The title is playful, but I'm serious, or as serious as Blake was when he wrote The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
"Christian Satanism"
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fichte/comments/6bk1nz/egoism_in_fichte/
How does transcendental idealism serve or manifest the urge or blind impulse toward freedom or power? In my view, any "God" or "principle" that would be above the I is (by transcendental idealism) recognized within the I. That which I might have worshipped or served or defined myself in terms of is revealed to me as a mere object of my thoughtand therefore subject to my Freedom. We can confusedly talk of what God is in "himself," but God is only relevant as "knowledge" or in terms of how "He" exists within the I. Of course this is "I" as worldview or concept system. The empirical self is also enmeshed in or grounded by this "I" or concept system. So transcendental idealism also dissolves or negates its own notion of itself. The empirical ego is recognized as such and therefore "worn" more loosely.
This idea that "no knowledge can be its own foundation" encourages me to read Fichte as non- or post-systematic philosopher. At least in this passage he is an "irrationalist." Others will come to a similar conclusion as his own if they possess "the honest, upright purpose" of which he is conscious. This is elitism. This is not a universal philosophy. It is closed to those who do not experience the urge or will-to-power at a sufficient intensity. They are (it is implied) insufficiently noble. He is implicitly (like Nietzsche) reading philosophies as "symptoms." The noble or good man will manifest this nobility or goodness in a philosophy of freedom that portrays the "will" conceptually. For me a key line is before myself only will I justify it. In its purity (or at a sufficient intensity) this urge toward independence refuses the duty to justify itself.
"All my conviction is Faith" is an abandonment of the authority of an ideal universal reason. Fichte sees the limits of theory. Skepticism is irrefutable. Metaphysics in its bloodless purity is futile. He understands himself to be foundationless in terms of the calculating, logic-chopping mind. If this urge is posited as a necessary structure of the self, then we might ask how this urge is served by being conceptually portrayed. I postulate that this portrayal is a rhetorical weapon against constraints on its own freedom. The urge firsts manifests the notion of an ideal universal reason in order to combat the oppression of superstition. Natural science is justified pragmatically, so we are really talking about ideal reason as a value or an authority. We are talking about unnatural science or what a positivist might call the pseudo-science of metaphysics. This is why the "urge" eventually (if sufficiently intense in the thinking individual) abandons the notion of ideal universal reason as an obsolete tool. The "blind impulse" rejects its dependence on this object that is not itself. It dis-identifies with "Reason." But the individual involved "walks away" from this obsolete tool or identification having transcended or negated "superstition." Yes, Fichte writes of faith, but clearly the supreme "spook" of ideal universal reason or Truth is not abandoned in order to go backwards toward a belief in ghosts and astrology. Reason demystified the world, cleansed it of threatening unknowns. Reason "tamed" the world into a system of predictable necessity that could be exploited without reverence when not being enjoyed aesthetically. Fichte, like Nietzsche, is a "post-rational" or "post-metaphysical" thinker. He can endure skepticism. He is not afraid of the "negative." He has immediate access to his "god," namely his own urge toward independence. Projecting this urge outward on others as the "truth" of their systems, he is not tempted by indirect or confused portrayals of this urge. He reads their systems as projections of personality that do not yet recognize themselves as such.
The metaphysician needs impractical and untestable propositions to be true or false in an ideal "logical" space. To insist that this logical space does or does not exist presupposes this same logical space. As Fichte saw, those earnestly invested in plumbing this logical space as metaphysicians wander in an abyss. True, a systematic thinker can accuse Fichte of a premature retreat from metaphysics. The systematist might tell us that we are either shirking our duty to pursue the Truth or lost in error, which is to say pursuing it incorrectly. But these accusations presuppose an investment in the truth for its own sake. A Fichtean or a pragmatist challenges the necessity if not the sincerity of this investment. While "Truth" is one of the noblest identifications that "Spirit" itself passed through to its current worldview, it understands this identification to be imperfect or not quite absolute. "Spirit" seeks to be "fatherless." It hovers like a perfect sphere, complete in itself. This is a portrayal in the imagination of the goal of a blind or irrational impulse. We can postulate that this impulse wants to know itself conceptually and pictorially, which is to say in philosophy and art.
How does transcendental idealism serve or manifest the urge or blind impulse toward freedom or power? In my view, any "God" or "principle" that would be above the I is (by transcendental idealism) recognized within the I. That which I might have worshipped or served or defined myself in terms of is revealed to me as a mere object of my thoughtand therefore subject to my Freedom. We can confusedly talk of what God is in "himself," but God is only relevant as "knowledge" or in terms of how "He" exists within the I. Of course this is "I" as worldview or concept system. The empirical self is also enmeshed in or grounded by this "I" or concept system. So transcendental idealism also dissolves or negates its own notion of itself. The empirical ego is recognized as such and therefore "worn" more loosely.
We have here a noble Satanism. I am myself more or less interested in elaborating something like Satanism. But I find the attachment to any particular image or symbol a little goofy. I also find organizations, fees, hierarchies to be fairly ridiculous here.
Anonymous reddit posts are in some sense the perfect medium for this ideology or anti-ideology. Graffiti ! It is a surplus that cannot be tamed or successfully mainstreamed. It's deeply and stubbornly "contrarian." I sometimes think that I wan't to talk about it with others, enjoy it with others, but in other moments I realize that there's not much to say about it. In its purity it is pure fire. So I post this sort of thing imagining that other equally "free" thinkers will stumble on it and enjoy the recognition of the muted post horn. They will have other symbols. The insight resists any final formulation.
