We're still on the subject of those two obscurities that are situated above and below the intellect, i.e., in matter below and spirit above. Along these lines, Garrigou-Lagrange (heretofore G-L) writes that
It is necessary to distinguish the inferior sort of obscurity, which arises from incoherence and absurdity, from the superior sort of obscurity, which comes from a light that is too powerful for the weak eyes of our mind.
Now, ironically -- or something -- this superior obscurity is the penumbra of certitude, so to speak. Put it this way: if you stare long enough at the sun, you are certain to go blind, thereby proving once and for all that the sun exists.
far from excluding certitude, this superior sort of obscurity is united to it; it does not truly begin unless it begins with certitude, and the two increase together.
In other words, it seems that certitude and obscurity covary, which again sounds a little strange until you realize that God is a bottomless abyss of superessential light. Analogously, the sphere necessarily contains an infinite number of circles, and then some.
Respect the mystery! This goes for everyone, Christian, non-Christian, and anti-Christian alike, for it is a human imperative. For if we fail to respect it -- and to the extent that we don't -- we will thereby render ourselves stupid in certain predictable ways.
For example, if we deny the superior obscurity by superimposing upon it the inferior clarity of scientism, we solve the mystery of humanness at the price of denying its existence. We are HINOs -- Human In Name Only, for we are really just a babbling mammal with too much self-esteem and too little self-awareness. We are all reduced to AOC, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Barack Obama.
Now, reality is what it is. What changes is our view of it. Like a work of art, things can be understood superficially or deeply; intelligence as such is able to penetrate beneath the surface of things and apprehend their deeper meaning: in so doing it unites particulars into a more integral vision of unity.
The object of the intellect -- AKA reality -- is inexhaustible: one can always deepen one's understanding "without ever touching the depth" -- or "summit," rather.
Put it this way: the existence of God may be proved with certainty -- which at once proves with inferior clarity the infinitely superior obscurity. Knowing one doesn't know is far superior to the tenured ape who doesn't know what he doesn't know and believes that what he knows is without mystery. Religious Dunning-Krugery pervades academia.
A child and adult see the same world. Then again, they don't at all. Likewise, conservative liberals and illiberal leftists see the same world. Then again, not even close. Now, what accounts for this unbridgeable distance between conservative and child? Are leftists just passively detached from higher realities, or are they actively hallucinating? I know: the power of and.
This is straight out of the Raccoon playbook:
while materialism has a horizontal view of things (making more elevated realities descend to the level of matter), true wisdom has a vertical view of things and distinguishes ever more clearly the two obscurities of which we have spoken -- the one from below that originates in matter (as well as error and evil) and the one from on high, which is that of the very inward and intimate life of God.
Except to "error and evil" we would add stupid and crazy.
We'll leave off with a riff on St. Thomas's acute sense of mystery, and how his peerless clarity was crowned with, and illuminated by, an even more superior vision of obscurity:
How does it happen that this human intellect (above all in those who have the philosophical spirit or also among the ordinary who have lofty souls) after sixty or seventy years is ripe (even from the natural point of view) for an intellectual life superior to that supplied by libraries and all the means of information, as long as the soul is united to the body?
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