Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Little Big God

We left off with Ratzinger's comment that "The three-ness of God -- the relatio -- stands beside the substance as an equally primordial form of being"; and that in this vision "lies concealed a revolution in man's view of the world" (emphasis mine). 

We aren't usually fans of revolution, but in this case we'll make an exception. Seen in its light the progressive left is a thoroughly reactionary movement, except to say that one cannot be "post-Christian" without reverting to pre-Christian barbarism, more or less. In other words, one cannot actually "surpass" the truth without falling short of it.

True, things are happening so fast it feels as if history is "speeding up." It is, but in reverse, that is, both down and out. The direction it is receding is also vertical in nature, so it is toward the pole of immanence

Which reminds us of one of the classic definitions of fascism: the practical and violent resistance to transcendence. Resistance to transcendence equates to the embrace of various anti-intellectual philosophies of immanence, e.g., Marxism, materialism, scientism, metaphysical Darwinism, etc. 

Modern history is a dialogue between two men: one who believes in God and another who believes he is a god.

Except you can't actually have an intellectual dialogue with those whose first principle is denial the intellect. You've noticed that 

The progressive travels around among literary works as the Puritan did among cathedrals: hammer in hand.

Now you know why.  

As to verticality, i.e., transcendence,

Hierarchies are heavenly. In Hell all are equal.

Of course, the left substitutes its own inverse hierarchy -- or lowerarchy -- with White Christian Males at the bottom. Surprisingly, equity wasn't was invented by the devil but by self-hating people of pallor:

Modern civilization: the invention of a white engineer for a black king.

That was rude. But don't blame Dávila:

I am not trying to poison the wells. But to show that they are poisoned.

You've also noticed that 

Progress finally comes down to stealing from man what ennobles him, in order to sell to him at a cheap price what debases him.

But

The revolutions of the left only shuffle the cards.

A shuffling that is another word for the chaos of immanence.

The Marxist does not think it possible to condemn except by distorting what he condemns.

To be subjected to the vile accusations of the gaslight media is to hear oneself being condemned for various crimes, from racism to Hating the Planet. 

When the progressive condemns, every intelligent man must feel alluded to. 

We could cite aphorisms all day, but let's get back to Ratzinger's real revolution -- the one that grounds us in the immanent transcendence of substance-in-relation, for it is the only real way out of the progressive chaos. 

liberal modernity -- despite its putative neutrality on matters religious and metaphysical -- harbors a hidden logic of being (onto-logic) that takes as given the radical independence of entities, whose interaction and relation [are characterized] as extrinsic and mechanistic (Gourlay, in Theological Anthropology). 

Which reduces to a metaphysic of logical atomism, of pure exterior relations. One might say it focuses on the particle to the exclusion of the wave -- or, as we discussed at length earlier this year, the left cerebral hemisphere (LCH) to the right, for it seems that ideologies are lodged in the left. You may accept this literally or metaphorically, so long as you accept it. 

The organicism of being can only be apprehended via the RCH, for it comes down to the difference between machines and living systems, the former consisting of externally related parts, the latter of an unspecifiable number of interior relations. And this is an interiorly related Cosmos, from the top on down, for everything bears the stamp of the Trinity (and of the interior relations therein). The

radically independent entities within this order can only relate to one another externally and materially.... things are approached as though they only had an "outside" as it were.

You've noticed that there can be no outside without an inside, and indeed, we only know of the outside from the inside. But the outsiders forget all about the inside, or deny it altogether, when it is without question the most important and consequential data point in all of existence. Recall Schuon's Undeniable First Ascertainment:  

The first ascertainment which should impose itself upon man when he reflects on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of that miracle that is intelligence -- or consciousness or subjectivity -- and consequently the incommensurability between these and material objects, be it a question of a grain of sand or of the sun, or of any creature whatever as an object of the senses.

Right, but how? By virtue of what Principle from which all else flows? Recall Whitehead's definition of metaphysics, as A coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every element of our experience can be interpreted. 

Here again, this is a truth that cannot be surpassed without falling short of it. "Relationality is anchored already in the first act of substance," and "therefore already as a matter of principle open to the other" (Schindler, ibid.). 

Being is always already being with -- not exteriorly but interiorly: "the human person is then understood to be receptive not only chronologically but ontologically." 

We mentioned yesterday that this openness and relativity are not to be understood as privations but perfections: "Rather than being a source of humiliation for the human creature," this receptivity is not only a perfection, but the very principle by which perfectibility -- AKA progress -- is possible. 

The greater a thing's capacity for receiving that which is not itself, the greater is its capacity for self-transcendence and the more distinct it is (Hanby, ibid.). 

Ultimately,

a relational rationality is, in point of fact, more adequate to the task of coming to know reality as such.

That's my story -- my metapersonal metaphysic -- and I'm sticking to (and in) it.

1 comment:

julie said...

Modern history is a dialogue between two men: one who believes in God and another who believes he is a god.

Going back to one of last week's posts, this is true on both the societal level and on the level of daily interactions.

But the outsiders forget all about the inside, or deny it altogether, when it is without question the most important and consequential data point in all of existence.

To be fair, there's probably a significant percentage of those who literally have no interior dialog. I still can't comprehend how someone can function that way, but apparently they do.

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