In short we have a pragmatic egoism. I have creatively misread Fichte or really just used him as a pretext to write about what was only a seed in him. To be fair, it was already all there in Fichte, but it was diluted or obscured. The urge still portrayed itself to itself as Science, even as it also hinted that this science wasn't universal --and therefore not science. Words are the tools of that which is not word. Words are a mirror for that which is not word. In portraying itself, the "will to power" or "will to freedom" develops and extends itself. God or "ultimate meaning" that is external to the will undergoes various transformations that are retrospectively understood as an evolving portrayal/satisfaction of this "Will." Finally the will knows itself as will, and it knows words as tools rather than masters-to-emulate. It is not in the words, or rather the words it uses to portray itself point beyond the realm of mere concept. The I is pure will or pure freedom that works at getting behind "theology." But it has to lose itself in theology as it seeks for a recognition of itself beyond this seeking. But this seeking was the thing sought all along. Nevertheless this seeking is creative. Theology creates "God." Or rather theology is the means whereby "God" creates a body for himself. "God" unveils himself to himself in the conceptual realm or through theology. But theology only recognizes itself as "God" at the end of the process.
We might say that worldviews are ethically or morally structured. The "ultimate meaning" is initially a universal object as opposed to a particular subject. But worldview becomes conscious of itself as worldview via transcendental idealism. This is apparent necessity dissolving in the freedom that through this dissolution comes to know itself.
Noble egoism is (as I understand it) just the addition of a "high" conception of egoism to the usual virtues. Stirner strategically used ugly phrases to break through the usual sentimentalities. This makes him hard to enjoy. He embarrasses me. Nevertheless he is a conceptually purer revelation of "absolute egoism" than Fichte is. But Fichte gets the tone right. Fichte is in the grip of beauty. His half-rational image of virtue is the "Human Form Divine" of Blake.
The notion that I'm interested in is just the addition of freedom to virtue as its completion. Self-posession is the completion of a noble soul. He looks on the world and sees nothing that is above him. But he enjoys seeing that which is equal to him. His ideal world is populated by the gentle, the beautiful, and the self-possessed. Why this gentleness? I appeal to the image of the sphere. It is complete. It does not hurry after others in envy or resentment. It concerns itself with itself. It enjoys a mirroring of its own joyful completeness in the eyes of another. This is the "to-and-fro" is realized Spirit in Hegel as I understand it. Realized religion is a participation in this freedom and completeness. This is ideal community.
But I'm no utopian. I think we settle for instants of this ideal community as they appear when we are with lovers and friends. Philosophy allows us to stand against chaos and confusion with a minimum of fear. We find stillness in the motion and silence in the noise. Others conceive themselves as victims or instruments, but we conceive ourselves as freedom that no longer reaches for a foundation or justification outside itself. We emerge from the confusion of childhood through a series of identifications with the substantial or objective, which is to say with permanence or being as opposed to becoming. These identifications are partial satisfactions. We enjoy a sense of progress as we climb what we already conceive of as a ladder.
But the rungs below our current rung, exactly because they are below our current run, appear as idiosyncratic or insubstantial. For instance, I am under the spell of Nietzsche in my 20s, and this allows me to jettison not only traditional religion but also moral indignation in general. Through Nietzsche's borrowed eyes, it appears to me as false or insubstantial. But eventually I read Nietzsche's most substantial ideas against that in him that I detect by their light to be inferior to this substantiality. I jettison Nietzsche-as-political-windbag.
The influence is consumed, digested, transcended. We have taken what we can use and excreted the rest. It no longer matters that we happened to get this or that insight from Nietzsche. The insight continues to matter, but the source is not substantial. If we meet others who achieved this insight in some other way, we will no longer pretentiously insist on the contingent medium through which we happened to obtain this insight. His name is no longer a magic word. For me philosophy has largely been a progressive demystification of magic words. It is a "counter spell."
Similarly the insight of absolute (noble) egoism puts us in a position of generalized creative misreading. If we no longer project authority away from ourselves and insist on the sanctity of our own minds, then every thinker becomes food for thought. The "alienated" thinker opens a book as if he were at a museum of fine art. "Spirit" opens a book as if it were cracking a egg on the side of a frying pan. "I am pretty fucking complete already, but let's see if I can add a new tool to my belt." At his best, Nietzsche is an incomparable poet of the imperious spirit as a stomach. I twist the proteins of my influences into a new unity, into a unique synthesis. My image of human beauty includes the notion of self-creation. I must be a "strong poet" in Bloom's sense. But this "must" is not a duty imposed on me but instead an irruption from within me. It is that urge toward independence and self-creation already portraying itself conceptually in Fichte's philosophy. Presumably Fichte still saw himself to some degree as a revealer of that which was already there, as a scientist. But he revealed the object that creates itself, which is to say the ego as the self-revealing or rather self-creating poesis or "bringing-forth." Nevertheless the philosopher as creator rather than discovered becomes more explicit as the tradition evolves. The "strong poet" (or he who dreams of himself as a strong poet) is prouder than the scientist. He wants to make his reality. Most importantly he wants to make himself. His makings not only reveal but construct their maker. Or rather they construct a portrayal of this maker who is ultimately an unnamable creative nothing. But this creative nothing delights in naming and un-naming itself. It itself names itself as that which cannot be conclusively named. Its essence is the negation of essence in the sense that it is never finally born and yet always being born. If we can only know "mind" or the "poetic genius" by its products, then we cannot hope to fix the nature of this endlessly creative mind. It feeds and builds upon that which is always already its past.
