Equality in consciousness

1. CaaT Theory

1.1 Manifestation

Agency and will, positioning and referral

Signal transfer and mapping

1.2 Substance

The inherency of consciousness

The live connection

1.3 Deontology

Getting familiar with consciousness

Light and consciousness

2. Evidence

2.1 Consciousness as scrutiny

The test of truth

The test of ownership and control

The test of relevance

2.2 Consciousness as realisation

The realisation of ignorance

The realisation of aloneness

The realisation of impact

2.3 Consciousness as being

The awareness of being

The sentience of being

The language of being

Equality in the mirror reflecting consciousness

Equality in consciousness

The concept of equality has been defended for centuries1 in bids to institute what many believe to be the original, rightful state of the human being in society. Yet, despite the prevalence of such shared, even common belief, not many societies appear to be able to implement equality in day-to-day life.

Hardly a day goes by when the news does not carry a headline showing how we fail to live up to our stated ‘right to equality’.

The following three quotes go some way to illustrate how, since the birth of democracy, there have been consistent irregularities in the implementation of equality as a right, as well as in securing a satisfactory definition of the concept.

Aristotle (384 – 322 BC) –a staunch defender of democracy and equality– said:

Equality consists in the same treatment of similar persons.2

Montesquieu (1689 – 1755), perhaps sullenly, pointed out:

Men are born into equality, but they would not know how to remain in it. Society removes it from them, and they only regain it through the protection provided by laws.3

While Tom Robbins (1932 – 2025) disparagingly told us:

Equality is not in regarding different things similarly, equality is in regarding different things differently.4

With such a variety of opinions, suggestions for redress and vested interests in this conflicting field where politics, society and philosophy appear to remain at odds with each other, there may be scope for both the concept and the reality of consciousness to make inroads and provide clarity about equality.

What I explore and propose in this essay is a theoretical response to what Socrates (c. 470 – 399 BC) states in the Phaedo dialogue:

Then, before we began to see and hear and use the other senses, I presume we must have acquired knowledge of what the equal itself is if we are to refer the equals perceived through the senses to that equal and recognise that everything of this sort endeavours to be like that, but is inferior to it.5

Consciousness is often represented as an unexplainable point of reference for the self from which various interpretations of how humans understand the world around them, the ‘objects’ they cannot perceive but can conceive of, as well as the magnitude of everything that remains to be discovered are designated and apprehended.

The main difficulty in defining consciousness lies in the clear understanding that it may not be witnessed outside of itself, outside of the domain of its own immanence. In other words, consciousness cannot be objectively evidenced.6

But what if consciousness is just a tool? What if it is devoid of personality, ideology, meaning, and only provides sentient beings with the wherewithal to live, carry on in and through the vicissitudes of the life they are allocated? What if consciousness is independent of self, of will, of desires, of perception, and is even distinct from somatic sensing?

What if consciousness is the platform, the operating system on which the modus operandi of a sentient being functions in performing the scope of its needs within the body/mind conglomerate it is physically constituted into? What if it is the environment against which and across which the world operates, endowing all living beings with its mediating and encompassing instrumentality, thanks to which they are able to operate and interact in existence? What if consciousness conceived as a tool constitutes the unerring foundation of equality?

In the following exposition, I will provide a register of observable phenomena and categorised information to substantiate my current theoretical position on the subject of consciousness.7

In outlining this theory and in the first part of the model, I will draw the attributes of consciousness’ Manifestation to then explain its Substance, before showing how humans have grown to derive an operating Deontology from their elusive understanding of consciousness.

In the second part of the essay, I will present the evidence proving and qualifying my theoretical framework by arguing that consciousness may be identified and confirmed as a tool in conditions established through nine separate tests categorised under Scrutiny, Realisation and Being.8

Even though CaaT may be receptive to some analogies and experimentation provided by other theories,9 its aim is to elicit the comprehensive nature of a phenomenon that can simultaneously encompass individual and cross-species relatedness within the common place of existence (the universe) while also drawing perennially from its greater compass as the foundational basis for connected, interrelated cognition in all its forms.10

CaaT does not aim at building on what idealist theories of consciousness (whether realist or metaphysical) explore, and remains focussed on the identification of a standard operating platform or environment that, while far from being encased in any single form or material representation, also distances itself from idealistic conceptions by fulfilling precisely the role of a tool, its specific functionality, its efficient use, and the direct correlation it establishes between its utility and the individual self-user inevitably bound to utilise it to variable levels of dexterity and skill.11

Similarly, I want to distance CaaT from the views advanced by phenomenology and functionalism mainly because their connection to the intrinsic psychological aspects of social and objective (conscious) structures make the link to self what I consider to be a restrictive parameter within which the scope I am outlining for CaaT theory cannot be contained.12 13

As to the particular import of psychological theories of self whether based on their subliminal play on personality and behaviour or their conceived connection to what has been termed the collective unconscious, my theory aims at distancing itself from anything that may be contained and circumscribed by the unprovable ‘self’ formation that exists as a projection and merely descriptive element in the philosophical dialogue, substituting in most instances the individual ‘I’ or ‘you’ required to effect communication and emphasise difference among enquiring humans.

I consider the individuality of the self to be self-evident and, as such, irrelevant in itself to a consciousness all, in one way or another, experience constantly. According to CaaT, consciousness occurs beyond self, and it is this particular characteristic that makes it apt to reflect the concept of equality without bias.14

CaaT Theory

Manifestation

Agency and will, positioning and referral

Consciousness is often linked to the capabilities of ‘agency’ and ‘the will’ which, in most cases, make its definition perilously close to something exclusively human. Neither of these capabilities may be attributed beyond doubt to other sentient beings within the realm of known phenomena.15

Nevertheless, what is clear beyond doubt is that animals, just like humans, benefit from consciousness at every stage in their development as living entities and that, in doing so, they inhabit the same consciousness-based environment humans inhabit.1617

As such, it is reasonable to assume that both agency and will are only interpretive capabilities particular to humans, to the individual human self employing a shared consciousness with other sentient beings as a platform or operating system (a tool) to various individual degrees of capability, skill and fluency.18

Therefore, I propose that the most important influencing design element in the growth, development, and survival common to all animals (humans included) is their reliance on consciousness.

According to CaaT, consciousness19 may be likened to a positioning system providing the universe, and humans more tangibly, location and referral parameters (both mental and physical) with which to navigate existence, and this regardless of circumstances or mental state (awake or asleep, conscious or unconscious).

Signal transfer and mapping

The operation of consciousness is seamless. It is present regardless of human structural awareness of it at the conscious level and works in the individual self as a compliant operating compass within the greater (encompassing) environment of consciousness in constant, apparently extemporaneous transfer, to provide directional ‘mapping’, practical reconnaissance of both mental and physical realities in the individual’s own life and its interactions with other sentient individuals.20

This applies equally to humans and other animals and ultimately means that the consciousness of one individual is interconnected21 at all times with the consciousness of others although not necessarily integrated or assimilated with that of others.22

Consciousness, understood in this way, forms an environment that encompasses all life capable of experiencing and utilising it. Such an environment represents the manifestation of consciousness and requires substantiation.

Substance

The inherency of consciousness

When faced with reality and in the repeated encounter with new circumstances, the consciousness of the individual self engages its referral and positioning mechanisms to recognise, realise and act through the motions of its developing ‘will’ expressed in what we usually term ‘agency’ and other capabilities both mental and physical available to it. This process of engagement and individual action, together with the internal and interactive forms of expression it establishes, is what we call freedom.

Freedom refers to what is embodied by the individual (both consciously and unconsciously) through the use of the tool of consciousness and relies on the synchronised and uninterrupted fulfilment of all the basic life-sustaining activities the individual performs as part of its existence in the congenital cycles triggered by the physical requirements of its body.

Based on this and in its Socratic sense, equality may be considered a direct consequence of such freedom and appears to be coterminous with what most societies today consider to be inalienable rights of the individual.23 24

As such, individual consciousness25 is referenced by the individual self as the signal linking its life to the unidentified (because not directly experienced) origin humans also call ‘consciousness’. Such signal is permanently connected to the sentient individual who is coded from inception to receive it throughout its existence, not just in essence but organically, to optimally support the survival efforts it attempts in living life.26

The live connection

Therefore, consciousness provides a live connection through signalling from its origins to individuals. For the individual, the connection exists in the reflective exchange from its origin into living (mental and physical) matter constituting the individual sentient being.27

The fact that the original source or derivation of consciousness and signalling method is not perceived apart from its outcomes and remains hidden from individual consciousness vouches for the utilitarian nature of consciousness itself. That is, using, realising or becoming aware of consciousness’ existence does not warrant a knowledge, or an understanding of either its origins (the why) or its ontological functionality (the how).

Consciousness may therefore be likened to an operating platform, a tool, whereby life is both allocated to and rendered self-mirroring in the individual self. The signals established between the tool of consciousness and the individual self are reflected on every individual self.28 Individual selves constantly benefit from the use of consciousness understood and represented within CaaT as reflections on consciousness itself.29

This entails that the greater objectivity of consciousness, its origin, reason or the mechanism of its operation (both structural and causative) cannot be comprehended by the individual’s effort to know it theoretically since the individual self’s sole reality is the reflection it experiences in the platform of consciousness and, as such, may only be known in experience.30

To put it graphically, consciousness does not differentiate between body and mind in its reflections. It shows no distinction between the two. Let us consider the picture below and establish the following factors

Sky = Consciousness

Lake and earth = reality in existence

Sky reflected in the lake = awareness

Self = the picture’s perspective

If we now imagine the self (the observer/the ‘I’) standing by the shoreline looking into the lake and being itself reflected in the lake (awareness), we note that in such reflection the self (observer), the lake and the earth (reality), and consciousness (the sky) will be visible or experienced in awareness (the actual reflection on the lake) without for that reason being united with them apart from their unity in the reflection.

Additionally, the self will remain separate from consciousness and from awareness, not being able to know or understand consciousness (sky) yet benefitting from it. It will however still be able to take a dip in the water or walk on the shore of reality (lake and earth).

In this reflection, the self sees itself enclosed by the sky (consciousness), the water and the earth (reality) while being reflected in the lake (awareness or self-consciousness) without for that embodying any of them or understanding them. All come across to the individual self as reflections. The self also experiences the world, and any other sentient beings either on the water, below the surface, or above it, without for that being joined to them apart from appearing in a common reflection.

The self cannot see itself but in reflection, yet the reflection allows it to be conscious of its own reality beyond the reflection, beyond the limits of the lake, the earth supporting it, beyond its agency and will, and even beyond consciousness (the sky).

This fact establishes the proof of the self’s existence beyond all reflection in so far as seeing itself in the reflection and seeing the world as well as consciousness in the reflection, it remains separate from all reflections as it experiences them.31

When the self comes into contact with another sentient being, whatever the contact be like, the reality of existence is only proven in the joined reflections of those coming together on the mirror of consciousness. At no point is the individual self deprived of its own reflection on consciousness. At no point does the individual self merge or converge with another self, with reality or even with its reflection on consciousness. Therefore, the individual self can remain separate while sharing in the same reality the rest of both sentient and inanimate objects partake in.

All these observations, being common and replicable by all sentient beings whether alone or in groups, represent tangible proof that consciousness is an instrument that facilitates existence in reality while confirming the separate individuality of each self beyond it.

Though consciousness may not be understood directly, its workings (experience) can be understood. Realisations born in awareness whereby the mirroring quality of consciousness recognised by the individual allows access to what we call ‘knowledge’, lead to understanding and to outcomes through the operation of the individual self’s capabilities of agency and will.32

Deontology

Getting familiar with consciousness

Because, as far as may be established through experience, life and consciousness are tied to each other from origin in that one appears to be inseparable from the other,33 and because life is something sentient beings cannot do without and perennially strive to keep going, protect, enhance and, if at all possible, better, a basic deontology establishes itself in the expression of life which has as its primary rule the preservation of life itself.

Hegel (1770 – 1831) overlaps ultimate consciousness with truth, which in his writings refers both to the goal of knowledge and, by implication, to the goal of all science.

The goal to be reached is the mind’s insight into what knowing is.34

he says in the Preface to his Phenomenology of Mind. This, he elucidates by stating that:

Consciousness knows something; this something is the essence or is per se. This object, however, is also the per se, the inherent reality, for consciousness. Hence comes ambiguity of this truth. Consciousness, as we see, has now two objects: one is the first per se, the second is the existence for consciousness of this per se.35

Here, Hegel attempts to make progress on Socrates’ ‘fancies’. That is, he endeavours to prove scientifically what Plato (c. 428–423 – 348/347 BC) has Socrates say in the Republic:

In like manner the good may be said to be not only the author of knowledge to all things known, but of their being and essence, and yet the good is not essence, but far exceeds essence in dignity and power.

Glaucon said, with a ludicrous earnestness: By the light of heaven, how amazing!

Yes, I said, and the exaggeration may be set down to you; for you made me utter my fancies.36

Hegel also offers an insight into the functionality of consciousness when he states,

The last object appears at first sight to be merely the reflection of consciousness into itself, i.e. an idea not of an object, but solely of its knowledge of that first object.37

He writes about the mechanism or function of self-reflection and, like Plato, refers such reflection to an idea carrying truth and devoid of its material elements, its sensory accoutrements.38 39

Therefore –and in this CaaT agrees with both Plato and Hegel, even before agency and will are recognised by the individual self, the first reflective act afforded to sentient beings by the instrument of consciousness and engaged by them in experiencing life is what I term ‘the consciousness of being’.

My theory also advocates for a reflective action performed by the self on the mirror-like instrument of consciousness but, distinctly from both Plato and Hegel,40 in CaaT, consciousness is neither part of what is known materially (sensorily), nor is it the idea of truth or its image.

What the CaaT instrument of consciousness reflects on the individual is the individual’s own development based on its personal capabilities of awareness, agency and will and does not constitute truth. Consciousness is only true in as far as it provides a reflective, mirror-like platform for the individual and remains true to what the individual reflects on or off it.41

CaaT proposes that consciousness as a tool is neither an idea or image nor is it part of the self who cogitates. Consciousness is an instrument where the signals I call ‘reflections’ provide the sentient being with a reference to truth and to origin in reflected reality, both mental (thoughts) and material (the phenomenal world), within which the individual self embodies and enacts agency and will.42

Within the scope of its reflections to all and sundry, consciousness enables existent individual self-truth as well as the multitude of truths individuals and societies43 see in their reflections on the instrument of consciousness. In that sense, consciousness may be considered true but not truth itself. CaaT conceives of consciousness as a shared tool or instrument reflective of the individual consciousnesses of all sentient beings.44

Therefore, consciousness of being represents an individualised reflective realisation which gradually (in the fulness of time and according to the cycles of individual growth and decay) constructs the parameters conducive to identifying an individual sense of conscience (a deontology) that, depending on the environment within which the sentient being develops, will advance an understanding of and an affinity towards the rudiments and actions it is required to perform in order to preserve life and, as a consequence, to identify what it calls its truth.45

Accordingly, the individual identification of truth in its reflections on the platform of consciousness make it improbable that equality in lived reality, based on such variety of individual truths, be achieved at the level of group life, since consciousness itself enables an unblocked access (freedom) to the individual reflections of all beings which are bound to and continuously prove to be unequal and often conflictive, making what one may understand as equal quite different from what another understands by it.

The concept of equality inhabits Hegel’s realm of ideas where no direct connection with material proof may be evidenced based on the diverse effects of agency and will, expressed by individuals and societies alike.46

As Hegel puts it:

But, as was already indicated, by that very process the first object is altered; it ceases to be what is per se, and becomes consciously something which is per se only for consciousness.47

Such restrictive applicability of equality in real life –since the awareness that Plato, Hegel as well as Kant’s (1724 – 1804) concept of ‘apperception’48 adduce to is set in the realm of ideas– requires that the concept of consciousness (the old conscience) undertake expansion.49

The concept of consciousness itself requires transformation whereby it may transcend the will and agency of the individual, of individual societies, cultures and traditions, to become encompassing of all. This represents a logical requirement in defining consciousness.

Miguel de Unamuno (1864 – 1936) speaks of this struggle for expansion when he says:

The world is for consciousness. Or, better said, the ‘for’, the notion of purpose and, better still, the sense, this teleological sense, is not born but where consciousness is found. In the end, consciousness and purpose are one and the same thing.50

Interestingly, before the word consciousness came into English language use in the 17^th century,51 Aquinas (c. 1225 – 1274) pre-empted part of its import by defining the idea of conscience in very specific ways. He writes:

Therefore a judge sins if he pronounces sentence according to the evidence but against his conscience of the truth.52

Conscience relates to both an awareness of the individual self and to that of the environment within which it operates. It is no doubt a self-reflection born in self-awareness and the awareness of its surroundings (whether material or mental) and can then be seen to develop through its associations with laws and societal requirements of various types.53

In as far as conscience depends on the awareness and a subsequent, particular behaviour (agency and will) of the individual self, it remains dependent on the reality of existence and, as such, is different from consciousness as posited by CaaT.

Much earlier, yet still within the context of an adherence to Christian values and laws, Augustine (354 – 430 AD) had spoken of conscience as abeyance by God’s law (or Christian truth) and, in the process, helped to define what it was and still is: a reflection against the law that will be transmitted through time and thought until it is exhausted and may be superseded by consciousness. He relates the individual awareness of self and other directly to an unavoidable (and therefore true) accountability before the law. He says,

Assuredly no science of letters can be so innate as the record of conscience, “that he is doing to another what from another he would be loath to suffer.”54

Both Aquinas and Augustine, in referring to “conscience of truth”, and to not “doing to another what from he would be loath to suffer” respectively, are speaking of equality as reflected in their own conscience and attempt to deal with the same problem: the enacting of an ideal or intuited belief/conception into real world behaviour.55

According to CaaT, consciousness is not equivalent to conscience; it is not even equivalent to consciousness of being.56

The first expression of consciousness in sentient beings is the elicitation of a responsibility to preserve the life that arises from the first and foremost conscious recognition that without life no continuity, no existence may be preserved. This follows the essential and inherent recognition of origins in consciousness initiating and persistently promoting life itself. Continuity of life is expressed in life itself through the instrument of consciousness available for recognition and realisation by the individual experiencing them.

The deontology in which humans understand their relationship with life and consciousness takes therefore the form of a conscience intent on, essentially, preserving life and its life-maintaining processes.

But even then, consciousness is only experienced as a reflection. Humans may name it, recognise qualities that arise from its instrumentality, but cannot isolate it from thought, from sense or from being as they can do with other phenomena such as death for example which can be clearly distinguished from life itself.

Light and consciousness

So far, I have stated two inferred facts57 from human experience which are constitutive of consciousness. The first is that consciousness cannot be separated from life. The second is that consciousness can be conceived as a tool linking individual and group realities to their origins through the media of life and of reflective consciousness itself.

Additionally, I want to use a third contingent fact, the phenomenon of ‘light’,58 as an integral part of the human experience of consciousness because it constitutes a reference to origin and positioning for sentient beings which, like consciousness, is not dependent on the individual, but without which no existence,59 awareness, agency or will are possible. In many ways, the search for consciousness is analogous to the search for the origin and nature of light.60 61

Perhaps another of Socrates’ realisations or fancies may prove useful in explaining what I have just stated. Still in the Republic, and in his dialogue with Glaucon, Socrates says:

And what is the organ with which visible things [are seen]?

The sight, he said. …

But you see that without the addition of some other nature there is no seeing or being seen?

How do you mean?

Sight being, as I conceive, in the eyes, and he who has eyes wanting to see; colour being also present in them, still unless there be a third nature specially adapted to the purpose, the owner of the eyes will see nothing and the colours will be invisible.

Of what nature are you speaking?

Of that which you term light, I replied.

True, he said. Noble, then, is the bond which links together sight and visibility, and great beyond other bonds by no small difference of nature, for light is their bond, and light is no ignoble thing?

Nay, he said, the reverse of ignoble.

And which, I said, of the gods in heaven would you say was the lord of this element? Whose is that light which makes the eye to see perfectly and the visible to appear?

You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say.

May not the relation of sight to this deity be described as follows.

How?

Neither sight nor the eye in which sight resides is the sun?

No.

Yet of all the organs of sense the eye is the most like the sun?

By far the most like.

And the power which the eye possesses is a sort of effluence which is dispensed from the sun?

Exactly.

Then the sun is not sight, but the author of sight who is recognized by sight?

True, he said.62

While Socrates evidences the third element enabling the individual self’s sight function and clearly establishes the separate nature of the one who sees, his sight, and the source of light in the sun, he also uncovers the realisation that all three remain interdependent in achieving the result of vision. “The bond which links together sight and visibility” make it an instrument, a tool providing for both these functions yet not being either of them. Nor is the tool itself defined by the individuals without whom the consciousness of it, of light, wouldn’t be achievable.

CaaT argues that life, consciousness, and light constitute the essential and integrated tool whereby the individual self experiences consciousness through its capability of awareness and puts to use its individual reflections on consciousness through the capabilities of agency and will.63 The individual cannot influence or alter consciousness in as much as it cannot alter life or light, yet without their integrated mediation, the individual cannot exist, let alone experience consciousness.

What Descartes (1596 – 1650) and Locke (1632 – 1704)64 proposed are themselves reflections on the platform of consciousness attempting a definition of what the individual self is able to realise. Such perceptions are both true and real yet, although part of consciousness, they cannot be deemed consciousness in themselves.

René Descartes says,

By the word thought I understand all that of which we are conscious as operating in us. And that is why not alone understanding, willing, imagining, but also feeling, are here the same thing as thought.65

John Locke says,

Self depends on consciousness.—Self is that conscious thinking thing (whatever substance made up of, whether spiritual or material, simple or compounded, it matters not) which is sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends.66

Neither Descartes nor Locke, in hinting at self-reflection, seem to be able to surpass the limits of the human individual or attempt considering consciousness a phenomenon outside themselves that may allow for the expansion of the concept of consciousness itself.67

This struggle with the concept of self, with the boundaries thinkers submit to of their own agency and volition, lasts until the twentieth century when the notion of consciousness stretches itself through metaphor68 to overcome what Unamuno also pointed to but was only able to grasp in what he calls the ‘sentirse’ or ‘sensing oneself’ and which, while arguing against Descartes and praising Spinoza, he posits by raising very relevant questions:

The consciousness of thinking, will it not be, first and foremost, consciousness of being? Is pure thought, without consciousness of self, without personality, possible? Is pure knowledge conceivable without feeling, without the materiality that sentiment allows it? Isn’t thought felt, while, at the same time, one feels oneself, knows and loves oneself?69

Husserl (1859 – 1938),70 James (1842 – 1910)71 and Durkheim (1858 – 1917)72 formulate what gives a stretched and more fluid meaning to consciousness.73 Consciousness gradually becomes a stream-like phenomenon in the minds of thinkers, something which is now objectified, a phenomenon which finds expression in the individual mind, but that, mainly because of its intractability, appears to transcend the self and, effectively, turns a philosophical corner in Western thought bringing into the analysis implications that coincide with processes identified by earlier, culturally and geographically distant philosophies,74 but which also help the process of characterising consciousness as a universal or cosmic phenomenon rather than a purely individual one.

CaaT benefits from the plethora of introspection and analysis that has brought the 21^st century thinker to refer to consciousness as a shared realm of awareness between the individual self and the world or universe containing it. But how can CaaT (consciousness as a tool) be demonstrated?

