How Am I Here?

This is the ultimate question. We might say it is Alpha and Omega, first and last, because, supposing I am able to answer any question at all, this inevitably leads to the question of who has answered them and why we should give any credence to his answers.

Who are you? Who gave you the keys to the cosmos? By virtue of what principle are you qualified to be a truth-bearing primate? Certainly not the principle of natural selection, which plunges you into a horizontal network of pure contingency from which there is no escape (let alone inscape) except by means of scientistic magic.

In short, you can't just make up some convenient epistemology that is wholly decapitated from your ontology. You can't just saw off the limb on which you are perched and expect to remain suspended in midair.

Eh, most people don't think about such things. Why trouble oneself with trivial and inconsequential matters such as the nature of reality and the purpose of life? Don't you have better things to do?

Well, no. Some things are for their own sake. But only the most important ones. As we've discussed I-don't-know-how-many-times, the purpose of work is leisure, the purpose of leisure is contemplation, and the object of contemplation is....

The dazzle!

Sure, I could ignore the dazzle, but as a preeminent rockhead asked, Lord, to whom shall we go? It's not like one can just run over to the Dazzle Store and purchase a dozen epiphanies.

As mentioned at the conclusion of the previous post, once upon a time, and every time since, there were two trees.

A tall tale of two trees, one of which is the proper object of contemplation, the other of which negates its very possibility. The first tree is planted in an ontology that bears good fruit. The second tree... well, you can also know it by its fruits, which are alienation, exile, death, and permanent cosmic stupidity.

Alienation from what? From the ground; and ground from roots, roots from trunk, trunk from branches, branches from leaves, etc. One Cosmos. The second tree will still give you leaves, but in a way that reverses the order of the first tree.

Yes, it sounds like I am pushing a strained metaphor into overdrive, but this is precisely what modern philosophy does: it amputates knower from known, I from Is, and then pretends we can still know anything about what is and who knows it.

Let me say a couple more things in defense of my utterly useless life. Or rather, let Pieper say them. In his Happiness & Contemplation he writes that ultimate happiness consists in.... contemplation?

This implies a relationship between ultimate happiness and utter uselessness, in that contemplation is for its own sake and not the sake of anything else -- as persons are for their own sake and not a means to some other end. I wonder if there's a connection -- you know, between persons and contemplation? Might their uselessness be related?

For example, I don't love my son for some ulterior reason. "Ah ha!," says the Darwinian. "Yes you do. You do so in order to perpetuate your DNA." Whatever. Notice how Darwinism pretends to explain the human being while totally unexplaining his most salient characteristics -- like denying roundness while pretending spheres can still exist.

Both doing and knowing are ultimately in the service of being. Conversely, if doing is for the sake of doing, or knowledge for the sake knowing, we are trapped in a circularity from which there is no escape: a manmade counter-paradise with walls as high as pride and thick as tenure. Thus,

"It is requisite for the good of the human community that there should be persons who devote themselves to the life of contemplation" [Thomas]. For it is contemplation which preserves in the midst of human society the truth which is at one and the same time useless and the yardstick of every possible use...

Yes, a man has to make a living, but an art which is deliberately produced to conform to the tastes of the market is no longer art. Rather, the genuine work of art "has no utilitarian end, and certainly it is not a means to accomplish something else." Whatever it is that gives rise to art isn't under our command, although we certainly must -- as with any form of grace -- cooperate with it.

I'm fortunate that I don't have to "contemplate for a living," so to speak. Frankly, I can't even imagine. It would mess with the process at the very source, introducing all sorts of contaminants and motives. It could no longer be totally unself-consciously for its own sake, but for the sake of something else.

Isn't this the original rationale for the university? Yes, academia has become totally corrupt, but why? Lots of reasons, but surely one is that it is no longer for the sake of truth, but for the sake of a political agenda. In turn, this agenda is the poisonous fruit of the second tree discussed above.

Happiness is the contemplation of truth. And "it does not rest until it has found the object which dazzles it." I suppose the only hope for this blog is that you may glimpse the dazzle and share the bedazzlement. Otherwise my uselessness will be of no use to others.