I Don't Roll on Shabbos, I Rappel

Let’s learn something. Before scaling the metaphysical mountain,  

it is necessary to start from the idea that the Supreme Reality is absolute, and that being absolute it is infinite (Schuon).

Now, Aristotle invented metaphysics, and while it is called “first philosophy,” he doesn't start with it. Indeed, for him “meta” did not imply transcendence per se, only the fact that this study of ultimate principles comes at the end:

since they are to be studied only by one who has already studied nature (which is the subject matter of the Physics), they are quite appropriately described as coming “after the Physics” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/). 

It is also worth highlighting that although metaphysics is the study of being qua being, this doesn’t imply an undifferentiated blob, rather, 

his description involves three things: (1) a study, (2) a subject matter (being), and (3) a manner in which the subject matter is studied (qua being).

Also,

Whereas natural science studies objects that are material and subject to change, and mathematics studies objects that although not subject to change are nevertheless not separate from (i.e., independent of) matter, there is still room for a science that studies things that are eternal, not subject to change, and independent of matter. Such a science, he says, is theology, and this is the “first” and “highest” science. 

Thank you, Aristotle. You may leave the witness stand. We will call you back should we have any additional questions.

This reminds me that last summer I read a book called The Seat of Wisdom that provides a systematic account of the historical development of metaphysics, which is helpful to a guy like me who has no plan and enough spare time to execute it. 

Which, it turns out, is a kind of prerequisite after all, in that there can only exist useless and ridiculous people such as myself if all the other more important stuff is taken care of:

The other sciences are more necessary because we cannot survive without them. For example, we need agriculture and mathematics and architecture and engineering if we are going to live in a civilized fashion. If these sciences are successful, we no longer need to struggle to survive. But this success would then raise a very different problem: what should we do with free time, with leisure, so as not to waste it? For this reason Aristotle says philosophy is the fruit of leisure (Jacobs).

Note the emboldened word: should, which goes back to what we said yesterday about an Ought being built into the nature of things. In short, if there is truth, then surely we ought to know it, no? Am I wrong? AM I WRONG?!

And if it is the fruit of leisure, then this indeed makes me a farmer, after a fashion. True, the trees grow by themselves, but someone has to tend the orchard and pick the fruit.  

There’s a paradox here, in that we usually think of leisure as being the opposite of work, or at least its cessation. Even God rests. Or perhaps we should say especially, because I recall certain esteemed rabbis saying that the the Whole Point of the Genesis story is that it converges upon the sabbath: the six days of creation are for the sake of the seventh. Come to think of it, the Catholic philosopher Stanley Jaki interprets it the same way.

I concur with Many European Languages:

the word for work in many European languages is associated with pain or even torture…. In contrast to this labor, free time or leisure is glorious: we have everything we need, so we do something simply because it is good in itself.

Of course, for us, even “doing” is a bridge too far. Rather, non-doing, which is also non-doodling, even if it looks to more productive people such as my in-laws that I’m just doodling around. Look, someone has to exit the absurcularity of life and bring back souvenirs for folks who, for whatever reason, can’t join us on our glorious mountain adventure:

If leisure were simply rest, life would be a vicious circle since it would have no point other than work. The idea of “working for the weekend,” where we play so that we can work again on Monday, is a life bereft of purpose.

So, look man, has it ever occurred to you that, given the nature of reality, that, uh, instead of blaming me, that this whole thing may just be, not, you know, not just a simple, but uh -- you know? I have not failed to achieve. I just don’t want to get bumped into a higher tax bracket.

Consider the fact -- the ontological fact -- that creation indeed has a big fat hole in it called the sabbath. 

Note also that even when it was necessary for everyone, children included, to contribute to production, one seventh of the time was still devoted to the leisure for the sake of which the other six days exist. 

Nowadays we have much more free time than ever before in history, so I think we ought -- there’s that word again -- to spend more time in that sabbath consciousness, i.e., dilate time, grab one of those ropes and climb upward. But how did the rope get here, and can we trust it? To what is it anchored?