My theory is based on three evidence-based factors which I classify as ‘consciousness as scrutiny’, ‘consciousness as realisation’, and ‘consciousness as being’ and which I will attempt to describe and exemplify in the next part of this essay through nine separate tests.

Evidence

Consciousness as scrutiny

The test of truth

So far, I have established the nature of consciousness within CaaT as an environment, a tool that in combining with the phenomena of light and life stretches from its origins and offers the individual self a mirror-like reflective experience allowing it to recognise its personal foundational capabilities of awareness, agency and will. These capabilities, in turn, secure for the individual self a reflective, recurrent and therefore trustworthy referencing mechanism to origin and to truth as expressed and repeatedly corroborated in the shared reality of the world humans, together with other sentient beings, inhabit.

Consciousness, life and light are not visible or distinguishable from the objects they reveal and capabilities they enable in sentient beings. Their ontological nature remains unknown to humans and may be attributed to various divergent sources through speculative explanations or theoretical narratives. Whatever explanation one may consider, it is not inaccurate to label their combined or independent provenances as ‘origins’ since their interaction and support of living organisms persists throughout the totality of human experience, including after the experience of death in others.75

As a consequence, consciousness, life and light are themselves proofs of as yet unidentified origin and of separateness from what the sentient being, in its materiality as an organism constitutes.

Therefore, the tests of their operation and utility to humans are bound to transcend the human and must perforce belong to a separate agency which nature humans can only imagine, guess at or conjecture.

The first encounter with consciousness is a continuous task of recalibration undertaken by the individual and carried out in recognition of awareness before the magnitude of all that it is not,76 that which remains separate from the individual self. Consciousness provides the platform where awareness is reflected onto the individual self who also sees reflected in consciousness the reality of the plural other (whether sentient or not).

In so far as such an awareness recognises and then accepts a reality of objects and conditions that cannot be tied directly to, controlled or regulated by the self experiencing them, this test of consciousness represents the first piece of CaaT evidence available to us.77

The proof of consciousness’ inerrancy is therefore affirmed in the waking state, during sleep and, perhaps most significantly, in the acts of moving from one to the other, from sleep into a waking state and from waking state into sleep, both of which require adjusting to realities (recalibration) only the use of consciousness can grant to the self.78 79

In all these circumstances, neither the awareness proper to the self nor the actuality or not of the objects and conditions being experienced may themselves be considered part of consciousness itself –they remain separate– and, because of this, need to be deemed tangible evidence of their truth in reality.

It is in the recognition of the consciousness environment on which the actions of the individual self are reflected where rests the test of truth (reality being recognised) and therefore where the proof of both a permanently present consciousness and the self there being reflected are evidenced.

The engagement of the individual self in recognising all that is reflected systematically on the platform of consciousness80 and its subsequent adaptation to further engagement through the capabilities of agency and will in what eventually become conscious mental processes that are optional and much more open to self-control, represent actual proofs of consciousness as a tool, its reality, as well as the first test of coherence with the world all sentient beings experience.

That is, in accepting and engaging with the platform of consciousness and the recognition it makes available to individuals through its reflections in the display of its universal mirroring, sentient beings achieve integration with the perceived world we call reality as well as coherence and congruence with the perception of others who equally benefit, regardless of the degree of development of their individual capabilities, from universal, consciousness-reflected actuality.

This instance of recognition, common to all sentient beings, is primary to the essence of self and precedes any realisation of self while still being experienced by the existing self. It represents the indirect or mediated connection (because reflected) between the individual self and that which, in consciousness, carries light and life.

Such connection can be called the individual self’s bond of scrutiny directly coupled to origin, to whatever produces, activates and enables the consciousness platform, procures life and light through reflection for the benefit of sentient beings.81

In reflecting evidence and truth, in the actuality of its recurrent reflections,82 in enabling such mediated connection between origin and all individuals, the consciousness platform also allows sentient beings, perhaps principally, to recalibrate repeatedly,83 to consciously recognise the individual coordinates that allow all sentient beings to find coherence, congruence, and enablement within the plurality of a shared reality. In CaaT theory, I term the recalibration phenomenon ‘scrutiny’.84

Therefore, the evidence of both known and unknown vastness or multiplicity the instrument of consciousness allows sentient beings to access perpetually in the act of scrutiny constitutes proof of truth for the individual as well as proof of truth of the derivation where consciousness originates (whatever its nature) while also enabling the consciousness of self and the capacities of ownership and control to develop and be used from a position where the individual can navigate its agency and will in existence.85

The test of ownership and control

In recognising a live signal between origin (consciousness, life and light) and self, the connection-enabling capability of agency and control provided by the reflective reality of consciousness in light-filled, living existence enables the individual self to test its will, a principal capability that together with awareness and agency becomes defining of behaviour and action within existence.

The individual self, after recognising in the act of scrutiny the magnitude of all that escapes its awareness, turns onto itself and revels in the freedom agency and will offer it.86 87

The test of ownership and control is evidenced in the recognition of the magnitude of existence as witnessed and acknowledged in the reflective mirroring of consciousness. Such recognition allows the individual self88 to go forward to exercise active capabilities (agency and will) delivering tangible results in terms of achievable objects and conditions.

The evidence the individual self requires, though already present in the organic cycles it benefits from spontaneously and independently from birth, requires little use of focussed awareness on its survival cycles, which allows the self to concentrate on whatever its environment has presented it with for use by its capabilities of agency and will.89

For example, a cat living in a human home environment will show a particular type of time awareness related to the serving of food while also showing clear signs of agency in meowing reminders aimed at its owners at or ahead of meal times, and indications of its will by engaging intently in bursts of activity any time a familiar feeder individual walks or gets up from the sofa at a time coinciding with one of its feeding periods.90

Such behaviour, not limited to instances when food is the main object of focus or purpose, constitutes definite proof confirming both the capabilities of the self as well as the reflective nature of a shared platform where the play of synchronic consciousness reflections available to all sentient beings are evidenced.91

It is in the evidencing of such shared consciousness among sentient beings that the third test of scrutiny becomes relevant.

The test of relevance

Relevance to others is a shared capability made patent and available through what the platform of consciousness provides to all sentient beings.92

It is because of the ability of individual selves to interact coherently (whether in harmony or conflict) with each other in the situations their individual reflections on consciousness allow them to do so that I can correlate here further evidence for CaaT theory.93

The proof of such congruent interaction where meaning is exacted from the interchanges between two or more individual sentient selves is evidenced in the relationships established between reflective causes and actual effects. Causality triggers individual interpretations of the shared or conflicting reflections of the individuals involved making possible derived consequences in experience that help characterise the individual’s behaviour94 and are conducive, in the large majority of cases, to the gathering together of groups, families, societies, as well as the enablement of all sorts of social interaction.95

The evidence resides in agency and will yielding results that may or may not be optimal according to the intent of the individual self initiating them but that, irrespective of success or failure, do generate outcomes that may be used by the sentient self, first of all, to confirm the accuracy of consciousness in delivering access to the other (whether objects, other sentient beings, or conditions), and secondly, to allow for the potentiality of success in achieving agency-led, wilful activities on the part of the individual in conditions where the individual is not alone, and therefore, where its pre-eminence may not be guaranteed.96

The self who originally experienced the recognition available to it in the first test of consciousness (scrutiny), now finds that the same consciousness reflection is available in environments where the plurality of what cannot be solely measured, owned or controlled by itself may be experienced first-hand.97

The principal, self-based capabilities whereby consciousness is put to use in existence have therefore been identified as awareness, agency, and will, and they have been related directly to the origin-given tools (life and light) co-forming the platform or environment we call consciousness where individual selves are able to witness the source and scope of their own freedom to act, as well as that equal freedom being enabled in others such as themselves.

I can deduce from the evidence available through the above three tests of scrutiny that, based on CaaT theory, equality is neither dependent on the individual self nor on groups of individuals but emanates and is thereafter enabled in all individuals at the point where awareness of both self and other is scrutinised by each individual’s recognition of the reflective consciousness that confirms the truth of their existence in the reality being experienced. As such, I also deduce that equality is a true, real and inalienable property of each individual self evidenced in consciousness.

I look hereafter at consciousness as reflected realisation.

Consciousness as realisation

The realisation of ignorance

The principal expression of what may be defined as a constantly renewed encounter with the instrument of consciousness is realisation. Realisation implies, first of all, discovering (or uncovering) what was always there, available but not accessed, or accessed unconsciously. That is, the uncovering of consciousness’ mirrored reflection and its recognition as ‘reality in existence’.98

Realisation is therefore both the integration of consciousness, life and light, their completion as physical reality in existence as well as the recognition of consciousness’ derived and acquired knowledge.

When consciousness, agency and will are stimulated in the individual self at the conscious level and put to use within existence, the faculty of realisation unveils three major aspects the tool of consciousness reflects which are used together to enable coherence with reality as well as congruent interaction with other individuals.

The realisation of ignorance is pre-eminent among these. It is the clear understanding that, faced with what consciousness enables the sentient being to discover, recognise and know, comes an overwhelming and simultaneous realisation of the magnitude of whatever is not known that may only be truly realised in an act of inevitable acceptance of the relative smallness of the individual self discovering this, as well as in the approximate nature of the knowledge of whatever it realises.

To understand the pivotal importance of this realisation, it is helpful to look into what the discoveries of quantum physics have allowed us to understand in terms of consciousness.

Eugene P. Wigner (1902 – 1995) explains:

All that quantum mechanics purports to provide are probability connections between subsequent impressions (also called “apperceptions”) of the consciousness, and even though the dividing line between the observer, whose consciousness is being affected, and the observed physical object can be shifted towards the one or the other to a considerable degree, it cannot be eliminated.99100

The ‘coming to the fore of consciousness’ as Wigner puts it, gave way to Werner Heisenberg (1901 – 1976) measuring the position and momentum of electrons and uncovering in 1927 what he called the ‘Principle of Indeterminism’101 which has led to what we know as the Uncertainty Principle of Quantum Mechanics. The uncertainty principle tells us that, as far as observation is concerned, measurement (or precision knowledge acquisition) creates trade-offs. The more clarity that is achieved in certain areas of observation, the less knowledge is available in other areas.102 103

With time, the magnitude of what is not known, rather than decrease, increases all around, and, if the individual self continues to be honest with itself about what it experiences through consciousness in scrutiny and in the use of its capabilities of agency and will while engaging in the changing reality of both its physical and mental surroundings, such magnitude will continue to grow larger till the day of its death.104 105

With the recognition of magnitude comes the realisation of ignorance and lack of accurate, complete or fully relevant knowledge about most things surrounding the self, and even about the majority of those pertaining to the individual self itself. Reality is approached through approximation in the use of both mental and sensory capabilities.106

Awareness is the first result of the realisation of consciousness. It opens the door of knowledge and understanding for the individual self who will necessarily recognise (consciously and unconsciously) the magnitude of its ignorance and the relative relevance of its smallness in the reality of existence and what makes it possible for it to engage with it.107

At this initial level of interaction with existence, equality among individual selves is perhaps more evident. Individual capabilities are therefore triggered, and, in CaaT theory, all individual selves have access to the same tool (consciousness) and benefit from the same supporting nature (life and light).

With this realisation comes another self-defining realisation, that of self itself.

The realisation of aloneness

The individual self, in realising its relative smallness within the magnitude of what is not known, realises simultaneously its referencing of all that is known. That is the place wherefrom consciousness is experienced, and ignorance is accepted as an obvious part of reality.

Such dual referencing isolates individuality and separates self from the rest. Crucially, it is also the space of aloneness where the individual starts to differentiate in the mirrored reflection provided by consciousness what is of self and what is not, what agency and will are able to utilise in distinguishing it from what cannot be accessed by the capabilities of the individual self.

Evidence of self is harder to come by than evidence for consciousness itself because, even though the self is the receiver and user of consciousness’ reflections, its mental formation is inexistent outside itself. It cannot be viewed, touched or heard and may only be interpreted.

Representations (reflections) of the self, including the physical self, are easier to formulate, recognise and communicate than actual, real, complete selves, living, sentient individuals who exist and operate according to their own understanding and capabilities and remain unknowable to a very large extent.108

What Henri Bergson (1859 – 1941) states in his An Introduction to Metaphysics becomes relevant here:

… whilst empiricism, weary of the struggle, ends by declaring that there is nothing else but the multiplicity of psychical states, rationalism persists in affirming the unity of the person.109

Nevertheless, when considering the reflective function of consciousness I have been describing in CaaT theory, it is possible, using the mirror metaphor, to point to the self that realises itself to be alone and therefore separate from the rest of existence.

The tool of consciousness is reflective because it operates like a mirror. It includes the revelatory nature of light which makes objects and selves available for perception by the organs of self and others. It also includes the movement of sentient life that tangibly reveals both the autonomy and action of the self as body. Thirdly, it includes the capability for recognition of a physical, tangible consciousness in so far as the combination of light, action/movement, and synchronised mental awareness, agency and will, are perceivable through the interaction of the three in both the individual self and the selves of others.

Further, the reflective quality of consciousness operates to mirror such synchronicity between body and mind, between self and other without intervening with meaning, without altering the disposition, presentation, intensity, and without interpreting the agency of the self or selves interacting with their reflections.

Just like a mirror that provides a reflected image but does not convey meaning, consciousness allows for total, accurate reflection, for a true, actual and therefore real rendition of the self without attaching any meaning to it and leaving sense and interpretation completely to the individual self or selves.

Equality too, may be seen as evidencing itself in the mirrored reflection of consciousness where it can only be true and identical to all who benefit from consciousness.

In as far as I cannot identify any other mechanism, being or element in existence, or any individual self that may be experienced on a constant basis as unbiased, equal, and as reliable in its reflections of reality in existence, the realisation of ignorance and the derived realisation of self in aloneness may be considered evidenced in the very act of realisation and, of course, in its acknowledgment by and interaction with other individual selves.

The split between self and other caused by the realisation aloneness prompts in awareness, the realisation of individual independence and conscious agency and will by the individual self together with the uncertainty ‘the other’ introduces into the shared reality of existence,110 bring about the first major obstacle to a realistic experience of equality. Equality now appears to be questionable and possibly negated by the multiple instances of individual, self-contained capabilities of agency and will, sharing a vastly differentiated and unknown realm of existence.

This brings me to the final realisation of consciousness as realisation of impact.

The realisation of impact

In finding interaction in reality and recognising the multiplicity of other individual selves, the individual consciousness that mediated knowledge of the magnitude of what is both known and unknown and comes to terms with aloneness, now moves to make an impact. It sets boundaries that clearly reference and claim pre-eminence in awareness, in the self-directed capability of agency, and the will to interact with whatever it encounters in existence.

Each encounter with new conditions, with others, reinforces the sense of individuality and self as well as enhances the scope of agency and will within its existence.

The reflection and effectiveness in the use of consciousness then enters the cycle where learning and maintenance, where decay,111 not just continuous growth, take place and the individual self is required –mostly through trial and error– to handle the tool of consciousness, its reflections, with greater attention, ensuring that its use of it is effective, encompassing of self and other, as well as reflecting accurately within an existence now persistently and heavily affected by agency and will of self and others.112

The clarity of reflection enabled by consciousness in the individual self can only be maintained through its repeated renewal of the realisation of ignorance as a recalibrated, day-by-day, minute-by-minute recognition of the reality the individual self inhabits.113 This renewed realisation allows for a clean mirrored reflexion with which the individual self maintains clarity and accuracy in its interactions with self and others, addressing and, if necessary, eliminating in the process whatever may become obstructing of its capabilities of awareness, agency and will.114

Simultaneously, the mechanism of constant referral back to the mirror of consciousness in the reality it experiences, enables and maintains synchronicity with origins through persistent recognition of its smallness115 and ignorance factors, allowing for an unconstrained, continuous reflection that may only be marred by the individual self’s increasing focus on its own capabilities of agency and will.116

A necessary distortion of what was equal in consciousness and first awareness takes place when the reality derived from the individual self’s failure to keep the recurring capabilities of awareness, agency and will continuously recalibrated occurs. This taints the reflections on the mirror of consciousness interpreted by the individual self and constitutes the evidence of impact of consciousness used by different individuals more or less able to keep to the truth and reality of equality in consciousness through their capabilities of agency and will.

The practicalities involved in securing successful interactions with other selves is what confirms the truth of being in reality and leads me to the last set of tests.

Consciousness as being

The awareness of being

Being is the state that enjoys a free –not interfered with– access to the mirror of consciousness which in its reflective nature allows for the recognition and realisation of its existence. Initially, being is the untainted conscious reflection of truth, the reality of the state of being. It does not depend on the involvement of agency or will and receives the benefit of realisation in a reality that persistently validates light and life.117

The state of being, the consciousness of being, is not confined to that initial realisation and remains available to the individual self and its experiences throughout life in existence. It constitutes an affirmation of what is of reality, as well as of the latent capabilities of agency and will that are engaged ensuing its recognition by and realisation of the individual self.118

The evidence of its truth and existence in reality, of being, may be drawn from the fact that it is the composite of what the individual self experiences and persistently accepts as the basis for all its mental and physical expression in the world and what it also expects of others like itself. The consciousness of being marks the point of consistent return where the individual self finds basis for both purpose and meaning.

In being too, CaaT proposes equality to be fully accessible since the consciousness of being refers to a state of potentiality available to all sentient beings where no impact by any of the multifarious individual agencies or wills is as yet expressed and may not therefore impact self or other.

The sentience of being

Sentience is the capacity developed by the individual self after awareness in pure cognition of being has taken root in its mental and physical processes. It denotes and takes reference from existence and everything that exists, while also allowing for the relational connections between all the existences awareness makes apparent. Sentience is the realisation of being in existence.

Practically, sentience opens the way for the definition of purpose in the individual self and, with it, the building of its mental faculties in direct relationship with its physical attributes.119 120

Therefore, recognition (the reflected signal) comes first, realisation (the awakening of individual self-awareness) next, to which follows the sentient notion of being associated with both recognition and realisation, all of which are understood within CaaT as detecting the mirrored-reflection of consciousness, light and life on the purpose-defining individual self in an instantaneous and ongoing process that continues throughout its existence.121 122

The immense number of individualised outcomes of reflective consciousness and their interactions with other individualised outcomes, suggests that the scope for actual equality taking place is thereby further restricted.123

As such, equality needs to be explained, agreed on and implemented in the communities of individual selves. In so far as this requires all individuals within such communities to abide by it in order to be real, equality itself must acquire a meaning beyond whatever may have been realised by the individual self’s reflection on consciousness. This imposes the need for communication. The individual self, by now, needs to work out a way or accept an existing way to describe its own experiences to both self and other, which in turn gives way to the inception of language.124

The language of being

The material evidencing of such mirrored-reflected consciousness and its basis on consciousness, light and life into purpose (both species-defined and personality-driven) triggers mechanisms that allow the individual self to find expression for its experience both mentally in the form of thought formations, and in the form of physical actions that, in many cases will come to affect or influence the behaviour and actions of others around it.125

The nature of the language the individual self develops to engage with and enable its agency and will in others is akin to that of the cat who knows of and enjoys being patted and signals the human patting it to continue when the human happens to stop doing so. It will gently place its paw on the human’s leg or arm and look intently into his/her eyes to convey the meaning that ‘it wills’ the stroking to continue.126

When I say that the cat responds, albeit unwittingly, to a human’s request to sit down or call out its name for attention, or else to stop it from doing something by saying the word ‘no’, should I assume that the cat actually understands such language as humans understand it? The language used is devoid of conceptual meaning in such situations, it is only ‘understood’ by the animal within the context of such particular situations the human and the cat share in those specific instances. It is equivalent to the human taking physical action to make the cat sit down, look towards him, or physically stop it from doing something.127

Similarly, consciousness, awareness, recognition, realisation, ignorance, aloneness, being, sentience and language have no other meaning in experience but the experiences themselves, and, as experiences, they benefit from the signals reflected in the mirror of consciousness to enable the individual self to position itself, become aware and gain access to its agency and will. Agency and will then, expressed as purpose and meaning, develop a language facilitating interaction with the other.128

Equality in the mirror reflecting consciousness

I have established that consciousness itself, as a tool, does not reflect meaning. The language developed by the individual self attempts to provide a meaning that will advance its main purpose: the preservation of life and the actualisation of its ever-increasing experiential knowledge.129 Such language130 represents the expression of meaning which works towards the proliferation of life in contact with others, not just its preservation.131 It then reaches further towards permutation132 as the individual self recognises, realises and embodies the limiting factors affecting its existence such as ‘the other’, decay, illness and death.133

Existence is characterised by organic needs and optional or aleatory ones, yet the by now accepted advent of an end to life in death demonstrated in the death of others around the individual self, provokes an inversion, a permutation, whereby the acute organic needs of the individual self turn from ‘body first’ prerogative to ‘consciousness first’ inevitability.134

This permutation to ‘consciousness first’ inevitability is defined by the duality of life and death and the sole possible connection between the two offered by the tool of consciousness. Therefore, what the individual self will let go of last before death is its consciousness of being in awareness, the same one it first realised and it has been reflecting on throughout its life.135

The individual self returns to the equality it experienced equally with all other sentient beings in its first connection with life, light and consciousness by focussing its awareness on consciousness at the point of death.

The mirror of consciousness itself is not existence, but existence cannot escape its reflections. The essential part of its operation in what regards sentient beings, its reflections, is embodied by sentient beings through the triple action of consciousness, light, and life, all of which are apportioned to the individual self before birth.136

The mirror represents an appropriate metaphor to construct CaaT theory on and to describe consciousness because of the following facts:

- consciousness reflects light.137

- consciousness confirms life in the movement of its live reflections.

- consciousness encompasses the consciousness of self and other.

- consciousness is objective, not discriminating between self and other in tendering its reflections.

- Its objectivity is proven in that sentient beings disregard most consciousness’ reflections immediately after new reflections are experienced, prompting constant recalibration in the individual self.138

- consciousness does not reflect meaning. It provides accurate synchronicity with the individual self and others in its unobstructed reflections.

- consciousness does not allow for direct knowledge or experience of its origins, it is ‘non-influencing’. It allows total freedom of interpretation by sentient beings in what is experienced in its reflections.

- consciousness is embodied by all without exception from birth to death (perhaps longer).

- consciousness is available and in use constantly throughout life, both in conscious and unconscious states.

- consciousness constitutes the only unmediated (by self or other) reflection of origin.

Whether through awareness, agency or will, consciousness as a tool, its mirror-like reflections provide self and other constant access to origin, to gauging the reality of equality in their life experiences.

Seen in that light, consciousness is both perennial and unavoidable, persistent and recurring, essential to life, to awareness and to knowledge, encompassing and equal to all who benefit from its reflections.

Consciousness does not differentiate between body and mind in its live reflections. It purports and shows no attachment. The closest the self can get to proving its existence beyond reflection in consciousness is through the experience of contact with the other (sentient or not). This is done repeatedly from conception, through food ingestion, through self-awareness, through proximity, affection, reproduction, and even through instances of illness, harm and death.

CaaT states that equality is known by all in consciousness because it reflects equally all individual selves. Equality is not a deduction or an idea, it is Socrates’ ‘presumption of acquired knowledge’,139 a basic truth on which the individual self is reflected both as a living image of what it itself is and as the cogitations of what it reasons to be.140

The individual self according to CaaT is the live, imaged reflection of its reality in consciousness.

© [2025] [Enrique Martinez Esteve]. All rights reserved.

Footnotes:

© [2025] [Enrique Martinez Esteve]. All rights reserved.

