What is Someone that Something Should be Mindful of Him?

Things are not mute. They merely select their listeners. --Dávila

The difference between something and someone must be the most consequential and enduring question in all of philosophy. If not, it ought to be, because everything on both sides of the divide hinges on it. 

In other words, if someone reduces to something, then anything and everything we can know about something is negated in that reduction. 

Conversely, if every something is but a projected form of our sensibility, then we are confined to our own subjectivity. 

The reduction of subjects to objects encases us in concrete, while the displacement of objects to subjects encloses us in a dream. 

In yesterday's post we alluded to the idea that man is a link between creator and creation, or being and intelligibility. According to Schuon, "it is the object of [our] existence"

to be in the middle: it is to transcend matter while being situated there, and to realize the light, the Sky, starting from this intermediary level. It is true that the other creatures also participate in life, but man synthesizes them: he carries all life within himself and thus becomes the spokesman for all life, the vertical axis where life opens onto the spirit and where it becomes spirit.

That sounds about right: man is the most ambiguous creature in all of existence, since he is open on both ends and thereby "completely incomplete," as it were. In other words, our incompleteness isn't a bug, it's a feature. But how and why?

As always, I go back to the cosmic faux pas -- itself a bit ambiguous -- of Genesis 3, but one way of interpreting it is to say that man chooses vertical closure and completeness over open engagement with his Creator. In so doing he chooses poorly, because he is then indeed confined to his own impoverished dreamworld.

Now we're getting somewhere, because it seems that our cosmos is characterized by a kind of effusive openness on every level. For example, science -- any particular science and science in general -- is only possible because the objects of the world never stop speaking to the subjects who study them. 

Going back to the title of this post, not only are the somethings that surround us not mute, they never shut up. They communicate their intelligibility, but obviously this intelligibility would mean nothing and make no sense if there weren't someone there to listen. 

Now we're in a position to dig a little deeper into this question, because we're talking about a cosmos that is intrinsically related to itself in mysterious ways, and what is the ontological nature of relation?

What I would say is that the category of relation is prior to the bifurcation of something and someone: that these two are intrinsically related. 

This is where the Trinity enters the picture. Even if this principle of ultimate reality weren't revealed to us from celestial central, we would be hard pressed to account for the structure of the cosmos in its absence. 

Put conversely, if ultimate reality is an irreducible substance-in-relation, then perhaps this same principle explains why man is intrinsically related to everyone and everything. Something <-> someone isn't a duality but a complementarity.

I agree with Dávila that In each moment, each person is capable of possessing the truths that matter. And I can't think of a truth that matters more than this one, i.e., the nonlocal interior relatedness of persons to other persons, to things, and to the very source and principle of this relatedness. 

What is Someone that Something Should be Mindful of Him?

Things are not mute. They merely select their listeners. --Dávila

The difference between something and someone must be the most consequential and enduring question in all of philosophy. If not, it ought to be, because everything on both sides of the divide hinges on it. 

In other words, if someone reduces to something, then anything and everything we can know about something is negated in that reduction. 

Conversely, if every something is but a projected form of our sensibility, then we are confined to our own subjectivity. 

The reduction of subjects to objects encases us in concrete, while the displacement of objects to subjects encloses us in a dream. 

In yesterday's post we alluded to the idea that man is a link between creator and creation, or being and intelligibility. According to Schuon, "it is the object of [our] existence"

to be in the middle: it is to transcend matter while being situated there, and to realize the light, the Sky, starting from this intermediary level. It is true that the other creatures also participate in life, but man synthesizes them: he carries all life within himself and thus becomes the spokesman for all life, the vertical axis where life opens onto the spirit and where it becomes spirit.

That sounds about right: man is the most ambiguous creature in all of existence, since he is open on both ends and thereby "completely incomplete," as it were. In other words, our incompleteness isn't a bug, it's a feature. But how and why?

As always, I go back to the cosmic faux pas -- itself a bit ambiguous -- of Genesis 3, but one way of interpreting it is to say that man chooses vertical closure and completeness over open engagement with his Creator. In so doing he chooses poorly, because he is then indeed confined to his own impoverished dreamworld.

Now we're getting somewhere, because it seems that our cosmos is characterized by a kind of effusive openness on every level. For example, science -- any particular science and science in general -- is only possible because the objects of the world never stop speaking to the subjects who study them. 

Going back to the title of this post, not only are the somethings that surround us not mute, they never shut up. They communicate their intelligibility, but obviously this intelligibility would mean nothing and make no sense if there weren't someone there to listen. 

Now we're in a position to dig a little deeper into this question, because we're talking about a cosmos that is intrinsically related to itself in mysterious ways, and what is the ontological nature of relation?

What I would say is that the category of relation is prior to the bifurcation of something and someone: that these two are intrinsically related. 

This is where the Trinity enters the picture. Even if this principle of ultimate reality weren't revealed to us from celestial central, we would be hard pressed to account for the structure of the cosmos in its absence. 

Put conversely, if ultimate reality is an irreducible substance-in-relation, then perhaps this same principle explains why man is intrinsically related to everyone and everything. Something <-> someone isn't a duality but a complementarity.

I agree with Dávila that In each moment, each person is capable of possessing the truths that matter. And I can't think of a truth that matters more than this one, i.e., the nonlocal interior relatedness of persons to other persons, to things, and to the very source and principle of this relatedness. 

The Case of the Missing Cosmos

Another brief one...

In a way, everything comes down to whether the cosmos is convergent or divergent (or multi- or polyvergent). I've probably written on this subject before, but in any event, let's try to revisit the place and know it for the first time.

These two words (convergence and divergence) have different meanings in different mathematical, evolutionary, and epistemological contexts, but I suppose what we mean is that 1) existence is a problem, especially for rational and self-conscious beings, and 2) is there a single solution to this conundrum?

There can only be a single solution if the cosmos is one, and this appears to be the case, or at least everyone assumes it to be true. Of note, no one has ever seen this cosmos; rather, it's an ontological assumption, or axiomatic. 

Obviously, no mere animal knows anything about a cosmos, or rather, their cosmos is confined to the unconscious order of instinct. Man alone transcends the evolutionary environment and enters the immaterial space of abstract and universal truth. 

Although most people just stop with that assumption, the next logical question is Why is the cosmos one?, or What is the source -- the sufficient reason -- of the wholeness, harmony, and unity of the cosmos?  Whatever it is, it can't be something "inside" the cosmos, because anything inside is obviously a part, not the whole.

In truth, it isn't possible to think in the absence of this implicit assumption of wholeness. If the latter isn't present, then it's as if we live in a world of disjointed inductive logic, with no possibility of convergence toward truth. The world would exist in bits and pieces, and the best we could do is throw them together into a pile, but with no interior unity. 

But everyone either assumes or looks for the missing cosmos. For example, materialism locates the cosmic unity in matter. Everything real is composed of matter, which means that our thoughts about matter aren't real, so this isn't a particularly intellectually satisfying answer. It's frankly an insult to the intellect and a punch in the nous. Besides, nothing can be that simplistic, let alone everything. 

Also, matter is the very principle of division: one thing is distinct from another due to its existence in matter. Pretending the principle of division is the principle of unity is a nonstarter.  

Man has always understood this, which is why God can never be eliminated, only denied. Even the most primitive concept of God serves as a kind of ontological placeholder for the missing source of the cosmos.

Really, we're dealing with two ultimate mysteries which seem to be complementary: being (and the source of being) at one end, man at the other. Or, we could say Creator <--> Creature, linked by Creation; thus, to say man is to say God, to say God is to say creation, and to say creation is to say being-intelligibility-truth.  

To be continued...

The Case of the Missing Cosmos

Another brief one...

In a way, everything comes down to whether the cosmos is convergent or divergent (or multi- or polyvergent). I've probably written on this subject before, but in any event, let's try to revisit the place and know it for the first time.

These two words (convergence and divergence) have different meanings in different mathematical, evolutionary, and epistemological contexts, but I suppose what we mean is that 1) existence is a problem, especially for rational and self-conscious beings, and 2) is there a single solution to this conundrum?

There can only be a single solution if the cosmos is one, and this appears to be the case, or at least everyone assumes it to be true. Of note, no one has ever seen this cosmos; rather, it's an ontological assumption, or axiomatic. 

