Perennial Misosophies & Philodoxies

After completing yesterday's post I ran into a couple of aphorisms that go to its subject -- or one of its subjects, the idea that the height of Greek thought reaches into the penumbra of the Christian revelation: 

Paganism is the other Old Testament of the Church.

Only he is a consummate Catholic who builds the cathedral of his soul over pagan crypts.

There is of course yet another revelation -- the oldest testament of all -- this being the Cosmos itself, AKA creation. It is also the newest, since its creation is ongoing. It is now it is now it is now.

Now, in order to pick up where a previous posted has ended, I can't just reread it, but rather, have to relive it. Or better, I need to find the place from which it emanated. A state of being, as it were. Which is a little like trying to grope one's way to the place where music originates. 

Hang on while I try to dial it back in. Stupid analogue tuner...

Okay, got it:  cosmos = cosmos + x. A reader points out that this initial formulation is different from the title of the post, which was written immediately thereafter: reality = cosmos + x. 

The reason for the discrepancy is that the observation was more empirical and spontaneous than conceptual and considered; in other words, it was a newborn thoughtlet -- a particularity -- that hadn't yet matured into a universal concept. Imagine an explorer in a new land: at first all he can do is take note of the novel flora and fauna before giving them abstract names.

Now that I have the time to think about what I meant, I would say that we always have a representation of reality, even while knowing -- or at least we should know -- that this representation is never sufficient. However one conceptualizes "reality," it always falls short of reality. 

This much is obvious.

Now, a couple of readers took issue with me in the comment section, which goes to the reasons why I never recommend this blog to anyone, and, if asked, usually deny its very existence. Who said I have a blog?! 

More generally, have you noticed how folks enjoy misunderstanding things? The left, for example, gets a big kick out of the idea that everyone who disagrees with them is a racist. You can explain to them that you are no such thing, but they don't want to know it, because it robs them of the unpleasantly pleasant enjoyment of imagining you are.

Similarly, a commenter yesterday accused us of having some animus toward Indians, when the real question is whether we prefer Western civilization over the Stone Age. It takes some real imagination to think that Bob blames someone for being born in the Paleolithic -- much less that he takes credit for having being born in the modern world! 

Back to the subject -- which yesterday seemed fresh, but now I'm worried might be a bit stale; or that I've gotten the point, and that spelling it all out will be an exercise in pedantry. More generally, we like exploring much more than cataloguing. 

I'm just going to highlight the passage that provoked this state of being, from Jacque Maritain:

Philosophic speculation, precisely because it is the supreme achievement of reason, is unknown to all the so-called primitive races. Indeed, even of the civilizations of antiquity the greater part either have possessed no philosophy or have failed to discover its true nature and distinctive character.

I am the last person to idealize the ancient Greeks, because first of all we're taking about a handful of people, and let's not even get into their sexual proclivities lest someone accuse us of ignorant, uncharitable, and disrespectful homophobia. 

At the same time, just because I'm not a fan of animal sacrifice it doesn't it make me anti-Semitic. Never forget that the past is a foreign country! Nor should you forget the corollary, that some foreign countries are the past -- in other words, that cultural space is often developmental time. For example, if I want to visit the '60s I can drive over to Santa Monica.

Maritain continues:

In any case, philosophy only began to exist at a very late period about the eighth and especially the sixth century B.C., and then found the right path to truth by a success which must be regarded as extraordinary when we consider the multitude of wrong roads taken by so many philosophers and philosophic schools. 

Yes, there is a -- gasp! -- correct philosophy of which we may have more secure knowledge than any of the special sciences. Just because most cultures, civilizations, and people have never discovered it is not a valid criticism of the perennial philosophy. It's hardly truth's fault if you refuse to believe it or pretend it cannot exist.   

[H]uman wisdom has everywhere proved bankrupt, and... even before philosophy took shape as an independent discipline, most of the great philosophic errors had been already formulated. 

Yup. There is no "new" atheism -- or materialism, or relativism, or skepticism, or pantheism, or idolatry, et al, for every form of sophistry appeared at the very outset of man's thinking career. All are provably wrong, but this hardly diminishes their appeal. 

I suppose the novel post-Christian philosophical developments are specifically Christian inversions such as Marxism, progressivism, and victimology. In any event, such   

fundamental errors are not unsubstantial and insignificant dangers; they may succeed, to the bane of those diseased cultures which they condemn to sterility.

Truth is not, as those who are apt to believe who have had the good fortune to be born in a culture formed by it, given to man ready-made, like a natural endowment. It is difficult to attain, and hard to keep, and only by a fortunate exception is it possessed uncontaminated by error and in the totality of its various complementary aspects (ibid.).

Which leads to my main point, which is: what are the chances that this natural truth should be so compatible with the supernatural truth -- that revelation should pick up just where human wisdom leaves off, serving as its capstone and perfection?  

Again, the most perfect philosophy will be imperfect under the best of circumstances, and can only be made perfect with recourse to something transcending it, i.e., "wisdom deified by grace."

"How highly therefore we ought to prize the sacred heritage of Greek thought!" For "In Greece, alone in the ancient world, the wisdom of man found the right path," such that 

the small Hellenic race appears among the great empires of the East like a man amidst gigantic children, and may be truly termed the organ of the reason and word of man as the Jewish people was the organ of the revelation and word of God (ibid.).

I'm not Greek and I'm not Jewish; nevertheless, I have homelands in Athens and Jerusalem as well as Rome. Regarding the latter, we'll leave off with an aphorism that I think I understand:

The basic problem of every former colony -- the problem of intellectual servitude, of an impoverished tradition, of second-rate spirituality, of inauthentic civilization, of forced and embarrassing imitation -- I have resolved with supreme simplicity: Catholicism is my native land (NGD).