140

Socrates was right in so far as the image of equality is represented as an idea in the individual self’s understanding of it, if by this he meant that ‘the equal’ is not just an idea, but the principle on which the tool of universal consciousness -the mirror of consciousness- constitutes an environment built for the embodiment and realisation of individual and communal existence. Hegel’s observation about the ‘ambiguity of this truth’ (Ibid, Hegel, 1961, p. 142.) is also correct in so far as a reflection is not the truth yet reflects the truth apparently, and the reality of such duality may therefore appear to be ambiguous. Sentient beings, together with both Socrates and Hegel, look at the reflection of a cloud’s silhouette or idea (in the sky of consciousness), they observe its shadow cast by the light of consciousness reflected on the lake of awareness and tainted by the angle of the self perspective (the self or ‘I’) of their respective individual selves. Humans understand equality in consciousness’ reflections and experience it, while also experiencing it as a moving shadow (or idea) they cannot really know or put to use apart from its live reflection in experience. As such ideas do not belong to consciousness itself but exist as cloud-like, passing, language-bound impressions (reflections) of the individual self’s cogitations. I describe ideas as shadows because no idea can be said or assumed to convey or mean the same to any two individual selves since they exist as representations or concatenations of solely mental forms evidencing no unmediated correspondence to physical reality. Also, because ideas are time (when conceived) and language limited (when expressed) and therefore cannot represent truth or reality to all equally. An idea may also be represented as the shadow of a bird perched on a branch projected on the wall of a room through a glass windowpane. It is the result of light’s projection onto the tree branch, the bird, and the glass and is therefore twice removed (with both the bird’s body and the glass forming its shape) from the reality of the bird itself. The idea of the bird seen on the wall is a deformed and discoloured silhouette, amplified or diminished by the reflection on the individual self’s mental glass, constantly subject to the impermanent effects of time (sunlight’s angle of projection) and to the language it is then interpreted or rationalised into by the self.

Perhaps what Zhuangzi (369 – 286 BC) describes as the dream of a butterfly in Chapter 14 of [qiwulun]《齊物論》which translates as ‘On the equality of all things’ or ‘The Adjustment of Controversies’, while generally interpreted as denoting the process of《化》[hua] ‘transformation’, may help us understand how reflections on the platform of consciousness, though available equally to all individual selves, do reflect in varied ways on different individuals and even in distinct forms on the same individual self. Zhuangzi writes: “In the past, Zhuang Zhou [Zhuangzi’s formal name] dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly vividly flying about, at one with its own aspirations! It did not know it was Zhou. Suddenly, he woke up astonished, realising he was Zhou. He did not know … had he, in Zhou’s dream, become a butterfly, or had it, in the butterfly’s dream, turned into Zhou? There must be a distinction between Zhou and the butterfly. This is what we call transformation.” My translation of 《昔者莊周夢為胡蝶，栩栩然胡蝶也，自喻適志與！不知周也。俄然覺，則蘧蘧然周也。不知周之夢為胡蝶與，胡蝶之夢為周與？周與胡蝶，則必有分矣。此之謂物化。》https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/adjustment-of-controversies

In Chapter 1 of [qiushui]《秋水 》The Floods of Autumn, Zhuangzi also writes: “Then, the river god said to himself with joy and in celebration, ‘by this I see that the beauty of all under heaven stands exhausted in me’. He then flowed eastwards arriving at the North Sea and, looking towards the East yet not able to discern where its waters commenced, he started turning his face around looking at the ocean and exclaimed in praise: ‘the common adage goes: “having heard the 100 doctrines, no one compares with me”, this can be said of me.’” My translation of 《於是焉河伯欣然自喜，以天下之美為盡在己。順流而東行，至於北海，東面而視，不見水端，於是焉河伯始旋其面目，望洋向若而歎，曰：「野語有之曰『聞道百，以為莫己若』者，我之謂也。」》https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/floods-of-autumn

Zhuang uses the river god [HeBo]《河伯》to highlight the magnificence of what is known, the importance of realising our ignorance of what we obviously do not know, and the crucial acknowledgment of the individual self’s diminutive position in our live reflections on consciousness.

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Leave a comment

Share My GloB

Knots and dots ... A Book of 101 Poems

Read more

Such lack of understanding and the subsequent absence of belief (belief cannot arise, least of all prevail, without some form of understanding underlying it) leads to questioning the very basis of it all: God’s agency in our lives and, as a consequence (we can only claim to understand with any sense of certainty what is closest to us), His position in the universe.

This situation, as we rely more and more on ourselves as agents of our own destiny and happiness/well-being, is deplorable, pitiful indeed because it tends to remove any possibility of approaching God in the original form of the creation He set up for us.

Humanity, in the clear lack of evolution it demonstrates through failed millennia of recorded history delivering a persistent state of strife, conflict, outright war, and destruction of the very life that allows it to be, appears, for the most part, to fail to understand that understanding God does not equal understanding Him directly in the way we understand ourselves and, to a limited extent, others, but understanding rather that there is an inevitable prime of place for God in our universe, and in the world we live in.

The well-known, seminal biblical story of Adam and Eve highlights the importance of such a realisation and conveys succinctly the consequent understanding, that, despite of all our gradually acquired sense of supremacy over the earth and life in general, we must give ourselves the logical opportunity to know the invisible God that creates and sustains all, and that such knowledge is achieved through the medium of faith.

It is both knowledge and faith that are crucial to understanding God logically and necessarily.

Going back to the beginning of the Bible storyline and to the events which we can recognise most readily, to the creation of humanity in the persons of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we note that the lack of belief, the dearth of faith prevalent in humanity automatically erases the validity of that story in most minds and relegates it to the status of myth, and with that, to being just another tale we are barely willing to consider.

This also implies that, if we admit to the facts outlined in the creation of Adam and Eve being the original ancestors of humanity as a possibility, Adam and Eve themselves must have had, as fully formed humans like you and I, the capacity for discernment, for distinguishing between what is of God and what is not of God within the Bible story, or else, God would not have commanded them not to eat of the fruit found in the forbidden tree.

The story of humanity according to the Bible then hinges on the ensuing events which take place in the account of Genesis 3 and lead humans to make the wrong choice and become confused after disobeying God’s command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and, as a consequence, falling from the Grace of God’s presence.

Share My GloB

Some say that Adam and Eve already had the capacity for true moral discernment before the Fall and that this must account for knowledge of some kind. Also, that such ability represents the agency we still possess today as humans: making choices, disobeying commands, making our own way through life.

Others say that in God pointing out to them they should not eat from the fruit of that particular tree, He stimulated a sense of curiosity in them that led them to openly listen to Satan’s (the snake in the Garden) claims which opposed what God had said to them and implied that God was lying to them, when Satan himself was the one lying.

Regardless of whether we agree or disagree with the above opinions, it is clear that what both Adam and Eve lacked was not knowledge but faith in God. And this too is the current state of affairs in the world. Ordinarily, faith in God takes second or third place in human priorities while the satisfaction of desires very much comparable to those represented by the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden take an overwhelming precedence in our activities, thought processes, attention, time and energy.

Had they obeyed God, the current state of affairs in the world may have been averted, though we cannot rule out Satan persevering in his attempts to derail God’s plans.

But Adam and Eve succumbed in their state of innocence and gullibility the moment Satan suggested that the fruit would make them see all things and live like God does, knowing good and evil. Honestly, I cannot say I would not have myself been tempted.

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”

² And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; ³ but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ”

⁴ Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. ⁵ For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Genesis 3:1-5

So, it appears that despite having sufficient presence of mind and knowledge of their own agency, Adam and Eve still managed to get it wrong and lead us, together with them into the toil and terrors of human existence outside Eden.

Carl Jung’s famous assertion,

I don’t need to believe, I know. 1

And his subsequent explanation of why he was lured into expressing such belief mirrors the seminal encounter between Eve and Satan in the Garden of Eden.

Jung said subsequently,

Mr Freeman in his characteristic manner fired the question… at me in a somewhat surprising way, so that I was perplexed and had to say the next thing which came into my mind. 2

I suggest that ‘the next thing which came into Jung’s mind’ when prompted by ‘the devil’ interviewer Mr Freeman, was just what the knowledge of good and evil allows us to infer, believe and then assert repeatedly to our own demise, something we have acquired in opposition and disobedience to God’s will.

Although Jung then tries to explain and defend himself and his original statement cleverly, the act and his knowledge had by then lost all its lustre. He said,

All that I have learned has led me step by step to an unshakable conviction of the existence of God. I only believe in what I know. And that eliminates believing. Therefore I do not take his existence on belief – I know that he exists. 3

A statement that pulls Jung back into the same realm of ignorance and full dependence on God through faith to which I pointed to at the beginning of this essay and within which we all uncomfortably reside: ‘belief cannot arise, least of all prevail, without some form of understanding underlying it’.

But this newly acquired knowledge of good and evil which is so patently present in our lives today still does not allow a sizeable number of humans to understand God. In fact, it may be argued that it continuously increases our separation from God very much to Satan’s satisfaction. What this god-like knowledge does instead, is stop us from understanding, because of the confusion and self-centeredness it creates about what God really did in creation, and more particularly in His creation of us humans.

What we fail to understand is that the fact that Adam and Eve already had moral knowledge sufficient to make a choice, believe Satan instead of God, and err, simultaneously reveals the magnitude of God’s creation of humans in His image.

Doesn't acknowledging that humans, when first created, had a capacity to distinguish and choose (although they did not fully understand the consequences despite the real and clearly stated threat of death), make God's creation of humans an even greater, even more magnanimous event when understood in this way?

Doesn't the fact that they (Adam and Eve) were able to know God’s presence in the Garden, hear Him and communicate with Him, that they knew and, like Jung, apparently did not need to believe, don’t all these premises make God God, and His creation unique and beyond human simulation/recreation/knowledge?

Doesn't this prove that knowledge is not sufficient to ‘get it right’ and that faith, sustained belief in and dependence on God are, by far, superior to knowledge per se?

It is clear that knowledge does not replace faith in understanding God’s purpose for humanity.

Share My GloB

In doing this, in creating man, God acknowledges that we are truly made in His image, that ‘we are gods’ (as the Bible also says), that we are free to choose, just like Him, and that, in His act of creation of someone ‘just like Him’, He is ready to allow potential opposition to His will, our disobedience to what He knows, as God, is right.

I believe this is the logical, knowledge-based proof of God’s existence and of His intentions for humanity, His wanting to shield us from evil and suffering, yet giving us the capacity to make our own decisions.

To this day, that capacity remains intact in all of us humans. It is intrinsic to the human nature God created.

Today, we also know and understand first-hand the consequences of wrong choices, of listening to lies, of following our desires to satisfy clearly immoral yearnings, and to remain selfishly devoted to the confused, self-refuting attitude that persists in repudiating God our creator and sustainer in attempting to justify our own, necessarily limited knowledge, in fact, our lack of pertinent knowledge, at all costs.

We are missing the faith bit. But what is faith? Most call it a blind belief. Others say it is the fruit of our imagination, a response to fear or a way of motivating ourselves through difficult times perhaps.

The best example of faith within the Bible and one that directly highlights the relationship between our Father God and humanity is that of the Father of the Semitic people, Abram/Abraham.

Abram/Abraham was one of the few, the only one perhaps, ready to prove God wrong with his extreme, bold faith, to stop God from giving up on His creation as He was being forced to do by man's evil deeds. And God needed to confirm and to test (not for Himself but for the human race) if there would be someone who would be capable to really trust Him.

How was that faith to be proven? What did God expect Abraham to do? How could He be sure that a man would, against all odds and against the current of ongoing, disappointing human performance, be faithful to Him and thus allow Him to restore creation to His original purpose while still maintaining human freedom of choice as originally bestowed to Adam and Eve? Does Abraham’s example of faith have anything to do with the faith required to understand our relationship with God?

In order to prove right action and faith, to prove Abraham’s obedience, God ordered Abraham to sacrifice the life and light of his own life, his own creation, his son Isaac, the only tangible reason for his existence in as far as without Isaac, Abraham’s progeny, the continuance of his life, would be eliminated outright.

But, apart from the personal relevance to Abraham’s life, to his people, what did such extreme obedience signify?

“6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

Genesis 22:6-12

God was asking man, in the person of Abraham, to do what is right by God, to fulfil God's original plan, and therefore restore His faith in humanity.

The ‘image’ of God in humans is what is interpreted traditionally as a ‘type’. Within Christianity, we may all be or become a type of the Logos/Jesus/Messiah when living in His/The Way He exemplified for us. God, with Abraham, allows Himself the chance to provide humanity the Way, the Truth and the Life He originally gave Adam and Eve, that is, another chance (a chance or opportunity always requires testing) brought about in the type Abraham embodies but which will only be truly incarnated in Christ, the Logos, the One and only, true sacrifice God indeed makes to save mankind from its own poor choices.

Share My GloB

There are countless examples of these ‘types of Christ’ in the Bible. Abraham is the Father of the Hebrew/Semitic people given the gift and responsibility to carry God’s message to the world. God is the Father of all. In that sense, and if we consider Abraham one of us, a man and just a man, as he certainly was, we may consider too that, through faith, through ultimate, extreme obedience to God, we too can get to understand who God really is beyond our imaginations, ideas, indoctrinations or guesses.

In fact, the need for interpretation only arises in humans because we cannot wholly understand the reality of God the Father and require not a duality (God and man) but the triunity of Father, Son (Jesus/Messiah), and Holy Spirit (Comforter and Spiritual Guide) to make some sense of the magnitude of God’s plans for us.

Abraham could have done wrong but, thank God, he didn’t. He did not fail in the way Adam and Eve failed. In fact, in Abraham, God found the reason to make sure His wrath over the evident failure of mankind to ‘get it right’ did not completely erase the world we live in.

4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.”

5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”

6 And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.

Genesis 15:4-6

In failing to apply the human moral compass which is and can only be a reflection [‘image’ being the key concept here] of God’s greater, wiser, ultimate will and allowing even for the possibility that God may want him to sacrifice his son, Abraham effected an act of transcendence, irremediably putting himself, his son Isaac, and the future of his family in the hands of a total obedience to what the invisible, formless God dictates. Such action is considered faithful as explained in Hebrews 11.

Additionally, he only did this to himself and his progeny, which means he was also enfranchised with the notion that such immoral action was not something he would impose on others. He took personal (and therefore moral) responsibility for his belief, his actions and did this alone at God’s bequest in a way which is very unlike the actual, fake morality evidenced by many religious people and institutions, by their attitudes in our world historically and even today.

Genesis 22 is clear:

6 So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together. 7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!”

And he said, “Here I am, my son.”

Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”

8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together.

Abraham’s hope was in God’s grace. He knew very well that sacrificing his own son was painful, illogical and wrong, yet trusted “God will provide for Himself the lamb”, a statement which does not only attest to Abraham’s moral compass, but is, in itself prophetic in as far as it predicts with total accuracy the sacrifice of lambs celebrated in the Passover Festival marking the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt as well as the advent of Messiah Jesus and God’s provision “for Himself” of the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world.

The death of Isaac would have meant the annihilation of God’s promises to Abraham and his people, something which Abraham’s mind would have been totally unable to conceive or accept. Yet, at God’s request, he prepared to do what he believed God would not allow and placed his (transcendent) faith in Him who created all. “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.”

The image, humans, are not the Logos, the Logos is God the Son. Abraham was the image (as we all are) and, in following God’s commands to the letter, he had the opportunity and provided us with a ‘type’ of the opportunity we all now have to complete the transcendence to God’s will in our willing and tested return to Him through Jesus the Son of God who, as a man (since God cannot die), was the first One to complete it in His willing death and Resurrection. Abraham, obviously, chose right.

The problem with the logic of our common interpretation of God is that it assumes an equation between human perception, experience and thought and God's own.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.

Isaiah 55:8

What I am trying to outline here is, in itself, equivalent to saying that God does not exist the way we humans exist, or, in other words, that humans are the embodiment of the reflected imagination (an image of) of God’s will. Seen that way, my argument makes sense, albeit projecting God well outside the scope of human knowledge in the process. If my thought process only allows for what I alone can consider, how can it be encompassing of God?

I believe that God does not exist as humans exist and that there is human truth in what we commonly understand about God. Nevertheless, if we expect to find God in what human logic might prove or evidence, we will fail. That is the whole raison d'être of faith and belief. Also, the whole purpose of the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus our Lord.

He traced the Way in His person alone by which we may make it to God's presence and therefore understand who God is.

God the Father does not exist as we exist; He is. Which implies His eternity, His invisibility, His omniscience, etc.

Disobedience is therefore impossible in God's presence, which is what we term ‘holy’ (the term equal to ‘separation’ in the Hebrew original קֹדֶשׁ [qōdeš] used in biblical events such as Exodus’ burning bush episode). It is also why Adam and Eve where expelled from the Garden of Eden after they were hoodwinked by the Devil.

Jesus is the bridge, the mediator, without whom no approaching God is possible for humanity.

Share My GloB

That God is ‘above’ and exceeds (so to speak) existence or may be above it whenever He purposes to be so is not only a coherent argument but a necessary one. It is also a logical one because whereas our logic does not allow us to enter God's presence, it does allow us to conceive of His being outside the realm of the multiplicity of individual consciousness (something which cannot be proven, and can only be inferred in faith).

That is the marvel of humanity, that while it can conceive of God and infer His workings from what nature and humanity performs day to day, it can only understand it through inference, through faith, since God has granted the necessary tools (mind and heart/knowledge and belief) for such recognition and occasional realisations to exist and take place even though His presence may not be experienced directly or outright.

This is the door to a transcendence without frills, a daily invitation to closeness with God that may be akin (not equal) to what Adam and Eve experienced in Eden before the Fall.

God stands in the congregation of the mighty;
He judges among the gods.
² How long will you judge unjustly,
And show partiality to the wicked? Selah
³ Defend the poor and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and needy.
⁴ Deliver the poor and needy;
Free them from the hand of the wicked.

⁵ They do not know, nor do they understand;
They walk about in darkness;
All the foundations of the earth are unstable.

⁶ I said, “You are gods,
And all of you are children of the Most High.
⁷ But you shall die like men,
And fall like one of the princes.”

⁸ Arise, O God, judge the earth;
For You shall inherit all nations.

Psalm 82

Share My GloB

Leave a comment

As Jacques Derrida has pointed out when speaking of painting – proving simultaneously through a self-conscious and rhetorical outburst his own vulnerability and predilection for textual critique – the discourse on art is, at best, an enterprise difficult to justify.

As for painting, any discourse on it, beside it or above, always strikes me as silly, both didactic and incantatory, programmed, worked by the compulsion of mastery, be it poetical or philosophical, always, and more so when it is pertinent, in the position of chitchat, unequal and unproductive in the sight of what, at a stroke [d'un trait], does without or goes beyond this language, remaining heterogeneous to it or denying it any overview. And then, if I must simplify shamelessly, it is as if there had been, for me, two paintings in painting. One, taking the breath away, a stranger to all discourse, doomed to the presumed mutism of "the-thing-itself," restores, in authoritarian silence, an order of presence. It motivates or deploys, then, while totally denying it, a poem or philosopheme whose code seems to me to be exhausted. The other, therefore the same, voluble, inexhaustible, reproduces virtually an old language, belated with respect to the thrusting point of a text which interests me. 1

Just how far Derrida's frenzy of juxtaposition is from the phrase 'A picture is worth a thousand words' and thus from one of his "philosophemes", one cannot be completely sure since some of its implications lead the reader to at least consider, in the act of perception described above, a seemingly undiscovered space between the audible medium of language and pictorial silence.

His 'two paintings in one' simile clearly specifies the separate reactions of the art admirer and that particular to the critical imagination. Derrida is rhetorical in so far as he provokes 2 his reader to depart from what is obviously ‘the reader's experience’ by stating the outline of a personal insight that sets itself against such ‘experiencing’ and thus compels him/her to entertain Derrida's subsequent discussion from the point of view of contradictory arguments.

Earlier, with Ma, 3 we have been privy to the ‘opening up’ of the act of perception in art objects and graphic impressions to the point where the critic’s exposition allows us to analyse how graphic art and the combination of pictorial media simultaneously displayed within writing may or may not affect our overall capacity to appreciate art itself.

Subscribe now

Ezra Pound, for his part, would use this method of composition as a definite prompt for his readers to consider and perhaps mull over the background and intent of his writings. With Derrida however, what we derive from his self-centred (not art-centred) apprehension represents a diarrhoetic transcription of what his mind may have fathomed regardless of the art object in view.

But our concern lies not with Derrida's parerga but with what he can contribute, albeit unwittingly, to the debate on the medium of light and its importance to aesthetics. Derrida's famous analysis of the 'tulip' 4 within his critique of Kant's Analytic of the Beautiful provides us with some clues as to the nature of a medium which is both pervasive and essential to the art of painting: light.

Derrida, and this is one of the more obvious weaknesses 5 of the book, does rarely speak of the physical phenomenon of light within The Truth in Painting. As will be seen from the following quotation, his critical disquisition comes short of uttering the word 'light' even though the language and argumentation appear to require such a substantive:

... the trace of the sans 6 is the origin of beauty. It alone can be said to be beautiful on the basis of this trait. From this point of view beauty is never seen, neither in the totality nor outside it: the sans is not visible, sensible, perceptible, it does not exist. And yet there is some of it and it is beautiful. It gives [ça donne] the beautiful. 7

This argument substantiates one of Derrida's most original claims, namely, the basic fallacy of the generally accepted act of perception. From this point of view however, Pound might be found to have constructed all his aesthetic models on shaky ground. 8 Therefore, we will do well to analyse the elusive language of deconstruction 9 while keeping close to the sensory realities of painting and light.

As seen above, the project of deconstruction is based not only on the thorough examination of theoretical constructs but on the avoidance of any allegiance to a methodology other than that provided by propositions like mise en abyme (set in/towards the abyss), the concept of 'trace' and the adverbial – and by definition parergonal – semantic directive suggested by the word sans (without).

These elements work within the deconstructive discourse, and more specifically within the example provided above, a rhetoric of camouflage, that is, an interplay of arguments which, by remaining close to the structure of the model (text/art) under scrutiny, aims at confusing and subverting inflexion and expression within the text in question.

The result is an out-and-out attempt at removal of all methodological approach or model, the lack in sum, of a naming convention (system of noun-substantives and active verbs) to which the reader may hold on when analysing the material being reviewed and critiqued.

The word sans refers unapologetically to dearth; trace describes a disintegrating residue of reason leading to the deconstructionist abyss (abyme), a vacuum arrived at on the back of a passive voice intent on shunning all accountability.

Derrida would hide behind the complexity of the original art, undermining it by using a device which, because unnamed and almost invisible in its deconstructive garb, strives to check the advances of any formal model of argumentation. This essentially stylistic technique is effective at the most superficial levels of criticism but lacks the necessary wherewithal to stand the onslaught of thought-out concepts on open ground. Derrida's critical strategy can be readily associated with infiltration tactics and guerrilla warfare and is thus tied to secrecy.