If it believes that it is X, then its consciousness that it believes that it is X cancels this identity with X. Nevertheless, this knowledge of its transcendence of its products is a talisman against the seduction of its products. That it remembers itself as the creator of gods insures that it remains the God of all therefore lesser gods. The transcendental idealist by definition remembers (or believes or insists) that beings are objects for itself as subject and therefore "ground." It is the ground of all objects. The "I" engulfs all gods, all principles, all gurus and masters. It recognizes the nullity of the thing-in-itself, the Secret that would dominate it, and therefore becomes absolute. This is Mind understanding itself in its power and glory. The "incarnation" of Mind is complete when this "Mind" is recognized as individual, as personal. The metaphysician embraces himself as "strong poet," as creator rather than discoverer. His own dignity and nobility are "leaps of faith" that manifest dignity and nobility. Less aware personalities imagine fixed social reality to which they must conform. The strong poet imposes on linguistic reality and reshapes it.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
The Birth of Spirit from Agency
Spirit is theology that has become or recognized itself as "God." This is a poetic indulgence. Because I experience the thought I'm trying to communicate as beautiful, I wrap it in grandiose terms. Suffice it to say that this is the "propaganda" of "Spirit." The story told is about an evolution of self-consciousness from various positions of "agency" to something beyond or simply not agency. Spirit is exactly the negation of agency as agency. Agency is the state of self-consciousness that justifies its value or authority in terms of something external to itself. https://www.reddit.com/r/Fichte/comments/6amj8l/the_birth_of_spirit_from_agency_a_creative/
The "I" am "God"
If I have a notion of God, I presumably think of a God that is really there on the "other side" of this notion. God is more than my idea of him. But all I can know of this God is precisely my idea of him. Therefore God can be for me nothing but my idea of him.
But this idea I have of God fits within my vision of reality as a whole. I understand God to be a part of this reality. If I think of God as the creator of the universe, then I think of both God and this created universe together within a reality that contains them both. But this reality is itself an idea within my mind. We know, of course, that there is a world outside of our mind. It is madness to deny to reality of the external world and of the consciousness of the other human beings in this world. On the other hand, we only know this world through concept, sensation, and feeling. We know that this knowledge is incomplete. We can be run over by the truck that we don't see or hear coming. We know that there are things that we don't know. But this knowledge is strangely "negative." All that we can know of an "unknown unknown" is that it is an unknown. It is a more or less empty "negation" of knowledge within knowledge.
But let's move on to God. What do we worship or admire in God? We can only worship our conception of God. We can only feel something toward what we know of God. In this sense our conception of the God we worship is revelation to ourselves of that which we value most. As Feuerbach is famous for indicating, we can only worship a God with human qualities or predicates. For instance, we admire God as a wise and loving Father. But this can also be interpreted as a worship of wisdom and love. We unite wisdom and love in an image of disembodied self-consciousness.
We tend to view God also in terms of power. God is supernatural. He can violate natural laws at will. He "installed" these natural laws in the first place. But do we worship this power? If so, then "should" we worship this power? If we imagine a human time-traveler taking impressive technology into the pre-scientific past, then what do we make of the idea of these pre-scientic humans worshipping this time-traveler as a god with "supernatural" powers? As practical beings with a need to manipulate material reality, it is natural that we admire power that doesn't threaten us and may even be used for our benefit. But is this our notion of the spiritual? To worship the power of God is to be more or less an "anti-Christian" philosopher like Nietzsche. "Might makes right" is not typically understood as a "spiritual" position. To be clear, I'm not interested in taking sides here. The goal is a clarification of the concept of God and what it means to worship or adore God.
Continuing this line of thought, we can examine the meaning of miracles. We usually think in terms of the "laws" of nature, but Hume's critique of induction reveals (or strongly suggests) that these laws are mathematical codifications of our expectations. Nature in the abstract is a concept system of expectations. Even those not trained in physics and chemistry still understand a certain stability in material reality. Things are created, destroyed, transformed, and moved around, but the nature of this transformation is itself fixed, or at least we understand it to be fixed and build skyscrapers on our trust that these expectations are valid. Miracles are of course surprising. They violate this system of expectation. If Jesus walks on water, he demonstrates a power beyond these laws.
But the concept of the natural evolves. Human flight was once "supernatural." Radioactivity and relativity were once "supernatural." Eventually the concept of the natural is expanded and elaborated to include surprises or miracles so that they are no longer surprises or miracle. To be fair, phenomena can in theory resist "explanation" indefinitely. Moreover there is a strong case to be made that reality as a whole is inexplicable in principle. We might say that the explanations of science are useful descriptions. For instance, the movement of the planets might be explained in terms of the "law of gravity." But why is there this law of gravity in the first place? Assuming we can fit this law of gravity into a yet higher law as its natural consequence, we can ask this same question of this higher law. The idea is that the annoying why of the child can keep climbing the ladder until it reaches questions like: why is there something rather than nothing?
