper it is the principle of creation. We start here, because either the universe is created or it isn't. If it is, then that is the ultimate source of unity. If it isn't, then there is no conceivable basis for unity, say, the unity between intellect and intelligibility.
To be continued in the next post, assuming I can find this strange attractor again.
10 comments:
...if you deny the intellect, then to what or whom is scripture addressed? And why should we believe it? If we say "yes" to it, then it can only be with the will, not the intellect.
And that's how we arrive at flat earth theory and young earth creationism.
if there is no real oneness, no underlying order, then everyone is living in his own private Idaho, with no conformity or adequation to a real reality.
Ratzinger:
"Incidentally, the liturgy, without any manipulation of the rite, has always quite spontaneously, through the way it it is celebrated, borne the imprint of each culture in which it is celebrated. A liturgy in an Upper Bavarian village looks very different from a High Mass in a French cathedral, which in turn seems quite unlike Mass in a southern Italian parish, and again that looks different from what you would find in a mountain village in the Andes, and so on. The decoration and arrangement of the altar and the interior of the church, the style of singing and praying--all of these things give the liturgy its own special character, enabling people to feel completely at home. And yet, in every place we can experience it as one and the same liturgy, and in this way, too, the great communion of faith."
We were literally just now discussing the beginning of the schisms in the west, and how the break of the Church of England from the RC church was essentially like a divorce, specifically because the king wanted to be allowed to divorce. Not the only split, of course, but in a way that's what it all comes down to as one faction turns against another.
I've come to understand how critical it is that Christ left a church and not a book. If he had left a book, then the reformation would have commenced the day he died -- similar to how Islam divided against itself shortly after its author died.
Not so sure about Mr. Luther. After eschewing reason to faith-puzzle over the Jews for a time, he is said to have come to want them destroyed. As you all know, a teaspoon of magnetar weighs a billion tons. That’s a lot of atom packing for sure. Would there still be enough room inside for spiritual beings? Maybe a question for another time. But for today, had Luther chosen to study magnetars instead of the Jews, would he have come to have wanted magnetars destroyed instead?
Taoism, Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism all have anti-nihilisticly moral value systems. Yet I’m unaware of anybody from any those fine religions wanting either Jews or magnetars destroyed.
Good morning blog community.
I like the topic of this post, and it was well-written. Unity is a cornerstone of spiritual life. Without grasping unity and acting accordingly, one immediately steps into error and there is no finding the correct path until unity is recognized and confirmed.
Due to the world being very diverse and heterogeneous, unity is not exactly obvious and in particular young people are unlikely to grasp unity. One of the signal markers of the wisdom that comes with age is grasping unity.
Everyone struggles with unity. The next-door neighbor's dog craps on your lawn, an argument ensues, you want to punch and punish. Where is unity there? Are you really unified with dog feces and argumentative people?
Yes, yes you are. So where does that leave you? In a struggle of sorts. It is a life-long struggle.
The finished product, the wise elder we all hope to be, is never rattled. She looks upon all and smiles. She walks with Jesus at her side. Then death comes.
Yes, there is unity, but the world was created by God to produce strife. There is no strife in heaven, only here, and that strife is meant to teach. What does it teach? Unity.
So if you have strife and feel disunified, be reassured you are attending class. You are getting schooled.
Accordingly, all religious schisms are acceptable as long as the schizmatic participant does this to enhance her personal religious experience and not to emphasize some spurious disunity with others.
So say I this day and all days. Stephen Greybeard
Unity works quite well for empathic beings. But for the sociopaths who usually conquer power and control, not so much.
Easily bored, these smarter sociopaths get good at encouraging us wee little unity folks to squabble amongst ourselves in interesting ways, for their own amusement. The system works because we wee folks are good at projecting our own values onto them, as if the sociopaths earned their power because that's what we would have done.
And then we get conditioned to not even try anything different, because if we do, we will inevitably become one of them and then the cycle will repeat. Yet my life experience suggests that this isn't necessarily an Iron Law.
Hi Anonymous 7:46.
I hear your concern about sociopaths, or more properly, people with anti-social personality disorder.
I'm not sure I picture lots of these folks getting far enough in business or politics to be a mass threat. Usually the afflicted person will have trouble with the law and is not likely to have a fruitful career.
On the other hand, ordinary folks who are predatory and manipulative are common and highly functional and I suspect it is these persons you refer to.
In any case, knowing and exercising your basic assertive rights and using a lot of prudence will navigate you past the threat.
I realize you had an adverse business outcome and feel bitter against those who wronged you, however you won't want to carry that weight any longer. Burn them all in effigy and move on. What you lost was just more of what you didn't need. You are where you need to be now. Trust the cosmos.
-Seething Lava Field
We have to do this for the children.
FYI, my own private Idaho is rapidly being overrun by Californians. I may have to privatize Wyoming.
My best to the Family Gagdad and my old OC friends. I fly by occasionally. ;)
Hey Robin!
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