Han-Liang Chang concludes his expert and succinct review of Western philosophical appropriation of the Chinese written character by claiming practicality and common sense to be the only valid measures in the debate. Chang browses masterfully through the major attempts at reigning in the Chinese script within the bounds of what he calls “European hallucinations”. He provides pithy, accurate, and cutting comments about towering figures in art, philosophy, and criticism and appears to say that they all ‘get it’ mostly ‘wrong’ by assuming that Chinese, as a language, is not underpinned by ‘logo-centrism’. Before finally accepting - in what seems to be a resigned tone - that cross-cultural endeavours of this sort are bound to remain inconclusive apart from those undertaken within the realm of practical, aesthetic communication, he writes:

What appeals to Leibniz, Fenollosa, Eisenstein, and Derrida in Chinese script is what they have found relevant to their own applications. In the jargon of comparative literature studies, this kind of misreading, or mirage, is a common phenomenon when two cultures encounter one another. The value of their readings, therefore, does not lie in their contribution to etymology, but lies, as Derrida puts it in Of Grammatology, in their aesthetic breakthrough of the entrenched Western tradition. 10

Reading Derrida, however, does not need to entail secrecy. In fact, his words are accurate pointers to what we have been trying to elicit as a basic phenomenon in the study of painting for the benefit of our discussion on Pound's early aesthetic stance.

Leave a comment

When Derrida writes "beauty is never seen, neither in the totality nor outside it: the sans is not visible, sensible, perceptible, it does not exist", he is speaking of the common ground shared by the painting and by the eyesight, by the art object and the art admirer's gaze.

Ultimately, Derrida and Chang are correct in their abstract formulation of the phenomenological process they describe, yet they both fail to name (though Derrida belatedly acknowledges it in terms of the importance he assigns to his ‘never seen’, ‘inexistent’ ‘sans’) the very phenomenon which propitiates its beauty, the painting as well as our writing and reading processes. 11

Light is itself the medium and the expression of all that becomes apparent to the sense of sight. As light, it cannot itself be perceived since it itself makes up the material of perception. Still, Derrida goes on to note "yet there is some of it and it is beautiful. It gives [ça donne] the beautiful." This late compromise and, most of all, the use by Derrida of the active verb "gives" provide us with a powerful metaphor of luminosity, that, though itself unnamed, suggests the source of potency/force and latent energies with which Pound and Fenollosa would have to agree with wholeheartedly.

Perhaps Derrida, after all, is only trying to express what Socrates has already said without recurring to sophistry:

And what is the organ with which visible things?

The sight, he said. …

But you see that without the addition of some other nature there is no seeing or being seen?

How do you mean?

Sight being, as I conceive, in the eyes, and he who has eyes wanting to see; colour being also present in them, still unless there be a third nature specially adapted to the purpose, the owner of the eyes will see nothing and the colours will be invisible.

Of what nature are you speaking?

Of that which you term light, I replied.

True, he said. Noble, then, is the bond which links together sight and visibility, and great beyond other bonds by no small difference of nature, for light is their bond, and light is no ignoble thing?

Nay, he said, the reverse of ignoble.

And which, I said, of the gods in heaven would you say was the lord of this element? Whose is that light which makes the eye to see perfectly and the visible to appear?

You mean the sun, as you and all mankind say.

May not the relation of sight to this deity be described as follows.

How?

Neither sight nor the eye in which sight resides is the sun?

No.

Yet of all the organs of sense the eye is the most like the sun?

By far the most like.

And the power which the eye possesses is a sort of effluence which is dispensed from the sun?

Exactly.

Then the sun is not sight, but the author of sight who is recognized by sight?

True, he said. 12

There is another interesting example which shows us how the approach used by Derrida in the The Truth in Painting does not originate in an inability to name phenomena such as 'light'. He writes in L'écriture et la différence:

But, at least in the case of painting, there exists an ultimate element which does not allow itself to be broken down further, something the painters cannot feign, 13 and it is colour. Here, this is only an analogy, since Descartes does not consider the necessary existence of colour in general: it is a sensory thing among others. But, in the same way as in a painting – no matter how imaginative – there remains a part of irreducible and real simplicity: colour, there is in the dream a part of unfeigned simplicity, assumed by every fantastic composition and irreducible before any break down. But, this time – and this is why the examples of the painter and colour were nothing but analogical – this part is neither sensory nor imaginative: it is intelligible.” 14 [i]

Therefore, if intelligibility is what we are after – and we must suppose it to be one of the bases of communication – why is it that Derrida chooses not to speak of 'light' when the phenomenon he describes inherently partakes of or indeed exists as ‘light’? 15 [ii]

Isn’t Derrida’s intelligibility what Pound describes here?

May I suggest (not to prove anything, but perhaps to open the reader's thought) that I have a certain real knowledge which wd. enable me to tell a Goya from a Velázquez, a Velázquez from an Ambrogio Praedis, a Praedis from an Ingres or a Moreau

and that this differs from the knowledge you or I wd. have if I went into the room back of the next one, copied a list of names and maxims from good Fiorentino's History of Philosophy and committed the names, maxims, and possibly dates to my memory.

It may or may not matter that the first knowledge is direct, it remains effortlessly as residuum, as part of my total disposition, it affects every perception of form-colour phenomena subsequent to its acquisition.

Coming even closer to the things committed verbally to our memory. There are passages of the poets which approximate the form-colour acquisition. 16

The graphic weight of italics in Derrida’s texts and the profound emphasis on freedom from attachment are extreme statements of intention on the part of their author who seems determined to sacrifice all for the sake of achieving a 'purified' province of objectification within his écriture.

Perhaps science-based observations about the nature of vision, image, and light will allow us to comprehend both Derrida’s hard-headed attempt at objectivization through deletion (an act of effective negation) and Pound’s endorsement of the image. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake invites us to consider the facts involved in vision and, in so doing, resolves the riddle:

Well, if you think about vision, just as a starting point, it’s fairly easy to see that it just collapses as an assumption. Think of what happens during vision, e.g., ‘you seeing me now’. We all know the scientific explanation. Light is reflected from me, travels through the electromagnetic field, enters your eyes, inverts the images on your retina, changes on the cone cells, [sends] impulses up the optic nerve and [triggers] activity in different regions of the brain, the optical cortex and elsewhere. So far so good. We know more details about that than anyone has known before. But is that an explanation of vision? No, it’s just a description of the changes that happen in your nervous system and in your eyes. How does that explain the conscious experience of seeing? Well, the answer to that is: ‘it doesn’t’. None of this explains consciousness at all. Which is why the mere existence of consciousness is called ‘the hard problem’ by philosophers of mind. So then, what might be going on? Well, where are these images located? The usual assumption is that your nervous system mysteriously generates a virtual reality display in full colour and 3D inside your head and that’s what you’re experiencing. But that’s quite a stretch! No one has ever seen a virtual reality display inside a head. But let’s just stay with this conventional view for a while. That means that when you see me standing here now, your image of me is not located where it seems to be, it’s inside your head; there’s a little Rupert somewhere inside your head. And if you look at the sky, then the sky you’re seeing is inside your head too, your image of the sky is inside your brain. … That, believe it or not, is the official view … The view I’m putting forward by contrast, is so simple that it’s hard to grasp. I’m suggesting your image of me is located right here. It’s in your mind but not inside your brain. Vision involves an inward movement of light and an outward projection of images. Everything you see in the world around you is projected out. Mind extends far beyond your brain. If you look at a distant star, it [your mind] extends out, literally, over astronomical distances. 17

Michel Foucault provides further scrutiny of Derrida's ‘tactics in his article “My Body, This Paper, This Fire”. 18 After thoroughly examining and undermining Derrida's reading of Descartes's Méditations and showing various methodological and academic flaws in the former's work, Foucault concludes by passing judgment on the deconstructive approach. He writes:

I will not say that it is a metaphysics, metaphysics itself or its closure which is hiding in this 'textualisation' of discursive practices. I'll go much further than that: I shall say that what can be seen here so visibly is a historically well-determined little pedagogy. A pedagogy which teaches the pupil that there is nothing outside the text, but that in it, in its gaps, its blanks and its silences, there reigns the reserve of origin; that it is therefore unnecessary to search elsewhere, but that here, not in the words, certainly, but in the words under erasure, in their grid, the 'sense of being' is said. A pedagogy which gives conversely to the master's voice the limitless sovereignty which allows it to restate the text indefinitely.

Share

Derrida has gone to the trouble of making some acute specifications of the phenomenon he chooses not to name (thus mystifying the reader) and which here will be equated – still focused on our current debate about painting – with light. He writes:

This something is not some thing, it is not a thing, still less part of the thing, a fragment of the tulip, a bit [bout] of the system. And yet it is the end of the system. The system is entire and yet it is visibly lacking its end [bout], a bit [bout] which is not a piece like any other, a bit which cannot be totalized along with the others, which does not escape from the system any more than it adds itself on to it, and which alone can in any case, by its mere absence or rather by the trace of its absence (the trace - itself outside the thing and absent - of the absence of nothing), give me what one should hesitate to go on calling the experience of the beautiful. The mere absence of the goal would not give it to me, nor would its presence. 19

Derrida has established the ambiguous nature of a phenomenon he will not have named, and in his effort of interpretation he agrees to take one more step into the realm of mystification created by his particular use of language, a mystagogy of sorts.

He speaks of "the trace of its absence" (absence being the lack of identification or naming – thus the possessive pronoun "its" – we have been referring to) and it is through this phrase that a further connection to painting can be made.

Foucault has identified a similar phenomenon to the one discussed above in his detailed analysis of the painting Las Meninas by Diego de Velázquez. Let us just remember that in this painting of the Spanish Royal Princesses, Velázquez chose to portray himself too. Foucault describes the painting and his own reactions to it:

Starting from the painter's gaze, which constitutes an off-centre centre to the left, we perceive first of all the back of the canvas, then the paintings hung on the wall, with the mirror in their centre, then the open doorway, then more pictures, of which, because of the sharpness of the perspective, we can see no more than the edges of the frames, and finally, at the extreme right, the window, or rather the groove in the wall from which light is pouring. This spiral shell presents us with the entire cycle of representation: the gaze, the palette and brush, the canvas innocent of signs (these are the material tools of the representation), the paintings, the reflections, the real man (the completed representation, but as it were freed from its illusory or truthful contents, which are juxtaposed to it); then the representation dissolves again: we can only see frames and the light that is flooding the pictures from outside, but that they, in return, must reconstitute in their own form, as though it were coming from elsewhere, passing through their dark wooden frames. And we do, in fact, see this light on the painting, apparently welling out from the crack of the frame; and from there it moves over to touch the brow, the cheekbones, the eyes, the gaze of the painter, who is holding a palette in one hand and in the other a fine brush ... And so the spiral is closed, or rather, by means of that light, is opened. 20

Foucault is naming what Derrida chooses to leave unnamed. The absence Derrida speaks of, the "something" which "is not some thing, still less a part of the thing ... yet ... is the end of the system" can easily be equated with Foucault's "light"; a light which, as he says a few pages earlier, "enables" both the observation by the painter and our own sight. 21

More importantly however, Foucault's expressive rendition of the phenomenon of light in motion recalls both Derrida's 'trace of absence' and Pound's own perception of light as energy and movement. When Foucault speaks of "light ... pouring", "light ... flooding" and "light ... welling out" not only does he come to name the phenomenon – and not just within the restrictive ambit of the frame 22 of Derrida's "absence" – he also provides the reader with an origin or "trace" through the depiction of its movement.

Foucault's light, and Pound's with it, travels at the speed with which interstellar distances are measured; it is also the light that alerts us to the passing of time in terms of days, seasons, and ages, and to the death of stars that are still visible.

Finally, it is the light that allows no total darkness, even in the depths of night, because night is physically the result of our planet casting its own shadow on itself and not some essential definition of lack or absence.

And it is precisely light as a phenomenon which points to an origin and holds the plastic and mobile qualities that Pound addresses in his analyses of painting and of the image in poetry.

Velázquez, like any painter, was acutely aware of light, and Pound, in turn, shared some of that awareness:

On your left hand in the great room [of The Prado Museum in Madrid], Las Hilanderas, the spinning girls, with that beamed light, and the duskiness, in the separate smaller room Las Meninas, the young princesses or court ladies, the mirror with glimpse of Velázquez by the far door painting the picture. …

In the great room Don Juan de Austria, the dwarfs, high at the end facing the door, the Virgin enthroned, differing greatly in workmanship, designed shall we say for Church lighting and not for a palace. …

A dozen returns and each time a new permanent acquisition, light, green shadows instead of the brown as in Rembrandt, …

a surprisingly small number of people who saw the light, …

So the background of Don Juan de Austria, the fire, that is there with two strokes or perhaps ONE of the brush. …

Our husky young undergraduates may start their quest of Osiris in a search for what was the PRADO .... 23

Pound had also employed some of these early impressions to describe the poetry of T. S. Eliot 24 and although he would end up making the Italian Renaissance painters the 'knowers' of light, Velázquez remained a vivid memory throughout his life and his paintings offered Pound a definitive aesthetic viewpoint for art criticism. 25

Subscribe now

Amid these specifications and points of order, we need to highlight the fact that whatever the bias of the critics presented here, they all grapple with the same reality, namely, the process of communication of a phenomenon not clearly definable. As Foucault points out:

... the relation of language to painting is an infinite relation. ... Neither can be reduced to the other's terms: it is in vain that we say what we see; what we see never resides in what we say. And it is vain that we attempt to show, by the use of images, metaphors, or similes, what we are saying; the space where they achieve their splendor is not that deployed by our eyes but that defined by the sequential elements of syntax. 26

Foucault will later qualify this statement and make it the starting point for speech in a manner not dissimilar from that advanced by Derrida above. Nevertheless, this statement remains useful because it signals the beginning of interpretation as such, and often provokes the rise of a polarity of perspectives among commentators.

And it is reading the Chinese written character within the context of the classical writings that considerations as to the inherent logic or lack of logic of language must be accounted for. As Maria Luisa Ardizzone has shown, bringing together the works of Leibniz, Fenollosa and the American poet:

... Pound claims the necessity to name something not in the abstract way but by its various components. At the same time he stresses the need to leave their intrinsic unity intact. The most incisive example seems to him to be that of Leibniz's monad, as an example of plural and at the same time organic reality. The term "intuitive" – which in this work is associated with "judgment" – leads us along the same path that Pound ventured on, that is the refused relationship already pinpointed by Fenollosa and resolved with a definitive rejection of logic in favour of nature, and science opposed to grammar and logic. 27

Perhaps the monad was not the only model fitting Pound's claim against abstraction. Both the basic sensory perceptions of 'light' and 'sound' might be seen to fulfil such requirements as well as underlying the poet's poetic experiments and his criticism.

It appears that, at least within the context of Chinese classical language usage, "intuition" remains a must for Western interpreters. A. C. Graham clarifies this point to exonerate some scholars from frequent mistranslations. He writes:

“... most Western sinologists (including myself) read literary Chinese without being able to write it, so that, although we gradually learn to narrow down meanings, every word even of late literary Chinese seems a little vaguer than it really is.” 28

Graham also elicits another principle at work in the exchanges between Eastern and Western philosophical endeavours. Re-directing his arguments towards a topic aptly dealt with by Fenollosa in his essay and which, because of its apparent simplicity, seems to frighten away serious academic commentary, Graham writes:

It is curious to watch Chinese translators struggling to reproduce Western fallacies in a language which, whatever its defects, does not permit them to make these particular mistakes. But there is nothing very surprising in the spectacle; until Wittgenstein's revolution in philosophy, it was generally assumed everywhere that if one cannot state a philosophical argument in another language, it is the language and not the argument which is at fault. The adaptation of philosophy to a new language (from Greek and Latin to modern languages, from Sanskrit and from Western languages to Chinese) often involves both an improvement in terminology and a deterioration in syntax. It is a remarkable fact that although Western philosophers have hardly yet rid themselves of confusion between existential and copulative being, the scholastic Latin distinguished the two almost as sharply as does the Chinese. Standard English, French and German confine "to be" almost entirely to its copulative functions, using special formulae for existence - "there is", "il y a", "es gibt". Nevertheless, philosophers have continued to say "X is" instead of "There is X". and to speak of "being" wherever they used to say esse. (One reason is no doubt that one cannot conveniently turn these formulae into verbal nouns, and philosophers who hold that they are studying entities, not the logical structure of language, have to operate with nouns). 29

It appears that, following Graham's advice, the previous analyses of 'light' by Derrida and Foucault represent but the two sides of the same coin. They induce the reader either to feel his way around artistic works (in Derrida's case) or else, to re-depict through words the movement presented within their respective frames (in Foucault's).

And the coin – pursuing the fiduciary metaphor – represents the syntax of a language which through its accepted currency becomes a medium for communicative exchanges. 30

It is syntax that matters here, a syntax capable of emphasising differences and thus able to reflect the current use of language as well as its musicality. This is certainly what Donald Davie meant to highlight when he called Fenollosa's The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry “a new defense of poetry comparable to Sidney's Apologie, the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and Shelley's Defense” 31 , but it is also what Pound was after when decoding and translating into English the works of Confucius and various literary and philosophical figures of the past.

Share

Leave a comment

“I don’t recognize the category of ‘sin’ as meaningful. I don’t know what people mean by that.”

I believe that the additional and seemingly unsolvable problems societies are facing today and will increasingly face in the future have to do with ‘categories’, and with what our ‘systems’ do and don’t recognise as categories.

Efficiency, in the computer age, entails the severance of one-on-one personal communication whereby conversations are categorised by the software being used according to parameters that do not stem from the individual but from a push towards Efficiency at all costs (which is, logically, an oxymoron).

My emails go into the ‘Spam folder’ when I receive them into my ‘inbox’ with little frequency, or when they have also been sent as part of a group to other email addresses, or when the sender’s email address does not belong to the ecosystem my email provider usually handles, or when my provider’s operating rules declare the email in question a potential threat. These are just some of my observations. I do not only need to think about what to say to my correspondent, I must also imagine the type of process my comms are going through to get to where they’re meant to be. Or else, I just adopt the ‘default’ configuration and push it all back to my subconscious. Can I do that?

None of these filtering considerations have been either created or implemented / activated by the individual user (me), and though there may be an option somewhere in the menu (probably buried somewhere under ‘Settings’) to disable some of them, they’ve been applied to my communications and effectively carry out a task whose root enablement is equivalent to censorship on my email exchanges with others. It is the price we pay for ‘free’ email (another oxymoron).

For example, when AI creates a set of rules and patterns by reviewing and putting together the information to be churned out as a set of instructions to a request for a tutorial on the use of some technology, or software, or an educational topic, it applies categories and parameters that belong to the mind of the institutionalised coder group based on rules of Efficiency among other business-based considerations.

The news tells us:

Google issues urgent warning over 'legit-looking' email scam

Which is the scam, the email, the email provider, or the piece of news itself? How do we know?

These considerations do not represent the individual’s desires or needs except for those constricted by the limited and limiting use of a ‘prompt’ or ‘command’ in the form of a query or a question put to a lifeless machine. The moment the ‘Enter’ key is struck, the words become categories and no longer represent the person behind the query or the prompt.

They are absorbed into an emasculating, post-modern drive (literally) that transforms what the ‘user’ thinks into a qualmic reservoir of invisible, dynamic machinery that, we know for sure, will bring back a quick reply, the smooth gratification of having something listen to us, right there, right now. And there is no return. I mean, we get an answer but there is no open return, another prompt is still required (yet another oxymoron). The proof of this being the set of automated questions the LLM generates for you (as if it knew you from the one question you just asked) and posts back to you on screen together with its answer, and all for Efficiency’s sake.

One other, cute example of categorisation being inflicted relentlessly on us for the purpose of Efficiency are ‘upgrades’ and ‘updates’. They now seem invisible, hidden in the background in their automated format.

Yet, they are the food of the computing world. Consumed at night, behind the flashy screen that tells you otherwise.

They ravage a rich, existing ecosystem, the source of all supply, of both those who are sentient beings like you and I, as well as what we feel to be inexhaustible resources, water and light, deluded as we are. Note: In the last 8 or so lines I’m confident you’ll find a wealth of oxymoronic situations we all seem to live quite comfortably with.

These updates, the warm upgrades, do their utmost damage within that faint ticking counter, the limited space where we all enjoy a dwindling credit, time.

But I speak of ‘feelings’ I guess.

Once the technology is there (Neuralink) to transfer such categories and patterns to implants in people’s bodies (neural structures) and it is perfected, two things will occur:

1. Robots will not be as necessary as they appear to be today to achieve Efficiency because the institutionalised sets of instructions will be transferred and adopted seamlessly by the, by then, hybrid human-machine co-host.

2. A whole new science and technology branch will be developed to cater for the implantation, repair and maintenance of human bodies in need of recalibration, adaptation, and upgrades so as to maintain institutionalised levels of optimal Efficiency.

The path to the implementation of such globalised Efficiency is already trod by the billions who today submit to the diktat of computing through the constant use of the technologies now available in communications, in management, information-gathering, health, science, and even in the most basic forms of human-nature interaction such as agriculture and climate control.

The intelligence that develops the targeted technologies, with its software and its algorithms driving Efficiency, constitutes a reason to itself and grows beyond the control of even those who use it to build this world of inescapable structures raised to magnify the idea (ideology) ahead of or in priority to the human.

In trying to gain overarching control, we lose it wholly to the contraption, to the complex mechanics we’ve ourselves build (another oxymoron, or so it seems).

The categorisation of reality into circumscribable, boxed-up concepts that can be represented through the 0,1 binary code of developers, compartmentalised according to parameters that have to do with artificial storage capacity, speed of transmission, unlimited natural resources, and aleatory combinatory randomness, sketches even now the clear incarceration of the operative human mind or, at the very least, of its mentality.

Share

Leave a comment

It is interesting to see how the human drive to answer all the unknown origins of its own existence is as relentless as life itself. The same push that some identify with survival (evolutionists) and others with transcendence (spiritualists) continuously finds ways to fulfil its needs through ever more complex efforts at understanding and explaining the relationship between humans and the world. And all this before fatalistically going on to attempt the re-creation and re-generation of practices that were once simple and succinct.

Romaric Jannel translates and quotes Isabelle Robinet saying:

The incommensurability of the world exceeds our capacity for knowledge and organization, and the “that by which” these exist is unknowable.

You may also want to check Tamara’s entrancing post on: The anatomy of a “Why”

Not content with simple sexuality, we’ve now developed genders based on mental preferences (likes and dislikes) with which we somehow associate a need for the existence of a variety of ‘identities’ matching us, complementing each individual, if the ‘so-called’ need be there.

Share

Not content with finding ways to exhaust the environment around us for benefits that outstrip any real, physical or mental human need, we’ve pushed along with the re-creation of ‘will-do’ type environments and ecosystems where the original subservience of nature is now transformed into what we’ll make of it, or not, for theories’ sake.

Not satisfied with carrying out exchanges with others to understand and work out each other’s needs and points of reference, we have moved to the adversarial form of relationship where the laws of humans trend well ahead of any sentient recognition of common goals and where governments and societies of all kinds trip each other in a race to legislate all behaviour under a legal business code no one truly understands but those who are paid to erect it and sustain it.

But there is one common element, one phenomenon enabling all that the mind of the modern human by now bored with tilling the ground for food and swiping clean the sweat of his brow in building his habitat, forces humanity through to the next stage of civilisation.

The tool, the tech, the technology supporting such human ability to catch and train, to move beyond what has been gifted to us in order to ‘make it over’ and try to turn it into something better than it already is or was, is what has taken over society, the world at large, to the point where humans are no longer able to see without or beyond technology.

As a consequence of this habitual pattern of re-creation (and I speak here of both its meanings: a re-invention or copy of what already exists but also a ‘sport’ of sorts where we find enjoyment and a certain fleeting satisfaction), we are not only altering the physical world, moulding it into uninhabitable bodies and cityscapes, into metallic jungles, lairs of garbage, and ghetto dens, we are also reversing the sense of thought and perception categories and doing so at speed never seen before.