Obviously, no mere animal knows anything about a cosmos, or rather, their cosmos is confined to the unconscious order of instinct. Man alone transcends the evolutionary environment and enters the immaterial space of abstract and universal truth. 

Although most people just stop with that assumption, the next logical question is Why is the cosmos one?, or What is the source -- the sufficient reason -- of the wholeness, harmony, and unity of the cosmos?  Whatever it is, it can't be something "inside" the cosmos, because anything inside is obviously a part, not the whole.

In truth, it isn't possible to think in the absence of this implicit assumption of wholeness. If the latter isn't present, then it's as if we live in a world of disjointed inductive logic, with no possibility of convergence toward truth. The world would exist in bits and pieces, and the best we could do is throw them together into a pile, but with no interior unity. 

But everyone either assumes or looks for the missing cosmos. For example, materialism locates the cosmic unity in matter. Everything real is composed of matter, which means that our thoughts about matter aren't real, so this isn't a particularly intellectually satisfying answer. It's frankly an insult to the intellect and a punch in the nous. Besides, nothing can be that simplistic, let alone everything. 

Also, matter is the very principle of division: one thing is distinct from another due to its existence in matter. Pretending the principle of division is the principle of unity is a nonstarter.  

Man has always understood this, which is why God can never be eliminated, only denied. Even the most primitive concept of God serves as a kind of ontological placeholder for the missing source of the cosmos.

Really, we're dealing with two ultimate mysteries which seem to be complementary: being (and the source of being) at one end, man at the other. Or, we could say Creator <--> Creature, linked by Creation; thus, to say man is to say God, to say God is to say creation, and to say creation is to say being-intelligibility-truth.  

To be continued...

Eros Shot Through the Heart

Just a short post, because we ran out of time.

The unstated point of yesterday's post is that my avocational interest in philosophy has never wavered, but that it's been a wrong and windy road from there to here. 

Viewing it from past to future, it looks like I was hacking my way through a dense jungle with a denser blade, but if we turn the telos-scope around, it looks more like a con-spiracy (breathing-together) of grace (or of some other vertical breeze, whatever we call it). 

Come to think of it, in the b ʘʘk, I just called the latter (↓), because I didn't want to make any assumptions about it; whatever we call it, it is that experience-near tingle that intermingles with (↑) and meets us halfway. 

If I'm not mistaken, this generic nonlocal assistance is called "operating" or "prevenient" grace, as it is anterior to our conscious cooperation with it. It seems that every man is given sufficient grace to arrive at the truth, or we'd never arrive there.

If it weren't operating, then there would indeed be no path back from there to here. Rather, each man would have to hack his own way through the ontological jungle, with no common endpoint. 

As it pertains to epistemology, we'd all exist in our own relativistic silo, each his own philosophy department, every man condemned to eternal tenure.

But there is an end, which is where we must begin, even if we don't know it the first time 'round. 

In other words, let's say I don't know anything about anything, which is precisely what I knew at age 25: nothing. I would like to know what's going on. 

Where do we begin? In hindsight, I'm gonna say that even asking this question -- so long as it asked honestly, persistently, and selflessly -- is already a consequence of operating grace. 

This same grace prevents us from accepting the many partial truths we encounter along the way as final.  

Rather, we recognize that half-, or three-quarters, or even ninety-nine and a-half won't do (https://youtu.be/yhX4liVtuCc). 

Theosis or bust!

Furthermore, I'm gonna say that the Incarnation is the last word -- the last possible and actual word -- on this (↓) not only meeting us halfway, but all the way and thensome. 

It is precisely this grace that is on offer, but not without our free cooperation. 

Which is also a grace in the overall circular scheme of things.

Eros Shot Through the Heart

Just a short post, because we ran out of time.

The unstated point of yesterday's post is that my avocational interest in philosophy has never wavered, but that it's been a wrong and windy road from there to here. 

Viewing it from past to future, it looks like I was hacking my way through a dense jungle with a denser blade, but if we turn the telos-scope around, it looks more like a con-spiracy (breathing-together) of grace (or of some other vertical breeze, whatever we call it). 

Come to think of it, in the b ʘʘk, I just called the latter (↓), because I didn't want to make any assumptions about it; whatever we call it, it is that experience-near tingle that intermingles with (↑) and meets us halfway. 

If I'm not mistaken, this generic nonlocal assistance is called "operating" or "prevenient" grace, as it is anterior to our conscious cooperation with it. It seems that every man is given sufficient grace to arrive at the truth, or we'd never arrive there.

If it weren't operating, then there would indeed be no path back from there to here. Rather, each man would have to hack his own way through the ontological jungle, with no common endpoint. 

As it pertains to epistemology, we'd all exist in our own relativistic silo, each his own philosophy department, every man condemned to eternal tenure.

But there is an end, which is where we must begin, even if we don't know it the first time 'round. 

In other words, let's say I don't know anything about anything, which is precisely what I knew at age 25: nothing. I would like to know what's going on. 

Where do we begin? In hindsight, I'm gonna say that even asking this question -- so long as it asked honestly, persistently, and selflessly -- is already a consequence of operating grace. 

This same grace prevents us from accepting the many partial truths we encounter along the way as final.  

Rather, we recognize that half-, or three-quarters, or even ninety-nine and a-half won't do (https://youtu.be/yhX4liVtuCc). 

Theosis or bust!

Furthermore, I'm gonna say that the Incarnation is the last word -- the last possible and actual word -- on this (↓) not only meeting us halfway, but all the way and thensome. 

It is precisely this grace that is on offer, but not without our free cooperation. 

Which is also a grace in the overall circular scheme of things.

Embarrassing Soph-Revelations

The philosophical opinions of a youth can only be interesting to his mother. --Dávila

I did once take a philosophy class. It must have been to fulfill an undergraduate humanities requirement or something. In any event, it was a course in logic which I ended up enjoying, even if I didn't make the leap to applying it to my actual life, let alone thought, since that hadn't yet made an appearance. It was beer, rock music, and goofing off, all the way down.

Not too long after that I did begin dabbling in philosophy per se, but never in any systematic way. Rather, the opposite: mostly randomly, but if anything, in a fully assbackward way, beginning in the present and moving backward.

In order to pretend that we know a subject, it is advisable to adopt its most recent interpretation.

Just as I assumed there was no meaningful music prior to Elvis, I assumed philosophy must, like science, be progressive. No scientist has to start with old and debunked ideas in order to study the current ones, so why shouldn't I begin by diving into the latest philosophical fad?

Back then there was no amazon, and in my neck of the woods just a B. Dalton Books with a few shelves of philosophy. Hmm. Being and Nothingnesss by Sartre, whose name I must have heard in a Woody Allen movie. 900 pages. That oughtta cover it!

The fool, to be perfect, needs to be somewhat educated.

With no context whatsoever, I dove right in, and soon enough believed myself to be a full-blown atheistic existentialist. I don't think I ever actually got through the book, as I found his prose to be indigestible. 

Speaking of which, I did read his novel Nausea, and that was sufficient to give me the bottom line: that there is no God and that life is meaningless; or rather, it is nothingness except insofar as we are forced to make choices that determine its meaning. We first exist, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it except define ourselves, since there are no essences or objective standards of any kind.

Philosophers often start from their conclusions in order to invent their principles.

For Sartre, we are condemned to a freedom which itself is a kind of nothingness, since it has no telos: existence is anterior to essence, meaning that we do not discover or perfect ourselves, rather, create ourselves via our choices. 

Somewhere Sartre says that existentialism is nothing but the attempt to draw all the consequences of a strict and consistent atheism. As such, precisely because there is no God, there can be no human nature. Wo, that is deep!

Confused ideas and murky ponds seem deep.

Only much later did I come to realize that Sartre had unwittingly proven the existence of God. For he takes the non-existence of God as simply axiomatic, while at the same time promulgating the complete contingency of the world and everything in it. 

Have you ever felt this way? I did for a few months in the 1980s, when my existentialism reached an acute phase and nothing meant anything, and vice versa. Then again, it may have just been a clinical depression.

Upon finding himself perfectly free, the individual discovers that he has not been unburdened of everything, but despoiled of everything.

