Absolute and Relative

Lately I've been rereading Schuon's Logic and Transcendence, which I must have already read half a dozen times. It's one of his more challenging works, partly because he often asserts rather extreme views as if they're self-explanatory, seemingly based upon his own authority -- which I don't necessarily deny, but still. 

Maybe we'll touch on some of those pronouncements later, but I want to focus on the things with which I *absolutely* agree, since he expresses them so clearly and succinctly. And since those things are so evident, it leaves me openminded toward some of his less evident assertions. In other words, since he verbally actualizes a great deal of what is latent in my own intellect, I cut him some slack.  

After all, he didn't derive his own knowledge from books, rather, from direct experience -- or, in his view, from meditating on the Nature of Things, including the nature of the intellect itself. This doesn't necessarily make it correct, since people experience all sorts of things. 

Nevertheless, he provides, for example, a useful definition of "mystical" and "mysticism," characterizing them as "inward contact (other than the purely mental), with realities that are directly or indirectly Divine." So, here is a man describing his contact with Divine realities, which countless people have done through the ages.

The question is, is it possible to reconcile or harmonize all of these diverse mystical testimonies? Schuon would most certainly say Yes, with the caveat that we cleanse them of various accidents and contingencies, e.g., of culture, language, passion, etc. "For Truth is one and so is humanity." 

Just as there can be no "Jewish physics" that exists apart from Buddhist or Christian physics, it's an appealing notion to believe there's only one religion of which diverse religions are more or or less adequate expressions. 

This is because the human intellect intrinsically seeks unity on every plane. As we've said before, the progress of science, for example, proceeds by reducing multiplicity to unity. Physics has thus far reduced things to four fundamental forces of nature, but is currently stuck on how to further unify these into a higher or deeper unity. Our minds spontaneously intuit the unity of reality -- hence the term universe -- but physics is not yet able to get from here to there. 

And if Gödel is correct -- which he is -- we can never get from here to there, but that's a somewhat different subject. For reality is One regardless of what the math shows and can show. 

In the previous post, a typical anti-religious midwit cut-and-pasted some "problematic" biblical passages, proving one again that there is no religious literalist more literal than the atheist. Each of the passages has an intellectually satisfying exegesis, but it does raise the issue of "asserting that every religion at its origins can be reduced to the crudest possible concepts." This is always done in bad faith by the intellectually dishonest (or lazy), spiritually untutored, or frankly depraved. To say the least, it speaks to a baseness of soul and poverty of imagination. 

But it doesn't help our cause when a devotee of this or that religion essentially says "my crude concept is the correct one, while yours is just a myth, fantasy, or superstition." How do we get around such religious infighting? For as Schuon says, "It has become impossible effectively to defend a single religion against all others by declaring the rest anathema without exception." 

To be sure, some of them are anathema, but based upon what objective criteria? Is there some purely extrinsic way to distinguish, say, Scientology or Mormonism from orthodox Christianity? Or is it solely a matter of faith and intrinsic arguments such as "it's true because it's in the Bible, and the Bible is true because God wrote it." 

The latter approach is not an intellectually satisfying argument, the question being whether God owes us this satisfaction, or whether he wants us to disable our intellect when it comes to the most important questions confronting it.

With all deus respect, that would be absurd and unbefitting a God worth worshipping.  

Schuon's entire opus is geared toward safeguarding "the religious heritage against the advances of the ubiquitous scientistic mentality, and, on the other hand, to bring about a perfectly logical and unsentimental solidarity between those who traditionally take cognizance of transcendence and immortality" -- which is to say, the great majority of human beings.

Now, atheistic types like to think of themselves as "perfectly logical and unsentimental," but Schuon turns this on its head and demonstrates that they are the ones who are plunged into passion, incoherence, and self-interest, beginning with the first chapter, called The Contradiction of Relativism.  

Because first of all, you are either an Absolutist or a Relativist; and if the latter, you're only fooling yourself; for to affirm it to be absolutely true that nothing but the relatively true exists, is like saying that words don't exist, or writing "that there is no such thing as writing."

It's not quite as simple as that, because personal subjectivity and perspective not only exist, but must exist if there is to be a creation separate from the Creator, or a relative apart from the Absolute. 

For me, these two categories are "absolutely complementary," so to speak, as they are never separate in a properly functioning psyche (nor even in God, as we will later argue). Come to think of it, one of the primary characteristics of an improperly functioning psyche -- AKA mental illness -- is a violent sundering of absolute and relative.

I could provide abundant examples, but let's rip one straight from today's headlines: a woman has an absolute right to kill her unborn child. Thus, since it is absolute, it must inhere in the female baby. But does it make sense to anyone that little girls have an absolute right to abort themselves, and wish to exercise this right?

Note that a real natural right doesn't work this way, e.g., rights to free speech, self-defense, and property. They are truly in the nature of things, and do not negate themselves at the source, nor impinge upon anyone else's natural rights. Unless, of course, you are a progressive, in which case you have the right to free speech so long as it doesn't hurt their feelings. Feelings -- which are always relative -- are thus transformed into an absolute. 

Yes, we are subjects, but this does not mean we are entirely enclosed in subjectivity and relativism. Rather, we only know of subjectivity because of our relation to 1) objects and 2) other subjects. Schuon:

For a man who was totally enclosed in his own subjectivity, that subjectivity would not even be conceivable; an animal lives in its own subjectivity, but does not conceive it because, unlike man, it does not possess the gift of objectivity.

Again: complementarity. I have a note to myself somewhere -- something to the effect that "paradise is walled by complementarities." These are not paradoxes, absurdities, or mysteries -- although mysteries generally partake of complementarities, now that I think about it.

Now, multiculturalism, diversity, identity politics, the "living constitution," gender insanity -- the left's whole agenda -- is simply the outward clothing of an inward relativism, which is the real issue: 

Thus it is that relativism, cleverly instilled into public opinion, paves the way for all manner of corruptions, on the one hand, and, on the other, keeps watch lest any kind of healthy reaction might put a brake on this process of sliding toward the abyss.

Note that the correct response is not a tyrannical counter-absolutism. Diversity, for example, is fine, relative to unity, not for its own sake. Otherwise it is like catabolism without anabolism, a diseased breakdown of the tissues of society.  

Likewise, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with doubt, questioning, skepticism. Aphorisms come to mind:

Two skeptics fit into every great Christian with space left over for Christianity.

I have seen philosophy gradually fade away between my skepticism and my faith.

Man’s moment of greatest lucidity is that in which he doubts his doubt.

Here again, doubt is ordered to, and complementary with, certitude, at least down here in the Kingdom of Horizontality:

This capacity for objectivity and absoluteness is an anticipated and existential refutation of all ideologies of doubt: if man is able to doubt, this is because certitude exists; likewise, the very notion of illusion proves that man has access to reality.

This post is getting a little long, isn't it? To be continued...