A traditional religious answer might be that God created this "something." But the child's why can demand an explanation for God himself. Why was there a God who wanted to create the world? At this point answers tend to refer to the psychology of God. Explanations of the material world tend to refer to natural law. Explanations of the actions of persons tend to refer to motives. Even if we appeal to the motives of God, this fails to address the existence of God. Those attached to the idea of God as creator will perhaps speak of God creating time in the first place. But can we genuinely possess this kind of concept? What is this but confusion or ambiguity masked as explanation or knowledge? Or perhaps a traditional theist will invoke an "known unknown. " God transcends human thinking. But what can this "transcendence of human thinking" be but an empty negation? What is this but a confession of ignorance?
A case can be made that thinking is "machine like." It thinks the world as a system of cause and effect. If we think of God separate from the physical world but joined with this created physical world in the "totality" or "reality as a whole," then we might perceive that God is functioning on a "metaphysical" level as an object within a system of objects. God as the ultimate object is used to explain the presence and character of every other object. But this God as explanation is just "clockwork." This philosopher's God is not the God we adore for his loving wisdom. Instead this "clockwork" is an attempt to fit our emotionally necessary necessary notion of God into our need to make sense of reality. If we insist on providence (a God who manifests himself as a physical force for our benefit), then we find ourselves trying to make sense of the interaction of the physical and this invisible personality God. But note that all along we have idea of this reality as a whole that is bigger than God. It contains God. Moreover our own mind is the conceptual or intelligible structure of the "totality" or reality as a whole. God exists for us as an idea toward which we have intense feelings.
I'm trying to trace out my mental process that led to a recognition of (traditional) theology as "mechanics." If you look into Fichte's definition of critical philosophy, then that's more or less what I am getting at. Anything comprehensible or about which we can have knowledge is smaller than the "transcendental I" in which this knowledge exists. The thing "as such" is conceptual, even the "God thing" that philosophers sometimes use as an explanation. All of these things exist within a system of concepts. We might say that the "transcendental I" is both the witness of and the unity of this system of concepts. Moreover the nature of any particular thing in this concept system is more or less nothing but its relation to other things. If you tell me about what a cat is, you will likely tell me about mice, for instance. To exhaust the nature of the cat (to say everything about it) is to indicate every possible relationship of the cat with every other object, even God. This is why (as I understand it) the "true is a whole" and science must exist as a system. Our knowledge is "always already" systematic. That is a nature of human knowledge. But this nature is itself a piece of human knowledge. It was discovered or brought to consciousness by thinkers. But this means that the concept system adds itself to the concept system. Intellectual reality can attain increased self-consciousness, we might say. The world becomes richer and more complex.
A thinker with less self-consciousness might imagine that the world is fixed at least in its essential as he contemplates it. But these "essentials" are exactly what thinking adds to the world. Where merely physical reality is concerned, we can project our discoveries backward. We can say that the law of gravity was in effect long before a human ever became conscious of it mathematically. But what about "spiritual concepts"? Let's say that a thinker "unveils" his "radical freedom." He achieves a vision of reality in which no conscious being has authority over him. I'm talking about theoretical freedom. As a matter of fact there are physical and legal constraints on our behavior. But certainly humans have tended to project a Deity, for instance, who imposes a law that is greater and more important than these physical limitations. So our thinker of theoretical freedom has transformed a legitimate bondage on his part to a bondage that just happens to be case and is therefore not absolute or divine. This freedom cannot be projected backwards. The man who doesn't know that he is theoretically free isn't theoretically free. So the reality of this freedom is simply the consciousness of this freedom. Objective physical reality is at the center of our practical or "animal" concern, so we tend to dismiss "mere" consciousness. But consciousness is what we are. We separate consciousness into "just for us" and "also for others." Where does language fit into this picture? We share an intellectual world of concept as well as a physical world. An idea born in the mind of one thinker can spread through this intellectual world and eventually reshape the physical world. Our modern cities of miles and concrete and steel are largely the result of idea creation. Some thinkers have called this mysterious hole out of which ideas come God or the "poetic genius." This God is the creator of the spiritual realm, and every thinking mind participates in or "hosts" this God --or has this God as its truth or center. This idea is related to theology-as-God, but it's mostly mentioned in passing.
The key idea is that the "intelligible structure" of reality evolves "spontaneously." We in our first-person experience constantly enrich our notion of reality. The situation becomes more complex as we include billions of others who participate in this creativity through language. When we value ourselves, this is likely going to be in terms of ideas about ourselves. We are objects for ourselves. We attach predicates to this idea of ourselves, and we love or hate ourselves in terms of these predicates. We might say that these predicates are divine. For they are at the root of our love of God and of ourselves. Moreover we love the same predicates in both objects of thought. If we ignore negative conceptions of God (the kind that atheists justly bring up as a critique of unsophisticated or cruel religion), then we can say that God is one and same with the person we ought to be. We ought to be wise and loving like God. In the case of the atheist, rationality or reason plays the role of God. The atheist ought to be rational and experiences self-respect to the degree that he is so. I myself have been (and still am in a particular sense) an "atheist." But thinking about "objects of ultimate concern" led me back to this word of my intellectual childhood. In a sense theists and atheists are both "theologians" debating about the highest object or principle. It's hard to imagine a thinker without interest in some version or another of this highest object or principle. I like to call this object the Thing. My basic theory is that we worship the Thing when we worship our highest self. Also we worship our highest self when we worship the Thing.
