Open for Isness

Man is the great exception to animal nature, being that he is not limited to the senses and enclosed in instinct. Now, how to account for this aberration, and does it make him superior to the beasts, or in a way more pathetic?

As we have been saying in recent posts, man is -- somehow -- open to the world, to the whole of being, but is this openness a purely negative thing, like freedom in the absence of a telos or intelligence in the absence of truth? 

If so, then the existentialists are correct -- just as freedom equates to nothingness, so too does our "openness" reduce to a cosmic fluke with no sufficient reason. 

Pieper touches on this possibility in Living the Truth, citing a certain philosopher who

misinterprets man's openness to the world as an expression, even a consequence, of man's organic imperfection and a "lack of specific natural means" and so as a "basically negative reality."

This is something I touched on in my own way in the Book. Supposing there is a natural explanation for our freedom and openness, why should it be that the resultant "space" isn't empty, but rather, is full of objective values -- of truth, beauty, goodness, language, creativity, ideals, etc.?

Why do we discover things in this space, and not simply imagine them? 

Well, I suppose that's a question for those sub-philosophers who insist that the open intellect is not ordered to objective realities, but rather, enclosed in its own structures and categories. Such thinking essentially deploys transcendence in order to deny transcendence. 

Rather than being a mistake or a fluke, Thomas maintains that "The spiritual soul is the most perfect soul of all," and that, "being able to know the essences of things, [it] possesses a potency unto the infinite." 

Other animals are constrained by "specific instinctive attitudes or with specific endowments for defense or protection," which may make man look comparatively bereft. But in place of the specific, we specialize in  generality, so to speak, for

man is naturally endowed with reason and furnished with hands, which together are the ultimate tools of all tools, allowing man to fashion instruments of any kind and for an infinity of purposes.

Again, the point is that this human space isn't empty but filled with interesting stuff -- essences, universals, transcendentals, logic, mathematics, beauty, science, history, necessary metaphysical truths, et al. What a place, and what a privilege!

Nor does it ever run short of interesting stuff, which is another feature of this space. Rather than just wanting to know what we need in order to survive and reproduce, we want to know it all. We have an unlimited desire to know everything there is to know about everything there is, or in other words, are ordered to the infinite object, O.

We all know there is a "biosphere," and underneath this a subatomic field of energy vibrations. But what is above these two? Teilhard de Chardin called it the "noosphere," which is again not "invented" by man but discovered. Or better yet, a kind of "co-creation" that takes place between immanence and transcendence, a la Voegelin or Polanyi.

Other animals live in an "environment" to which they are adapted. What is man's environment? Reduced to an animal environment the human being would scarcely be human, because there would be no way to actualize his infinite potential. For

It is not merely the "totality of all things" but equally the "nature of things" that constitutes the realm of the mind. We are able to reach -- which does not mean comprehend -- the essence of things, and because of this we find ourselves empowered to attain the totality of things as well (Pieper).

Otherwise, truly truly, to hell with it.

One of the keys to understanding our true nature and our ultimate destiny is the fact that the things of this world are never proportionate to the actual range of our intelligence. Our intelligence is made for the Absolute, or else it is nothing (Schuon).

So, pick one: God or radical absurdity.