As we know, everyone is a metaphysician, nor can man not be one short of a literal psychosis that results in no order to anything, both inside and out.
The qualified metaphysician is simply someone who reflects on this implicit order, not just of this or that aspect of reality, but of the totality. Metaphysics "aims in the first place at the comprehension of the whole Universe” from top to bottom, i.e., "from the Divine Order to the terrestrial contingencies” (Schuon).
Not so fast, Gagdad: isn’t that a bit presumptuous? Who said anything about a Divine Order?
Fair enough. We may or may not call it this at the end of our discussion, but for now it’s enough to call it the “vertical dimension,” or just “verticality.” But so long as you are truly open and minded, you will realize that this verticality is neither self-explanatory nor reducible to something else.
Indeed, the very first thing we know is actually two things that necessarily coarise: objects and our knowledge of them.
This is in contrast to animals, who perceive a world of objects which they cannot penetrate. They see only surfaces where we perceive essences. A man who sees only unintelligible surfaces would be a severely autistic nominalist.
Man as such turns walls into windows. But only because there is a skylight, more on which as we proceed.
So, it’s not possible to say or know anything about anything without presupposing this verticality. To say “there is no verticality” would be as nonsensical as saying “I am not speaking.”
Whence the desire of our class of pseudo-intellectual imbeciles -- or worse, intellectual imbeciles -- to bury the vertical, and metaphysics along with it, over the past few centuries? Why? What’s the motivation? And what’s the payoff?
I don’t recall ever posting about this question, but I suppose I have only to interrogate my former Bob to find out.
For example, if you had asked me back in the ‘90s what the conscience is, I would have assured you that it’s just a colloquial way of talking about the superego, which is a kind of internalized voice that punishes us for not going along with the more or less random rules of this or that culture, and rewards us when we do.
Morality itself is relative, but the superego makes it feel absolute, almost like “the voice of God,” if such a thing existed. Indeed, the existence of the superego is a big reason why people believe in God to begin with, since it is as if we are under the judging eye of an interior Other.
And if you had asked me about the ultimate source of the superego, I would have said something about the introjection of the father. Come to think of it, this is why people refer to God as “father,” since he’s mostly the projection of a big superego in the sky
It wasn’t until I started listening to Dennis Prayer in the 1990s that I realized how ridiculous this was. Take an obvious example: is murder wrong, or do we just imagine it’s wrong because our superego says so?
As obvious as that is, it couldn’t penetrate my stupidity at first, because there were other, equally important factors at play — all the usual leftist ones such as social status, moral and intellectual superiority, secular gnosis, class conformity, etc.
It’s almost Christmas, so I’m giving you a break: a short post.
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