A Five Story Split Level Cosmos

One of the traditional proofs discussed by Garrigou-Lagrange is based on the degrees of being. Just look around, and what do you see? I'll give you a hint: inanimate objects, living things, and rational beings, which means that this cosmos must have at least three likely storys. 

But where's the foundation? And even supposing we agree on the foundation, the foundation is not the plan. Rather, the plan, as they say, is first in intention but last in execution. So if the plan involves rational corporeal beings, these latter must be closer to the real foundation of things. Seen this way, matter is but a means to an end.

G-L writes that if we widen our view and 

consider the being that is the foundation of truth, there are various degrees for, "the things that are greater in being, are greater in truth"; that which is richer in being is also richer in truth.

Again, there are, for example, contingent truths, as well as those truths that are necessary, universal, and eternal, such as the principle of identity, the latter therefore being situated higher on the scale of truth and being. I'll jump to the bottom line:

"When there is greater or less, when there are degrees in anything, then the perfect also exists; if, then, a certain being is better than a certain other, there must be one which is perfect, and this can only be the divine" (Thomas, in G-L).

Considered from another angle, we could say there is reality and there are appearances, the former being of a higher order than the latter. 

Otherwise, we are in the position of attributing equal value to dreams and hallucinations as we do to science and logic. And if this were true, then progressivism would be no better or worse than any other delusion. It would mean that we might even end up being ruled by a class of mentally ill people -- decroded gerontocrats and developmentally arrested adultolescents pulling their strings -- and that could never happen.  

In the first paragraph we alluded to three of the most obvious degrees of being, but how many are there in reality? It depends on which way we look, from the bottom-up or the top-down, and even then it's a bit like asking how many colors there are in the spectrum. A good answer might be three primary colors, but a better one would be the infinitude of shades ranging from Aero to Zaffre, and Zomp back to Aqua.      

As to the cosmos, we used to have more levels prior to the Reformation, which left us with two: God and world. In so doing, it eliminated intellect and intellection, relying instead on faith. This left the field wide open for the further scientistic reduction of the cosmos to the single level raunch-style home of postmodernity.

Conversely -- I'm looking at a book called Frithjof Schuon and the Perennial Philosophy, by Harry Oldmeadow -- I see that Schuon lives in a rambling five-story cosmos ranging from Beyond Being (or Godhead) at the top to the Corporeal Realm at the bottom; in between are Being, Spirit, and Soul. 

Now, one intriguing point that may give rise to difficulty is the division, not only in the human realm, but in the divine one as well; just as there are degrees of being in man, so too are there degrees in divinas, but here again, this is not an obstacle for traditional orthodox Christians who have no issue with the existence of angelic beings and intelligences. We never left the old five-story cosmos, so it's more of a problem for Protestantism, which banished all intermediaries between man and God. I say, the more the merrier.

Schuon often discusses the difference between ego and intellect, which correspond to the levels of Soul and Spirit, respectively. Here again, Protestantism essentially collapses these two levels into the Soul alone. If there's an Intellect, it's too warped and attenuated by the Fall to be of much use anyway.  

As Oldmeadow describes it, the Intellect is "the faculty which perceives the transcendent." It is conformed to the latter in the same way our senses are conformed to the material world: "The Intellect receives intuitions and apprehends realities of a supra-phenomenal order." 

It is, in Schuon's words, "a receptive faculty and not a power which produces." Rather, "it receives and transmits; it is a mirror," in the same way lower degrees of knowledge more or less adequately (but never perfectly) mirror the world.  

It is "that which participates in the divine Subject," that which in man is "most conformable to God," the "transpersonal essence of the subject." Intellection is a "naturally supernatural" grace...

Going back to our month long review of McGilchrist's The Matter With Things, I think we might agree that the mode of intellection sounds very right-brainish, such that folks with a high degree of intellection probably have a highly functioning right cerebral hemisphere, but we'll leave that to the neuropsychologists. Here we are practicing pneumopsychology or something.

At any rate, Schuon points out that the transcendent faculty of Intellect is "capable of direct contact with Reality," which is precisely how McGilchrist characterizes the RH, in contrast to the LH, which lives within its maps, abstractions, and ideologies. Nothing wrong with that, but its a lower story.

This must mean that standard-issue exoteric theology is more of an LH undertaking, but recall what was said yesterday about the x-factor that must enter the (LH) system from outside and above, and it is the Intellect that is more directly in contact with this, indeed, may even be a kind of local prolongation of it, speaking of continuity and discontinuity. 

It is also noteworthy that Intellect is often spoken of as "heart" as opposed to "head" knowledge, and if I recall correctly, McGilchrist said something about the RH literally being more directly and richly connected to the heart, but in any event, let's not collapse our five storys into a house of neurology.  

We shall resume our real estate inspection tomorrow...