Here's what I've been thinking about the last couple of days, if not decades: how has it come to pass that the most consequential thing in all of existence is also the most impossible thing?
What I mean is that each of us has firsthand experience of the human person, and yet, our official philosophy -- or theology rather -- whether we call it naturalism, secular humanism, or scientistic materialism, renders this evidence irrelevant and incomprehensible. It is never explained, only explained away, such that the most real reality is regarded as unreal, a position that is incoherent and can never be held with logical consistency (since the person holding it doesn't really exist).
Now, it's nice to have intellectual back-up, but in my opinion we don't need Gödel to tell us that any manmade system of thought can be complete or consistent, but not both. Rather, the only complete and consistent system can come from God. Except it's not a system, it's a person. God is the source and ground of any completeness or consistency we encounter down here, because he is Absolute and Infinite.
Even God himself is rendered incomplete and/or inconsistent upon contact with time. This may be ill-sounding, but if this weren't the case, revelation would be a syllogism or mathematical equation rather than a messy historical adventure. It wouldn't be an incarnation but an idea. And as the Aphorist says,
The history of Christianity would be suspiciously human if it were not the adventure of an incarnate God. Christianity assumes the misery of history, as Christ assumes that of man.
There's a good reason why Christ did not leave a book, rather, transformed persons, because personhood is the first and last principle of Christianity, and the person can again not be reduced to any formula.
Nor, for that matter does history have a direction per se, rather, a center. But once grafted to this center, it reveals a (vertical) direction, a telos. Absurd? Yes: in the sense that
Man calls “absurd” what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence.
Moreover,
If we could demonstrate the existence of God, everything would eventually be subjected to the sovereignty of man.
Let's dig a little deeper into this conundrum of personhood. Intrinsic to it is not just the desire to know what's going on, but to know it completely. Even animals look for patterns and predictability. But man has a kind of infinite epistemophilia, an inborn desire to know everything about everything, such that nothing less will satisfy. Our innate drive to know has an unrestricted scope and illimitable horizon, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it....
Wait: there is actually something we can do about it. Among other things, we can numb or even kill our curiosity. We all know people who have stopped asking Why?, and who instead swaddle themselves in the latest ideological twaddle. It is indeed difficult to attend college without this happening, since this is the whole point of attending college.
Put another way, if you somehow survive college un-indoctrinated, you are a threat to the whole system, AKA the progressive Matrix. It will never leave you alone until you submit -- until you admit 2+2=5 and love Big Sister unconditionally.
But we don't want to just live as rebels and fugitives from the Borg. That's fun for awhile, but we're getting too old for that. Rather, we really do want to understand what's going on.
In that spirit, here are some important clues and tips we've picked up from our pal Nicolás. Are they arguments from authority? No, they're soph-evident appeals to the common sense of the intellect. Here are two of the most important:
The truth is objective but not impersonal,
and
The life of the intelligence is a dialogue between the personalism of spirit and the impersonalism of reason.
The Truth is metaphysical and yet personal, therefore it must be... metapersonal.
The following two are almost equally important:
The world is filled with contradictions when we forget that things have ranks.
Therefore,
In order for a multitude of diverse terms to coexist, it is necessary to place them on different levels. A hierarchical ordering is the only one that neither expels nor suppresses them.
Diverse terms like, say, person and matter. The only way to avoid the suppression and expulsion of man from the cosmos is with recourse to a vertical ordering. Thus, "let us be neither relativists nor absolutists, but hierarchists" (Dávila).
Magic? No, the opposite:
The doctrines that explain the higher by means of the lower are appendices of a magician’s rule book.
Or, if you want to play that game,
The relationship between volition and movement is magical.
I conceive the idea to make a fist and the hand closes. How are these realities -- interiority, I, idea, intention, free will, movement -- possible?
Wrong, Mr. Science:
The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.
The bottom line is that
Determinism is ideology; freedom is experience.
Okay, but what is experience and how is it possible?
We'll leave off with three aphorisms to ponder:
The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act.
The permanent possibility of initiating causal series is what we call a person.
That which is not a person is not finally anything.
15 comments:
You know, I know this steak doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the naturalism, secular humanism, or scientistic materialism is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.
If ignorance were bliss, San Francisco would be utopia.
Man calls “absurd” what escapes his secret pretensions to omnipotence.
Moreover,
If we could demonstrate the existence of God, everything would eventually be subjected to the sovereignty of man.
Recently, Elon Musk tweeted about his deep love for humanity. Normally, I don't care what he has to say, unless it's somewhat amusing. This comment was troubling, though, perhaps especially because so many people thought it was a lovely sentiment.
In an ordinary person, love of "humanity" is foolish but not likely to cause any particular harm to the population at large. Someone like Musk, though... He seems to have big ideas about what would be good for mankind; I wonder where his authority comes from?
The free act is only conceivable in a created universe. In the universe that results from a free act.
Yes, and this supporting observation:
There is no analysis of freedom which does not turn out to be deceptive unless by freedom we mean the action of an uncoerced agent choosing among alternatives. There is no true freedom without a free agent. On the impersonal level freedom becomes a matter of words with no realities corresponding to the verbal counters.
Lynn Harold Hough, Patterns of the Mind, Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York and London, 1942, pg. 97
Okay, but what is experience and how is it possible?
Indeed.
Let alone the experience of experience, which is like packing your suitcase inside itself.
Our postmodern, post-human world lives in the shadows of freedom and reason, i.e., relativism and rationalism.
If ignorance were bliss, San Francisco would be utopia.
Indeed Dupree. As a 14 YO boy, smallish and as some ladies said, cute and sweet, I was allowed by well-intentioned yet highly-naïve parents to freely travel about the Bay area on the BART system.
With an unlimited day pass I got to visit many neighborhoods. I learned that people tend to gather in cohort groups. Businessmen in Embarcadero. Tourists in Daly City. Academics in Berkeley. And so on.
Only twice did I have to hightail it outta there. Downtown Oakland, where all the poor angry-looking blacks gathered, and Buena Vista park. Up until then I’d been wondering where all those notorious gays gathered. And boy did I find out. Fortunately, I was also a speedy boy and a very good runner. And men in heels can't run very fast.
The modern metropolis is not a city; it is a disease.
The philosopher who adopts scientific notions has predetermined his conclusions.
I like to research things, especially when there's something happening pertaining to physical health or unusual experiences, in order to try find solutions to various problems. I used to imagine I understood the solutions, but really I just trust to the authority of other people and their experiences.
Mostly, it helps, but lately I find there are some things and some experiences I'd rather not understand or research at all; where having a scientific - or really, any - explanation would only do violence to something which science could only ever describe, but never comprehend. To "explain" it would be to deny there's any mystery at all.
Mystery is less disturbing than the fatuous attempt to exclude it by stupid explanations.
The scientific proposition presents an abrupt alternative: understanding it or not understanding it. The philosophical proposition, however, is susceptible to growing insight. Finally, the religious proposition is a vertical ascent that allows one to see the same landscape from different altitudes.
The soul is fed from what is mysterious in things.
INTPs love a good neverending story. INTJs not so much. They’re more into problem solving, and less into problem marinating. When they tell the INTP that this is the solution to the problem, the INTP says no, you’ve just created more problems. The INTJ says, okay, so you got a better idea? The INTP says, lemme think about it for a while. Hopefully, a long while.
With the categories admitted by the modern mind, we do not manage to understand anything but trifles.
Finally saw Matt Wash's "What is a Woman". Well done. Just ask intelligent questions and watch the answers fall apart.
Indeed Nicolás. One can never have all the facts. At least so say the academic scientists and the ivory tower philosophers. We need to get them into a room together to discuss what is a woman. And since we all know what little happens when they're actually in a room alone with a woman, biologic or self-described, I'm sure they'd be eager to endlessly discuss this.
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