We can understand worship in terms of sacrifice. The atheist "worships" rationality by exposing his wishful thinking to criticism. This is a "burnt offering" of a "lower" part of himself. It is proven to be a lower part of himself precisely through this sacrifice. Similarly a patriot may risk his life for his nation. He proves that this nation is his higher self by risking his entire bodily life to preserve it. The anorexic worships thinness by sacrificing the pleasure of food and health itself to "incarnate" this thinness. Sacrifice is a measure of intensity or seriousness. We experience ourselves as a mess of desires and fears. The Thing is the object that forces this mess more or less successfully into a unity. But to think the Thing in its generality is already to understand the entirety of my theory. This thinking of the Thing in its generality is terrifying or perhaps even impossible for those attached to a thing in its particularity. As long as we identify with a supernatural God or social justice as our highest self, the thinking of the Thing is the thinking of ourselves from the outside. We convert the most precious form of our subjectivity into an object for ourselves. In this sense we kill it. We have offered up this former higher self as a "burnt offering" to the fire of thinking. We might say that theology is this process of throwing ourselves on the fire, of making the subjective that is fixed and unfree into an object that our now-freer mind can contemplate calmly. Theology recognizes itself as God when it has offered up all "particularity" or "identification." It reveals itself as a "nothingness." But this "nothingness" is completed being. Reality exists more enriched and complex than before. But "theology" is now detached from every particular object. It is in this sense "bodiless" passionate self-consciousness. The "I" of this completed theology is universal. It is all personality and it is no personality. The infinite is exactly the negation of the finite. The "false" infinite is something particular (often hidden and difficult). It has a "positive" existence. It is a version of the Thing.
The "true" infinite is revealed by an abandonment of this quest for the Thing. The "I" that seeks the Thing is that which was sought in the Thing, or rather it becomes what was sought in the seeking.
The God-seeking individual or "theology" is a fire or a process. It sews or weaves its own narrative. In order to find God it discovers that it needs to understand itself as this finding. But it finds that this finding is itself the construction of manifestation of God. It's original concept was a relatively empty promise of knowledge and completion. "Pure being" in its transcendence of all specification and perfect unity is a symbol promising the self's own attainment of harmony, unity, simplicity. It journeys toward the Sky Father or Reason and develops its knowledge and therefore specifies this Father and/or this Reason as it continues on its way. The final specification is a recognition that its image of itself as knower and image of "God" as known are one in the same. Life goes on, of course. Thinking continues. I write this "poem," for instance, elaborating on the basic realization. But the realization is attended by a feeling of achievement or completeness. It is experienced as a complete and beautiful idea, even as the most complete and most beautiful idea.
But this idea I have of God fits within my vision of reality as a whole. I understand God to be a part of this reality. If I think of God as the creator of the universe, then I think of both God and this created universe together within a reality that contains them both. But this reality is itself an idea within my mind. We know, of course, that there is a world outside of our mind. It is madness to deny to reality of the external world and of the consciousness of the other human beings in this world. On the other hand, we only know this world through concept, sensation, and feeling. We know that this knowledge is incomplete. We can be run over by the truck that we don't see or hear coming. We know that there are things that we don't know. But this knowledge is strangely "negative." All that we can know of an "unknown unknown" is that it is an unknown. It is a more or less empty "negation" of knowledge within knowledge.
But let's move on to God. What do we worship or admire in God? We can only worship our conception of God. We can only feel something toward what we know of God. In this sense our conception of the God we worship is revelation to ourselves of that which we value most. As Feuerbach is famous for indicating, we can only worship a God with human qualities or predicates. For instance, we admire God as a wise and loving Father. But this can also be interpreted as a worship of wisdom and love. We unite wisdom and love in an image of disembodied self-consciousness.
We tend to view God also in terms of power. God is supernatural. He can violate natural laws at will. He "installed" these natural laws in the first place. But do we worship this power? If so, then "should" we worship this power? If we imagine a human time-traveler taking impressive technology into the pre-scientific past, then what do we make of the idea of these pre-scientic humans worshipping this time-traveler as a god with "supernatural" powers? As practical beings with a need to manipulate material reality, it is natural that we admire power that doesn't threaten us and may even be used for our benefit. But is this our notion of the spiritual? To worship the power of God is to be more or less an "anti-Christian" philosopher like Nietzsche. "Might makes right" is not typically understood as a "spiritual" position. To be clear, I'm not interested in taking sides here. The goal is a clarification of the concept of God and what it means to worship or adore God.
Continuing this line of thought, we can examine the meaning of miracles. We usually think in terms of the "laws" of nature, but Hume's critique of induction reveals (or strongly suggests) that these laws are mathematical codifications of our expectations. Nature in the abstract is a concept system of expectations. Even those not trained in physics and chemistry still understand a certain stability in material reality. Things are created, destroyed, transformed, and moved around, but the nature of this transformation is itself fixed, or at least we understand it to be fixed and build skyscrapers on our trust that these expectations are valid. Miracles are of course surprising. They violate this system of expectation. If Jesus walks on water, he demonstrates a power beyond these laws.
But the concept of the natural evolves. Human flight was once "supernatural." Radioactivity and relativity were once "supernatural." Eventually the concept of the natural is expanded and elaborated to include surprises or miracles so that they are no longer surprises or miracle. To be fair, phenomena can in theory resist "explanation" indefinitely. Moreover there is a strong case to be made that reality as a whole is inexplicable in principle. We might say that the explanations of science are useful descriptions. For instance, the movement of the planets might be explained in terms of the "law of gravity." But why is there this law of gravity in the first place? Assuming we can fit this law of gravity into a yet higher law as its natural consequence, we can ask this same question of this higher law. The idea is that the annoying why of the child can keep climbing the ladder until it reaches questions like: why is there something rather than nothing?
