Circular Quests and Spiraling Questions

Just as questions provoke answers, answers generate more questions.

And here we are.

Yes, here we are. The question is, is this a circular process or a spiraling one? One can answer it either way, but our response is another question: WTF? 

For if it is truly circular, regarding it as so presumes exit from it, i.e., seeing it from outside or above. But if it is a spiral, this presumes a destination, or at least faith in one. 

But science can never arrive at this telos, only aim there. And supposing we could arrive there, wouldn't this just make it another circle? A Theory of Everything would be a Theory of Nothing, the ultimate tautology. We would be sealed in immanence.

It seems to me that the principle of freedom must presuppose exit from the circle. In other words, if determinism is true, then no one leaves the circle. Which is why Dávila says,

Freedom is not an end but a means. Whoever sees it as an end in itself does not know what to do with it when he gets it.  

This kind of freedom results in a prison without walls, so to speak. Thus,

Today what is called "intellectual liberation" is a change of prisons.

For freedom is literally meaningless if it is only freedom from. In other words, absent a telos -- the freedom to -- it is another name for absurdity. Ironically,

Total liberation is the process that constructs the perfect prison.

Perfect because it is both ontological and epistemological: we know neither what we are nor what is, and we certainly don't know what to do about it, since any direction is as good as any other -- like being lost in the desert without a map.

Which touches on yesterday's post, in the sense that both man and world -- (•) and ⬤ -- are inexhaustible mysteries. In this context, 

Freedom is not indispensable because man knows what he wants and who he is, but in order for him to know who he is and what he wants.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that man must be free, because if he weren't, he could never know it. Again, we would be confined to the circle; we wouldn't believe things because they are true, but because we are determined to believe them:

The determinist is impatient with his opponents, as if they had the freedom to speak as they wished to.

It's no one's fault if you reject free will. 

Correct: To admit the existence of errors is to confess the reality of free will.

On the other hand, no one believes man has no constraints whatsoever:

In any proposition about man its paradoxical fusion of determinism and freedom must emerge.

Thus, it seems it isn't a matter of circle or spiral, but both. Man is uniquely capable of using the rigid boundary conditions of a lower level in order to seek freedom at a higher level.

For example, we are constrained by the 26 letters of the alphabet, with which we have invented approximately 500,000 words so far. The list is finite but always growing, and I'm doing my part. Now, imagine trying to assemble a "dictionary of sentences." This would be an impossible task, for nearly everything we say has never been said before in the same way. 

The point is, language is both constrained and more or less infinite. Gemini?

Your statement captures a fundamental paradox of language: it is simultaneously constrained and infinitely expansive. Languages are governed by specific rules of grammar and syntax. These rules constrain the ways in which words can be combined to form meaningful sentences.

However, despite these constraints, language is capable of generating an infinite number of unique expressions. In essence, language is a finite set of rules and sounds that can be combined in an infinite number of ways to create meaning. 

Now, what is the principle of language? If being is a logosphere of meaning, then being and knowing must be kissin' cousins. 

Back to the question of questions. What are they, and why do we have them?

Good question.  

I recall Schuon saying something to the effect that there is far more Light in a good question than a bad answer. Moreover,

No answer can be more intelligent than the question that gave rise to it.

Putting these two together, the most intelligent question will permit the most Light, and even be of that Light. Or at least a reflected image of it.

Shifting seers for a moment, I'm reading a book by N.T. Wright called Surprised by Hope. In it he says that "All language about the future... is simply a set of signposts pointing into a fog." 

This is not quite true with regard to garden-variety scientific knowledge -- for example, we can confidently predict where the earth will be 365 days hence, even if we cannot predict where we will be on the planet, or even if we'll still be on the planet.

But "supposing someone came forward out of the fog to meet us?" Now, that would be something, for it would imply the telos of the spiral manifesting in time. 

The following passage directly addresses the question of circle vs. spiral:

the Christian worldview is a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not to have closure at the end of the story -- to be left with a potentially endless cycle, round and round with either the same things happening again and again or simply perhaps the long outworking of karma -- would be the antithesis of the story told by the apostles and by the long line of their Jewish predecessors.

This, I suppose, is the story of the end made middle that middle might become end; or spiral made circle that circle might become spiral.

The endless spiral of trinitarian love, truth, and beauty? 

Some questions have more Light than any answer I could provide. How about an image, Gemini?

Eh, a human can do better: