So, man is the rational animal, from which follows the free animal, religious animal, self-aware animal, speaking animal, moral animal, political animal, artistic animal, et al; to put it conversely, remove reason, and man is plunged back into mere animality and worse.
Worse because man cannot actually eliminate reason; rather, he can only misuse it -- which is to say, order it to a bad end.
For example, freedom minus reason = license; religion minus reason = superstition; education minus reason = the looniversity bin; politics minus reason = Democrats; etc.
Man minus reason is just an opinionated animal. A bloviating primate. A tenured ape. A crank with a blog. In a word, Bob. For "Bob cannot take criticism. I mean at all. Not even the slightest little thing. That is not normal. He will never be civil to you again" (A. Nonymous Troll).
In the previous post we touched on the principle of substance, which comes to us through matter but cannot be reduced to it; rather, it
is a formal principle belonging to an order beyond quantity and sensible qualities. A whole entirely in the whole and entirely in each part, this formal principle assures the unity of the whole. The senses cannot grasp it. The intellect alone reaches it (G-L).
This relation works both ways. Which is why they call it a relation, for if A is related to B, then B is thereby related to A. Suffice it to say that knowledge of substances proves the existence of the intellect that knows them, and vice versa.
But this knowledge is only "the first determination of being," i.e., that something is. We grasp that it is something, but what? According to G-L,
the multiple is intelligible only in function of the one, and the transitory only in function of the permanent or the identical.
Which goes back to what we said a couple of posts back about how the unity of the cosmos must be (albeit atemporally) prior to its diversity, both objectively and subjectively. If this weren't the case, then science would be impossible. Yes, the cosmos is divisible, but only because it is indivisible. Absent the latter, then the divisibility ends in an absurd logical atomism with no substantial ground: all discrete particles with no unifying wave, you might say.
Speaking of which, I was a little surprised to see Ratzinger deploy the wave-particle complementarity to the trinitarian Godhead, as this principle is usually misused by woohoo pneumopaths of dopey Oprah-Chopra kind.
But before transitioning over to Ratzinger, a few more words about the indivisible and immutable. Just as we can't coherently deny cosmic unity, nor can we coherently deny the immutable. Those who do merely elevate something less to the immutable (i.e., create a false absolute), and fall into idolatry -- like the frog at the bottom of a well who is sure the sky is a small blue disc.
These folks may be known by their rigidity and closed-ness to Reality. They reduce Reality to ideology and then blame us for escaping from their little matrix! This is
the immutability of narrow minds and tight hearts, the immutability of the obstinate who see only one side of things and wish to make it absolute.... This is the immutability of the fanatic and sectarian...., the egoist who is full of himself and satiated.
Which they can't help but project into us, because what else are they supposed to do with it? We literally become the Taliban -- even while they pretend the actual Taliban aren't so bad if you just give them a chance!
Above this cadaverous immobility that arises from narrowness of receptive capacities and of desire, there is something superior, found only in natures capable of seeing the multiple aspects of things, without, however, being able to bring this multiplicity back to a superior unity.
This describes the skeptic, the mid-level sophist whose mind is like an organism with catabolism (breaking down) but no anabolism (building up, synthesis):
Here, we have inconstancy and agitation, a seeking that does not arrive at a result. This is the state of mind of those who prefer... the search for truth to truth itself.
Above this intermediary and perpetually adolescent state is
the immutability that arises not from the narrowness of capacities, nor from the poverty of desire, but rather, from the perfection of what one possesses, from the value of the realized end.
"This is no longer the immutability of the simplistic person, of the closed mind," but of "the synthetic thinker who knows how... to pass beyond the multiple, to give a unity to his science."
At the far (vertical) end there exists a "superior immutability" that converges on sanctity, of all things, for "the saint is a being who is immutably fixed in God." In other words, there exists an "immutability of beings who have passed beyond the relative and have truly found the Absolute."
Which makes perfect nonsense if we recall that truth and goodness necessarily converge at the toppermost of the poppermost, because the virtue of the intellect is Truth itself, and both share the same substance.
Probably a good place to end, rather than veering into a very different but intimately related subject.
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