A traditional religious answer might be that God created this "something." But the child's why can demand an explanation for God himself. Why was there a God who wanted to create the world? At this point answers tend to refer to the psychology of God. Explanations of the material world tend to refer to natural law. Explanations of the actions of persons tend to refer to motives. Even if we appeal to the motives of God, this fails to address the existence of God. Those attached to the idea of God as creator will perhaps speak of God creating time in the first place. But can we genuinely possess this kind of concept? What is this but confusion or ambiguity masked as explanation or knowledge? Or perhaps a traditional theist will invoke an "known unknown. " God transcends human thinking. But what can this "transcendence of human thinking" be but an empty negation? What is this but a confession of ignorance?
A case can be made that thinking is "machine like." It thinks the world as a system of cause and effect. If we think of God separate from the physical world but joined with this created physical world in the "totality" or "reality as a whole," then we might perceive that God is functioning on a "metaphysical" level as an object within a system of objects. God as the ultimate object is used to explain the presence and character of every other object. But this God as explanation is just "clockwork." This philosopher's God is not the God we adore for his loving wisdom. Instead this "clockwork" is an attempt to fit our emotionally necessary necessary notion of God into our need to make sense of reality. If we insist on providence (a God who manifests himself as a physical force for our benefit), then we find ourselves trying to make sense of the interaction of the physical and this invisible personality God. But note that all along we have idea of this reality as a whole that is bigger than God. It contains God. Moreover our own mind is the conceptual or intelligible structure of the "totality" or reality as a whole. God exists for us as an idea toward which we have intense feelings.
I'm trying to trace out my mental process that led to a recognition of (traditional) theology as "mechanics." If you look into Fichte's definition of critical philosophy, then that's more or less what I am getting at. Anything comprehensible or about which we can have knowledge is smaller than the "transcendental I" in which this knowledge exists. The thing "as such" is conceptual, even the "God thing" that philosophers sometimes use as an explanation. All of these things exist within a system of concepts. We might say that the "transcendental I" is both the witness of and the unity of this system of concepts. Moreover the nature of any particular thing in this concept system is more or less nothing but its relation to other things. If you tell me about what a cat is, you will likely tell me about mice, for instance. To exhaust the nature of the cat (to say everything about it) is to indicate every possible relationship of the cat with every other object, even God. This is why (as I understand it) the "true is a whole" and science must exist as a system. Our knowledge is "always already" systematic. That is a nature of human knowledge. But this nature is itself a piece of human knowledge. It was discovered or brought to consciousness by thinkers. But this means that the concept system adds itself to the concept system. Intellectual reality can attain increased self-consciousness, we might say. The world becomes richer and more complex.
A thinker with less self-consciousness might imagine that the world is fixed at least in its essential as he contemplates it. But these "essentials" are exactly what thinking adds to the world. Where merely physical reality is concerned, we can project our discoveries backward. We can say that the law of gravity was in effect long before a human ever became conscious of it mathematically. But what about "spiritual concepts"? Let's say that a thinker "unveils" his "radical freedom." He achieves a vision of reality in which no conscious being has authority over him. I'm talking about theoretical freedom. As a matter of fact there are physical and legal constraints on our behavior. But certainly humans have tended to project a Deity, for instance, who imposes a law that is greater and more important than these physical limitations. So our thinker of theoretical freedom has transformed a legitimate bondage on his part to a bondage that just happens to be case and is therefore not absolute or divine. This freedom cannot be projected backwards. The man who doesn't know that he is theoretically free isn't theoretically free. So the reality of this freedom is simply the consciousness of this freedom. Objective physical reality is at the center of our practical or "animal" concern, so we tend to dismiss "mere" consciousness. But consciousness is what we are. We separate consciousness into "just for us" and "also for others." Where does language fit into this picture? We share an intellectual world of concept as well as a physical world. An idea born in the mind of one thinker can spread through this intellectual world and eventually reshape the physical world. Our modern cities of miles and concrete and steel are largely the result of idea creation. Some thinkers have called this mysterious hole out of which ideas come God or the "poetic genius." This God is the creator of the spiritual realm, and every thinking mind participates in or "hosts" this God --or has this God as its truth or center. This idea is related to theology-as-God, but it's mostly mentioned in passing.
The key idea is that the "intelligible structure" of reality evolves "spontaneously." We in our first-person experience constantly enrich our notion of reality. The situation becomes more complex as we include billions of others who participate in this creativity through language. When we value ourselves, this is likely going to be in terms of ideas about ourselves. We are objects for ourselves. We attach predicates to this idea of ourselves, and we love or hate ourselves in terms of these predicates. We might say that these predicates are divine. For they are at the root of our love of God and of ourselves. Moreover we love the same predicates in both objects of thought. If we ignore negative conceptions of God (the kind that atheists justly bring up as a critique of unsophisticated or cruel religion), then we can say that God is one and same with the person we ought to be. We ought to be wise and loving like God. In the case of the atheist, rationality or reason plays the role of God. The atheist ought to be rational and experiences self-respect to the degree that he is so. I myself have been (and still am in a particular sense) an "atheist." But thinking about "objects of ultimate concern" led me back to this word of my intellectual childhood. In a sense theists and atheists are both "theologians" debating about the highest object or principle. It's hard to imagine a thinker without interest in some version or another of this highest object or principle. I like to call this object the Thing. My basic theory is that we worship the Thing when we worship our highest self. Also we worship our highest self when we worship the Thing.
