Being, Reality, Absoluteness, and Other Truths that Matter

I'll keep repeating it as long as Davila keeps saying it:

In each moment, each person is capable of possessing the truths that matter.

Each person is also capable of feeling puzzled by all the ins & outs and what-have-yous that must be integrated and woven into the cosmic area rug. Maybe it's just the stress talking, but sometimes the mind is not limber and the plan is too complicated. We're suddenly out of our element and lose our train of thought. There is no frame of reference. 

When this happens to me, I go back to basics -- to the truths that matter to which the Aphorist alludes. What are they? 

We touched on the subject yesterday, but only very lightly. We need a plan -- not a complicated one, because something always goes wrong with one of those. Rather, one that is beautiful in its simplicity, like a Swiss philosopher.

Schuon's simplest book is called Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, consisting of short passages, often a single sentence. I wouldn't say they're aphorisms, since their more blunt, nor do they twist the knife, as do so many of Davila's wise cracks. For example, here is the first one:

The worth of man lies in his consciousness of the Absolute.

Of course, this has a lot of missing context and implications that the reader must bring to the table. Davila may convey the same idea, but more in the form of a guffah-HA! experience -- for example, 

Each one sees in the world only what he deserves to see.

Or

The simplistic ideas in which the unbeliever ends up believing are his punishment. 

And

We conservatives provide idiots the pleasure of feeling like they are daring avant-garde thinkers.

I suppose the Absolute is literally the simplest idea -- as is God, who is "absolute simplicity, which consists of all perfections eminently in harmony" (Garrogou-Lagrange). We are able to participate in these perfections, even if we can never be them. 

A few posts back we were discussing Beyond Being, about which G-L has this to say: the Deity is 

above being (super-being)..., as it is the Thought of Thought and the subsisting love of the Supreme Good.

And

From this it follows that the Deity as such is naturally unknowable and consequently ineffable. 

Nevertheless, we can know at least that much, which is far from nothing. We know that O is and must be, and that we are not O. We can deny the Absolute, but "Error cannot descend lower." Nevertheless, fallen man never stops trying to fall further.

The very last section of this massive tome is entitled Conclusion: the true God or radical absurdity. As in change my mind: "We must choose one of the two: either the ineffable essence," 

or else the universal confusion and destruction of all forms of truth and goodness in an absurd identification with error and evil.

Is it really that simple? The short answer is Yes, although it takes G-L 900 pages to explain why. But deny the Absolute, and "the words 'integrity' and 'lying' no longer have any precise significance. There are no longer any lies, but merely successive opinions." Truly truly, everything is just your opinion, man.

But here's the deal: "The supreme Cause is more knowable and intelligible in itself than all other causes." Likewise, "Matter of itself is obscure, God is light; time is more obscure than eternity." 

These are all implications of the simple affirmation that The worth of man lies in his consciousness of the Absolute.

This is why it is impossible to engage in honest debate with someone who denies the Absolute, because such a person has made an absolute of the constricted matrix in which he dwells. As Voegelin describes it, "Rational debate" cannot prevail

because the partner to the discussion [does] not accept as binding for himself the matrix of reality in which all specific questions concerning our existence as human beings are ultimately rooted; he has overlaid the reality of existence with another mode of existence.

AKA a Second Reality, such that 

behind the appearance of rational debate there [lurks] the difference of two modes of existence, of existence in truth and existence in untruth. The universe of rational discourse collapses, we may say, when the common ground of existence in reality has disappeared....

"In more gloomy moments" -- such as the moment we are collectively living through -- this corrosive force "may look strong enough to extinguish our civilization -- unless of course you are an ideologist yourself and identify civilization with the victory of Second Reality."

In which case, things are going just great. 

About the collapse of reality, let's switch seers to a very compact book called Philosophy of Science in the Light of the Perennial Wisdom that asks, "how do we know if anything is true?"

before we can begin to look for a criterion of truth, we have to ascertain that there is such a thing as truth. Now, unless one accepts that there is indeed such a thing as truth, nothing holds: remove truth and everything collapses.

Well, not if I have anything to say about it, for even to say "I do not know" is "to imply that I know one thing is true and that is precisely the fact that 'I do not know.'" 

And

To say there is such a thing as truth is to speak in absolute terms. The notions of "being," "reality," "truth," and "absoluteness" are thus intrinsically interrelated. Reason cannot prove them; on the contrary, it takes them for granted, that is to say, it cannot function in their absence.

To be continued.