Saturday, April 22, 2023

On the Achievement of Perfect Subjectivity

Just a brief bit of spontaneous mind jazz.

I heard that. 

Of course it is self-indulgent, the question being whether it is sufficiently so.

That subjectivity exists is an objective statement, and already adequate proof that we cannot be plunged into a radical subjectivism, or into a cosmic Just Your Opinion, Man, as the bums never tire of saying. 

Now, I've always had a sense that objective truth exists and that I personally know it. Problem is, I had this sense even -- or especially -- when I was a lunatic and an idiot, so it turns out my feelings aren't dispositive after all. 

Nowadays I'm much more circumspect in my circumnavelgazing, AKA, my  cosmic narcissism. It's more a way of life than a determinative content. Did someone say Voegelin?

The quest, thus, has no external "object," but is reality itself becoming luminous for its movement from the ineffable, through the Cosmos, to the ineffable.

Did someone say... circum?

The honest philosophy does to pretend to explain but to circumscribe the mystery. 

Did someone say political philosophy?
In the current political landscape no party is closer than others to the truth. There are just some that are further away.

Now, why are they further away? Because of the Ray of Creation, more on which.

It seems to me that the most obvious thing in the world is simultaneously the most mysterious and even miraculous, i.e., the human subject, or even just subjectivity itself. 

This (this!) is pretty much the most inconceivable thing you'd expect to pop up (boo!) in a heretofore purely objective universe with no interior at all -- unless it was (is!) there in potential all along, in which case it's still a mystery but at least nested in a Big Mystery, or Mystery Central.

Now, revelation implies -- threepeatedly -- that Mystery Central is not just "subjective" but intersubjective, i.e., tripersonal. 

Importantly, the Persons are not at all analogous to three objects in space, but rather, like a... like a family that is metaspiritually prior to its members; it is one even though "diverse." 

Not only does this principle explain how human beings are both subjective and intersubjective, it also explains how the latter always exists both horizontally and vertically. 

And truly truly, it makes perfect sense of what otherwise sounds crazy or nonsensical, that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 

And while tracking down the exact words, I saw many other passages in John that are unlocked with the same hermeneutickey to the kingdom.

As if the human subject weren't miraculous enough, along comes objectivity, which is equally miraculous, because it means simultaneously being the subject we cannot not be, but somehow standing above or outside ourselves, as if partaking the old "view from nowhere."

Now, most philosophers say this view from nowhere is impossible, but most philosophers are asses. Of course there's a view from nowhere, even if only God enjoys it.   

I want to say that even if we can never have this perspective in the literal sense, God does indeed furnish us with points of reference that are more than sufficient to guide us through this vale of veils.

What's under the veil? 

Wouldn't you like to know!

Yes, I would like to know. Are there only more veils? 

Yes. And no. Which gets into the whole business of just where to situate relativity, and also to the Ray of Creation alluded to above. Obviously it exists. But how and why? Maybe the pneumagraph to our right is a harbinger of the self-indulgent mind jazz of tomorrow -- a fancy way of saying to be continued.

2 comments:

julie said...

Speaking of mysteries and miracles, so I was making naan this week and at one point while rolling out some dough prior to cooking it I absentmindedly stuck a finger in my mouth to get a bit of dough off. Blech. Which is to say, one of the mysteries and miracles of bread is how something essentially bland, gloppy, shapeless, tasteless, and near-inedible can be transformed in a matter of seconds into something fluffy and irresistible (for those who like bread) by the simple application of heat. Also, how the same ingredients with just minor variations and different amounts of leaven can become pancakes, a whole loaf of bread, crackers, or tortillas.

There's a reason bread is a metaphor for the Body.

Van Harvey said...

"Now, most philosophers say this view from nowhere is impossible, but most philosophers are asses."

Yup. [what?... oh, ok, sure I'll pass it on] Buriden agrees.

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