We can understand worship in terms of sacrifice. The atheist "worships" rationality by exposing his wishful thinking to criticism. This is a "burnt offering" of a "lower" part of himself. It is proven to be a lower part of himself precisely through this sacrifice. Similarly a patriot may risk his life for his nation. He proves that this nation is his higher self by risking his entire bodily life to preserve it. The anorexic worships thinness by sacrificing the pleasure of food and health itself to "incarnate" this thinness. Sacrifice is a measure of intensity or seriousness. We experience ourselves as a mess of desires and fears. The Thing is the object that forces this mess more or less successfully into a unity. But to think the Thing in its generality is already to understand the entirety of my theory. This thinking of the Thing in its generality is terrifying or perhaps even impossible for those attached to a thing in its particularity. As long as we identify with a supernatural God or social justice as our highest self, the thinking of the Thing is the thinking of ourselves from the outside. We convert the most precious form of our subjectivity into an object for ourselves. In this sense we kill it. We have offered up this former higher self as a "burnt offering" to the fire of thinking. We might say that theology is this process of throwing ourselves on the fire, of making the subjective that is fixed and unfree into an object that our now-freer mind can contemplate calmly. Theology recognizes itself as God when it has offered up all "particularity" or "identification." It reveals itself as a "nothingness." But this "nothingness" is completed being. Reality exists more enriched and complex than before. But "theology" is now detached from every particular object. It is in this sense "bodiless" passionate self-consciousness. The "I" of this completed theology is universal. It is all personality and it is no personality. The infinite is exactly the negation of the finite. The "false" infinite is something particular (often hidden and difficult). It has a "positive" existence. It is a version of the Thing.
The "true" infinite is revealed by an abandonment of this quest for the Thing. The "I" that seeks the Thing is that which was sought in the Thing, or rather it becomes what was sought in the seeking.
The God-seeking individual or "theology" is a fire or a process. It sews or weaves its own narrative. In order to find God it discovers that it needs to understand itself as this finding. But it finds that this finding is itself the construction of manifestation of God. It's original concept was a relatively empty promise of knowledge and completion. "Pure being" in its transcendence of all specification and perfect unity is a symbol promising the self's own attainment of harmony, unity, simplicity. It journeys toward the Sky Father or Reason and develops its knowledge and therefore specifies this Father and/or this Reason as it continues on its way. The final specification is a recognition that its image of itself as knower and image of "God" as known are one in the same. Life goes on, of course. Thinking continues. I write this "poem," for instance, elaborating on the basic realization. But the realization is attended by a feeling of achievement or completeness. It is experienced as a complete and beautiful idea, even as the most complete and most beautiful idea.
Theology Itself is God
The ideas presented here are largely inspired by Hegel. On the other hand, the ideas presented point beyond all philosophical and religious authority.
Theology is God. Theology is our protagonist. Theology seeks to know God. But theology discovers that it had the been the God it desired know all throughout its search for God. Indeed, theology created or enlarged itself in this pursuit of God, without realizing that it was constructing the very God that it enlarged itself to pursue or know more effectively. We might say that (in terms of this theory) God is nothing but his own knowledge of himself. So God is self-consciousness. But this is a result. Until this particular conceptual but passionate journey is untaken, such statements can only appear as absurdities. The undeveloped conception of God does recognize that it is indeed a conception. The journey of self-consciousness involves a recognition that the intelligible structure of reality is conceptual. Common sense, which deserves honor as a foundation for any "higher" kind of thinking, tends to be lazy in all thinking that is not practical. As a general rule, conceptions of God are vague and are perhaps better described as pictures than conceptions. We think of a person who is somehow an object that is really "there" and yet not at all material like a tree or a stone. On the other hand, this is how we think of our own "souls," which are attached to or within our bodies. We tend to vaguely think of God as a passionate disembodied mind. He is passionate because he loves. He is mind because, like us, he is self-conscious. This theory is likely to appeal only to those who value conceptual clarity for its own sake, as an "esthetic" value that has no justification outside itself.
Continuing, we can say that theology evolves its notion of itself as well as its notion of God as it progresses. This progression is complete when these notions finally coincide. If this sounds blasphemous, this is probably because the blasphemous "I" of theology is understood as an idiosyncratic being. But the idea here is that theology (or the individual) raises himself up to God.
Theology is evolving process. Its result is that it discovers itself to be God's own self-consciousness. But throughout the process (until this consummation), it understands God as an object of thought apart from the thinking of this object that it itself is. It does not yet understand God as a self-thinking thought that exists "above" or as the "negation" of "idols," or these limitations of God that are experienced as pieties. The individual thinker, "purified" of various identifications, discovers himself to be "God." But this "dis-identified" I is the universal I of first-person "Christ consciousness." This theory presents the "true" or "revealed" Christ to be exactly this first-person conceptually mediated experience. In the terms of this theory, the adoration of Christ as an "external" person or object is an unstable position within the journey of theology to its complete self-consciousness.
Ultimately this theology leads "behind" words or toward a radical freedom in the use of words. So theology-as-God is "also" an "atheistic" theory in the sense that the "God" involved is nothing like the God of the typically religious. This God is also the "I" as "absolute negativity" (Hegel) or "nothingness." Note that this "nothingness" is also the "infinite" or the comprehension of everything that is not God as a unity. Typically religion is understood as belief in supernatural objects, but the theory presented here is stubbornly committed to the realm of concepts. It understands human experience as thinking and feeling, where "feeling" includes both emotion and sensation. While it does repurpose the ideas and myths of traditional religion, it understands itself to be "rational." But this theory also examines the idea of the rational as one of the "masks" of God. This theory is a "negative theology."