Leave a comment

The tool, technology, is the foremost example of how concentrating on ‘the way to change’, to ‘make things much better’, to ‘radically move’ away from what and how we know, will land us all in an inverted world where we’ll not recognise ourselves or others and will soon deny even the possibility of order or soundness in thought or in behaviour.

Some say things like this:

“The real function [of technology] is to create an action path that lowers the threshold for getting people to do something different than they were doing before”.

Others expand on this new sense of the ‘technification of reality’ by providing specific examples of how technology is itself breaching traditional tech boundaries and explain we are getting to the point where:

“They [the technologies] allow for what could be called vibe-department-managing—a single operator using AI tools to architect, implement, and document entire flows across design, strategy, operations, product, and comms.”

Now, whether technology does breach the accepted boundaries of what we use to call tools by taking over the planning and execution of certain logistical/operational endeavours or not, the fact is that they do not, and will not, once implemented as common practice, do ‘something different than what people were doing before’, they’ll just do ‘something different’.

Human needs, if analysed in their depth, are basic, as are the gist of prevalent human endeavours.

Subscribe now

Apart from the levels of real danger that allowing a “single operator using AI tools to architect, implement, and document entire flows across design, strategy, operations, product, and comms” represents in terms of uncontrollable, lone-wolf engineered destruction events this ‘capability’ may allow and even stimulate at a scale never before witnessed by humans, to attribute “intuition” and “vibe-management” to the conglomeration of categoric randomness inherent to the LLM phenomenon is a blind faith metaphor with no basis in reality.

The outcomes of such processes being implemented will not do things humans do/did differently, they’ll just multiply the processes, overwhelming and therefore destroying (eventually) whatever good/coherence humans (even within their blatant record of failure) may have achieved or could achieve.

Technology is and has always been a tool. It may be developed nowadays to the point where not one human knows what it is actually doing based on parameters set by humans as are set in a game, a gamble of sorts. However, trusting ourselves, our fate, to technology because it can achieve things our bodies and our brains cannot control is probably the biggest error humanity will ever make.

Sam Altman has said in a recent ‘Ted Talks’ interview:

I mean, the writing quality of some of the new models, not just here but in detail, is really going to a new level. I mean this is an incredible meta answer but there’s really no way to know if it is thinking that or it just saw that a lot of times in the training set. And, of course, like, if you can’t tell the difference, how much do you care? (starting at minute 2:24)

Apart from potentially erecting technology to the undue and underserved standing of a god, some, not without reason, foresee that technology itself may grow in status in the world by realising what I described earlier as: “an inverted world where we’ll not recognise ourselves or others and soon deny any order or soundness in thought or in behaviour”. This would be achieved through pushing the belief that considering technology (AGI being the current favourite) only as a traditional tool is

“[t]he key mistake popular culture makes when a disruptive technology is rolled out is to think that the function of the technology is primarily to do the same thing as before but better (less error, safer, faster, more efficient, greater value, increased scale, etc…”

Such ‘popular mistake’ referred to in the quote above is tantamount to what https://substack.com/@martijara says could be understood as “indoctrination”. Yet, how the utilisation of tools (and technology) as has been carried out over millennia may have become a ‘doctrine’ is something that escapes me.

Tools are contraptions created by humans to facilitate and/or achieve greater precision in the creation and performance of human projects mostly aimed at providing outcomes for real or perceived human needs.

We may of course consider that there is such a possibility, that we may suffer from indoctrination in considering tools less than what they are or could be, but it seems to me that making technology ‘the goal’ rather than ‘the tool’ sounds much more like actual indoctrination.

There is another problem with this argument which purports technology as transcending humans’ self-imposed prerogatives and priorities (both communally and individually) through the strength of its computational prowess.

Technology – and saying this feels funny even as I write it – cannot do anything (whether good or bad) without the technologist and the technocrat (even those who do not care to care), both of whom happen to be humans.

At the most basic level, the type of superseding technology we are talking about here cannot exist without electricity for example, and electricity needs to be sourced, generated and distributed by the work of humans.

Even then, electricity is just a very material example. The whole brain/neural function is something ‘the machine’ wouldn’t even know where to find, let alone replicate.

The LLM, even the dream of AGI, is but a mere copy (and a poor one at that) of what we think we know a human brain/neural/consciousness is.

As I see it, playing God and trying to create a new ‘machine’ consciousness is wasteful and ridiculous. As I have said before, “God creates, humans re-create”.

Share

Leave a comment

What is the meaning of a statistic? What is their use? The more telling and overwhelming they are, whether in their greatness or their minginess, the less they matter to you - the one who is reading them - and the less you matter to whomsoever got them built.

Taking the 'aerial view' of averages about what you and some horde of people prefers or not, do or not do, no matter how refined statistics are - sunk in calculations and in graphs - will not help you make up your mind. And if they do, you'll probably lose your ‘self’ in the process - and think you are lost too - drowned in confusion.

Scientifically, stats are born of trying to equate what is not equal through an 'equation', obviously.

They rise in importance socially in that they effectively help move the opinions of some, despite statistics being irrefutable, paradoxical paroxysms of reality and, as such, exceptions changing day by day.

Politically, they are the means of pushing ideology while magically 'disappearing' your own ideas away from your mind/heart composite.

Share My GloB

But, above all, stats attempt to usurp the weight of reason by substituting logic with some numbers, injecting a conclusion in the argument only supported by reductive ranges of up to a 100 percentile in the race made up of 7 billion people (or are we 8 billion now? Nobody really knows), by the slant, the angles where those one-off, question-generated problems are first raised.

Stats need to be explained, positioned and circumscribed to make the sense only their well-crafted, redacted consideration, the flicker of one mind may deem relevant and acceptable to ALL. Statistics may enhance deception.

Now, a random example in point. (just came across it)

The crushing numbers first:

“The rise of DeepSeek, along with other key players like ByteDance’s Doubao, Tencent’s Yuanbao, Moonshot AI’s Kimi, and Baidu’s Ernie, has propelled the aggregate monthly active users (MAU) for AIGC (Artificial Intelligence Generated Content) apps to a staggering 248 million in February 2025. This growth trajectory is remarkable, with AIGC apps achieving a 20% internet user penetration rate in just 23 months, outpacing even the rapid growth of short video apps, which took 30 months, according to Citi Research.

Zooming in on DeepSeek’s achievements over the last few months. It achieved the fastest daily active user (DAU) growth in the history of the Chinese internet, reaching 50 million DAU in a mere 42 days. This is a stark contrast to established giants like Douyin (371 days) and PDD (741 days) in reaching the same milestone. While DeepSeek's DAU has since stabilized at around 45 million after peaking at 53 million in February 2025, its initial surge has left an indelible mark, according to industry blog Democratizing Information 信息平权-Jason . This stabilization occurred as more Large Language Models (LLMs) integrated DeepSeek and launched their own reasoning models.”

Finally, the article’s conclusions.

Trying to equate what is not equal through an 'equation':

“By prioritizing cost efficiency, open collaboration, and broad accessibility, DeepSeek has set new benchmarks for innovation while challenging American dominance in the field.

Being irrefutable, paradoxical paroxysms of reality and, as such, exceptions changing day by day:

DeepSeek's rapid ascent has acted as a catalyst for the explosive growth and evolving user demographics within China's AI application market. While the competitive landscape is heating up, DeepSeek's initial impact demonstrates the significant potential and transformative power of AI in engaging a broad spectrum of Chinese internet users (as I said, consumer apps can scale so fast in China).

Pushing ideology while magically 'disappearing' your own ideas away from your mind/heart composite:

As China embraces this transformative wave of AI applications, the implications extend far beyond its borders—reshaping global perceptions of the future of AI.”

AI Proem

DeepSeek's Ascent Reshapes China's Burgeoning AI App Landscape

*figures from Questmobile cited from Citi’s Implications From Pre and Post DeepSeek Insights and Analysis On China AI Apps Report published in March 2025…

Read more

a year ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Grace Shao

What are your conclusions when you read this stuff? What have you learnt from the stats? Chinese AI is trending. Lots of people use them. That's about all. What did the stats do for you?

They substituted your logic with some numbers and inject a conclusion in an argument only supported by reductive ranges of up to a 100 percentile.

Share My GloB

Leave a comment

You must read the compartmentalisation of language when reading AI ‘art’, the satirization of borrowing, and the thematization of images to understand it does not belong.

It is the true alien, forever separated and then joined by the faculty of representing what we already understand, have understood and really do not think worth the time or effort.

Subscribe now

Share

Leave a comment

It is not the now ‘more than human’ E.T. We've managed to make a true, alien copy of our pasted knowledge and stand in awe before it, not convinced but somewhat flabbergasted it can make some sense that is not what we would have made ourselves without the brain machine.

More entertainment…

For a more in-depth look at AI and art click here:

AI Poetry

But for those who only know this AI, those who cannot trace a text back to its by now distorted, contextless original, it does become the target of achievement, the goal to emulate bringing creation to a regurgitation of amassed connections swallowed full, never digested, coming back up to make what Miyazaki calls "an insult to life itself"... of our own making.

Share

In Chapter 2, ‘An American Abroad’, 1 a controversial point was made to qualify the inclusion of Pound's work within the American tradition that appears to flow unhindered from Ralph Waldo Emerson, through Walt Whitman to the latter T. S. Eliot. If the similarities that have been shown to exist can at all be substantiated, this needs to be done at a further remove from the tradition Pound himself wanted to leave behind, and from the influences of the likes of Fenollosa who had been steeped in Emersonian philosophy. There are, doubtless, an array of propositions that the early Emerson might share with Pound on subjects like the nature of language, and their terms can at times come close to suggest a perfect match, as in the following excerpt:

The same symbols are found to make the original elements of all languages. It has moreover been observed, that the idioms of all languages approach each other in passages of the greatest eloquence and power. And as this is the first language, so is it the last. This immediate dependence of language upon nature, this conversion of an outward phenomenon into a type of somewhat in human life, never loses its power to affect us. It is this which gives that piquancy to the conversation of a strong-natured farmer or back-woodsman which all men relish. 2

There is much in this paragraph that may be directly connected to Pound's ideogramic method and to Fenollosa's conception of language. However, whereas Emerson goes on, within his discourse on language and within his entire discourse on nature, to link such descriptions of phenomena with the ultimate agency of God and to make his explanations proofs of such metaphysical union, Pound appears to be concerned solely with the nature of language and the consequences that an understanding of nature might afford the poet. The need for a metaphysical explanation does not arise in Pound, so that his philosophical position and that of Emerson are somewhat opposed. Let us hear Emerson once more:

But wise men pierce this rotten diction and fasten words again to things; so that picturesque language is at once a commanding certificate that he who employs it, is a man in alliance with truth and God. The moment our discourse rises above the ground line of familiar facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by thought, it clothes itself in images. A man conversing in earnest, if he watch his intellectual processes, will find that a material image, more or less luminous, arises in the mind, contemporaneous with every thought which furnishes the vestment of the thought. Hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are perpetual allegories. This imagery is spontaneous. It is the blending of experience with the present action of the mind. It is proper creation. It is the working of the Original Cause through the instruments he has already made. 3

It might be thought that, with a few variations (i.e., 'emotion' for "thought" and 'gods' for "God") and a quickening in the style as well as the omission of the last sentence, Pound could have expressed himself in much the same words. The rhetoric appears to be the same; both Pound and Emerson will 'certify' the quality of any writing that remains faithful to natural symbols; both will 'blend experience and present action' in the search for the 'luminous' detail.

Share

Yet, while the two writers suggest a direct relationship between language and natural phenomena, they part company when language itself is put to use. For Pound is, in this respect, an utilitarian, someone who will not only utilise perceptions from nature but who will work at perfecting them in the service of communication, that is, in the service of a transference of meaning; while Emerson remains uplifted by such perceptions and roams into realms that the reader finds difficult to characterise due to their overwhelming descriptive temperament, something Harold Bloom has accurately conveyed in his own impressionistic sketch:

Emerson is appalling and peculiar – at first. Then he is – simply – ourselves, perhaps for worse. 4

But a more useful distinction may be derived from considering Walt Whitman 5 – the indubitable partner of Emerson's poetic philosophy – in contrast to Pound. Emerson overflowed with confidence, as did Whitman and Pound, and that is perhaps the most characteristic trait of what has come to stand as the American tradition in literature. I cannot help thinking that, overall, the concepts underlying such tradition-building exercises are based on ethical and not aesthetic considerations; that is, considerations which play the double role of tradition and nation building; something in which the United States is not alone. For, as enquiries into the detail of both biography and literary considerations are made, the differences outnumber the similarities, and much is lost in trying to draw a coherent picture that may not resemble a collage.

In the case of Whitman and Pound, we find powerful analogies within their individual conceptions of nature and, more importantly, in the universalising tendency of some national traits whose most important line of descent might be traced to Emerson.

Share

However, as has been explained by Bloom, there are two distinct strains to Emersonian thought, the latter of which is characterised by the transformation of an earlier strong and perfecting determinism into one that would accommodate imperfective modes of existence. This late breach in Emerson's thought – roughly traceable to the death of his young son Waldo, points to an area of research he could only comprehend in terms of future development and progress. David Robinson explains:

The 'general ideas' defended by the realists are an important reminder that a sense of worth can be preserved when discrete human actions fail to offer any support for that faith. 'A man is only a relative and representative nature ... a hint of the truth,' suggestive to us of general principles but never embodying the truth completely'. These questions were directly rooted in Emerson's personal situation in the middle 1840s, a time when he was attempting to beat back the demands from his friends for commitment to political projects of various sorts, while he simultaneously approached on his own terms the most appropriate methods of achieving the 'practical power' he had advocated in 'Experience.' In one sense, 'Nominalist and Realist' is a complicated attempt to answer this double bind, warning against the potential loss of judgment that too narrow a sense of political commitment can bring, while also insisting that particular facts are the only measure of general truths. 6

Though Emerson's overall perception of phenomena as interrelated and ultimately unitarian might be said to coincide with that of Pound, the latter will find it necessary to disclaim such a traditional outlook in order to get started on a detailed, scientific scrutiny of literary processes that, while casting away an uncalled-for romanticism, might nevertheless bring the poet close to an understanding of communication, that is, the process of development and preservation of what until then had been assumed to be the manifest unity of human and natural endeavour.

Therefore, Pound belongs with Emerson and Whitman in so far as he is able to contradict them in their assumed understanding of universal forms only to work towards their intuited notion from the base up, through an experimental approach.

Emerson's arguments flow on from an assumed understanding of unity and a visionary conception of the processes of nature. In his words:

And if one shall read the future of the race hinted in the organic effort of Nature to mount and meliorate, and the corresponding impulse to the Better in the human being, we shall dare affirm that there is nothing he will not overcome and convert, until at last culture shall absorb the chaos and Gehenna. 7

Such accommodations for evil in society, for disillusionment or for elements that do not strictly fit a perfect pattern had been part of Pound’s early personal findings and an integral part of his college life and his life in Europe with all the difficulties that self-imposed exile created for him.

Pound leaves behind Whitman and the Emersonian legacy. 8 An urgency other than that of exploring spiritual realities also confronted by the young Eliot, a need to find concrete links between social and personal needs in the new European environment – something Pound had a glimpse of within the writings of Henry James, but which, even there, remained picturesque and only accessible at an intellectual level – in sum, the youthful urge to experience and expound on the results of all experience, are the mark of what Roy Harvey Pearce has defined as Pound's "means of defining himself through his understanding of the creations and creative modes of others."

Such is the turning-point signalling a shift, if not a rift, in the tradition; a rift that may be explained away but which holds out a significant clue to the long-lasting differences that, to this day, permeate criticisms for and against the figure of Pound.

Pound chooses to transport the viewpoint of the American pioneer back to Europe and perhaps unwittingly, yet to a deeper extent than any American writer before him, immerses himself in the spirit and the practice of foreign cultures and languages, something Emerson himself had envisaged with words such as: "[w]e need not fear excessive influence. A more generous trust is permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humiliation. Grudge no office thou canst render. Be the limb of their body, the breath of their mouth." 9

Subscribe now

Roy H. Pearce points precisely to the area where this breach in tradition occurs and, though his general work is devoted to the task of reinforcing the American cultural genealogy, his argument gives credibility to our presentation. Commenting on Mauberley and accurately juxtaposing Whitman and Pound, he forms a notion of the basic "counter-current" Pound was to encourage with his literary activities.

As the style in which Whitman worked demanded of the poet no less than that at some point he renounce the world in favor of himself, the style in which Pound would work demanded no less than at some point (Eliot was to call it a "still, turning point") the poet renounce himself in favor of the world. 10

Pearce's argument is also a very old one; it is one for which much popular sympathy has been summoned over the centuries. The lines that Milton borrowed from the Protagoras: "So charming left his voice, that I the while / Thought him still speaking; still stood fixed to ear" (Paradise Lost Book VIII) are but the preamble for Socrates' criticism of a form of speech that Pound would also criticise in writers among whom Emerson and (paradoxically) Milton are two leading examples. Socrates addresses Protagoras after the latter's long speech:

If a man were to go and consult Pericles or any of our great speakers about these matters, he might perhaps hear a fine discourse; but then when one has a question to ask of any of them, like books, they can neither answer nor ask; and if any one challenges the least particular of their speech, they go ringing on in a long harangue, like brazen pots, which when they are struck continue to sound unless some one puts his hand upon them: whereas our friend Protagoras cannot only make a good speech , as he has already shown, but when he asks he will wait and hear the answer; and this is a very rare gift. Now I, Protagoras, want to ask you a little question, which if you will only answer, I shall be quite satisfied. 11

These criticisms appear explicit enough and, however individualistic the style of Emerson might be, they can certainly be applied to his writings. The fact remains that the main import of Emerson's private philosophy and of his methodology were opposed to those of Pound. The renunciation of the world Pearce attributes to Whitman (and which here is extended to encompass Emerson) is sought through a style that may lay no claim as a tool for instruction. Emerson's prose in his lectures, essays and addresses is infused with an unstoppable, romantic, and narcissistic dialectic that offers little access to analysis or even quotation. Arguments are used by Emerson irrespective of their comparative rational weight, that is, they appear to be inbuilt in the fabric of the prose and to follow a highly subjective mode of expression that indulges the devices of enumeration and concatenation of phenomena the author seems to consider philosophically equivalent.

Accordingly, Emerson will entertain parallel arguments that cannot be clearly defined or differentiated against each other yet rely fully on his unswerving optimism and belief to evoke their common ultimate and infinite origin. 12 His arguments are like the shafts of sunlight piercing through the clouds and appearing in our eyes as singular and independent expressions of the same reality. Stylistically speaking, Emerson's achievement is great, yet his approach is descriptive and offers little scope for direct discussion.

Perhaps George Santayana's remarks might help the reader position Emerson within the history of American thought. Santayana writes:

If we ask ourselves what was Emerson's relation to the scientific and religious movements of his time, and what place he may claim in the history of opinion, we must answer that he belonged very little to the past, very little to the present, and almost wholly to that abstract sphere into which mystical or philosophic aspiration has carried a few men in all ages. The religious tradition in which he was reared was that of Puritanism, but of a Puritanism which, retaining its moral intensity and metaphysical abstraction, had minimized its doctrinal expression and become Unitarian. Emerson was indeed the Psyche of Puritanism, "the latest-born and fairest vision far" of all that "faded hierarchy." A Puritan whose religion was all poetry, a poet whose only pleasure was thought, he showed in his life and personality the meagreness, the constraint, the frigid and conscious consecration which belonged to his clerical ancestors, while his inmost impersonal spirit ranged abroad over the fields of history and Nature, gathering what ideas it might, and singing its little snatches of inspired song. 13

Pound's prose, on the contrary, reveals a search for direct expression of opinion and a concern for utter plainness of speech which at times impinges on the crude. His own 'renouncing in favor of the world', as Pearce would have it, is the measure of an ultimate belief in the communicability of experience and the necessity for science as a means to provide accurate descriptions of reality. Consequently, Pound's arguments are eminently quotable and may be used within a syllabus of studies without much need for re-arrangement. Pound's prose pays constant attention to reason and to what is reasonable in the form of minutiae and in his effort to establish arguments at a common level of understanding.

Share

Arguably, Emerson's complexity and philosophical wealth is based on his assumed or experienced (as the case may be) notion of identity between the writer and his argument, while Pound's contribution to thought in the twentieth century relied on a conscious, structured movement away from style as the mark of an individual author and towards style as "the mode of writing which implies a very considerable basis of agreement between writer and reader, between writer and an order of existence, together with comparatively low percentage of difference." 14

Twenty-nine years later, he will summon Frobenius to make the point once more: "Writing, which is communication service, should be held distinct from the production of merchandise for the book trade.” 15 And that measure of communication was defined by Leo Frobenius and quoted by Pound within his ‘Immediate need of Confucius’: “It is not what a man says but the part of it which his auditor considers important that determines the amount of the communication.”

Even though Pound's approach has been described here as scientific and set against the romantic displays of Emerson and Whitman, such a claim is controversial and in need of explanation. For science, as Sheldrake has written, "can deal only with regularities, with things that are repeatable", 16 and Pound appears to be dealing mainly with the particular.

Nevertheless, in order for him to uncover the 'pivotal' elements in the history and practice of literature and the other arts, an acquaintance with much that is not salient or pivotal was necessary, so that, in spite of the unorthodoxy of Pound's scientific approach – more in line with the modus operandi of the inventor (who achieves through trial, error, and accident) than that of theoretician or science historian – his analyses may still be gathered under that label without upsetting the basic tenets of scientific learning. And it is in this context that philosophical considerations about communication and Pound's study of words and language may be entered into.

Pound wrote in 'Mang Tsze': "That things can be known a hundred generations distant, implied no supernatural powers, it did imply the durability of natural process which alone gives a possibility for science." 17

Sheldrake has written:

Time after time when atoms come into existence electrons fill the same orbitals around the nuclei; atoms repeatedly combine to give the same molecular forms; again and again molecules crystallize into the same spatial patterns; seeds of a given species give rise year after year to plants of the same appearance; generation after generation, spiders spin the same types of web. Forms come into being repeatedly, and each time each form is more or less the same. On this fact depends our ability to recognize, identify and name things. 18

On the grounds of this succession of observable phenomena, the correspondence between actualities in nature and names in language which Emerson largely assumes and inevitably links to extra-scientific considerations, veers, in Pound's work, towards an understanding that, though not deprived of the benefit of straight correspondence, provides enough leeway for scientific argumentation.

Because Emerson somewhat allows himself the literary privilege of equating the abilities of 'children and savages' with those of 'wise men' in their dealings with language, reducing the apprehension of language to a form of intuition, and because, in his exploration of learning and discipline, 19 a reader might come away with no practical clue as to how to start up the line of his own inquiries but instead receives a dose of formal optimism that delights him as would the sweetness of honey, Emerson's approach is far from scientific or modern. It becomes difficult to refute its truthfulness since the inbuilt 'essentialism' that characterises it leaves no room for questioning.

Leave a comment

Emerson writes in revelatory fashion, a privileged methodology that seldom leads to communication other than what the poetic stimulus (some would argue, a purely romantic one at that) allows. After first immersion in the flow of Emmerson’s writing, the reader emerges stirred by the sheer force of the homiletic discourse, while his/her intellect appears to have momentarily arrested in its work and been drawn to the mode of contemplation.