In truth, an "absolute contingency" is not just absurd but impossible and unthinkable. Rather, contingency implies a necessity on which it must be parasitic, or at the very least, complementary to. In such a world there would be no basis or foundation for either theism or atheism. 

"Wait a minute," I recall saying to myself. "It isn't possible to live out the consequences of a strict atheism, unless one is literally psychotic" (by this time I had begun studying psychology, also in a random way, but enough to distinguish relative normality from complete craziness).

Modern man treats the universe like a lunatic treats an idiot.

Anyway, from dabbling in Sartre's nihilism I read randomly from Bertrand Russell to Wittgenstein to Nietzsche to Foucault, jumping around to Bergson and Whitehead, tossing in a few rationalists, then jumping all the way back to Plato. Stopping at Aquinas would have been a complete non-starter. Never would it have occurred to me that

Ideas less than a thousand years old are not fully reliable.

Or that 

He who does not place his life alongside the great texts places it alongside the clichés of his time.

Why am I burdening the reader with these soph-indulgent reflections? To illustrate what happens when you dive into the sea of philosophy without a canoe or oars, let alone map or captain. How did I not simply sink beneath the waters of tenure and drown in my own BS?

In hindsight, I guess a turning point was bumping into Ken Wilber's The Spectrum of Consciousness. The book means nothing to me now, but at the time it provided the impetus for an ontological u-turn, in which I was able to reorient myself to a bright-side up cosmos, and take it from there. Now, instead of drawing the consequences of utter contingency, it became necessary to draw the consequences of Necessary Being.  

My main point is that there is an Order in things, and it is for us to discover and elaborate it, not invent it. How much wasted time could I have avoided if I had only been introduced to this order when I was a young adult in college, or maybe even high school, instead of having to rediscover the wheel?

The modern man is the man who forgets what man knows about man.

Oh well. In a certain sense I suppose it's providential, as my foundation in stupidity is quite secure. Having lived it, I know all about it, such that no one could talk me out of it (or back into it). This existential stupidity is indeed a ground of my certitude, and there are a number of aphorisms that prove I'm not alone:

It is not to increasing our knowledge to which we may aspire, but to documenting our ignorance.

Intelligence by itself possesses nothing but rebellious slaves.

Genuine atheism is to man’s reason what the ten-thousand-sided polygon is to his imagination.

Sartre famously said that "hell is other people." But in reality,

Hell is any place from which God is absent. 

Embarrassing Soph-Revelations

The philosophical opinions of a youth can only be interesting to his mother. --Dávila

I did once take a philosophy class. It must have been to fulfill an undergraduate humanities requirement or something. In any event, it was a course in logic which I ended up enjoying, even if I didn't make the leap to applying it to my actual life, let alone thought, since that hadn't yet made an appearance. It was beer, rock music, and goofing off, all the way down.

Not too long after that I did begin dabbling in philosophy per se, but never in any systematic way. Rather, the opposite: mostly randomly, but if anything, in a fully assbackward way, beginning in the present and moving backward.

In order to pretend that we know a subject, it is advisable to adopt its most recent interpretation.

Just as I assumed there was no meaningful music prior to Elvis, I assumed philosophy must, like science, be progressive. No scientist has to start with old and debunked ideas in order to study the current ones, so why shouldn't I begin by diving into the latest philosophical fad?

Back then there was no amazon, and in my neck of the woods just a B. Dalton Books with a few shelves of philosophy. Hmm. Being and Nothingnesss by Sartre, whose name I must have heard in a Woody Allen movie. 900 pages. That oughtta cover it!

The fool, to be perfect, needs to be somewhat educated.

With no context whatsoever, I dove right in, and soon enough believed myself to be a full-blown atheistic existentialist. I don't think I ever actually got through the book, as I found his prose to be indigestible. 

Speaking of which, I did read his novel Nausea, and that was sufficient to give me the bottom line: that there is no God and that life is meaningless; or rather, it is nothingness except insofar as we are forced to make choices that determine its meaning. We first exist, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it except define ourselves, since there are no essences or objective standards of any kind.

Philosophers often start from their conclusions in order to invent their principles.

For Sartre, we are condemned to a freedom which itself is a kind of nothingness, since it has no telos: existence is anterior to essence, meaning that we do not discover or perfect ourselves, rather, create ourselves via our choices. 

Somewhere Sartre says that existentialism is nothing but the attempt to draw all the consequences of a strict and consistent atheism. As such, precisely because there is no God, there can be no human nature. Wo, that is deep!

Confused ideas and murky ponds seem deep.

Only much later did I come to realize that Sartre had unwittingly proven the existence of God. For he takes the non-existence of God as simply axiomatic, while at the same time promulgating the complete contingency of the world and everything in it. 

Have you ever felt this way? I did for a few months in the 1980s, when my existentialism reached an acute phase and nothing meant anything, and vice versa. Then again, it may have just been a clinical depression.

Upon finding himself perfectly free, the individual discovers that he has not been unburdened of everything, but despoiled of everything.

In truth, an "absolute contingency" is not just absurd but impossible and unthinkable. Rather, contingency implies a necessity on which it must be parasitic, or at the very least, complementary to. In such a world there would be no basis or foundation for either theism or atheism. 

"Wait a minute," I recall saying to myself. "It isn't possible to live out the consequences of a strict atheism, unless one is literally psychotic" (by this time I had begun studying psychology, also in a random way, but enough to distinguish relative normality from complete craziness).

Modern man treats the universe like a lunatic treats an idiot.

Anyway, from dabbling in Sartre's nihilism I read randomly from Bertrand Russell to Wittgenstein to Nietzsche to Foucault, jumping around to Bergson and Whitehead, tossing in a few rationalists, then jumping all the way back to Plato. Stopping at Aquinas would have been a complete non-starter. Never would it have occurred to me that

Ideas less than a thousand years old are not fully reliable.

Or that 

He who does not place his life alongside the great texts places it alongside the clichés of his time.

Why am I burdening the reader with these soph-indulgent reflections? To illustrate what happens when you dive into the sea of philosophy without a canoe or oars, let alone map or captain. How did I not simply sink beneath the waters of tenure and drown in my own BS?

In hindsight, I guess a turning point was bumping into Ken Wilber's The Spectrum of Consciousness. The book means nothing to me now, but at the time it provided the impetus for an ontological u-turn, in which I was able to reorient myself to a bright-side up cosmos, and take it from there. Now, instead of drawing the consequences of utter contingency, it became necessary to draw the consequences of Necessary Being.  

My main point is that there is an Order in things, and it is for us to discover and elaborate it, not invent it. How much wasted time could I have avoided if I had only been introduced to this order when I was a young adult in college, or maybe even high school, instead of having to rediscover the wheel?

The modern man is the man who forgets what man knows about man.

Oh well. In a certain sense I suppose it's providential, as my foundation in stupidity is quite secure. Having lived it, I know all about it, such that no one could talk me out of it (or back into it). This existential stupidity is indeed a ground of my certitude, and there are a number of aphorisms that prove I'm not alone:

It is not to increasing our knowledge to which we may aspire, but to documenting our ignorance.

Intelligence by itself possesses nothing but rebellious slaves.

Genuine atheism is to man’s reason what the ten-thousand-sided polygon is to his imagination.

Sartre famously said that "hell is other people." But in reality,

Hell is any place from which God is absent. 

Good Enough Philosophy Out the Wazoo

Our subject is the basis of Authority, which I suppose is a more folksy way of talking about ontology and epistemology: of what is and on what basis we can claim to know it: being and knowing, reality and truth.

This (philosophizing) has been going on a long time -- ever since Homo sapiens elbowed ahead of the pack some 60,000 years ago -- except that western man took a u-turn roughly 400 years ago. In those centuries, the journey back to intellectual barbarism has resembled that of the mythical oozlum bird, which flies in ever-decreasing circles until it disappears up its own rectum. 

Which is where most contemporary philosophy stands today: in the darkness and tyranny of relativism. Ontologically and epistemologically speaking, it isn't possible to fall any lower than this, although of course the ongoing results cannot be known in advance: an endless apocaloop of The horror! 

