First Things First

Let's review.

Okay. Review what?

Good question. We're nearly caught up (or given up) with our desk-clearing, with just a few miscellaneous zingers, gags, and aphorisms strewn about, such as  

Modern philosophy erects a wall of separation between intellect and reality.

We could spin that one into another whole post, but why bother? We get it, and they never will: truth is the link between intellect and being. If not, then to hell with it.  

As everyone knows, anything deep and true is conservative. Some things are true but not particularly deep, e.g., science. Others are deep but not true, assuming ideology can ever truly be deep. For it is written:

Confused ideas and murky ponds seem deep.

Jump headfirst into this shallow pond, and you're likely to knock yourself unconscious.  

Ideology is the antithesis of philosophy as such. There is a law of identity in this here cosmos, such that One ≠ Two; and the very point of philosophy is to comprehend and assimilate the oneness of this one. If we couldn't do this, there would be no such thing as progress.  

There exist many sciences, from physics to chemistry to biology and on up.  But to posit two or more philosophies is incoherent. Even if one hasn't arrived there, one must implicitly posit oneness as both the ground and telos, or alpha and omega, of thought.

I love simple and straightforward definitions of things, with few adjectives, less equivocation, and no poetry. The latter of course has its uses, but also its misuses.  Beware of, say, bad poets masquerading as worse judges. It's how we end up with a SCOTUS decision that includes the following purple passage by Justice Deepak Kennedy:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.

Yes, the infamous Mystery Passage. Nice sentiment, but what does it have to do with the Constitution as written, much less with abortion? Does the baby get to exercise this liberty? Or nah? 

Note that it pretends to be a principle, but this is precisely what it can never be, on pain of eliminating the Constitution and even law itself. 

For if law reduces to my right to define reality as I please, then we are all as crazy as the craziest progressive, with no cure. This crock of a doctrine simply allows imbeciles to call themselves philosophers. 

You wouldn't say there are "two physics" -- although I suppose that horsesh*t  has already left the barn too, what with the calls for gendered physics and maths of color.

Let's get back to the principle of one philosophy. Now, this doesn't mean we can't argue over the substance of this one philosophy, but let's not pretend old nobodaddy can be plurabelle.  Don't be buffaloed: nobody's right if everybody's wrong. Likewise, if everybody's right, then nobody is. 

Moreover, if you only understand one side of the question, you understand neither side, let alone the top and bottom.

I know we've discussed this before, but here it comes again: one cosmos, one human nature, one truth, one God, just ONE, gagdaddit!

Allow me to quote Cardinal Mercier on the matter: "philosophy does not profess to be a particularized science, with a place alongside other such sciences and a restricted domain of its own for investigation." 

Nor is it merely the sum of these particular sciences. Rather, it is their unity, both anterior, in a pre-differentiated manner, and posterior, in all their differentiation, i.e., in a higher unity: we analyze in order to synthesize, and abstract in order to unite.  

Science itself is the reduction of multiplicity to unity: as it advances -- say, from geocentrism to heliocentrism, or from Newtonian to quantum physics -- it unifies more disparate phenomena. It becomes both truer and deeper. 

Unless it fancies itself to be truth itself, much less the "deepest truth," at which point it careens off the shallow end into anti-philosophy, i.e., a silly caricature if itsoph.

The Cardinal defines philosophy as "The science of all things through their ultimate and deepest reasons." Again, it is the final answer to the Last Why. The deepest knowledge is the end of the line. It is known with certitude, and this certitude equates to rest. But the left hates rest -- it loves the opposite, "activism" -- and aways wants to stir things up.

For example, who, even a decade ago, would have predicted we would be relitigating the question of free speech? Or that half the country would favor corporate censorship of the other half?  Even Petey didn't see that coming.

Chesterton: "When a society has two souls, there is -- and ought to be -- civil war.... for anything which has dual personality is certainly mad; and probably possessed by devils."

One God and one Truth. Conversely,  many demons and countless lies.

I gotta get some work done, but not before we locate a few aphorisms to help wrap things up in a more restful and slack-infused way:

Because opinions change, the relativist believes that truths change.

Truths are not relative. What is relative are opinions about the truth.

The truth does not need the adherence of man in order to be certain.

To change thoughts repeatedly is not to evolve. To evolve is to develop the infinitude of a single thought.  --Dávila