Strange Neighborhood

Let's stipulate that man is without question the most interesting and important fact in all of creation. If you can't stipulate to this, then you haven't yet begun to think.

I say this because thinking isn't just anything. Rather, it is ordered to reality, and exists for that reason. And unless you are a bit dim or just plain tenured, you will notice -- for starters -- that man qua man is the only creature that inhabits two very different worlds.

Indeed, man effortlessly reconciles these worlds in his own being. There are various theories of how this can be so, but they're just theories. Irrespective of your little theory, the fact remains that there is a material reality and an immaterial reality. Modern sophisticates like to reduce the latter to the former, while unsophisticated retro-Platonists such as Deepak prefer it the other way around -- i.e., "consciousness" is all.

But neither of these approaches fits the case. They're just two sides of the same sophistry aimed at making the problem go away instead of confronting it head on in all its strangeness: that we are embodied and we are ensouled, and although we can distinguish these, they are "not two." The body isn't analogous to an empty vessel into which an immaterial soul is inserted, nor is the soul a material entity or side effect of physics and chemistry. In reality,

man stands on the fringe of two universes: one, the world of matter and material dimensions; the other, the world of spirit, which has neither length, nor breadth, nor weight, nor any other tangible property (Brennan).

What a queer neighborhood! On the one hand, man shares the same zip code as animals, plants, minerals, atoms, and quarks. Yet, man is also "neighbor to the angels. Truly, he is a denizen of two worlds, a horizon and a meeting place. Though angelic by his intelligence, yet he is not a pure spirit; though sensitive and passionate by his brute powers, yet he is not entirely material" (ibid.).

The question isn't that this is the case, but how it is the case: by virtue of what principle(s) can such a strange situation obtain?

We mentioned a few post back that people naturally wonder how a divine nature and a human nature can coexist in the same person. Nevertheless, it is equally puzzling how animal nature and human nature can coexist in the same person, which is to say, in all of us, in varying proportions.

This is probably going to be a non-linear post, since I'm just flipping from page to page. Or perhaps we should put a positive spin on it and say it will be a holographic post, such that each part will reflect the whole.

At any rate, Brennan -- writing back in 1941, before it would have been controversial -- makes the surprising claim that the growing baby is never, nor can it ever be, "inside" the mother. As soon as you think about it, you'll understand why:

Man's body may be likened to a cylindrical mass of of matter, perforated by several tracts or cavities that open to the outside world.

For example, there is the alimentary tract, the respiratory tract, the urinary tract, the uterine tract. This being the case, there are obviously "two surfaces to the human body: an outside surface covered by skin; and an inside surface covered by mucosae."

So, just because something is "in" your stomach it doesn't mean it is in your body per se. Rather, digestion is the process of absorbing and transforming it into the body, precisely. And the most complete scientific account of this process will never explain how an it -- food -- is transformed into I -- the person.

It's an everyday analogue to the mystery of life itself -- of how, with the appearance of life, existence becomes experience. By virtue of what principle? And is this related to the principle of how two natures can coexist in one person?

Not to get ahead of ourselves, but Yes.

Back to the growing baby. If we want to be literal about it, the fetus is never inside the mother's body; rather, only in contact with the inside surface. If you want a baby to be literally inside your body, you'll have to eat one.

Speaking of outside and inside -- or interior and exterior -- Brennan makes the point that "certain requirements are demanded of the object if it is to be known, that is, if it is to be united with the subject."

In other words, waaaaaay before we can claim to know anything about any thing, there must be a principle by virtue of which such knowledge is even possible. What is this principle?

Here again, I suspect it will ultimately be related to the two mentioned above. But if we're going to know something -- anything -- the knowing subject and knowable object must share something in common. What sort of something? Well,

a certain degree of immateriality is a primary requisite. A universe of matter alone would be simply unintelligible.

Now, what renders matter knowable? Its form, which is the intelligibility that may be known by intelligence, both of which are obviously immaterial. So, man dwells in a haunted neighborhood, with invisible ghosts of intelligibility running around everywhere.

Boo!