Really True and Really Real

Or really self-indulgent? You decide. But look before you leap. Hesitate. 

Yesterday we stipulated that it is necessary to begin our climb with the ideas of Absolute and Infinite. 

Now, to begin the trek with any idea already lands us in controversy, so we can’t actually just stipulate this and move along. The whole Aristotelian-Thomist tradition begins at the other end, with the senses. 

This certainly has its virtues, since it seemingly anchors us in something a little less flimsy than ideas, of all things. For is there any idea so stupid that it hasn’t formed the basis of some tenured lunacy?

Confused ideas and murky ponds seem deep.

Yes, but we’re talking about the Supreme Idea, or idea of the Supreme Being. Perhaps, but so what? As if the idea of God hasn't brought about as many problems as it has solved!

We can start with the idea that matter or class or race is supreme, and there’s nothing we can do about it once we concede that we can begin with ideas.

There’s a response to that, and let’s t-try to f-figure out what it might be. Note that our hesitation is not a bug but a feature, for

As long as we can respond without hesitating we do not know the subject.

Rather, proof of our mastery of the subject is in our, uh, you know, man, that this whole mountain thing may just be, not as simple as, uh, you know? Besides, 

That which is incomprehensible increases with the growth of the intelligence.

Now you're talkin', because the more we know the less we really know, am I right? 

And the operative word here is really, because we all know stuff, but what do we really know? 

Which leads immediately to the question of what is really real. If something is really true, it must conform to what is really real. And if man can know what is really real, that says a great deal about what man really is. 

Another provocative aphorism:

Nothing is more superficial than intelligences that comprehend everything.

Why should this be? Because the principle of our comprehension is located in a higher principle -- the Principle, as we hope to demonstrate. 

Let’s say that man can only comprehend anything because he is in turn comprehended. I mean this literally, for com-prehend connotes something like “grasp-around,” which means that we are “contained” by something that transcends us. We can know a great deal, which means we contain a lot of knowledge. But it’s only because we are contained. 

Contained by what? Here is where vulgar reductionism goes off the rails, because to say, for example, that we are contained by matter is to enclose us in eternal stupidity. It explains nothing, or not even nothing.

Here we have to draw an important distinction between reduction and reductionism, similar to the distinction between science and scientism, or matter and materialism, or ideas and idealism. 

The real problem is “ismism" in its diverse forms. And for me, the real meaning of Genesis 3 is this descent from the Really Real to some manmode ismism, which is both naive idolatry and the uncritical cosmic onanism of infertile eggheads.

Here we touch on humility, not for its own sake, but because it is the… how to put it… ontological stance necessary for certain perceptions of what is really real. After all, we are contingent. And we are contingent full stop, end of story, do not pass go, unless we are somehow connected or related to what is not contingent, rather to what is necessary, AKA Necessary Being.

Which is none other than the Absolute mentioned above in paragraph one. To say Man is -- in one way or another, explicitly or implicitly -- to say Absolute. 

For example, you can say man is “nothing but” a randomly evolved animal. But in so saying this, do you not see how you have covertly partaken of the Absolute? But by virtue of what principle? What’s your excuse? 

Here is the shocking bottom line, or at least I find it to be a perpetual shock:

Truth is a person.

Which means that what is really real is the principle of Personhood.  

But what is a person, really?

Two favorite aphorisms before we stop for the day:

The truth is objective but not impersonal.

And 

All truth goes from flesh to flesh.

We are here. The mountaintop is there. The distance between is at once infinite and as close as our jugular. Or so we have heard from the wise.