This idea would also be perfectly useless. The other day, a troll asked what we think we are doing with our life -- what is our purpose, what do we hope to accomplish, what is our mission, etc. Well, we do not wish to brag, but our goal is to be as utterly useless as the perfectly useless Idea toward which we are being attracted.
Yes, the ultimate humble brag.
Now, metaphysics is the last word in uselessness, or at least the last human word before one leaps into the translinguistic void. According to Pieper, metaphysical knowledge
refers to knowledge concerned with the whole of reality, with the structure of the world as a whole.... It is the application of our knowing faculties -- from deep within our spirit -- to the totality of all that is, to the meaning and foundation of all reality in toto: i.e., the application of the mind to its complete and undiminished object.
Commenting on another post, the same troll referenced above confessed that, "I don't get it. The intelligence of man is potentially total? So what is total intelligence? To know everything? And how is this totality explained by a transcendent reality? I'm not making the connection."
There is a deep connection between the perfect idea and our ultimately futile attempt to know and describe it: they are equally pointless.
"This kind of knowledge," writes Pieper, "is what Aristotle says is the only free kind." And by "free," he means "non-practical," in contrast to practical knowledge aimed at achieving an end.
I have a friend who is a contractor. He can do pretty much anything. He could build a guesthouse in the backyard made out of junk sitting in my garage. He might be the most useful person I know. In other words, we are polar opposites. For
the kind of knowledge which deals with the ultimate foundation of the world is supposed to not "serve" a purpose.
Rather, it is "not even possible or thinkable to put it to any use: 'it alone is there for its own sake.'"
And this means it is free: no strings of purposefulness attached. Like the human person and other ultimate goods, it can never be a means to an end. You might say it is "sabbath knowledge," when we stand back from the whole existentialada and just enjoy the handiwork.
Having said that, we can never quite get there. Try as we might, we can never become perfectly useless:
[T]he knowledge that focuses on the totality of the world, purely for the sake of knowing and to that extent free -- this knowledge cannot possibly be achieved by man; he never fully grasps it; it is therefore not something that man possesses without limitation, since as a human being he himself is subject to many kinds of necessities.... One would have to say that only God can achieve this knowledge completely....
So, only God can be perfectly useless, for he is the ultimate "for his own sake." Then again, the very essence of God is for the sake of the other: God is substance-in-relation, such that the Father makes himself useful by giving himself to the Son, and vice versa. This cannot be for the sake of something else; it is not as if the Father has an ulterior agenda or secret payoff in so pouring himself into the Son.
It must be the same with creation. If creation is an icon of trinitarian love, then it too can have no practical purpose, rather, a wholly impractical one.... What am I trying to say? Perhaps this:
First, however much man is a practical being who needs to use the things of the world to meet his requirements for living, he does not acquire his real riches through technical subordination of the forces of nature but through the purely theoretical knowledge of reality.The existence of man is all the richer the more deeply he has access to reality and the more it is opened up to him. Through his knowledge he achieves the purest realization of his being, so that even his ultimate perfection and fulfillment consist in knowledge...
And we're back to paragraph one, the Perfect -- and perfectly useless -- Idea.
Anaxagoras expresses it his own way when, in answer to the question, "Why were you born?" he says: "To look at the sun, the moon and the sky" -- by which he would not have meant the physical heavenly bodies but the construction of the world as a whole (Pieper).
A final point: science is obviously practical. But to the extent that it transforms to scientism, it tries to be as useless as metaphysics, but only renders itself soulless and nihilistic, which is another thing entirely. It is a pseudo-uselessness, a nothing masquerading as everything. It doesn't release the intellect into freedom, but rather, eliminates freedom at the root.
Pieper ends with a crack by Boethius: The human soul is necessarily at its freest when it remains in contemplation of the divine spirit.
5 comments:
You might say it is "sabbath knowledge," when we stand back from the whole existentialada and just enjoy the handiwork.