Whatever the merits and nature of this fluxing style, they are surely not characteristics that can be attributed to Poundian or Confucian writing. A similar set of anthropological correspondences may be said to belong to all three types of discourse, yet only Pound and Confucius can be tied to a solely organicist conception of the universe they describe where causation relates exclusively to the organic pattern of relationships developed and maintained by the organisms perpetuating existence and, especially, by the human species in its understanding and control over aesthetics.

Ultimately, Emersonian dualism remains distant from the comprehensive monistic approach of Confucius and the evolving Poundian ethic of effective communication through education.

Here, I hasten to make a point of precision regarding some of Pound’s statements that could be interpreted as dualist philosophical assertions. In 'Axiomata', meant as 'his "intellectual will and testament" on leaving England', Pound writes with enviable soundness and clarity:

(I1) The intimate essence of the universe is not of the same nature as our own consciousness. (I2) Our own consciousness is incapable of having produced the universe. (I3) God, therefore, exists. That is to say, there is no reason for not applying the term God, Theos, to the intimate essence .... (III2) The theos may affect and may have affected the consciousness of individuals, but the consciousness is incapable of knowing why this occurs, or even in what manner it occurs, or whether it be the theos; though the consciousness may experience pleasant and possibly unpleasant sensations, or sensations partaking neither of pleasure or its opposite. Hence mysticism. ... The effects remain, so far as the consciousness is concerned, in the domain of experience, not differing intellectually from the taste of a lemon, or the fragrance of violets or the aroma of dunghills, or the feel of a stone or of tree-bark, or any other direct perception. As the consciousness observes the results of the senses, it observes also the mirage of the senses, or what may be a mirage of the senses, or an affect from the theos, the non-comprehensible. 20

The poet shows in this the depth of his perception and sincerity. Moreover, he shows his willingness to discern between knowledge and belief, experience, and imagination through what is a philosophically coherent and an essentially scientific approach. Pound writes in section V11:

We do not quite know how we have come by these concepts of common decency, but one supposes it is our heritage from superior individuals of the past; that it is the treasure of tradition. Savages and professed believers in religion do not possess this concept of common decency. They usually wish to interfere with us, and to get us to believe something "for our own good." 21

With Pound, and with Confucius (to the poet’s reckoning: a clear exponent of ‘superior individuals of the past’), language may be analysed from the bottom up, never shifting perspective or introducing the deus ex machina principle but constantly developing what could be labelled 'a logic of communication'.

Share

Pound is certain that, to achieve this, due attention needs be given not only to the origin of language (its etymologies) – something Emerson was also fond of – but to the processes underlying communication itself. Such processes originate in daily usage and are not restricted to the realm of a pre-twentieth-century notion of literature. As Louis Zukofsky has written of Pound's endeavour:

- intent upon 'language not petrifying on his hands, preparing for new advances along the lines of true metaphor, that is, interpretative metaphor, or image, as opposed to the ornamental.' 'Artists are the antennae of the race,' words to him are principals of a line of action, a store, a purpose, a retaining of speech and manner, a constant reinterpreting of processes becoming in himself one continuous process, essentially simplification.

He has treated the arts as a science so that their morality and immorality become a matter of accuracy and inaccuracy. 22

Although I have mentioned previously the importance that accuracy in the use of language had for Pound, and the Confucian doctrine of zheng ming 正名 has also been introduced in Chapter 4 of this study, 23 it will be necessary to expand on this topic here and to provide some historical background that may qualify the extent to which the doctrine itself may be considered a genuine Confucian philosophical principle.

The characters zheng ming 正名 are found only once in the Analects and therefore do not stand the test of quantitative comparison with terms such as li 禮 or ren 仁 that have achieved a similar standing within Confucian literature and are often repeated therein.

As John Makeham has shown, 24 signalling an 'excessive broadening of what Confucius meant by zheng ming', the scarcity of direct or indirect references to this term within the Confucian classics remains bewildering in the light of the commentary such doctrine has engendered from students of Confucianism.

Makeham points out however, that although we might not call zheng ming a doctrine about language – a conception which Pound and most Western sinologists have embraced – there exist sufficient textual examples in the Classics denoting a Confucian preoccupation about the 'ordering of names' and its prominence as a necessary government policy to substantiate, within the evolving forms of Confucianism in early China, a legitimate need for linguistic precision.

In fact, Makeham relegates the scope expressed by the term zheng ming to the realm of what he calls "rank/titles/stations" and gives ample historical illustration of the events which gave way to its only occurrence in the Analects. Makeham also goes on to trace the development of the notion and offers three possible reasons for its 'application to a broad range of entities'.

Of these reasons, the one that should be fully acknowledged and that has qualified not only Pound's but the whole of Western Sinology up to this day, is that which gives credit to the wealth of philosophical debate while also eliciting a tendency towards abstraction and re-interpretation characteristic of philosophical endeavours in ancient China. Makeham writes:

The sophisticated philosophical developments of the third century B.C. where ming [名] was abstracted and contrasted with shi [事], "actuality," gradually resulted in ming developing a very broad semantic field. Moreover, the arguments posed by skeptical Daoist and School of Names polemicists which challenged both traditional and common sense notions about the relationship between language and reality, as well as the difficulties of orthographic and lexical standardization that confronted the centralized governments of the Qin and Han empires, meant that the term ming and its inherent connotations came to be associated with a far broader spectrum of problems and issues than had been the case in Confucius' time. 25

Within this extremely active period (500 B.C. to 150 B.C.) of philosophical debate in China, Makeham has identified "the emergence of essentialist theories of naming". We will use Makeham's arguments and distinctions that may be used to further clarify the difference between Emersonian thought and Poundian thought and thus open the debate to other sources of philosophical influence in the life and work of the modern American poet.

Subscribe now

Makeham distinguishes two strands of thought within the essentialist theories of naming developed by the late third century B.C. in China. On the one hand, he notes the work by Dong Zhongshu 董仲舒 in the second century B.C. and qualifies its essentialism by expounding on his theory of naming.

Each entity, upon its creation, has certain identifiable characteristics which are an expression of that entity's unique actuality. The subsequent image a sage forms of these characteristics provides the basis for naming that entity. Thus the notion that things carry their own name should not be construed too literally. What it means rather is that each entity is sufficiently unique to be able to be given a name that truly represents the qualities of that entity. Ultimately, however, it is Heaven which determines what that name will be: 'Each affair accords with its name and each name accords with Heaven'. 26

This stance is very close to the Emersonian conception of language as seen above. It differs from Pound's however, in that it finds the ultimate cause for the act of naming in a privileged metaphysical (tian yi 天意 or Heaven's will) image and not in the play and interaction of natural phenomena.

Makeham's second strand in ancient essentialist theories of naming is headed by the Guanzi 管子. This text has traditionally been included together with other texts of Huang Lao 黃老 27 provenance though there has been much debate about their relative degree of closeness after the 1973 discoveries of the only extant texts of the Huang Lao school in Hunan 湖南 province. It is in the Guanzi that Pound's understanding of the act of naming and the natural and social relations identified through the use of language find their best ancient model. Makeham writes:

In Guan zi, that which makes a name appropriate to a particular entity is the bond it has with that entity's actuality. There is no notion of names being born of actualities; rather names and actualities are like two sides of the same coin with neither having ontological precedence over the other. 28

It is disconcerting how a large majority of modern philosophers choose to ignore or reject outright any philosophical basis to biblical teachings and, more specifically, those attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus’ teachings, in their most basic assertions and evidencing provide the basis for a phenomenological approach to knowledge, a method for understanding reality, and a clear logic for ascertaining truth.

The fact that belief and faith play a foundational role in the building of such ‘phenomenology’ (I am aware of Husserl’s 1st-person perspective), should not stop philosophers from researching its validity, the evidence provided in biblical texts, real life, and the relevance of the philosophical knowledge thereby imparted.

The generalised practice of modern philosophers asking questions about the world, life and purporting to seek knowledge has been to first draw suited conceptual perimeters or spheres able to contain the ‘eternality’ and ‘wideness’ of the conceptions they are able to witness, imagine and theoretically believe in, to then build a set of mostly causal relationships back towards the individual centre of their own mental activity, attempting to draw in the process the further reaches of such conceptions (“eternal and infinite” as they may be) towards the reach of material/real human understanding.

Now, a ‘god’ that may be called God and which entity is worth its weight, cannot be said to exist as humans do exist. God is. The God entity is the creator of existence while ‘infinitude’ and ‘eternality’ are two of God’s characteristics as far as we are told and can summarily tell. But that's another topic.

As many of the ancient philosophers demanded of those ‘plotting the field’, ‘humility’ is to provide both a logical (what can humans really know about the interactions of infinity and eternality?) as well as an appropriate starting point (the ‘truths’ we witness are often witnessed differently by others).

They (from Socrates to Confucius) recognised how, faced with all these 'truths', faced with the traditions people hold on to, with the societies we have 'grown' and, more importantly, with how the mysterious nature of the world and life itself require 'openness' and 'enlightenment', they recognised (to paraphrase a fellow Substacker) that ‘the thing was not about winning an argument or proving someone wrong but about remaining open and continuing to learn’.

However, we now witness how the modern tendency to ‘enlighten’ and ‘be enlightened’, far from enhancing the understanding of truth or valid/correct knowledge, does much to confuse the dialogue. For those who have investigated, lived through, and thought deeply about various philosophies, cultural bias and beliefs, ‘enlightenment’ tends to blurr beyond all recognition the philosophical view.

The obvious first-hand conclusion a philosopher faces when looking at the profuse amalgam of theories and philosophical outlooks is yet another question: ‘How can this all make sense or be concurrently valid? How can it all be true?

In fact, saying that they are all true, consistent with each other, concurrently valid and logical represents the opposite of ‘humility’ and speaks of an impossibility rather than truth or accurate knowledge. It speaks of a blatant ignorance about truth.

The dictionary ‘truth’ defined as: "Conformity to fact or actuality, Reality; actuality. The reality of a situation" has been abandoned.

Based on this, I'd say there is a problem with the logical intent of modern philosophy at large, a line of argumentations which, as I see them, originate essentially in trying to equate that which is not, and can never be equal.

The enlightened position of the modern philosopher is to equate personal ratiocination and expression of conceptual theorising with truth.

As such, this is unreliable at best. Trying to equate all individual philosophising expressions under the banner of philosophical truth or validity is implausible. And to expect that the act of such philosophical expressions being communicated through language will somehow validate such equality is even more implausible as a philosophical premise.

Additionally, if such varied philosophies are meant to provide a foundation for the improvement of human society and explain how that may be achieved, then their validity must be phenomenonological in nature and provide tangible corroboration of its adoption which, in view of the numerous and divergent alternatives available, summons the spectre of very high improbability levels.

The modern philosopher, by and large, has exchanged ‘truth’ for ‘truths’, adopted the change without external confirmation, and happily works their way to build their knowledge base independent of corroboration or any direct relationship to truth in fact.

This means that if philosophical ‘truth’ has no direct and effective connection to reality, in fact, if truth does not show, embody, or completely fill our reality, it cannot be called truth.

As such, truth is an experience, and the truth of Jesus is as tangible and personal to those having witnessed it as any other truth. It effects change because it is true or, as we know from history and from modern times, it was used by ancient philosophers and is currently utilised by people everywhere because it points to a universal, underlying principle that remains eternally valid.

John 1:1-5 is the revelation to humanity of the divine experience, the truth of that experience. And truth is unique and universal, not comparable or equivalent to any other so-called philosophical ‘truth’.

John 1:1-5 says God's Word (Logos) is life, life is itself light, and light maybe comprehended or understood in the light and not in darkness.

John 1:6-14 explains how light (life, the Word and God) are understood by humans, how humans become witnesses to the light, to God, and how humans, by receiving (by believing in, by having faith in, by witnessing to the truth) the Word made flesh (God with us Immanuel/Jesus), by witnessing Him (the Lord Jesus), are born (again) as children to God. That is, children to truth.

So, there are those who recognise the light - the truth - and those who don't. And these children are born again ("born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." John 1:13), they are in truth with God through Jesus (light of the world). They hold the first-hand knowledge of the truth in Jesus.

Now, there are many ways, as many as there are individual people to express the phenomenon of truth, and Jesus tells us clearly: "And I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 8:11).

These are those people who see the light in Jesus through His Word (the universal Logos), whose hearts have turned away from personal conceptions, philosophies, and the varied expressions (guesses at the mysteriousness of what we experience) of humanity and look into the light, the life, into God through choosing the Way of Jesus (His philosophy), His loving of the true knowledge of God. The Logos has said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6)

True humility lives in witnessing God's Word, God's life, God's light, receiving the Holy Spirit, and making the 1st and 2nd commandments efforts to remain dependent and subject to Him in truth throughout our lives.

‘Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”

Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”’ Mark 12:29-31

‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said [God’s Word], “Let there be light”: and there was light [God's Word = Jesus = the light of the world]. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.’ Genesis 1:1-4

God creates existence by His Word and what He creates is not only the expression of His truth, It is the truth itself manifested in the light which itself manifests in life. Who among humans can live without light? Who among humans can do what God does?

What is the truth? Which philosophy would humans hear?

Leave a comment

Share

Goal

Method

Strategy

Jesus is ‘tempted’ to doubt and fear by Satan at three levels at least: 1

1. Satan/evil purports to satisfy Jesus’s physical needs when He is faced with hardship (His 40-day fast) and to secure Jesus’s survival by allegedly protecting His life.

2. Satan/evil would lure Jesus into disobedience by quoting the Word of God in a deceptive fashion and purporting to secure proof to confirm the validity of Jesus’s faith.

3. Satan/evil would entice Jesus to acquire power through spiritual corruption in worshipping evil/unreason in order to secure worldly advancement in pursuit of personal ambition.

All three temptations are subtle. They address realities faced by all humans at three levels of existence: the physical and material, the mental and intellectual, and of the soul and spiritual.

All three temptations have at least three common characteristics:

goal

The first characteristic is that they all aim at introducing doubt and fear in the person being tempted. The conditional phrasing of the 3 acts of temptation by Satan (“If…” clauses) reveals the exact grammatical construction used to engender first doubt, then fear in the interlocutor. 2 These doubts and the resulting fear can be plainly rendered as follows:

• If you don’t get food when hungry, I’m afraid you’ll starve to death.

• If you cannot prove that reason and good prevail in your own life, I’m afraid you’ll lose faith and lose face.

• If you don’t accept my lordship, I’m afraid you’ll never achieve your ambitions.

The temptations are different, yes, but they all rely on the introduction of unreason into consciousness. Only an engaged conscience (the consciousness of being or existence, the consciousness of reason) can overcome such lures.

It is for our conscience to task itself to recognize such malignant/unreasonable ‘voice(s)’ in our own thinking, in the chains of habit to which we submit ourselves once evil has broken through, to decide, at the very moment we recognize them, that unreason/evil does not deserve our time and energy, and to arrest and expel them from our mind/heart immediately, because, after that time, they will grow to engender fear.

method

The second characteristic is that the temptations from Satan are all fallacious in nature.

To be hungry does not in itself mean that we’ll starve to death. Perhaps there is an increased possibility of that occurring but, for a person who has already been fasting willingly over forty days and nights, this may or may not be that crucial. More importantly however, the actual conversion of stones into bread relies on divine power, the power of God and is therefore something that could have been invoked by Jesus Himself earlier had He so wanted or needed to. The first ministry of Jesus on earth (conforming to the prophecy of the ‘suffering servant’ in Isaiah 53 and Daniel 9) was marked by Jesus’s persistent emphasis on not using His godly powers to repeatedly overcome blatant evil or to boast about His own bequest, but instead use them to reduce suffering, heal the sick, and offer the hope of salvation through the remission of sins in His sacrifice for humankind at the cross.

To conceive that something may not always be as it appears represents the description of what we mean by words such as ‘error’ and ‘lie’. To suggest to the mind that something may not be as it is currently understood or experienced and that it may need to be tested in order to ascertain its already known validity represents an exercise in ‘void creation’, in the breaking down of structures that have upheld or even created the position in which we find ourselves before conceiving doubt is even possible.

Such is a destructive exercise whose only objective is to create a void replaceable by another ‘soon to come’ construct that may or may not be valid or true and will often go against what the mind has entertained, believed, experienced, and exercised previously.

This action represents the onset of doubt and remains without reason since its only aim is that of achieving a transfer of adherence between conceptions, give way to the construction of a substitutive truth yet unproven, and that way, motivate a transfer of power. The causality produced by doubt is deceptive in nature.

Share

strategy

The third characteristic is that all three temptations form part of a strategy for destruction devoid of reason, that is, destruction for its own sake.

When someone attempts to substitute what we have created, believed and or experienced, that someone has 2 choices:

- To humbly submit to the reality that they have found a greater or equally valid option in us/our experience, or

- To attempt to destroy us/our creation to prove that their understanding is superior.

It may be posited that to question something does not necessarily amount to the destruction of our way of life, our understanding and that, in fact, much of the knowledge achieved by humankind, and more specifically by what we term ‘scientific knowledge’, has been obtained through the mechanism of ‘systematic doubt’, a strategy which is believed to promote the enhancement and betterment of humanity across geographies and history.

Nevertheless, when accepting ‘cartesian doubt’ 3 as the basis of accurate/true knowledge, we are not undoing the foundations of our life on earth as humans but relying even more strongly on them to, supposedly, get to the bottom of, to a clearer understanding of the human nature and the world we inhabit.

‘To question’ is not ‘to doubt’ but to consider all the available/conceivable elements before us and to research the nature of their interactions within daily life, the extent of their reach and influence, and the results of their activity.

Doubt is in fact diametrically opposed to ‘questioning’ in the scientific sense. Doubt requires no theory, no pre-supposition, no argumentation; it sets itself as an idol before which the sceptic, the atheist, the agnostic willingly prostrate and offer the crowns of all their acquired knowledge and experience.

Just as evil is, doubt remains reason-less, unreasonable. Are we reasonably warranted in doubting our own existence? Is doubt even possible without existence?

When we question something, when we enquire, far from pulling the rag of our acquired knowledge and experience from under our foundational feet, we pierce through the rag and push the roots of our existential and conceptual foothold on life (our acquired knowledge) further down, deeper, to ensure equilibrium (otherwise called ‘objectivity’), drawing from a balanced understanding of potential causes/reasons and consequences, and to remain true to the basis of any investigation we carry out. 4

Ultimately and more importantly, Satan’s wished-for success depends on Jesus’s compliance with the terms of evil’s proposals. Significantly, Jesus remains unmoved, undeceived by Satan’s stratagem, and firmly rooted in God’s Word, something which, as humans, demonstrably, we are not prone to carry out so successfully ourselves.

Share

Temptation

Reason is for love

There are ways and ways

The difficulty Joseph, an orthodox Jew, faced was that Mary was with child before they got married. Society and religion were extremely explicit in declaring to him that he should not accept Mary as his bride because she was pregnant and because the child was not his own flesh and blood, since he had no part in the child Jesus’ conception.

The reason (logos) of God’s creation, the Word of God / Jesus, overrode then and continues to override today what society and the religions of humans consider, establish, and prescribe.

temptation

Joseph’s temptation at the time was to follow what people and society said and to believe what would certainly turn into an accusation were he to accept pregnant Mary as his wife. He was confronting his upbringing, his culture, and the basic tenets of human religion and tradition.

Such too are the situations we find ourselves in when faced with evil. These are not easy encounters, nor is the way out before evil conditions necessarily obvious, yet the consciousness of reason, the Bible, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit may be engaged when recognising the presence of evil and thus allow for the selection of a correct choice.

Share

Joseph intended to marry Mary and was betrothed to her (a Jewish traditional practice lasting about one year and tantamount to marriage). 1 Their marriage proper had not yet taken place, nor, obviously, was it consummated. 2 On finding out about Mary’s pregnancy and what appeared to be the breaking of all traditional and religious rules, Joseph needed to make a choice: would he confirm his betrothal and marry Mary, or would he retract his promise of marriage and conform to tradition and religion?

Had he chosen to put Mary aside and not marry her, wouldn’t Mary have become a single mother within a deeply religious and traditional society? What would have been the consequences of such a choice for Mary?

reason is for love

Joseph chose charity(love)/compassion even though, in the face of it (the evil/unreasonableness of the religious and traditional society around him), he was bound, if found out, to become an outcast, a pariah, his future life ruined to all intents and purposes. Matthew’s Gospel explains the origin of Joseph’s choice:

Matthew 1:20-21 Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: After His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly. But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

there are ways and ways

1 Corinthians 10:13 states: No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

Regarding the nature of evil and the actions of Satan, a translation from the Book of Job provides further substantiation:

Job 2:3 in the English International version has God saying about Job to Satan: Then the Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.’

Evil has no raison d'être according to God's original creation. We waste a lot of time every day trying to explain what evil is, why it occurs, what its origins are, and how best to counter it. But the reality is that God taught us very early on in history the rules of thought and behaviour that allow us to keep evil at arm’s length. These rules are the Ten Commandments, which Jesus, for simplicity’s sake, reduces to the following:

Mark 12:28-34 Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” So the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” But after that no one dared question Him.

Note also that Jesus’ summary of God’s 10 Commandments into two (2) Commandments represents a thoroughly positive, active, and totally accurate formulation of the rules of behaviour, rather than the original, still valid, yet more prohibitive (“you shall not”) formulation given in Moses’s tablets. The basis of the New Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah (c. 650-570BC) and given by Jesus (c. 4BC-30AD) may be found in this prophecy:

“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” Jeremiah 31:31-34

Evil has no reason to exist and only occurs when Satan roams the earth (whereto he was expelled for wanting to be like God). God says that Satan's actions have no reason for being, that they are 'without cause'/'without reason'.

Share

We give evil much importance in our lives, we give it time, energy. If/when evil occurs in our life (which happens and will happen frequently because that is Satan's job to prowl the earth where we live) the essential thing is to direct our thoughts towards the good, towards God, and consult His Word, the guidance that He has given us to persevere and to prevail in the midst of such situations.

If we can intervene by remembering the Good News (Gospel) and the Word of God (Old and New Testaments) when we have to face evil, loneliness, injustice, lack, hunger, illness, death, usurpation, persecution, etc., at the very least, we know that there is nothing better, nor stronger, nor more effective, nor faster, nor healthier, nor more reasonable than what God and Jesus (the Word), through the Holy Spirit offer us.

Leave a comment

Share

Leave a comment

There appears to have been a decidedly Southern ‘light’ in philosophical endeavours bridging the ideal, God-inspired mutterings of devout souls, and the more practical necessities of human law and order across centuries.

From Empedocles (Sicilian) to Albert the Great (Bavarian by birth), through his contemporary Thomas Aquinas (also Sicilian) and Llull (Majorcan) – both younger than Albert by two decades – this meridional light filters through to universities and courts north of the Mediterranean, to Montpellier and Paris and eventually exerts its influence on the brilliance of European Renaissance and Enlightenment worlds, culminating in Immanuel Kant’s at once probing, encompassing, and crisp analysis of the same themes.