For this is a form of politico-intellectual Calvinball, such that there is no stable ground because the rules keep changing moment by moment, based upon the needs of the left. Which is why it is always an error to call the left "hypocritical." Rather, they aren't even hypocritical, because there is no fixed rule to violate.  

Or, there is a kind of faux-stability, in the sense, for example, that the left is always "for the little guy," even when they are robbing and killing the little guy. They are always "for the planet," even when they render it more unlivable, and they are always "for the victim" even when countless citizens are being victimized by these sainted victims.   

Anyway, no one is saying your philosophy has to be perfect, or that you have to know everything about everything. Besides, that's impossible. But there are rules, as in any sport. 

Or better, there are the rules that render the game possible, and then there are the rules -- the strategy -- for winning the game. The latter exist because the outcome of the game is intrinsically uncertain, which in turn has to do with the one-way direction of time. 

This is one of Hayek's main points about the irreducible complexity of the Great Society and the impossibility of manufacturing this or that outcome, or of knowing it before it happens. 

Rather, the best we can do is legislate clear and unambiguous rules about the conduct of the game, and then leave the rest to personal strategy based upon knowledge on the ground of changing circumstances.

You Will Have Noticed that leftism is founded on the conflation of rules and strategy, and the seductive delusion that tweaking a rule can result in an outcome that can be known with certainty. This is now called "equity," but it's really just a new name for cheating and taking what doesn't belong to you.

But the left has become so intellectually lazy (minus the intellect) that they no longer even bother to pretend they can bring about the outcome they want. Rather, they just engage in word magic such as the Inflation Reduction Act. This is sufficient to satisfy the rubes (beginning with the media) -- just as it was enough to call previous delusions Obamacare, or Build Back Better, or the American Jobs Act, etc., etc. 

The title of this post alludes to a concept in developmental psychology called "good enough mothering," popularized by the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott. Speaking of word magic, I see that Wokipedia has changed the entry to "good enough parent." God forbid we trigger any birthing people! 

Perhaps I should change our title to Good Enough Opinion, but that would only enable self-deception, lying, and tenure. 

Of what does a good enough philosophy consist? What is the bare minimum, such that any philosophy that fails to reflect this bare minimum results in error on a grandiose scale, due to the principle (itself part of the Bare Minimum) that a small mistake at the beginning redounds to a big one at the end?

To be continued...  

Good Enough Philosophy Out the Wazoo

Our subject is the basis of Authority, which I suppose is a more folksy way of talking about ontology and epistemology: of what is and on what basis we can claim to know it: being and knowing, reality and truth.

This (philosophizing) has been going on a long time -- ever since Homo sapiens elbowed ahead of the pack some 60,000 years ago -- except that western man took a u-turn roughly 400 years ago. In those centuries, the journey back to intellectual barbarism has resembled that of the mythical oozlum bird, which flies in ever-decreasing circles until it disappears up its own rectum. 

Which is where most contemporary philosophy stands today: in the darkness and tyranny of relativism. Ontologically and epistemologically speaking, it isn't possible to fall any lower than this, although of course the ongoing results cannot be known in advance: an endless apocaloop of The horror! 

For this is a form of politico-intellectual Calvinball, such that there is no stable ground because the rules keep changing moment by moment, based upon the needs of the left. Which is why it is always an error to call the left "hypocritical." Rather, they aren't even hypocritical, because there is no fixed rule to violate.  

Or, there is a kind of faux-stability, in the sense, for example, that the left is always "for the little guy," even when they are robbing and killing the little guy. They are always "for the planet," even when they render it more unlivable, and they are always "for the victim" even when countless citizens are being victimized by these sainted victims.   

Anyway, no one is saying your philosophy has to be perfect, or that you have to know everything about everything. Besides, that's impossible. But there are rules, as in any sport. 

Or better, there are the rules that render the game possible, and then there are the rules -- the strategy -- for winning the game. The latter exist because the outcome of the game is intrinsically uncertain, which in turn has to do with the one-way direction of time. 

This is one of Hayek's main points about the irreducible complexity of the Great Society and the impossibility of manufacturing this or that outcome, or of knowing it before it happens. 

Rather, the best we can do is legislate clear and unambiguous rules about the conduct of the game, and then leave the rest to personal strategy based upon knowledge on the ground of changing circumstances.

You Will Have Noticed that leftism is founded on the conflation of rules and strategy, and the seductive delusion that tweaking a rule can result in an outcome that can be known with certainty. This is now called "equity," but it's really just a new name for cheating and taking what doesn't belong to you.

But the left has become so intellectually lazy (minus the intellect) that they no longer even bother to pretend they can bring about the outcome they want. Rather, they just engage in word magic such as the Inflation Reduction Act. This is sufficient to satisfy the rubes (beginning with the media) -- just as it was enough to call previous delusions Obamacare, or Build Back Better, or the American Jobs Act, etc., etc. 

The title of this post alludes to a concept in developmental psychology called "good enough mothering," popularized by the psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott. Speaking of word magic, I see that Wokipedia has changed the entry to "good enough parent." God forbid we trigger any birthing people! 

Perhaps I should change our title to Good Enough Opinion, but that would only enable self-deception, lying, and tenure. 

Of what does a good enough philosophy consist? What is the bare minimum, such that any philosophy that fails to reflect this bare minimum results in error on a grandiose scale, due to the principle (itself part of the Bare Minimum) that a small mistake at the beginning redounds to a big one at the end?

To be continued...  

Sez Who?

Even a woken crock is bright twice a day, or at least unwittingly stumbles into an honest question from time to time, in this case the question of authority. Who or what is the ultimate authority, and how can we tell? 

He mentions the Bible, but that can't be right, because it is only recognized as authoritative on the authority of another entity. Obviously, no writer of the Bible had the slightest idea that he was a co-contributor to a compilation that was only closed and canonized as infallible hundreds of years later. 

At the same time, any number of would-be gospels and apostolic letters were rejected for inclusion by this same authority. So our principle of authority can't be located in the Bible, except by extension from the prior authority upstream from the Bible itself.

Yada yada, we can trace this authority back from the apostles, bishops, popes, councils, saints, and doctors to Christ himself, who founded the Church and handed on the authority to teach what he had orally communicated. 

Ultimately the buck stops with God, but ignoring the mediators is as illogical as denying secondary causes in science, as in the occasionalism of Islam or the double-predestination of Calvin that renders human life utterly superfluous. Besides, who died and left Calvin in charge?

The same commenter asks if our ultimate authority might be something a philosopher said, but again, it depends on the source of the philosopher's authority.  

Let's get right on down to the real nitty-gritty, with the Cosmic Flow Chart: at the top of the Flow Chart is the initial bifurcation between Authority and non-Authority. 

Supposing we choose the latter, then there is and can be nothing but opinion, and we are thereby plunged into the tyranny of relativism. Everything is truly just your opinion, man, which then redounds inevitably to a nihilistic world of pain and coercion: MARK IT ZERØ!  

But this isn't 'Nam. Rather, we choose Authority, which is to say, absolute order (or order of the Absolute). 

That sounds a bit fishy, so stop being coy: who or what is Bob's Ultimate Authority? When Bob says he "chooses" the Absolute, isn't that implicitly saying that Bob is the authority, no better than, say, Luther, who pretends he isn't the authority who authorizes the authoritative principle of sola scriptura? 

Settle down, Beavis! There are ways out of this nul de slack of solipsism and special pleading, but is there any way out short of faith? 

No, there is no way short of faith. However, there are reasonable and unreasonable forms of faith. Let me turn the wheel over to the Aphorist while I try to sort this out. 

There are arguments of increasing validity, but, in short, no argument in any field spares us the final leap.

Thank you, Nicolás, that is absolutely correct. Anything else?

Faith is not an irrational assent to a proposition; it is a perception of a special order of realities.

The first aphorism goes to the faith required of any truth in any field -- even to the very existence of truth, and of our capacity to know it. 

So if you want to know the source of my terrestrial authority, it rests on this faith: that there is a total order of intelligible reality spanning the horizontal and vertical, interior and exterior, subjective and objective realms, AKA the cosmos; and that this order is intelligible to human intelligence, which is to say that being is convertible to truth, uniquely so in the human being.