One of the great challenges of living is being able to sit back and appreciate our uselessness - not to be confused with meaninglessness - in the course of our lives. I'm reminded of a passage from the book Farmer Boy, where Almanzo's father looks on the idea of a threshing machine with pure disdain, in no small part because of the potential of freeing up too much of a man's time. The prospect of having a day with nothing to do (as they spend Sundays, permitted neither nonessential work nor any serious fun) seems like a vision of hell, not an opportunity to appreciate heaven.
Uselessness is good. Buddhists tried to corner that one. But then there's also barbarians who need to see you as an enemy, who want to crush you, to drive you before them, then hear the lamentations of your women. They sorta change things. It's hard to be blissfully useless with people like that around.
On this earth you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. There's always some bowl mouthed hairy thing or horned creature trying to pick a fight or take us back to Jabba. So we must be cautious.
Sometimes I wish they'd combine Conan, Star Wars, and Ben Hur into an epic movie for our useless pleasure. But then I remember The Phantom Menace. It's sad that not even advanced CGI can make up for a lame plot and bad acting. It's always something.
Thank you for the post, it is very good.
The takeaway I get is that some things are means to an end, and some things are the ends themselves. When you arrive at the finished product, as it were, it lacks any sense of utility because it is the end to which all means was applied.
Therefore a sense of uselessness will be found in all finished products, as you elegantly put it.
I think we are deeply hooked on carrying out means. Our bodies and minds cry out for food, shelter, warmth, love, and the appreciation and respect of our peers; these inbuilt needs mostly propel us, and when they are fully and finally met, we are left a adrift.
Nothing hurts so bad as getting everything you ever wanted.
And, as Anonymous 7:07 AM pointed out, hostile others help guarantee a person will have plenty to do just to stay safe and unmolested, and never reach the end of security needs.
Therefore, it is said, a good enemy is worth two friends. Not that I buy into all that.
Then there's the mindless materialists. If you don't buy all this stuff they're selling then you're useless. And in the bad way. If you don't want a smart toilet or craft beer dribbling down your nonconformist hipster beard, then you're the bad kind of useless. If you're able to make those things all by yourself then you might be admired by some, but to most you're just plain evil. Only Satan makes hands that aren't idle anymore.
I still think mindless consumerism is a pathology, like alcoholism. It leads to drunks in control of everything, always pushing drunkiness. I remember the old Dr. Pepper commercials. He's a drunk, she's a drunk, wouldn't you like to be a drunk too? I'm glad I have my ants and cats to keep me satisfied. Plus my mass murdering hobby, though it's still only slugs that I'm killing.
What is the utility of the One Cosmos, seen as a whole?
I'm not talking about the book and blog (these are very useful), but the thing itself, the actual Cosmos seen as a unitary whole.
Who is it for?
What does it do?
Why was it created?
Answers to these questions have been presented by Dr. Godwin in various posts, but it can't hurt to revisit these important questions, which all boil down to one question, "What for?"
The main postulate is God created Cosmos to express His uncontainable/irrepressible creativity and joy, and that is the utility of the Cosmos, because it pleases God to express Himself.
Some, including myself, find this answer unsatisfying, but there doesn't seem to be anything better.
I think Cosmos may turn out to be a work of art done by God as artist. And this has utility, it causes pleasure, for God.
Pleasure might very well be the bottom, the root, the alpha/omega, the ultimate reduction, the reason for Cosmos.
This fits in with the musing of the ancients, who decided God was composed of, among other things, bliss on a massive scale.
And this finds a place for boredom as the anti-pleasure principle which is also very reductive and basic; boredom makes no sense in any other context except this.
And this ties in to the comment by Anonymous 08:31 AM: Materialist behavior and consumerism is all about experiencing pleasure and keeping boredom at bay. If you are not participating in this crusade against boredom, then you are "useless."
Then the sage, who contemplates God and finds no boredom anywhere, is immune to consumerism and is also going to be completely useless, and in fact this uselessness is a sign of the sage's holiness. The sage mimics God, finding pleasure in contemplation of the Cosmos as a beautiful and true work of art, and in doing so finds the end of all striving and strife.
So say I Stephen Greybeard this day, 4 May 2020 AD. "Lay your weary head to rest, don't you cry no more."
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