The Idiot's Guide to Being a Complete Idiot, Part 1

One can't blame someone for believing that philosophy is essentially an endless argument with no clear victor, and no way to even determine what victory would look like. 

But since there is only one reality -- change my mind -- there can be only one correct philosophy, and maybe that's a clue. For example, if there is only one reality, then any form of relativism is a non-starter. 

Come to think of it, I remember Schuon saying somewhere that he was fundamentally an Absolutist. Therefore, just begin with the Absolute and draw out the implications. How easy is that? 

However, Bob maintains that it is possible to begin at either end, with the Absolute or with the evidence of the senses; in fact, Bob furthers believes these two approaches are complementary and that they complete one another. Moreover, if you attempt a wholly one-sided metaphysic, you will inevitably leave out some important features of reality.

The archetypal example is of Plato vs. Aristotle: the former distrusted the endless change of temporal phenomena in favor of the timeless and transcendent forms, while the latter brought heaven back down to earth and sought to understand the nature of terrestrial change. But these two approaches complete each other and are harmonized by Thomas.

Nevertheless, there is and can be no complete map of reality that leaves nothing out. This is a controverted point, but I sometimes wonder if even God doesn't possess such a map, for reasons having to do with the nature of freedom and creativity (including continual creation), and that God cannot act outside his nature. But that's a sideshow, or rather, the final dot on the last i, and we're not there yet. We'll cross that t when we get to it.

A common definition of reality is that which doesn't go away when we stop believing in it, and I don't know if I can top that. However, in another sense, reality is what appears when we do believe it, precisely. This is where confusion enters the picture, because it is impossible to live as a human being without some kind of map and metaphysic, whether explicit or implicit. 

In fact, this is one of the principles of classical liberalism, which is fine as far as it goes, but eventually ends in the absurd tyranny of relativism under which we are currently sophicating. Before our eyes we see how the absolute relativity of "diversity" and multiculturalism lead to the anti-intellectual bullying and ontological terrorism of the left, with the violence of the state and the ignorance of Big Tech enlisted to enforce compliance. Institutional violence + mandatory stupidity never ends well.

About those things that persist even when we stop believing in them, at the top of the list (by definition) is what folks call God. But for a number of reasons, that's not the best word to use, at least at the outset. 

For example, when I use the word and an Islamic terrorist does, we're not referring to the same thing. Similarly, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi believe in a god who most definitely doesn't exist when they stop believing in him. It is purely fanciful to imagine such a being, let alone Being as such.

That much is obvious, but another intrinsic problem is that infinitude can never be reduced to finitude, such that anything we say about this Absolute has the capacity to mislead. 

However, this is actually no different from any other form of knowledge. For example, physics tells us a great deal of about the world, but if we then imagine that nothing in the world exists outside of physics, then we have fallen into scientistic idolatry. 

False gods are everywhere, but only because -- obviously -- there must be the true God. The other day we alluded to the principle of sufficient reason, the idea that everything in time has a cause, and that the cause must be sufficient to explain the effect.

Let's begin with something that is right under, over, and behind our noses: consciousness. Its existence is self-evident, the question being, what is its cause or sufficient reason? If your metaphysic cannot provide an intellectually satisfying and non-trivial answer to this most basic of questions, then I declare you to be a Shallow Person Unfit for the Conduct of Philosophy. 

About those false gods, you will no doubt have noticed that the metaphysical atheist crowd is always proving the non-existence of gods that do not and cannot exist, and which no sophisticated person believes in anyway. 

It would be analogous to my using the example of climate change idiocy to prove the non-existence of science. More generally, an important side-principle is that the corruption of the best is the worst, whether it involves the maiming of the intellect by ideology or of a pizza with pineapple.  

By the way, there is such a thing as intellectual sin, and it comes to us in many forms, for example, the type of intellectual dishonesty that absolutely pervades the media-academic complex. 

Another form is the idolatry referenced above, as well as any form of relativism. To this I would add any denial of the principle of identity, or any conditions for the intelligibility of the cosmos. These latter can be summed up in what Chesterton called the 

thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own.

What thought might that be? It is any thought that renders the world unintelligible and therefor the thinker a complete idiot: relativism, deconstruction, idealism, rationalism, materialism, scientism, atheism, CRT, Marxism, Son of Marxism, Bride of Marxism, etc.

To be continued...