The second aphorism is almost equally important, as it goes to the spiritual organ ordered to this totality, which is to say, the intellect as opposed to the profane ego, the latter having more to do with adaptation to this or that human community. This intellect sees before it knows, such that it is indeed the perception of a special order of realities.

BUT. This is only half the story, and that's not even the half of it. We'll discuss how that other half lives in the next post -- and in particular, how it can live in us.

Sez Who?

Even a woken crock is bright twice a day, or at least unwittingly stumbles into an honest question from time to time, in this case the question of authority. Who or what is the ultimate authority, and how can we tell? 

He mentions the Bible, but that can't be right, because it is only recognized as authoritative on the authority of another entity. Obviously, no writer of the Bible had the slightest idea that he was a co-contributor to a compilation that was only closed and canonized as infallible hundreds of years later. 

At the same time, any number of would-be gospels and apostolic letters were rejected for inclusion by this same authority. So our principle of authority can't be located in the Bible, except by extension from the prior authority upstream from the Bible itself.

Yada yada, we can trace this authority back from the apostles, bishops, popes, councils, saints, and doctors to Christ himself, who founded the Church and handed on the authority to teach what he had orally communicated. 

Ultimately the buck stops with God, but ignoring the mediators is as illogical as denying secondary causes in science, as in the occasionalism of Islam or the double-predestination of Calvin that renders human life utterly superfluous. Besides, who died and left Calvin in charge?

The same commenter asks if our ultimate authority might be something a philosopher said, but again, it depends on the source of the philosopher's authority.  

Let's get right on down to the real nitty-gritty, with the Cosmic Flow Chart: at the top of the Flow Chart is the initial bifurcation between Authority and non-Authority. 

Supposing we choose the latter, then there is and can be nothing but opinion, and we are thereby plunged into the tyranny of relativism. Everything is truly just your opinion, man, which then redounds inevitably to a nihilistic world of pain and coercion: MARK IT ZERØ!  

But this isn't 'Nam. Rather, we choose Authority, which is to say, absolute order (or order of the Absolute). 

That sounds a bit fishy, so stop being coy: who or what is Bob's Ultimate Authority? When Bob says he "chooses" the Absolute, isn't that implicitly saying that Bob is the authority, no better than, say, Luther, who pretends he isn't the authority who authorizes the authoritative principle of sola scriptura? 

Settle down, Beavis! There are ways out of this nul de slack of solipsism and special pleading, but is there any way out short of faith? 

No, there is no way short of faith. However, there are reasonable and unreasonable forms of faith. Let me turn the wheel over to the Aphorist while I try to sort this out. 

There are arguments of increasing validity, but, in short, no argument in any field spares us the final leap.

Thank you, Nicolás, that is absolutely correct. Anything else?

Faith is not an irrational assent to a proposition; it is a perception of a special order of realities.

The first aphorism goes to the faith required of any truth in any field -- even to the very existence of truth, and of our capacity to know it. 

So if you want to know the source of my terrestrial authority, it rests on this faith: that there is a total order of intelligible reality spanning the horizontal and vertical, interior and exterior, subjective and objective realms, AKA the cosmos; and that this order is intelligible to human intelligence, which is to say that being is convertible to truth, uniquely so in the human being.

The second aphorism is almost equally important, as it goes to the spiritual organ ordered to this totality, which is to say, the intellect as opposed to the profane ego, the latter having more to do with adaptation to this or that human community. This intellect sees before it knows, such that it is indeed the perception of a special order of realities.

BUT. This is only half the story, and that's not even the half of it. We'll discuss how that other half lives in the next post -- and in particular, how it can live in us.

The Idiot's Guide to Being a Complete Idiot, Part 1

One can't blame someone for believing that philosophy is essentially an endless argument with no clear victor, and no way to even determine what victory would look like. 

But since there is only one reality -- change my mind -- there can be only one correct philosophy, and maybe that's a clue. For example, if there is only one reality, then any form of relativism is a non-starter. 

Come to think of it, I remember Schuon saying somewhere that he was fundamentally an Absolutist. Therefore, just begin with the Absolute and draw out the implications. How easy is that? 

However, Bob maintains that it is possible to begin at either end, with the Absolute or with the evidence of the senses; in fact, Bob furthers believes these two approaches are complementary and that they complete one another. Moreover, if you attempt a wholly one-sided metaphysic, you will inevitably leave out some important features of reality.

The archetypal example is of Plato vs. Aristotle: the former distrusted the endless change of temporal phenomena in favor of the timeless and transcendent forms, while the latter brought heaven back down to earth and sought to understand the nature of terrestrial change. But these two approaches complete each other and are harmonized by Thomas.

Nevertheless, there is and can be no complete map of reality that leaves nothing out. This is a controverted point, but I sometimes wonder if even God doesn't possess such a map, for reasons having to do with the nature of freedom and creativity (including continual creation), and that God cannot act outside his nature. But that's a sideshow, or rather, the final dot on the last i, and we're not there yet. We'll cross that t when we get to it.

A common definition of reality is that which doesn't go away when we stop believing in it, and I don't know if I can top that. However, in another sense, reality is what appears when we do believe it, precisely. This is where confusion enters the picture, because it is impossible to live as a human being without some kind of map and metaphysic, whether explicit or implicit. 

In fact, this is one of the principles of classical liberalism, which is fine as far as it goes, but eventually ends in the absurd tyranny of relativism under which we are currently sophicating. Before our eyes we see how the absolute relativity of "diversity" and multiculturalism lead to the anti-intellectual bullying and ontological terrorism of the left, with the violence of the state and the ignorance of Big Tech enlisted to enforce compliance. Institutional violence + mandatory stupidity never ends well.

About those things that persist even when we stop believing in them, at the top of the list (by definition) is what folks call God. But for a number of reasons, that's not the best word to use, at least at the outset. 

For example, when I use the word and an Islamic terrorist does, we're not referring to the same thing. Similarly, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi believe in a god who most definitely doesn't exist when they stop believing in him. It is purely fanciful to imagine such a being, let alone Being as such.

That much is obvious, but another intrinsic problem is that infinitude can never be reduced to finitude, such that anything we say about this Absolute has the capacity to mislead. 

However, this is actually no different from any other form of knowledge. For example, physics tells us a great deal of about the world, but if we then imagine that nothing in the world exists outside of physics, then we have fallen into scientistic idolatry. 

False gods are everywhere, but only because -- obviously -- there must be the true God. The other day we alluded to the principle of sufficient reason, the idea that everything in time has a cause, and that the cause must be sufficient to explain the effect.

Let's begin with something that is right under, over, and behind our noses: consciousness. Its existence is self-evident, the question being, what is its cause or sufficient reason? If your metaphysic cannot provide an intellectually satisfying and non-trivial answer to this most basic of questions, then I declare you to be a Shallow Person Unfit for the Conduct of Philosophy. 

About those false gods, you will no doubt have noticed that the metaphysical atheist crowd is always proving the non-existence of gods that do not and cannot exist, and which no sophisticated person believes in anyway. 

It would be analogous to my using the example of climate change idiocy to prove the non-existence of science. More generally, an important side-principle is that the corruption of the best is the worst, whether it involves the maiming of the intellect by ideology or of a pizza with pineapple.  

By the way, there is such a thing as intellectual sin, and it comes to us in many forms, for example, the type of intellectual dishonesty that absolutely pervades the media-academic complex. 

Another form is the idolatry referenced above, as well as any form of relativism. To this I would add any denial of the principle of identity, or any conditions for the intelligibility of the cosmos. These latter can be summed up in what Chesterton called the 

thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own.

What thought might that be? It is any thought that renders the world unintelligible and therefor the thinker a complete idiot: relativism, deconstruction, idealism, rationalism, materialism, scientism, atheism, CRT, Marxism, Son of Marxism, Bride of Marxism, etc.

To be continued...

The Idiot's Guide to Being a Complete Idiot, Part 1

One can't blame someone for believing that philosophy is essentially an endless argument with no clear victor, and no way to even determine what victory would look like. 

But since there is only one reality -- change my mind -- there can be only one correct philosophy, and maybe that's a clue. For example, if there is only one reality, then any form of relativism is a non-starter. 