Such endeavours, in truth, were by no means limited to Southern latitudes, and parallel efforts in ascertaining ‘God as a reality’ also witnessed a path of progression towards the settling of evidence spanning the centuries in Northern geographies, culminating in what Joshua Moritz calls the ‘God-Shaped Hole at the Heart of Mathematics’. He writes:

About 1500 years ago the Christian mathematician, physicist, theologian, and philosopher John Philoponus (490 to 570) was the first to use detailed mathematical arguments to make a case for the existence of God. Striving to demonstrate the logical consistency of the Christian faith to the pagan philosophers of his day, Philoponus discovered a deep contradiction at the heart of Aristotle’s argument for the eternity of the world that opened a path to a mathematical case for the Christian concept of a creator God…

The medieval tradition of faith seeking understanding, exemplified by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), Bonaventure (1217-1274), and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) inherited and further developed the arguments of Philoponus. Anselm also constructed a novel type of proof for the existence of God, known as the “ontological proof”, which aims to demonstrate that God’s existence is logically entailed by the very concept of God. Natural philosophers such as Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Isaac Newton (1643-1727), and Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) further elaborated the proofs with regard to their mathematical formulation and logical consistency. Leibniz, the “founder of computer science” who invented both calculus and binary code, continued to refine Anselm’s ontological proof, arguing that 1) a Most Perfect being [aka God] is Possible, and 2) If God is possible, then God exists…

Within the context of faith seeking understanding, Gödel developed a mathematical proof to demonstrate God’s existence. Viewing himself as a successor to Leibniz, Gödel’s proof elaborated upon the ontological proof of his predecessor. Gödel sought to fix the fundamental weaknesses of and remove inconsistencies from Leibniz’s proof. Gödel’s proof addresses all of the classic philosophical criticisms of Anselm’s, Descartes’, and Leibniz’s ontological proofs, and also addresses Kant’s well-known objection that existence should not be treated as a predicate. 1

Although we look in Kant for answers as to the precise relevance of what is reason-led and to the critical separation between all that is ‘of Good’ and ‘not of Good’, within his still, dissecting prose, the spirit of the argument that arose in ancient minds and found the self-same dilemmas explored once and again throughout the ages remains veiled by the profuseness of his style of argumentation and by the crafted logic itself.

That much may also be said to be true of the efforts of philosophers at large, and so, reverting to the dynamism of poetry to discern the ‘direct light’ or ‘knowledge’ at the origin of it all, does not seem to be a far-fetched proposition or approach. But how can that be justified philosophically?

That enlightenment, consistent, insistent, and near enough perpetually and directly available in meridional geographies (in the form of physical light), allows for clear sight and distinction while also upholding the unity of perception in the element that facilitates it, a ‘truth’ grounded in observation that may be deemed to overflow (poetically) the strictures of vocabulary and even reason.

Kant, in his search, will work on a division between practical and speculative reason at the source of the unravelling of this truth, something Aquinas had already sought to do in making sense of life’s dichotomies.

Leave a comment

While Kant writes about ‘happiness’ and the ‘highest good’, setting with others the conceptual stage for radical changes in the New World, and justifies it by saying,

It is just the same with the foregoing antinomy of pure practical reason. The first of the two propositions, that the endeavor after happiness produces a ground for a virtuous disposition, is absolutely false; but the second, that a virtuous disposition necessarily produces happiness, is false not absolutely but only insofar as this disposition is regarded as the form of causality in the sensible world, and consequently false only if I assume existence in the sensible world to be the only kind of existence of a rational being; it is thus only conditionally false. But since I am not only warranted in thinking of my existence also as a noumenon in a world of the understanding but even have in the moral law a purely intellectual determining ground of my causality (in the sensible world), it is not impossible that morality of disposition should have a connection, and indeed a necessary connection, as cause with happiness as effect in the sensible world, if not immediately yet mediately (by means of an intelligible author of nature), a connection which, in a nature that is merely an object of the senses, can never occur except contingently and cannot suffice for the highest good. 2

Aquinas’ Summa Theologica postulates the normative of ‘the habitual’ in daily life by determining:

Accordingly we conclude that just as, in the speculative reason, from naturally known indemonstrable principles, we draw the conclusions of the various sciences, the knowledge of which is not imparted to us by nature, but acquired by the efforts of reason, so too it is from the precepts of the natural law, as from general and indemonstrable principles, that the human reason needs to proceed to the more particular determination of certain matters…

The human reason cannot have a full participation of the dictate of the Divine Reason, but according to its own mode, and imperfectly. Consequently, as on the part of the speculative reason, by a natural participation of Divine Wisdom, there is in us the knowledge of certain general principles, but not proper knowledge of each single truth, such as that contained in the Divine Wisdom; so too, on the part of the practical reason, man has a natural participation of the eternal law, according to certain general principles, but not as regards the particular determinations of individual cases, which are, however, contained in the eternal law. Hence the need for human reason to proceed further to sanction them by law…

The practical reason is concerned with practical matters, which are singular and contingent: but not with necessary things, with which the speculative reason is concerned. Wherefore human laws cannot have that inerrancy that belongs to the demonstrated conclusions of sciences. Nor is it necessary for every measure to be altogether unerring and certain, but according as it is possible in its own particular genus. 3

Therefore, what Aquinas, in dealing with human (practical) ‘natural participation in the Divine’, relegates to the realm of imperfection and removes from (speculative) ‘necessary things’, effectively excusing it from the ‘inerrancy’ of perfection, Kant employs in a positive light to link ‘contingently’ human (mediated) experience ‘in the world of the senses’ to ‘the highest good’ through the morality of ‘necessary connections’.

Share

And it is on the pull of the ‘necessary’, a term used over 120 times in Kant’s 130 page-long Critique of Practical Reason and over 1,600 times in Aquinas’ 4,900 page-long Summa 4, that both philosophers base their argumentation, indeed, where they lay the pre-eminence of their assumptions related to the presumed and encompassing nature of human intellection.

Moritz describes the progression of ‘necessary truth’ in his account of 20^th century efforts to mathematically prove God’s existence as follows:

Gödel’s ontological proof uses mathematical logic to show that the existence of God is a necessary truth. “God” in Gödel’s proof is defined as a “Godlike object”. In order for an object to be “Godlike”, it must have every good or positive property. Also, a Godlike object has no negative properties. In the context of Gödel’s proof, an object (x) has “the Godlike property” if and only if for every property (φ), if φ is a positive property, then x has property φ. Because being “Godlike” is a positive property, it is possible that that property exists in an object (x). After mathematically defining essential or necessary properties Gödel then shows that it is necessary that there is an object x that has the Godlike property. If a Godlike object (i.e. God) has every good property, and necessary existence is a good property, then a Godlike object (i.e. God) must exist. 5

Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides 1135-1204), a close predecessor of both Aquinas and Llull 6 explains the concept of ‘the necessary’ in a treatise that may be better understood as a cross-cultural (Hebrew-Arabic), glossary of the basic concepts used in the discussion of logic and philosophy. 7

It is obvious that in every affirmation or negation, that which you affirm or negate of something is inevitably either necessary or possible or impossible with reference to it. For example, when we say 'Every man is an animal', we call this proposition necessary; when we say 'Every man is a bird' we call this proposition impossible; and when we say 'Some men write', we call this proposition possible. We say that both the necessary and the impossible are so of necessity because we say, 'Man is of necessity an animal' and 'Man is of necessity not a bird'. When we assert concerning Zayd, let us say, at the time of his birth, 'This Zayd is writing' or 'this Zayd is not writing', we call this proposition truly possible; but when we say this concerning Abu-Isbak the lad, when he is actually writing, we do not call this proposition possible but absolute or actual. For, a thing can be possible only with reference to the future, before one of the alternatives is realized; when such a realization takes place, the possibility is removed. When Zayd stands near us, his standing is no longer a possibility but resembles something necessary. 8

The pre-eminence of pure reason – even when considering practical reason – and a sure return to and containment of thought within the limits of language, remain at the basis of what Llull too grappled with within his writings, and the contentious debates he conducted with the authorities of the time.

As Jorge Garcia explains:

‘Reason’, as Llull understands it, differs considerably from natural reason, since by itself it does not attain to full consistency, needing faith to discern the truth. What solution may be said to impose itself then? How can the two assertions coalesce within a coherent doctrine? Which of the two aspects, reason, or faith, should be recognised as prevalent? 9 10

Llull writes in his Libre de Demostracions:

7. If the Antichrist comes and performs miracles 11 before you so that you believe in him, you will [then] be able to strongly resist 12 your [own] susceptibility to the miracles you will see [only] if you have necessary reasons; [those reasons are] that Jesus became flesh and that his Trinity will endure these well, which you would not be able to do without [these] necessary reasons; and if the Son of God were not incarnate nor had his Trinity endured these well, there could be no [place for] necessary reasons, and if you were so to believe, that would be a false belief. Based on this, you will be able to strongly resist your [own] susceptibility to the sensual sight of miracles that you will see the Antichrist perform falsely, by [the] benevolent power and by [the] greater, and by existence, for that is why the incarnation of the Son of God and the holy trinity who will endure it well, are demonstrable. 13 14

In the Book of the Friend and Lover Llull writes:

198. The friend loved so much the lover that he believed everything he said, and he desired to understand him so much that everything he heard him say, he wanted to understand through necessary reasons. That is why the friend’s love was between belief and intelligence. 15 16

To paraphrase Salvador Galmés in his preface to Llull’s Book of Demonstrations (Libre de Demostracions), Llull’s ‘sizeable conception encompasses a double aspect to its ultimate purpose which is both speculative and practical’. 17 Galmés says of its practical aspect:

The first purpose – to bring the infidels to the catholic faith – compelled him to shun the test or demonstration of the faith, that the adversary would have never admitted, and to adopt instead the necessary reason, which could not be refuted. But in terms of the scope of this qualifier, it is already well known that the concept it contains was a little subjective and personal to the Author, understanding as necessary reason, rather than an apodictic demonstration, a demonstration of minor or major congruence, which could not be denied without denying commonly accepted principles. — The same purpose, together with his temperament, led him to dispense with a rigorously scientific expression and to employ more elastic and at times very bold forms of demonstration. But those who have labelled him a heterodox, have not known how or have not wanted to read in the fringes of every bold concept expressed, an implicit "so to speak", such as was the case with those he often used explicitly. 18 19

The necessary reasons Llull calls on in the previous excerpt are: 1. God’s incarnation on Earth as Jesus Christ, and 2. The Trinity and its enduring nature as a reality in Creation. 20

But what is his basis for the formulation of these necessary reasons and for their use?

Leave a comment

We must accept that these are pre-eminently matters of faith and, as such, subject to faith. However, in putting together the above two quotes, we are reminded of the subjacent reality that, for the Christian, instigates both the Trinity and God’s incarnation in the person of Jesus.

The concept and experience of ‘love’, something Llull frames between “belief and intelligence” (between ‘faith and understanding’) underlies, pre-exists, and pre-empts such necessary reasons, their very existence. And ‘love’ is not only the first and foremost representation of God’s character but also the energy that drives poets (and troubadours in particular) in their understanding and expression of the world around them.

In the account of Creation from Genesis to Revelation, God uses the 2^nd and 3^rd persons of the Trinity to bring the world as we know it into existence. God’s holy spirit surveys the space/time continuum and acts as the test and confirmatory energy of his truth, while God’s word (Jesus in his own most abstract and eternal form), undertakes the tasks of creation.

Llull considers these necessary reasons ‘necessary’ because ‘love’ is God’s practical expression as shown in his creation and of his continuous overseeing of it. In this practical sense, the notions of creation and overseeing or caring for one’s creation can readily be associated with the concepts and the practice of ‘loving’ as understood by humans too.

But it is important that we look to scrutinize how Llull brings these two aspects of knowledge together in a coherent way. Alexander Fidora has accomplished that precisely in his article ‘«Sicut oleum super aquam», On the relationship between faith and reason in Ramon Llull’. His analysis becomes extremely useful in the context of our own research. Examining the implications of Llull’s statements in Disputatio fidei et intellectus, he writes:

The book commences with various exempla and images meant to establish the interaction between the two protagonists in the dialogue, brothers Faith and Understanding. The first of them vindicates the clear labour division between the two. … 21

The model described here, illustrated through the Augustinian analogy of oil and water, encompasses various phases. Initially, the inchoative function of faith, one that plays a fundamental role in Llull’s thought, is introduced and given value. Like Saint Augustine, Llull was convinced that belief is necessary to the cognitive process, since admitting – even hypothetically – to the possible truth of a consideration being proposed is condition sine qua non for its examination by the faculty of understanding. Therefore, both Llull and Augustine frequently call on the biblical quote from Isaiah 7:9 “Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis”. 22 23 Nevertheless, this function is inchoative, that is, it drives understanding in a second instance, to achieve a rational knowledge of God and his mysteries. It is a type of understanding that, though genetically supported by the act of believing, is not so endorsed – to use a modern epistemological distinction – in its validity. Thus, Understanding prepares, in the Dispute between faith and understanding, to demonstrate by reasons which it calls ‘necessary’ the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Creation of the world and the Resurrection of bodies (Llull, 2011: 124-167, 168-191, 192-215 y 216-267, respectively). …

This means both forms of understanding are co-extensive because they both arrive at the knowledge of the mysteries of faith, but they are not co-intensive because understanding only achieves a knowledge of the mysteries of faith that we could call structural while faith possesses a knowledge that is ever more complete. In other words, faith and reason encompass the same realities, however, they do not signify them in the same way, because faith always signifies something more. It is in this sense that faith remains above reason, just as oil always floats above water, while both are comprehended by divine grace. Therefore, the relationship between faith and reason is not described in terms of an absolute separation, nor is it shown as a static juxtaposition with precisely demarcated competences as in, for example, Thomas Aquinas. On the contrary, Llull’s model expresses the contiguity and the dynamism between faith and reason which allow for mutual retro sustenance: two models of knowledge acquisition that communicate with each other with immediacy and converge progressively in the highest truths. 24 25

Fidora’s last sentence represents a synthesis of knowledge akin to what poetry delivers to the reader, to the listener. The result of a combinatory approach to knowledge acquisition flanked by faith and reason together with the relatable declinations of human art and skill such as, for faith: intuition, feeling, sentiment, insight, revelation, vision; and for reason: cause, exemplification, nature, episteme, structure, and science, has proven to be very rewarding over the centuries and could be said to permeate what we commonly call ‘general knowledge’ in its necessarily hybrid configuration.

Share

Leave a comment

If we were to ‘etymologise by sight’ and allow our imag[e]ination to review the various elements of the character 顯 in its ancient form 㬎, neither the true etymologist nor the person in the street would find fault or feel a sense of oddity when considering either of the two potential declensions shown, right and left, in the diagram below:

What proves interesting about this pictorial analysis is that, in allowing the origins of Chinese radicals and their character parts to play their full role in character interpretation, the result arrived at – regardless of whether one chooses the right or left side of the chart – remains an act of anthropomorphism.

Subscribe now

To be precise, the end result suggests a conceptual definition or meaning (“display” / ”reveal” / “conspicuous”) that is drawn entirely from the human perception of the ‘light phenomena’ and of its most relatable effects on human vision or eyesight.

The Chinese character achieves that by drawing its light source, the sun 日 (top and centre), tracing a downward flowing action by means of filaments 幺 and tiny dots 灬 - the fine silky 糹threads 絲 - and describing both anthropo-logically and metaphorically ‘how’ and ‘why’ the Chinese language owes so much to the act of sensory perception when building its linguistic characteristics.

In this case, the Chinese character 㬎 paints accurately and symbolically an act of perception that remains true to the ultimate source of observation: light.

Moreover, and despite the loss effected to origins by the simplification common to many characters throughout the centuries (𣊡 turns into 㬎 and then 显, 糹becomes 纟, and 絲 becomes 丝), the transference of representational and therefore conceptual meaning remains to a large extent unaltered.

Share

Additionally, and perhaps beyond what anyone could have intended, thanks to these two possible picto-etymological interpretations, the Chinese script’s systematic reflection on the act of perception can be said to describe in its depiction of natural silk production under the sun and despite the ancient nature of such activity, the still unresolved ‘particle 灬 versus wave 幺’ controversy about the nature of light.

Today, both macroscopic metaphors on the nature of light have been re-defined by quantum mechanics, but such scientific explanations, to the uninitiated, prove no better at resolving the conundrum than the deft representation provided by the Chinese character appears to do.

For reference, the 說文解字 Shuo Wen Jie Zi of the Eastern Han dynasty (東漢 25 - 220 AD) written between the years 100-121AD by 許慎 Xu Shen, which lists character etymology and provides examples under specific 部首 bushou or Chinese character radicals, says of the character 顯 xian catalogued under the ‘sun’ 日 ri radical: “crowded miniscule threads or twigs. The sight of silk in the sunlight. Alternatively, may be said, apparently, a concentration of mouths.” 1 [i]

The reference to ‘silk cocoons’ is also corroborated by scholars as one of the character’s etymological sources within the available commentary on the Shuo Wen Jie Zi. 2

For more like this

Leave a comment

[i] My crib translation: 日部: 㬎：衆(zhong4 crowd) 微(wei1 tiny) 杪(miao3 tip/end of a twig) 也(ye3)。从(cong2 follow)日中(zhong1centre) 視(shi4 look/see) 絲(si1 silk/thread)。古文以為顯字。或曰(huo4yue1some may say) 衆口 (kour3 opening/mouth) 皃(mao4 appearance)。讀若(du2ruo4 pronounce) 唫唫。或以為繭(jian3 callus)；繭者，絮(xu4 coarse silk floss) 中往往(wang3wang3 frequently) 有小繭也。

A fellow Substacker provided their audience with the results of a survey analysing what humans ‘preferred’: human-generated or AI-generated poetry. The results showed a much higher level of preference expressed by humans for AI-generated poetry.

The train of thought below accounts for my reaction to these findings. I asked myself:

If AI can be said to recognise an AI-generated text as being different from a human-generated text and provide a percentage approximation result as to its provenance while also measuring the extent of human responses derived from them, can such results necessarily and meaningfully be categorised as ‘human preference’?

and

Can we assume humans are also able to recognise AI-written texts?

I don't think recognition and cosiness with ‘the familiar’ (which often means the lowest common denominator), the easily digestible, can be called a ‘preference’. To assume or affirm so is not logical, nor is it scientific.

There are major issues with the way we seem to accept AI-generated knowledge (including survey results and stats).

With AI, ‘average’ (whether pure average or average difference or their combination) is king. This is itself a problem since not one of the people surveyed can be legitimately called an ‘average’ individual.

An ‘average’ is an imagined construct arrived at through equating some individuals (and their stated opinions) with others, and calculating their numbers, even though, evidently, each is individually different. Why then are we willing to apply the results or conclusions of such calculations to our individual selves and consider them equivalent to actionable ‘truths’?

Then, there's the method. A survey is hardly a proper, let alone accurate way of measuring understanding, depth of thought, or causality, all of which, to a greater or lesser degree make up the subject, the content and the form of poetry.

The poetic reflexions at the origin of poetry are not occurrences humans leisurely produce, share openly or discuss regularly. Each one carries the imprint of individual memory, time and contemplation. They also require an environment conducive to human communication for them to arise, to be shared and understood.

AI provides no third-party validation of its results or answers, which, in effect means it trusts the depths of its own echo-chamber and that alone. Yet somehow, we've decided that its outcomes do not require review, a second opinion, or another test. And, despite all the disclaimers and obvious errors, humans tend to ‘swallow AI results whole’ and make rapid decisions based on those ultimately, perhaps desperately biased outcomes.

Machines, on the other hand, will throw every word, every concept they are fed into the mix, only to apply preferences it has been programmed with in order to deliver outcomes. These are automated selections some of which are randomised and none of which refer to the specific individuality of the people sourced for information.

Share

No two searches or surveys produced by an AI bot, though expressed in the exact same way (prompt) and made only seconds away from each other will deliver the exact same answer or result (it's all a question of available information and timing differences which necessarily change constantly).

I suspect most of this hype has to do with the easy way in which conclusions, a causality chain disguised as reasoning (AI bots do not reason, they compute), may be arrived at based on feeding everything to the machine.

The ‘poetic’ results provided by AI bots represent a descriptive account of cumulative data arranged in a syntactically coherent format devoid of intrinsic messaging apart from that which the individual consumer may themselves be willing to attach to it.

AI-generated poetry results are marketable objects ‘out for sale’ carrying no other meaning than that of the generic usefulness an individual consumer may extract from them. Their value is equivalent to that of staple, mass-produced homeware or household goods.

The production process works much like the workflow of a paper or wood shredder. AI bots don't understand, they shred all the information they're fed into LLM-compatible bits (basic units of information). They then regurgitate their contents according to the size and shape of the funnel and the blades they have been fitted with, recycling them into probabilistic, class-labelled, numerical predictions, confetti-like texts, images and other data forms.

Eventually, AI bots build the bits and chips again into preformulated shapes and categories that mirror (an image) and restrict (a sample) human input to a general outcome humans can understand because it is made of human-generated bits, our languages.

This process may be compared to a recycling system producing outcomes such as plywood or chipboard from wood and paper. That is, average, multipurpose, mass-produced objects available to all as generic, superficially useful objects (in terms of their probabilistic nature), and hardly the stuff of human-like, foundational structures.

Humans understand the full page of poetry, as well as the trees with their branches, we understand the bits and chips as well, the plywood and the chipboard. AI just helps fast-process what we are too occupied to do by ourselves because it takes time and effort, and we don’t give ourselves the scope or the time to realise what AI cannot do. It cannot supplant the original, the poem or its life.

Subscribe now

The results are poor copies, average imaginations we can all recognise, even accept as ‘truth’ but do not represent, describe, or help a single human to make their way in their own lives or in the lives of those around them.

Why does the ‘average human’ statistically ‘prefer’ the poetry AI puts together over the poetic originals? I would say, such texts may be easy to read, cosy to mirror oneself upon, and generic beyond description, very much like horoscopes.

As I see it, this process is a game - entrancing yes - but just another toy the human builds to distract their attention, attract others’ attention and divert it from more pressing things. A form of relaxation, entertainment, which, in the process, generates some swift but fleeting rewards.

There are arguments against seeing AI this way of course.

The ongoing narrative on this topic is currently showing three basic positions:

1. ‘I’m all in’, following the wave of investment and the flourishing technical research and start-up creation.

2. ‘It’s all wrong’, because not only does it take away jobs, freedom of choice, it ties people in bulk to machines building a dystopian world we all should fear.

3. ‘It’s alright’, it’s just another technical development that will help us a lot (medicine, services, business, etc), and it’s fast, convenient, and sleek.

I am personally concerned about point 2. above, and think the AI wave will facilitate ways for those in power (not necessarily governments) to manage essential public assets and resources around the world, monitor individual behaviour, and bring society to the level of an ‘affluent slavery’ we’ve never seen before, and which many people will welcome (universal basic income, convenience, security, etc).

The greater peril it carries is the loss of freedom. Submission to AI-generated progress seems unavoidable and will take place under the guise of its usefulness, speed, and misplaced sense of generalised security.

Getting back to AI and poetry, the arguments to support AI-generated analysis are based on reasons that only hold a measure of validity within the context of AI itself.

People in the know speak of "a sufficiently large number of individuals" to include in their surveys, in their queries. They speak of what “the odds” would be for something to happen or not, that is, probability. And they talk about "extracting information from individuals" using humans as information containers, making the human into a compatible AI source, and moulding the human mind exclusively into the framework of computational needs and the scope of AI categories.

Share

Within AI, everything, every bit of information has a designated holder, a receptacle classifying data according to pre-defined parameters. There, all information has a name and is therefore classified.

Such processing mechanisms are not only alien to poetry and the individual’s creative drive – a drive founded on personal experience, the specific environment, and mental state – they are constricting of the human mind, and that despite the huge volumes of information generated by their computational power.

There is no going back however, mainly because the mind has already been circumscribed to the limits of what machines can and may be able to offer. Within the machine-sphere, we plan and feed data relentlessly with one apparent purpose: the enhancement or perhaps the replacement of humankind.

