The Business of Isness and the Degrees of Being

Being. What a concept! 

Being Is. If it isn't, then Non-being Is, which is impossible. Sounds like a modest claim, but it is the basis for any other claim -- any judgment -- of what Is. We have to start somewhere.

So, if the first axiom is that Being Is, the second is that Being is Intelligible. Indeed, Being never stops communicating to us, such that one begins to suspect that reality might as well be made of language -- like a transcendent-and-therefore-immanent Logos or something. 

Now, it's one thing for the Logos to speak, another to be heard and understood. My dog, for example, knows nothing of Being, even though she surely is a being, and is moreover an intelligent one in her own way. But this intelligence does not reach the concept of intelligible Being. 

Rather, only man reaches Being, and isn't that a kick in the head. How is this possible? If something is, then it was possible for it to be. By virtue of what principle is it possible for us to know both intelligible Being and all the little beings of intelligibility? 

Just wondering, but why we do we even wonder? Again, my dog doesn't wonder about anything, which is to say, about the reality beneath appearances. Rather, she's perfectly content to abide in appearances. It is very much as if our Wonder is ordered to Being. Or ought to be, anyway. 

Which makes me further wonder: are the events of Genesis 3 a fable about the rejection of reality -- of Being -- for appearances, which are non-being insofar as they are detached from the principle of Being?

Well, all I can say is that these annoying thoughts were provoked by a book I'm reading called The Philosophy of Being, so blame Renard. That this "introductory" text was published in 1943 goes to show how much stupider we've become since then. And why? Because we've forgotten all about Being. 

I know I did for a good while. I've mentioned before that when I first took the plunge into philosophy, it was with the assumption that it was progressive, like science, so it was best to start in the 20th century, in my case with the existentialists. Anything prior to, say, Nietzsche, was relegated to the "history of philosophy," not philosophy as such. Analogously, no one needs to study premodern science in order to understand modern science.

Now existentialism is the polar opposite of the philosophy of being, since it starts with existence rather than essence. We don't actually have an essence, for this would imply God, and we can't have that. Therefore we simply fashion our own being out of nothing, by our choices and actions, which is to say, will. We will ourselves into being. But this is not real being, rather, something of our own invention.

Hence the title of Sartre's Being and Nothingness: being is nothing until we will it into something. But from nothing, nothing comes. Which I realized pretty quickly, as my existential phase lasted only a year or so. 

It's hard to remember, but I think another 20th century philosopher, Polanyi, was a big part of the cure. He didn't take me all the way to the other side, but certainly he lifted me out of any radical immanence. Says Prof. Wiki, 

Our pursuit of self-set ideals such as truth and justice transform our understanding of the world. The reductionistic attempt to reduce higher-level realities into lower-level realities generates what Polanyi calls a moral inversion, in which the higher is rejected with moral passion. 

Polanyi identifies it as a pathology of the modern mind and traces its origins to a false conception of knowledge; although it is relatively harmless in the formal sciences, this pathology generates nihilism in the humanities. Polanyi considered Marxism an example of moral inversion.

This goes to the reduction -- or expansion -- of science to a scientism which precisely reduces those higher-level realities to lower-level ones. 

Never forget the levels! I once wrote an ironic post on The Seven Levels of Reality, based on a remark by Paul McCartney when he was high on acid. Back in the day, this was the most frequent search term ("there are seven levels") that landed folks at One Cosmos. Now I don't know how they get here, if at all.

More generally, Vanderleun was my main link to the outside world, or rather, the outside world's link to me. Sure miss him.  

In reality there are more or fewer than seven levels, depending on how you look at it. The exact number is somewhat arbitrary so long as you remember the big ones, which I suppose we'll be getting into. According to Bina and Ziarani, there is 

no unique classification of the various degrees of being, and depending on the scale of gradation desired, different accounts can be given. 

At the far end, some "have proposed forty states," while others posit as few as two, which is to say, "the Divine Order, and that of all that is created, namely, Creation."

We'll try to limit ourselves to seven or less. We all know about the Great Chain of Being, a hierarchy that

has God at the top, above angels, which like him are entirely spirit without material bodies, and hence unchangeable. Beneath them are humans, consisting both of spirit and matter.... Lower are animals and plants. At the bottom are the mineral materials of the earth itself; they consist only of matter. Thus, the higher the being is in the chain, the more attributes it has, including all the attributes of the beings below it.

As Ken Wilber says, each level transcends but includes the level(s) below, in the above case God, angels, man, animals, plants, minerals, so, six. If we toss in the apophatic God-beyond-God, that would make for seven, so Paul was right after all. 

Speaking of the God-beyond-God, this is where Schuon begins, i.e., with "beyond-being," so that being itself is its first specification, so to speak. 

We've spoken in the past of how this could be translated into the terms of Father and Son, so we won't repeat it here. We were just speculatin' anyway. I won't hold me to it, but what's wrong with saying the Son is the eternal determination of the indeterminate Father? Probably something, but this is just a hobby, so I'll leave it to the professionals. 

Actually, there might be a flaw in the concept of Beyond-Being, but let's first review the levels as described by Schuon: these are Beyond-Being, Being, Spirit, Soul, and Body; or Godhead, Personal God, Angelic or Celestial, Psychic, and Corporeal/Material. 

These five levels can again be reduced to two, in that the uncreated Divine encompasses Being and Beyond-Being, while created Existence pertains to Spirit/Intellect, Soul/Psyche, and Body/Corporeal. 

But yesterday in Renard I read an abstruse analysis of why Beyond-Being is problematic, and let's see if I understood it and can even explain it.

The doctrine of Beyond-Being is found in the neo-Platonists, especially Plotinus, who posits "something higher than 'being,'" and from which everything else proceeds. This is because Being appears to be many.

Of necessity, then, there must be "THE ONE," supremely perfect and positive, above all multiplicity [the latter of] which implies imperfection.

However, Renard explains that our difficulty here arises from a confusion of the meaning of "one" as it pertains to transcendental reality. That is to say, "the fundamental mistake" is the failure 

to distinguish sharply between the "the one" which signifies indivision of "being" and "one," the mathematical unit of measurement. The difference between these two is very great.

In reality,

"The one" is a transcendental concept, and as such, "adds" nothing to the concept of "being" which is not already virtually contained in that concept, and, hence, in no way restricts it.

In other words, 

"The one" does not add anything to "being," but is only a negation of division: for "the one" means undivided "being." This is the very reason why "the one" is the same as "being." 

Bottom line: Plotinus' "'the one' adds nothing real to the concept of 'being,' but merely denies the division of the 'to be.'"

Therefore, it is enough to say Being, which is already beyond any determination or division. 

So, where does this leave us? Something to do with the Trinity, I'll bet. Let me wonder about it and get back to you in the next post.