Come to think of it, I remember Schuon saying somewhere that he was fundamentally an Absolutist. Therefore, just begin with the Absolute and draw out the implications. How easy is that? 

However, Bob maintains that it is possible to begin at either end, with the Absolute or with the evidence of the senses; in fact, Bob furthers believes these two approaches are complementary and that they complete one another. Moreover, if you attempt a wholly one-sided metaphysic, you will inevitably leave out some important features of reality.

The archetypal example is of Plato vs. Aristotle: the former distrusted the endless change of temporal phenomena in favor of the timeless and transcendent forms, while the latter brought heaven back down to earth and sought to understand the nature of terrestrial change. But these two approaches complete each other and are harmonized by Thomas.

Nevertheless, there is and can be no complete map of reality that leaves nothing out. This is a controverted point, but I sometimes wonder if even God doesn't possess such a map, for reasons having to do with the nature of freedom and creativity (including continual creation), and that God cannot act outside his nature. But that's a sideshow, or rather, the final dot on the last i, and we're not there yet. We'll cross that t when we get to it.

A common definition of reality is that which doesn't go away when we stop believing in it, and I don't know if I can top that. However, in another sense, reality is what appears when we do believe it, precisely. This is where confusion enters the picture, because it is impossible to live as a human being without some kind of map and metaphysic, whether explicit or implicit. 

In fact, this is one of the principles of classical liberalism, which is fine as far as it goes, but eventually ends in the absurd tyranny of relativism under which we are currently sophicating. Before our eyes we see how the absolute relativity of "diversity" and multiculturalism lead to the anti-intellectual bullying and ontological terrorism of the left, with the violence of the state and the ignorance of Big Tech enlisted to enforce compliance. Institutional violence + mandatory stupidity never ends well.

About those things that persist even when we stop believing in them, at the top of the list (by definition) is what folks call God. But for a number of reasons, that's not the best word to use, at least at the outset. 

For example, when I use the word and an Islamic terrorist does, we're not referring to the same thing. Similarly, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi believe in a god who most definitely doesn't exist when they stop believing in him. It is purely fanciful to imagine such a being, let alone Being as such.

That much is obvious, but another intrinsic problem is that infinitude can never be reduced to finitude, such that anything we say about this Absolute has the capacity to mislead. 

However, this is actually no different from any other form of knowledge. For example, physics tells us a great deal of about the world, but if we then imagine that nothing in the world exists outside of physics, then we have fallen into scientistic idolatry. 

False gods are everywhere, but only because -- obviously -- there must be the true God. The other day we alluded to the principle of sufficient reason, the idea that everything in time has a cause, and that the cause must be sufficient to explain the effect.

Let's begin with something that is right under, over, and behind our noses: consciousness. Its existence is self-evident, the question being, what is its cause or sufficient reason? If your metaphysic cannot provide an intellectually satisfying and non-trivial answer to this most basic of questions, then I declare you to be a Shallow Person Unfit for the Conduct of Philosophy. 

About those false gods, you will no doubt have noticed that the metaphysical atheist crowd is always proving the non-existence of gods that do not and cannot exist, and which no sophisticated person believes in anyway. 

It would be analogous to my using the example of climate change idiocy to prove the non-existence of science. More generally, an important side-principle is that the corruption of the best is the worst, whether it involves the maiming of the intellect by ideology or of a pizza with pineapple.  

By the way, there is such a thing as intellectual sin, and it comes to us in many forms, for example, the type of intellectual dishonesty that absolutely pervades the media-academic complex. 

Another form is the idolatry referenced above, as well as any form of relativism. To this I would add any denial of the principle of identity, or any conditions for the intelligibility of the cosmos. These latter can be summed up in what Chesterton called the 

thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own.

What thought might that be? It is any thought that renders the world unintelligible and therefor the thinker a complete idiot: relativism, deconstruction, idealism, rationalism, materialism, scientism, atheism, CRT, Marxism, Son of Marxism, Bride of Marxism, etc.

To be continued...

What Is It All About? The Idiot's Guide to the Cosmos

I'm getting a little tired of talking about what we can't know. Let's talk about what we can. "To engage in philosophy," writes Pieper, "means to reflect on the totality of things we encounter, in view of their ultimate reasons."

Better yet, he references a comment made by Whitehead to the effect that "philosophy consists in the simple question, What is it all about?" 

Agreed, but how shall we define "it all"? Well, for starters, we won't exclude half -- the most important half -- of the cosmos, which is to say, the experience of the cosmos. 

Nor will we even call it "half," because this implies quantity and division where there is and can be none: experience is intrinsically simple, immaterial, and spiritual. It's the first thing we encounter, and some catastrophically influential people say we can never actually leave it. 

But if that's true, it's false, so it violates what will be one of our few guiding principles, those principles without which we can't know anything, in this case, the principle of identity (or non-contradiction). 

Four or five invulnerable philosophical propositions allow us to make fun of the rest (Dávila).

In short, any version of idealism is an ontological and epistemological nonstarter, for you can't at once deny access to reality and call it truth, let alone THE truth. If that's the case, to hell with truth. Rather, truth is the conformity of the intellect to reality, precisely. If truth is conformity of the intellect to non-being, then lies are true, which is how you end up being a leftist.

Speaking of ontology and epistemology -- or what is and how we can know it -- this is precisely where we begin: with the intelligibility of being: being is, and we can know it, which is as miraculous as that first miracle alluded to above, the miracle of subjectivity.

Once upon a time, at the beginning of the book of the same name, I asked the question -- the same question anyone anywhere anytime must ask -- "Where in the world do we begin?"

Of course we should start our inquiry with the "facts," but what exactly is a fact? Which end is up? In other words, do we start with the objects of thought or the subject who apprehends them? And just what is the relationship between apparently "external" objects and the consciousness that is able to cognize them? Indeed, any fact we consider presupposes a subject who has selected the fact in question out of an infinite sea of possibilities, so any conceivable fact arises simultaneously with a subjective cocreator of that fact, Inevitably we are led to the conclusion that the universe is one substance. But what kind of substance? That seems to be the question.

Those are all good questions for someone who didn't know what he was talking about and was trying to find out by writing a book. This was also well before I knew anything about Thomism or the perennial philosophy, except in bits and pieces. You could say I was trying to reinvent -- or rediscover -- the cosmos. 

Anyway, it turns out that being and knowing are intimately related. This is lucky for us, because otherwise what we know has no necessary relationship to what is, and we are plunged into a world of darkness and tenure. It reminds me of a wise crack by Schuon:

Existentialism has achieved the tour de force or the monstrous contortion of representing the commonest stupidity as intelligence and disguising it as philosophy, and of holding intelligence up to ridicule, that of all intelligent men of all times. 

.... [A]nd if it be original to elevate error into truth, vice into virtue and evil into good the same may be said of representing stupidity as intelligence and vice versa.... All down the ages to philosophize was to think; it has been reserved to the twentieth century not to think and to make a philosophy of it. 

In short,

To claim that knowledge as such could only be relative amounts to saying that human ignorance is absolute.

The question is, why would you want to enclose yourself in a permanent and ineradicable stupidity, and call it philosophy? How is that loving wisdom? 

Which is also a fine place to begin: with loving wisdom, even though it sounds sentimental or inexact. But this is where Plato begins and ends -- which is perhaps why Whitehead made the claim that all of western philosophy is but a series of footnotes on him. 

To love wisdom embodies a number of implicit claims, i.e., that there is a type of knowledge that surpasses the always-changing appearances, which we can lovingly pursue but never possess. 

Not to re-belabor the principle, but I think this even goes to the ontological miscue of Genesis 3, whereby man presumes to possess wisdom instead of being lovingly conformed to it. The Bible tells us that Sophia-Wisdom was there with God before the creation of the world. Therefore, we cannot know it in the usual sense, since we are in time and wisdom is timeless. Nevertheless, we can forge a loving relationship with it, through which various graces flow.

What do you mean, "loving relationship?" Well, this is simultaneously easy and difficult; easy because all you have to do is be disinterested, dispassionate, and egoless, and difficult for the same reasons. Schuon:

The paradox of the human condition is that nothing is so contrary to us as the requirement to transcend ourselves, and nothing so fundamentally ourselves as the essence of this requirement, or the fruit of this transcending.

