Man and Superman

Yesterday's post touched on Thomistic psychology, which prompted me to review Schuon's thoughts on the subject of man and his place in the cosmos. In the Introduction to The Essential Frithjof Schuon, Nasr writes that

to be human is to seek to be suprahuman. Man can in fact be defined as the being created to transcend himself and to seek the Transcendent as such.

Moreover, 

To understand the meaning of human consciousness and the nature of intelligence is to be convinced of the reality of God, for to say man is to say God.

As you all know by now, I still go back and forth between whether there is a universal metaphysic that "contains" any and all revelation, or whether revelation absolutely trumps metaphysics -- almost like a left-brain / right brain thing. Looked at this way, we might say that revelation is the poetry of metaphysics, so to speak, poetry being both composed and understood via the RCH. 

At the very least, I do believe that revelation conveys an implicit metaphysic, but can the metaphysical form, so to speak, be separated from its explicit content? 

It seems to me that Schuon solved this problem by affirming both: that one can pursue abstract metaphysics all day long, but this must be supplemented by the practice of an authentic and orthodox religion -- analogous to how one can study music all day, but in the end, one must pick an instrument in order to play it. Unless you're Beethoven. 

Is there a spiritual analogue to Beethoven -- i.e., someone who storms Heaven via his own power and needs no instrument to play? Well, even Beethoven had to start somewhere, i.e., with a piano. Only later did he become deaf, an accidental infirmity that forced him inward and upward to the harmonious Place where the melodies never stop flowing. 

It reminds me of the old book Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, which I can't find at the moment. But according to amazon reviewers, it is either "presumptuous drivel" or it "captures and understands the depth that results from identifying one's life with the search for the meaning of life and of the universe." Another reviewer quotes Beethoven to the effect that

There is no loftier mission than to approach the Godhead nearer than other people, and to disseminate the divine rays among humanity.

Which is a very Schuonian sentiment, in that he too believes the intellect as such is not only the terminus of a divine ray, but of the same substance, and why not? The intellect is

At once mirror of the supra-sensible and itself a supernatural ray of light....

The Intellect "is divine," first because it is a knower -- or because it is not a non-knower -- and secondly because it reduces all phenomena to their Principle; because it sees the Cause in every effect, and thus surmounts, at a certain level, the vertiginous and devouring multiplicity of the phenomenal world. 

Well, good. Elsewhere he writes that the Intellect is, "in a certain sense,"

"divine" for the mind and "created" or "manifested" for God: it is nonetheless necessary to distinguish between a "created Intellect" and an "uncreated Intellect," the latter being the divine Light and the former the reflection of this Light at the center of Existence; "essentially," they are One, but "existentially," they are distinct, so that we could say... that the Intellect is "neither divine nor non-divine."

So much Orthoparadox, but that's the Way It Is. As to its relation to revelation, he says that "Pure Intellection is a subjective and immanent Revelation just as Revelation properly so called is an objective and transcendent Intellection."

With which I agree: that the miracle of subjectivity is itself already a revelation. However, clearly, metaphysicians are more born than made, hence the need for revelation proper. 

Which is not to say there are people who are not in need of revelation -- we are all fallen -- for it provides a kind of corrective structure to prevent us from going off the invisible rails. It's a complementary dialectic, that's what it is, i.e., between the "objective revelation" given to us from without, and the "subjective revelation" of Intellect as such. 

Concur:

Revelation is none other than the objective and symbolic manifestation of the Light which man carries in himself, in the depths of his being; it reminds him of what he is, and of what he should be since he has forgotten what he is.

Or again, Revelation is

the objectivation of the transcendent Intellect and to one degree or another awakens the latent knowledge -- or elements of knowledge -- we bear within ourselves. 

Which is why

it has the power to actualize the intelligence which has been obscured -- but not abolished -- by man’s fall. 

In any event, man inhabits a very queer neighborhood. As I put it in an old post, 

On the one hand, man shares the same cosmic zip code as animals, plants, minerals, atoms, and quarks. Yet, man is also "neighbor to the angels. Truly, he is a denizen of two worlds, a horizon and a meeting place. Though angelic by his intelligence, yet he is not a pure spirit; though sensitive and passionate by his brute powers, yet he is not entirely material" (Brennan).

People naturally wonder how a divine nature and a human nature can coexist in the same person. Nevertheless, it is equally puzzling how, say, animal nature and human nature can coexist in the same person, which is to say, in all of us, in varying proportions. 

Before we can claim to know anything about any thing, there must be a principle by virtue of which such knowledge is even possible. What is this principle? For if we're going to know something -- anything -- the knowing subject and the knowable object must share something in common. What sort of something? Well,

a certain degree of immateriality is a primary requisite. A universe of matter alone would be simply unintelligible.

Now, what renders matter knowable? Its form, which is the intelligibility that may be known by intelligence, both of which are obviously immaterial. So, man dwells in a haunted neighborhood, with invisible ghosts of intelligibility running around everywhere. 

Strange to say, but everything wants to communicate. To an intellect that wants to know everything.

To be continued...