O <--> (k) Boomer

I'd like to wrap up our discussion of Thomistic Psychology so we can move on to the next subject, whatever it is. Much of this material isn't new per se. In fact, it's straight out of the Raccoon playbook, except I arrived at it in a circuitous and nonlinear manner, just scratching my intuitchin' and following my whimful thinking wherever it loiters. Given our very different approaches, it's rather striking that we somehow ended up in the same place, more or less.

The intellect of man has nothing to start with, yet it is potentially a whole creation. It reaches out and conquers the world by the process of becoming the world (Brennan).

Turns out that knowing and being are very much linked; in fact, if they're not, then there's nothing to talk about but our own neuropsychology. One could express the relation of knowledge to being with a very simple formula: O <--> (k).

The philosophistry of materialism makes no sense, because it cannot make sense; it is literally the denial of intelligibility, of intelligence, and of any real relation between them:

the singular does not resist understanding because it is singular, but because it is material, since nothing is understood except immaterially (emphasis mine).

A single tree, for example, isn't understood as a tree, because doing so requires the abstract concept of treeness. "The essences of corporeal things are opaque rather than translucent, so far as our ability to understand them is concerned."

In fact, it is impossible for us to imagine such a world of absolute singularities, because we would be reduced -- literally -- to psychosis. The psychotic person lives in a world of terrifying novelty, with every object in each moment de-linked, so to speak, from the others; one exits meaningful history and enters a catastrophic collidescope from which there's no escape from the constant collisions.

Ogden describes it well: "symbol and symbolized are emotionally indistinguishable since there is no interpreting self to mediate between" them. "Thoughts and feelings" become "palpable objects and forces that appear, disappear, contaminate, transform, destroy, rescue, etc." Such a person

may shake his head to get rid of tormenting feelings, may literally put his thoughts into a letter and send the letter to the person who should hold these thoughts, or may request x-rays in order to be able to see the things inside of him that are driving him crazy.

Or, he may put his disturbing thoughts and feelings into President Trump, which solves one problem only to create another: the unenending torment of Orange Man Bad! Not only is this story as old as politics, but the raison d'etre of vulgar politics. The founders saw and recognized this, and hoped to create a system that would neutralize it.

But right away political philosophy devolved into faction, and here we are. Beneath the conviction that politics can solve one's problems is the fantasy that politics is responsible for one's problems. So, hating President Trump is every bit as sensible as putting one's sins into an animal and killing it. It even works. For awhile, at which point a new sacrifice is necessary. This is why the News Cycle was invented by the Aztec. See Bailie for details.

Note that the process is "psychotic," even though we don't label it as such. But clearly, a different sort of logic is at play when we enact such an unconscious political phantasy. Come to think of it, The Symmetry of God explains the basis of the process in both health and illness.

For there is a healthy basis for such confusion of symbol and symbolized, for example, in the experience of art. In appreciating drama, one must "lose one's mind" and give oneself over to the imaginary world. This constitutes the healthy use of a power that becomes unhinged and autonomous in various states of pathology.

For example, what is a conspiracy theory but an imaginary drama into which one projects oneself? I've been binge-watching The Man in the High Castle, but its alternative world is no more bizarre than Rachel Maddow's long-running soap opera, The Russian Operative in the White House, which I occasionally cringe-watch.

Back to Brennan (Robert, not John). Like the materialist, we begin with material objects. However, we don't end there (in truth, neither does the materialist, except he has no principle to explain how he gets from first base -- sensation -- to second -- abstraction). An angelic intelligence requires no object, but can proceed straight to the essence. But we aren't angels, although some people come close. Not for nothing is Aquinas called the "angelic doctor." Schuon too seems to fly in that gossamer plane, right at the threshold between the local and nonlocal.

But for the restavus earthbound dirtclods, our knowledge "is not central but radial knowledge. It proceeds inward from without, and reaches the center only by starting from the periphery. It apprehends the essences of sensible things, not in themselves, but in the symbols which these essences manifest to the senses."

In fact, I think this might constitute a fork in the road between Thomas and Frithjof, because, if I am not mistaken, Schuon believes the True Metaphysician has access to the principial world of a priori truth. There are permanent truths we can know directly and infallibly, and indeed, we have a right to these truths (along with an obligation to know and live from them). Let me see if I can dig up a suitable passage.

It is indispensable to know at the outset that there are truths inherent in the human spirit that are as if buried in the "depths of the heart," which means that they are contained as potentialities or virtualities in the pure Intellect: these are the principial and archetypal truths, those which prefigure and determine all the others (Survey of Metaphysics and Esoterism).

I suppose I'm partial to the Schuonian view, while also maintaining a healthy respect for the Gnostic temptation: the Tower of Babel, the Promethean usurpation of divinity, the idea that we can build our own stairway to heaven. That always ends badly, although it can be lucrative while it lasts. Humility is the thing. If it doesn't vary directly with knowledge, then you're doing it wrong. Certain truths have moral and characterological prerequisites, which is why we don't toss our pearls before trolls or give what is holy to the Dems.

For Schuon, not all knowledge is from the periphery to the center. I will speak only for myself, and say that it must be a two way street, or better, an inspirling circularity between God's descent and our ascent, bearing in mind that the latter is strictly impossible in the absence of the former. It is in this context that I would understand the following passage:

if there were no pure Intellect -- the intuitive and infallible faculty of the immanent Spirit -- neither would there be reason, for the miracle of reasoning can be explained and justified only by the miracle of intellection. Animals can have no reason because they are incapable of conceiving the Absolute; in other words, if man possesses reason, together with language, it is because he has access in principle to the suprarational vision of the Real and consequently to metaphysical certitude.

So, the intelligence of man is potentially total, "and this totality is explained only by a transcendent reality to which the intelligence is proportioned."

Boom.

O <--> (k) boomer.