As my dad often used to tell me, Don't be an idiot. That's also a surprisingly good place to begin. 

What Is It All About? The Idiot's Guide to the Cosmos

I'm getting a little tired of talking about what we can't know. Let's talk about what we can. "To engage in philosophy," writes Pieper, "means to reflect on the totality of things we encounter, in view of their ultimate reasons."

Better yet, he references a comment made by Whitehead to the effect that "philosophy consists in the simple question, What is it all about?" 

Agreed, but how shall we define "it all"? Well, for starters, we won't exclude half -- the most important half -- of the cosmos, which is to say, the experience of the cosmos. 

Nor will we even call it "half," because this implies quantity and division where there is and can be none: experience is intrinsically simple, immaterial, and spiritual. It's the first thing we encounter, and some catastrophically influential people say we can never actually leave it. 

But if that's true, it's false, so it violates what will be one of our few guiding principles, those principles without which we can't know anything, in this case, the principle of identity (or non-contradiction). 

Four or five invulnerable philosophical propositions allow us to make fun of the rest (Dávila).

In short, any version of idealism is an ontological and epistemological nonstarter, for you can't at once deny access to reality and call it truth, let alone THE truth. If that's the case, to hell with truth. Rather, truth is the conformity of the intellect to reality, precisely. If truth is conformity of the intellect to non-being, then lies are true, which is how you end up being a leftist.

Speaking of ontology and epistemology -- or what is and how we can know it -- this is precisely where we begin: with the intelligibility of being: being is, and we can know it, which is as miraculous as that first miracle alluded to above, the miracle of subjectivity.

Once upon a time, at the beginning of the book of the same name, I asked the question -- the same question anyone anywhere anytime must ask -- "Where in the world do we begin?"

Of course we should start our inquiry with the "facts," but what exactly is a fact? Which end is up? In other words, do we start with the objects of thought or the subject who apprehends them? And just what is the relationship between apparently "external" objects and the consciousness that is able to cognize them? Indeed, any fact we consider presupposes a subject who has selected the fact in question out of an infinite sea of possibilities, so any conceivable fact arises simultaneously with a subjective cocreator of that fact, Inevitably we are led to the conclusion that the universe is one substance. But what kind of substance? That seems to be the question.

Those are all good questions for someone who didn't know what he was talking about and was trying to find out by writing a book. This was also well before I knew anything about Thomism or the perennial philosophy, except in bits and pieces. You could say I was trying to reinvent -- or rediscover -- the cosmos. 

Anyway, it turns out that being and knowing are intimately related. This is lucky for us, because otherwise what we know has no necessary relationship to what is, and we are plunged into a world of darkness and tenure. It reminds me of a wise crack by Schuon:

Existentialism has achieved the tour de force or the monstrous contortion of representing the commonest stupidity as intelligence and disguising it as philosophy, and of holding intelligence up to ridicule, that of all intelligent men of all times. 

.... [A]nd if it be original to elevate error into truth, vice into virtue and evil into good the same may be said of representing stupidity as intelligence and vice versa.... All down the ages to philosophize was to think; it has been reserved to the twentieth century not to think and to make a philosophy of it. 

In short,

To claim that knowledge as such could only be relative amounts to saying that human ignorance is absolute.

The question is, why would you want to enclose yourself in a permanent and ineradicable stupidity, and call it philosophy? How is that loving wisdom? 

Which is also a fine place to begin: with loving wisdom, even though it sounds sentimental or inexact. But this is where Plato begins and ends -- which is perhaps why Whitehead made the claim that all of western philosophy is but a series of footnotes on him. 

To love wisdom embodies a number of implicit claims, i.e., that there is a type of knowledge that surpasses the always-changing appearances, which we can lovingly pursue but never possess. 

Not to re-belabor the principle, but I think this even goes to the ontological miscue of Genesis 3, whereby man presumes to possess wisdom instead of being lovingly conformed to it. The Bible tells us that Sophia-Wisdom was there with God before the creation of the world. Therefore, we cannot know it in the usual sense, since we are in time and wisdom is timeless. Nevertheless, we can forge a loving relationship with it, through which various graces flow.

What do you mean, "loving relationship?" Well, this is simultaneously easy and difficult; easy because all you have to do is be disinterested, dispassionate, and egoless, and difficult for the same reasons. Schuon:

The paradox of the human condition is that nothing is so contrary to us as the requirement to transcend ourselves, and nothing so fundamentally ourselves as the essence of this requirement, or the fruit of this transcending.

As my dad often used to tell me, Don't be an idiot. That's also a surprisingly good place to begin. 

Gods, Kings, Chaos & Clowns

In the past we've mentioned the "Viconian cycle," which, if Joyce is correct, forms the underlying structure of this collective dream/nitemare we're having which we call history. The cycle features four recurring phases, beginning with  

the Theocratic or Divine Age of gods, represented in primitive society; the Heroic Age of kings and aristocrats, characterized by incessant conflict between the ruling patricians and their subject plebeians; the Democratic Age of people, in which rank and privilege have finally been eradicated by the revolutions of the preceding age. 

This is  

followed by a short period of chaos caused by the collapse of democratic society, which is inherently corrupt. Out of this chaos a new cycle in initiated by the ricorso, or "return", to the Theocratic Age. 

In FW, Joyce elevated the lacuna between successive cycles into a fourth age: the Chaotic Age. Vico's theory is applied to the image of the history of mankind as depicted in Earwicker's dream. 

Is there anything to this, or is it just an innocuous way to play with history, like that medieval monk who divided it into the ages of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Comte, who thought it progressed from theology to metaphysics to positivism (speaking of theology)? 

Note that the left always historicizes in some form or fashion, hence the name "progressive," accompanied by the delusion that they are inherently on the "right side of history." Obviously this presumes some sort of telos to history, even though their retarded metaphysic allows for no such enduring reality. Rather, it's just the usual unwitting inversion and immanentization of the Christian eschaton.  

Obviously, the most infamous example of this historicizing is Marx himself, who likewise inverted the Christian metaphysic, beginning with the original sin of private property and ending in a stateless utopia whereby a man could fish in the morning and indulge in critical theory at night. I don't think he ever imagined a capitalist world in which hordes of tenured parasites would be paid to engage in critical theory all day, resulting in the ongoing destruction their own privileged world, but here we are.  

It's not difficult to posit an "age of gods," since we know of no culture or civilization that doesn't begin this way. The question is whether we ever leave it, or whether it is even possible to do so. I mean, if a man can imagine the world is composed of nothing but matter, or that he is a she, what can't he imagine? 

It's also not difficult to discern some kind of "progress" in history, but of what? In other words, change of any kind can only occur in the context of an unchanging substance. But again, this substance -- AKA human nature -- is precisely what the left denies. Therefore, progress for the left involves the denial and destruction of the substance undergoing it, or what Lewis called the abolition of man.

This abolition is well under way, and I suppose it always is. But who imagined even a decade ago that our institutions would be unanimous in slandering as bigots those of us who think the mutilation and sacrifice of children to the perverse homolochians of the left is a bit much? Strange gods for a stranger people. 

Nor is it difficult to imagine that we've entered an Age of Chaos, good and hard. Here again though, the question is whether we're ever not in an Age of Chaos. I think this is the way I'd look at it: that it is always simultaneously an age of gods, kings, heroes, men, and chaos, only in varying proportions. 

Looked at this way, we can see, for example, why a lot of Americans wouldn't have minded if George Washington had been elevated to king, just as so many on the left regarded Obama as a god, or Evolutionary Lightbringer. If historical "progress" can be measured in the distance between a Washington and an Obama, we are clearly moving backward at a frightful pace. Throw in the chaos of the Age of Brandon, and the cycle is complete.

All of this is confused by the intrinsic and incessant tendency of the left to project its own unwanted and unacknowledged chaotic and sub-religious impulses into us. Most obviously, they imagine we are Trump-deranged zombies who do and think whatever our god-king tells us. They are half correct, in that we are indeed surrounded by Trump-deranged zombies -- for example, an apparently prominent journalist named Edward Luce, who tweeted that 

I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close.