This theory also understands itself as "poetry." It expresses itself as non-fiction, but it does not understand itself as science. It does not a make a claim to universal validity. It includes what might be called skepticism and relativism, though it avoids diluting such skepticism or relativism by making claims that nothing can be known or that all is relative. Instead this is a theory of freedom that exists as consciousness of itself. This freedom includes a freedom from the need to claim objectivity or universal validity. In this sense the theory is "post-philosophical" or "post-metaphysical." Pragmatism is one of its fathers. It offers itself as a tool constructed from concepts. It understands this tool to likely be of use only to a few who happen to be sufficiently similar to the creator of this tool. The creator of this tool was hugely influenced by thinkers who came before him. Nevertheless he feels (I feel) that the current theory is an especially digestible update of these influences.
The essence of this theory has already been presented on Reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fichte/comments/69t6n9/freedom_incarnate_creative_misreading_of_the/
Note that this particular post is largely composed of difficult quotes from my influences. Other posts in the Fichte subreddit elucidate, interpret or creatively misread these quotes in terms of the theory that I share as a poem, conceptual art, or tool made of words to be used in unforeseen-by-me ways.
Theology is God. Theology is our protagonist. Theology seeks to know God. But theology discovers that it had the been the God it desired know all throughout its search for God. Indeed, theology created or enlarged itself in this pursuit of God, without realizing that it was constructing the very God that it enlarged itself to pursue or know more effectively. We might say that (in terms of this theory) God is nothing but his own knowledge of himself. So God is self-consciousness. But this is a result. Until this particular conceptual but passionate journey is untaken, such statements can only appear as absurdities. The undeveloped conception of God does recognize that it is indeed a conception. The journey of self-consciousness involves a recognition that the intelligible structure of reality is conceptual. Common sense, which deserves honor as a foundation for any "higher" kind of thinking, tends to be lazy in all thinking that is not practical. As a general rule, conceptions of God are vague and are perhaps better described as pictures than conceptions. We think of a person who is somehow an object that is really "there" and yet not at all material like a tree or a stone. On the other hand, this is how we think of our own "souls," which are attached to or within our bodies. We tend to vaguely think of God as a passionate disembodied mind. He is passionate because he loves. He is mind because, like us, he is self-conscious. This theory is likely to appeal only to those who value conceptual clarity for its own sake, as an "esthetic" value that has no justification outside itself.
Continuing, we can say that theology evolves its notion of itself as well as its notion of God as it progresses. This progression is complete when these notions finally coincide. If this sounds blasphemous, this is probably because the blasphemous "I" of theology is understood as an idiosyncratic being. But the idea here is that theology (or the individual) raises himself up to God.
Theology is evolving process. Its result is that it discovers itself to be God's own self-consciousness. But throughout the process (until this consummation), it understands God as an object of thought apart from the thinking of this object that it itself is. It does not yet understand God as a self-thinking thought that exists "above" or as the "negation" of "idols," or these limitations of God that are experienced as pieties. The individual thinker, "purified" of various identifications, discovers himself to be "God." But this "dis-identified" I is the universal I of first-person "Christ consciousness." This theory presents the "true" or "revealed" Christ to be exactly this first-person conceptually mediated experience. In the terms of this theory, the adoration of Christ as an "external" person or object is an unstable position within the journey of theology to its complete self-consciousness.
Ultimately this theology leads "behind" words or toward a radical freedom in the use of words. So theology-as-God is "also" an "atheistic" theory in the sense that the "God" involved is nothing like the God of the typically religious. This God is also the "I" as "absolute negativity" (Hegel) or "nothingness." Note that this "nothingness" is also the "infinite" or the comprehension of everything that is not God as a unity. Typically religion is understood as belief in supernatural objects, but the theory presented here is stubbornly committed to the realm of concepts. It understands human experience as thinking and feeling, where "feeling" includes both emotion and sensation. While it does repurpose the ideas and myths of traditional religion, it understands itself to be "rational." But this theory also examines the idea of the rational as one of the "masks" of God. This theory is a "negative theology."
This theory also understands itself as "poetry." It expresses itself as non-fiction, but it does not understand itself as science. It does not a make a claim to universal validity. It includes what might be called skepticism and relativism, though it avoids diluting such skepticism or relativism by making claims that nothing can be known or that all is relative. Instead this is a theory of freedom that exists as consciousness of itself. This freedom includes a freedom from the need to claim objectivity or universal validity. In this sense the theory is "post-philosophical" or "post-metaphysical." Pragmatism is one of its fathers. It offers itself as a tool constructed from concepts. It understands this tool to likely be of use only to a few who happen to be sufficiently similar to the creator of this tool. The creator of this tool was hugely influenced by thinkers who came before him. Nevertheless he feels (I feel) that the current theory is an especially digestible update of these influences.
The essence of this theory has already been presented on Reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Fichte/comments/69t6n9/freedom_incarnate_creative_misreading_of_the/
Note that this particular post is largely composed of difficult quotes from my influences. Other posts in the Fichte subreddit elucidate, interpret or creatively misread these quotes in terms of the theory that I share as a poem, conceptual art, or tool made of words to be used in unforeseen-by-me ways.
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