This is not exaggeration nor hyperbole. Rather, I believe him, just as I believed any of my patients who confided in all sincerity that they were haunted by this or that persecutory delusion. Why would they make it up? Indeed, I even believe Liz Cheney. 

These meditations on the Viconian cycle were provoked by an essay by Hayek called Reason and Evolution, in which he describes how the "progress" of wideawake & cutandry constructivist rationalism lands us back in the historical soup of anthropomorphic gods. The idea that we can rationally understand and construct society 

is rooted originally in a deeply ingrained propensity of primitive thought to interpret all regularity to be found in phenomena anthropomorphically...

Although Hayek doesn't say so, I equate this to the ontological fall described back down in Genesis 3, whereby man presumes to be as a god, but in so doing merely encloses himself in an artificial world. In thinking he is "progressing," he is actually regressing, and this never stops happening. Therefore,  in *ironically* presuming that "reason alone should enable him to construct society anew," man only relapses "into earlier, anthropomorphic modes of thinking." 

For example, the other day Nancy Pelosi told of how "Mother Earth gets angry from time to time," and that opposition to the Dem's most recent legislative crime is a "vote against the planet" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAB2E-LzdTg). 

But if this is a chaotic age of primitive gods, then perhaps there's a king on the horizon. Or at least that's what the left never stops warning us of: the return of the Great MAGA King!

Gods, Kings, Chaos & Clowns

In the past we've mentioned the "Viconian cycle," which, if Joyce is correct, forms the underlying structure of this collective dream/nitemare we're having which we call history. The cycle features four recurring phases, beginning with  

the Theocratic or Divine Age of gods, represented in primitive society; the Heroic Age of kings and aristocrats, characterized by incessant conflict between the ruling patricians and their subject plebeians; the Democratic Age of people, in which rank and privilege have finally been eradicated by the revolutions of the preceding age. 

This is  

followed by a short period of chaos caused by the collapse of democratic society, which is inherently corrupt. Out of this chaos a new cycle in initiated by the ricorso, or "return", to the Theocratic Age. 

In FW, Joyce elevated the lacuna between successive cycles into a fourth age: the Chaotic Age. Vico's theory is applied to the image of the history of mankind as depicted in Earwicker's dream. 

Is there anything to this, or is it just an innocuous way to play with history, like that medieval monk who divided it into the ages of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or Comte, who thought it progressed from theology to metaphysics to positivism (speaking of theology)? 

Note that the left always historicizes in some form or fashion, hence the name "progressive," accompanied by the delusion that they are inherently on the "right side of history." Obviously this presumes some sort of telos to history, even though their retarded metaphysic allows for no such enduring reality. Rather, it's just the usual unwitting inversion and immanentization of the Christian eschaton.  

Obviously, the most infamous example of this historicizing is Marx himself, who likewise inverted the Christian metaphysic, beginning with the original sin of private property and ending in a stateless utopia whereby a man could fish in the morning and indulge in critical theory at night. I don't think he ever imagined a capitalist world in which hordes of tenured parasites would be paid to engage in critical theory all day, resulting in the ongoing destruction their own privileged world, but here we are.  

It's not difficult to posit an "age of gods," since we know of no culture or civilization that doesn't begin this way. The question is whether we ever leave it, or whether it is even possible to do so. I mean, if a man can imagine the world is composed of nothing but matter, or that he is a she, what can't he imagine? 

It's also not difficult to discern some kind of "progress" in history, but of what? In other words, change of any kind can only occur in the context of an unchanging substance. But again, this substance -- AKA human nature -- is precisely what the left denies. Therefore, progress for the left involves the denial and destruction of the substance undergoing it, or what Lewis called the abolition of man.

This abolition is well under way, and I suppose it always is. But who imagined even a decade ago that our institutions would be unanimous in slandering as bigots those of us who think the mutilation and sacrifice of children to the perverse homolochians of the left is a bit much? Strange gods for a stranger people. 

Nor is it difficult to imagine that we've entered an Age of Chaos, good and hard. Here again though, the question is whether we're ever not in an Age of Chaos. I think this is the way I'd look at it: that it is always simultaneously an age of gods, kings, heroes, men, and chaos, only in varying proportions. 

Looked at this way, we can see, for example, why a lot of Americans wouldn't have minded if George Washington had been elevated to king, just as so many on the left regarded Obama as a god, or Evolutionary Lightbringer. If historical "progress" can be measured in the distance between a Washington and an Obama, we are clearly moving backward at a frightful pace. Throw in the chaos of the Age of Brandon, and the cycle is complete.

All of this is confused by the intrinsic and incessant tendency of the left to project its own unwanted and unacknowledged chaotic and sub-religious impulses into us. Most obviously, they imagine we are Trump-deranged zombies who do and think whatever our god-king tells us. They are half correct, in that we are indeed surrounded by Trump-deranged zombies -- for example, an apparently prominent journalist named Edward Luce, who tweeted that 

I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close.

This is not exaggeration nor hyperbole. Rather, I believe him, just as I believed any of my patients who confided in all sincerity that they were haunted by this or that persecutory delusion. Why would they make it up? Indeed, I even believe Liz Cheney. 

These meditations on the Viconian cycle were provoked by an essay by Hayek called Reason and Evolution, in which he describes how the "progress" of wideawake & cutandry constructivist rationalism lands us back in the historical soup of anthropomorphic gods. The idea that we can rationally understand and construct society 

is rooted originally in a deeply ingrained propensity of primitive thought to interpret all regularity to be found in phenomena anthropomorphically...

Although Hayek doesn't say so, I equate this to the ontological fall described back down in Genesis 3, whereby man presumes to be as a god, but in so doing merely encloses himself in an artificial world. In thinking he is "progressing," he is actually regressing, and this never stops happening. Therefore,  in *ironically* presuming that "reason alone should enable him to construct society anew," man only relapses "into earlier, anthropomorphic modes of thinking." 

For example, the other day Nancy Pelosi told of how "Mother Earth gets angry from time to time," and that opposition to the Dem's most recent legislative crime is a "vote against the planet" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAB2E-LzdTg). 

But if this is a chaotic age of primitive gods, then perhaps there's a king on the horizon. Or at least that's what the left never stops warning us of: the return of the Great MAGA King!

Progress in Metaphysics Delayed by Well-Intentioned Blogger

That's almost thirty consecutive days with a new post. I have the time to write them, but who has the time to read them without ontological indigestion? This seems to be a violation of Dávila's first principle of writing:

Write concisely, so as to finish before making the reader sick.

I do actually try to honor that principle, and always want to say the maximum with the minimum -- the minimum required to communicate the idea. 

If a finger is pointing at the moon, it's the moon that counts, not the length of the finger. Nor am I the kind of guy who points at the fair and silvery orb adorning the firmament of God's pinprick dome, swaddling us in our night-sea journey as we go a-roving in dreams, or some other gay words. I'll occasionally throw in a fruity adjective to honor the mystery, but generally I try to be pretty blunt.

Another principle:

He who longs to write for more than a hundred readers capitulates.

I don't check the site meter, so I'm not sure if we've shed enough readers to be below triple digits yet.

To write honestly for others, one must write fundamentally for oneself.

If you ever catch me in a lie, know that I have first lied to myself, and there's no talking me out of it.

The idea that does not win over in twenty lines does not win over in two thousand pages.

Guilty with an explanation: finitude can never exhaust infinitude.

There are never too many writers, only too many people who write.

And there are always too many bloggers, even though there aren't many of us OG types who still embrace this antiquated platform.

Wordiness is not an excess of words, but a dearth of ideas

Worse yet, if left untreated it can end in tenure, which is why

The deluded are prolix.

When I wake up in the morning, I check out the news of the day. And then I escape from it:

Writing is the only way to distance oneself from the century in which it was one’s lot to be born.

If you find yourself agreeing, it is because

Words do not communicate, they remind.

Conversely, if you find yourself disagreeing, it is because 

Reading makes the fool more foolish.

I wonder: if we look back to October of 2005, when we started blogging, would we see any "progress?" Or is it rather that

Every writer comments indefinitely on his brief original text.

The same ideas, just painted different colors? I suspect my writing has improved as a result of all this practice. Well, so what:

Simple talent is to literature what good intentions are to conduct.

I can take a hint, but I'll be back in a few days.