As I see it, there is no replacement for or enhancement of the human individual possible, no matter how much information we throw at them, how much we think we can extract from them, or to what levels such information may be computed.

The self-imposed goal of achieving an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) that possesses human-like cognitive abilities across a wide range of tasks, is self-teaching, adaptable, and endowed with cognitive flexibility represents a real stumbling block for humanity.

Some powerful humans somehow believe that the human mind may be bottled and re-created as AGI, that it may be as good or better than the human mind itself and that it will be able to produce sentient poetry I guess, among many other human things.

Computations fulfil the purpose of what they were created for and no other. They offer no practical application to the individual human life unless additional individual human ‘customization’ is made on them by the individuals themselves for their own purposes.

Such individual customization or interpretation of the results provided by AI requires that a whole new process only that individual can assess, question and control be started. That process is one that only the individual may override in their freedom.

There are no averages that practically matter to the individual in any situation, let alone in poetry.

Share

Leave a comment

Contents

Jefferson, Adams, and democracy

slavery: counting the peoples

thoughts on racial prejudice

Confucianism and democracy

Two Mosaic figures (Thomas Jefferson and Confucius) will be introduced here as a means of gauging whether Democracy is solely the child of the West and/or whether it can also be traced to a conceptual foundation in Confucianism, the practical political philosophy of ancient China. The teachings of Confucius (c. 551-479 BCE) as a source of political thought appear to be comprehensive enough to provide us with a just model for the administration of the state.

Jefferson, Adams, and democracy

The figures of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams – the former particularly – are continuously drawn into historical accounts of the United States as founding fathers of its republican model of government and, most importantly, of the nation's independence. Such terms ('republic' and 'independence') are often accepted as icons valid in past representations of the North American nation as well as in discussions over its present political reality. 1 However, both 'republic' and 'independence' are concepts that also gain validity as alternative forms of government and national behaviour to political tyranny or autocracy in its various known forms.

The dilemma has marred politicians and thinkers through the ages as Trevor Lee points out in his review of Aristotle’s own assessment of government under democratic rule. He writes:

Despite its perceived faults, Aristotle was not entirely opposed to the concept of democracy. His primary critique of Athenian politics was that it was often too democratic. The demos were routinely tricked by populists and made decisions that served themselves rather than the state. Consequently, Athens lacked a substantial oligarchic or aristocratic counterweight to balance out its politics. Additionally, Aristotle argued that demagogues only arose when the laws were ignored, and the people ruled supreme.

This does not mean that he unequivocally favored oligarchies. In fact, he believed that whenever either the masses or the oligarchs gained power, both sides established governments which served their own interests over those of the state.

Instead, Aristotle favored governments which held a mix between oligarchic and democratic policies. He called this ideal balance politeia, usually translated as “polity” or “constitution.” This imagined government would be predictably characterized by its moderation. For example, Aristotle argued that the ideal citizen for a mixed government did not come from the rich or poor, but the middle class. That is, he thought that the very rich and the very poor were susceptible to extremism and political dissent, in contrast to the moderate middle class. Consequently, Aristotle’s politeia was the best because it was stable and free of civil strife. 2

A need for a two-chamber approach to government (a universal format modern democracies have since adopted) seems to reverberate within such propositions as Aristotle favours.

Share

The very document that still stands today as the bastion of U.S. sovereignty, declares, and demands of Americans the prerequisite of an ongoing assessment of the political situation and of the system of government employed in steering their sovereign state. Aside from the well-known phrases that the world has grown to revere, we find next to them those which perhaps offer a greater scope in understanding American politics. Jefferson wrote in 'The Declaration of Independence':

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 3 That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. 4

An assessment of the situation that confronted the British Colonies in America in the second half of the eighteenth century, stood to address both the need to legitimise the actions of independentists and, once successful in achieving emancipation, the equally important obligation of immediately reinstating an order into political life that may have been strong enough to avert very real dangers such as existing allegiances to the British Empire and the conflicting claims from the then thirteen States of America. 5

The new independent government of the United States needed as much to destroy the previous status quo as to replace it with something that could provide stability and economic independence.

Jefferson's rhetoric in the 'Declaration of Independence' is one that aims at balancing a revolutionary thrust with the eventual creation of an institutional model which, because founded on the will of the people to free themselves from oppressive British measures, 6 was meant to replace it and thus provide access to a more equitable system of government for North Americans.

Principled criticism of the United States government can well be classified under such provisos as Jefferson distinguishes in the 'Declaration ...'. After all, what is intended for the United States through such criticism is that it be true to the founders and that it reassess the structures of governments and the legislative corpus to ensure a greater measure of access and equality among its citizens.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

That such re-evaluation may have implied a study of different economic options to the blatantly capitalistic approach to administration by post-Enlightenment economies, and that such options as have been proposed were not and have not been to the liking of many people in power then and now, does not subtract from the fact that they are meant to examine a potentially fairer system of government where the people can operate not under a structure bent on the levying of taxes but within a model of sound administration and monetary impartiality on the part of the state.

Leave a comment

Perhaps what draws a line of distinction between the two ex-presidents of the U.S. and some of their critics is that the former were prepared to defend the democratic principle to a greater extent than some of these critics were and are prepared to do even today. 7 Here is Ezra Pound speaking about democracy in the broadcast of October 2nd, 1941. According to Leonard D. Doob, the transmission was expressly meant for Americans. The first two paragraphs of the transcription made by the American Federal Communications Commission and edited by Doob read as follows:

It's a ditch all right. Democracy has been LICKED in France. The frogs were chucked into war AGAINST the Will of the people. Democracy has been licked to a frazzle in England where it never did get a look in ANY-HOW. But even pseudo-democracy breaks down when a people is chucked into a war against its will, and the Brits. never VOTED Winston into the premiership. In fact WHEN DID they have an election?

Remember the government in England that decides WHEN to have an election. Think where we would be if Mr. Roosevelt could merely POST-PONE elections till he got ready to have one.

Well, democracy is in her last DITCH, and if she ain't saved in America NO ONE is going to save her in her parliamentary form. 8

Pound's expression of controlled anger represents as much a warning about the potentially nefarious consequences of representative democracy (when bureaucracy and self-interest take precedence over untainted political representation) as a suggestion – placed at the beginning of a script to be broadcasted – that there is a faster way to achieve genuine representation for the people. However, at a point where the listener might prick-up his/her ear to catch again the long-lost echoes of debates over direct democracy, Pound fancies something less intricate. For him, enlightened rule and the cult of the honest leader is still a viable route, and in that, he appears to draw inspiration from history and from the frustration experienced by those before him who had to fight institutional red tape to achieve social results through political means.

Both Jefferson’s and Adams's writings show how the slow process of bringing their ideas into action often made them despair of their most cherished projects. Nevertheless, since they always managed to remain within the circle of executive power at the highest levels of government, they never completely capitulated before their opposition.

Share

It took Jefferson nearly forty years to see his 'Bill for the more General Diffusion of Knowledge' passed in 1817. Throughout his life, he advocated the institution of a balanced education and prepared detailed administrative proposals for delivering education at primary and higher levels. Despite his efforts however, it was only nine years before his death that the projects he fashioned during the years of the revolution came to fruition.

Adams's plight is perhaps more complex, since most of his writings and particularly his letters to Jefferson reveal how his interest in philosophy, anthropology, religion, and other apparently disparate subjects must have shifted his perspective on practical and financial matters in a way perhaps uncharacteristic of the American mind of the time, which was more concerned with pressing matters of survival.

In fact, if trust is granted to Jefferson's own renditions of the congressional debates during the first years of the revolution, it is possible to discern how Adams's debating manner remains quite different from that of his colleagues. Adams succeeds in providing a great number of vivid examples which are meant to serve as points of view from which others might perceive his opinions in a favourable light.

slavery: counting the peoples

The former president's wide-ranging interests are also worth highlighting since they frequently provide independent and eclectic analyses of whatever issue comes under discussion. An example in point is the debate over the classification of peoples – slaves in particular – for the contributions to the common treasury in the different states of the confederation.

While most of Adams's colleagues are content to express their opinions, and in so doing trust the ideas and principles underlying such opinions as the sole foundation for argumentation, Adams sees it necessary to illustrate his beliefs – and he does so at every instance with hypothetical examples which appear to have been improvised on the spot and which tend to reduce his arguments to very simple pseudo-mathematical equivalences. The main thrust of Adams's opinion on the topic has been well summarised by Jefferson.

Mr. John Adams observed, that the numbers of people were taken by this article, as an index of the wealth of the State, and not as subjects of taxation; that, as to this matter, it was of no consequence by what name you called your people, whether by that of freemen or of slaves; that in some countries the laboring poor were called freemen, in others they were called slaves; but that the difference as to the state was imaginary only. 9

But Jefferson finds it necessary to extend the record of Adams' delivery and provides a full-page account of his open reasoning. Adams has stated that it is all a question of nomenclature. He then goes on to explain why these differences in 'naming' should not affect the procedures of the state when counting its sources of wealth for taxation purposes. His ensuing explanation is important for what it reveals about the processes of government and our ongoing remarks about the nature of naming 10 and its direct relation to the management of official business.

Suppose, by an extraordinary operation of nature or of law, one-half the laborers of a State could in the course of one night be transformed into slaves; would the State be made poorer or less able to pay taxes? That the condition of the laboring poor in most countries, that of the fishermen particularly of the Northern States, is as abject as that of slaves. It is the number of laborers which produces the surplus for taxation, and numbers, therefore, indiscriminately, are the fair index of wealth; that it is the use of the word 'property' here, and its application to some of the people of the State, which produces the fallacy. How does the Southern farmer procure slaves? Either by importation or by purchase from his neighbor. If he imports the slave, he adds one to the number of laborers in his country, and proportionably to its profits and abilities to pay taxes; if he buys from his neighbor, it is only a transfer of laborer from one farm to another, which does not change the annual produce of the State, and therefore, should not change its tax: that if a Northern farmer works ten laborers on his farm, he can, it is true, invest the surplus of the ten men's labor in cattle; but so may the Southern farmer, working ten slaves; that a State of one hundred thousand freemen can maintain no more cattle, than one of one hundred thousand slaves. Therefore they have no more of that kind of property; that a slave may indeed, from the custom of speech, be more properly called the wealth of his master, than the free laborer might be called the wealth of his employer; but as to the State, both were equally its wealth, and should, therefore, equally add to the quota of its tax. 11

Adams' analysis of the fiscal situation in the American Colonies needs to be seen in the light of contemporary opinions about slavery among his peers. However, what strikes the reader most in his delivery is the facility with which generalising concepts about the condition of, and the naming conventions used for some inhabitants of the New Continent seem to suffice for the purpose of administration.

Subscribe now

Such tenets reflect what has been identified previously in the examples of the hierarchies in the Eleusinian cult and the Confucian pledge to ancient rulers 12 as the capacity to utilise naming (zheng ming 正名) as a tool for the conceptualisation of phenomena as well as its use as a precise medium for the formulation of laws and the running of government.

The fact that Adams can make all humans (free and slaves alike) count as taxable individuals in their respective states and that, in doing so, he is allegedly investing them with one of the basic obligations befitting free individuals – something the condition of slavery had precluded them from – does not make him feel in any way uncomfortable.

What such a proposition means in terms of the reigning double standards about basic human freedom, rights, and obligations his government would invite were it to implement such fiscal policy, does not seem to bother him. It can hardly be said that whatever slaves got back for their contribution as taxable individuals within the state was on par with what free individuals benefitted from as rights within the terms of the Declaration of Independence. 13

Adams, immersed in the congressional debate, finds no fault in bringing to light the double nature of language; in fact, he seems pleased to uncover such duality and to expose it as a stumbling block for the process of government. His comparing the plight of Northern fishermen with that of Southern slaves must be seen in this light. For the politician in charge of an administration (the treasury), such distinctions have no materiality since the noticeable difference in ‘person for person’ production from both Northern and Southern states appears negligible.

Similarly, under this conceptual framework, the free labourer becomes the "wealth [property] of his employer" and differs only in appellation from the slave who is indeed the "wealth [property] of his master". It is obvious that the difference between two such people, labourer and slave, is great and that Adams must have been aware of it; however, what matters most here is the service such an understanding of language usage and nomenclature provides in terms of facilitating the drawing up of a particular policy.

It may be said that politics is born in this conscious erasure of such difference in expression or language, and that, with political parlance, comes a necessary obfuscation of what is really meant, together with the ambiguity about the practical meaning of idealistic statements on governance (The Declaration of Independence, constitutions, political manifestos, etc.) and their applied reality as exercised through the mechanisms and ‘tools’ of government.

Reading through Jefferson's account of Adams's congressional contributions, a very clear picture emerges of the status of the early American nation. More importantly, this clear depiction of the implementation of power through the use of language reveals how the Jeffersonian dictum that 'knowledge is power, ignorance is weakness' has slowly filtrated into the rhetoric employed by minority and oppressed groups in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The world-wide union, feminist, LGBT+ rights, and critical race theory movements have challenged and continue to challenge an exclusive access to the use of ‘language as power’ in modern times, 14 raising complex problems related not just to the legitimacy of state legislation in what regards such minorities but also to the status of these self-same minorities among themselves.

Share

In terms of Adams's own beliefs about the nature of government and how these were translated into specific blueprints for the establishment of American institutions something must also be said. There is perhaps no better example than that provided by his unwavering advocacy of a strong executive organ 15 that would balance the dealings of the higher (Senate) and lower (Congress) elected assemblies.

In the preface to his three-volume A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America against the attack of M. Turgot, in his letter to Dr. Price, dated the twenty-second of March, 1778, Adams makes the point that an independent executive is the only real leveller for the activities of the representative assemblies; a theme which is often alluded to in his correspondence with Jefferson. He writes:

If there is one certain truth to be collected from the history of all ages, it is this: that the people's rights and liberties and the democratical mixture in a constitution can never be preserved without a strong executive, or, in other words, without separating the executive from the legislative power. If the executive power or any considerable part of it is left in the hands either of an aristocratical or a democratical assembly, it will corrupt the legislature as necessarily as rust corrupts iron or as arsenic poisons the human body; and when the legislature is corrupted, the people are undone. 16

Adams's opinions are controversial now, especially in the light of recent events actively affecting the American democracy, and if we consider his status and that of his colleagues in Congress. Yet it is obvious that his assessment of how an administration should perform remains in vogue to this day. The preceding comment on the nature of government and the previously presented positivist views from Adams about the way in which slaves should be accounted for, lead the discussion on to Jefferson's own compromises and to the real position on the issue of race many American politicians held at the time.

thoughts on racial prejudice

It is important to remember that many of the members of Congress were themselves landowners who also owned slaves. Jefferson was among them and although he has always been portrayed as favouring a gradual elimination of slavery through emancipation, we should re-position such notions within the perspective of his most explicit statements on this topic. 17

In the May 1779 session of the Virginian legislature, Jefferson moved a bill "declaring who should be deemed citizens" and "asserting the natural right of expatriation". The bill was passed on the 26th of June 1779 and, according to Jefferson himself "was a mere digest of the existing laws respecting them [slaves], without any intimation of a plan for a future and general emancipation." The ensuing remarks will prove to be of great relevance when trying to assess the interests at play and the real extent of racism in the first years of the North American nation. Jefferson continues:

The principles of the amendment, however, were agreed on, that is to say, the freedom of all born after a certain day, and deportation at proper age. But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day [1821]. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degree, as that the devil will wear off insensibly, and their place be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up. 18

This personal commentary on the nature of race and slavery, and on the possible solutions to the problems arising from a combination of these two realities, must be seen in the light of what has been an ongoing dualism about the nature and consequences of the fusion of races in the making of policies in most countries. 19 Even though Jefferson speaks of the inevitable emancipation of slaves, his admission to what appears to be a clear aversion in the "public mind" and to the "indelible" differences between races as well as to what he perceives to be the only solution, namely, deportation, remain facts in disharmony within a current reading of history and are, even in our day, quite removed from the accomplishment of the ‘higher democratic ideals’ it would seem rightful to uphold. 20

Moreover, Jefferson’s analysis displays a level of ignorance as to the actual plight of the immigrant slave which is staggering. To think that someone born and brought up, let’s say as an African American in the United States would gain anything from being deported to Africa is objectionable to say the least and tells us that Jefferson’s underlying assumptions regarding slaves were not that far removed from John Adams’s in considering slaves to be equivalent to ‘numbers’ for the purpose of government. 21

Leave a comment

Ezra Pound might have followed a similar progression of ideas leading him to support the Mussolini regime in Italy, yet proof of his prejudice can be found as early as his pamphleteering contributions to the column 'The Revolt of Intelligence' in London's New Age. On January 15, 1920, his column was devoted to the criticism of nationalism of the 'wrong' sort. Having expounded on the nature of superstition and blind religious observance, basing his arguments on a swift semantic analysis of long-established phrases and cultural stereotypes, he goes on to say:

Nine-tenths of everything decent in American civic life and institutions probably rest on the Jeffersonian basis; Jefferson may be recorded, therefore, as a fairly decent citizen of his country; he managed to be without failure as a citizen of the world; for an advance in the form of institutions in one part of the globe is a benefit to the whole of it. The term 'citizen of the world' may have fallen into loose usage, but it is a finer ideal than most, and Dante's "Nos autem qui mundus est patria" is the fruit of a more consideration of life than is to be discovered in 'Good American,' 'Good Englishman,' or 'Français loyal.' 22

Pound therefore, aligns himself with Jefferson and is confident enough to gain in decency through the act by what he considers to be world standards. His remarks on the nature of language usage compare well with those of Adams on the topic of taxation quoted in the previous section. Both appear to relish the discovery of 'clichés' yet, they also enjoy the power that such discovery offers them in terms of the knowledge and practical decision-making being acquired in the process.

To give Pound the benefit of the doubt, and to assume that the one-tenth of the depravity in public affairs he allows Jefferson is that which emanates from the previously quoted paragraph on the issue of slavery, is to err in the analysis.

As the delayed true emancipation from the scourge of slavery that only took place in the U.S. in the mid-1960s through the Civil Rights Movement proves, intellectual positions, ingrained beliefs, and blatant self-interest result in prevailing attitudes of peoples removed by generations becoming ever more deep-seated and stultified, leading societies persistently to decision-making totally out of touch with the evident realities identified with and experienced by those poor and oppressed under the social status quo.

Pound’s position is not uncommon, and his opinions and statements represent well such stultified and damaging cultural traits. In 1920, already in London, he carries over his prejudices across the Pond and writes:

America has for some decades been flooded with "inferior races," with the "off-scourings of Europe"; civilization does not "advance" with anything resembling solidarity. 23

Racial bigotry was not something alien to Pound or many of his American contemporaries, and the bedrock of his offensive attitude towards Jews, African Americans, and others was laid during his childhood. His arguments regarding racial conflict are muddled and irrational. Once confronted with his bigotry, his explanations cannot stand their ground. Even when more humane considerations arise, and Pound is forced to weigh the consequences that his racist attitude would have on Jewish individuals who are not part of what, if we believe Pound, amounts to a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, his reasoning is, at best, weak:

All that line of talk distracts from the MAIN issue. If the Jews wd. take any sort of part in econ/reform as distinct from communist obscurantism and financial obscurantism there wd. be no need of any antisemitic stuff at all.... It is hard as hell to do justice. A minority race can NOT fight in the open. Not if it has any sense at all. The small jew suffers for the sins of the big gombeen man. The fight ought Not to have been fought on the lines of race prejudice. Only way to avoid that is by spread and acceleration of economic light. 24

The problem with such an approach to a debate on racial issues is that, under the guise of a benign tolerance, the argument of supremacy of some races over others is being cemented. Pound never doubts his prerogative as a self-appointed judge. 25 Thus, he can, on the one hand, speak of race and prejudice as a generality and make alarming comments on the status of a whole people, while, on the other, he patronisingly removes from every single individual belonging to that race all direct access to freedom of thought, spuriously accusing them of supporting concepts such as "communist or "financial obscurantism". The result of such dialectic, perhaps unsurprisingly, is not far removed from what Adams proposed in dealing with the taxation of free and slave. Language and the way language can allow for the concatenation of ideology proves to be a treacherous tool of government indeed.

Perhaps Pound should have learnt to view other peoples in a more positive light, in the manner one of his elder American craftsmen did. Mark Twain, had written in 1899:

"If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk.

His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished.

The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities, of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? " 26

The same is true of Pound’s treatment of African Americans as "coons", and of his treatment of women, though some critics perilously seem to think that Pound means no harm when using such appellatives. 27

For all his concern about justice and his genuine sensitivity towards other cultures, Pound fails to acknowledge, when addressing political or economic phenomena, the fact that different races, religions, and cultures handle these matters in different ways, and that the ‘ruler’ role-model he would have liked to create should have functioned within processes driven by understanding and not through a forceful equalization of divergent standards. It becomes difficult to explain such an attitude in Pound without falling prey to psychoanalytical arguments about the poet's complexes and deviations.

Share

On the other hand, how Pound manages to endorse such statements may be understood in the light of the tense social conditions evident in America at the time of his birth, 28 but also in terms of the American burden of legacy. As parents, we are all aware that we instigate in our children certain traits – some positive and others not so constructive – that are inevitably transferred to our next generation consciously or indeed unconsciously. ‘Founding fathers’, it seems, succumb to the same phenomenon, though perhaps do so in a more poignant way: they create and become an integral part of a transmission system endowed with the capacity to influence entire nations and cultures.

Confucianism and democracy

Returning to the discussion on government and Pound's affiliation to the Confucian philosophical model, it is important to recognise what the American poet understood to be the benefits of enlightened rule as against those offered by democracy. Such comparison opens two principal lines of enquiry.

Firstly, we must acknowledge the fact that there exists a real historical choice between a model of government based on the democratic principle which is traceable to ancient Athens and the Platonic defence of democracy, and that separate standard of authority understood within the Confucian lore to be acquired through the concerted nurturing of moral attitudes and practices by the leader/ruler.

Secondly, there is the question of how these two models have been preserved in various forms throughout the centuries.

The differences between these two generic dispositions for government have been explained by Benjamin I. Schwartz in his book The World of Thought in Ancient China. His discussions of linguistic, political, and philosophical matters within this volume are thorough and illuminating. He writes:

We have the radical rigorism of Plato and what looks like the more relaxed moral optimism of Confucius. There is no question in Plato of any inherited system of li [禮] which, when performed in the spirit proper to it, can lead men to a life of jen [ren仁]. Nothing less than a prolonged arduous study of philosophic dialectic can lead the guardians to the higher vision of the good. In the interim they must be sealed off against all the insidious selfish particularisms of society by being cut off from the economic sphere and familial life through a system of communistic isolation. Confucius' noble men, few as they may be, live in the midst of corrupt society yet, by dint of their unremitting pursuit of jen, are still able to achieve an autonomous inner equanimity as well as outer integrity. Their moral attainments, far from being inhibited, are actually enhanced by their particularistic familial commitments, all of which they are able to treat in a spirit perfectly appropriate to their general integrity. It is precisely in the proper practice of family commitments that they manifest virtue. The traditions of the past which in a distorted and fragmented form are still present in the society do not represent an 'irrelevant' traditionalism but the very source of wisdom. 29

For an individual like Pound who considered himself able to criticise and suggest new ways to ameliorate the society of his time, a 'hands-on' approach such as that exemplified by Schwartz's description of the Confucian model behaviour, may have been very attractive.

Section 7 of Chapter XX in Pound's translation of the Zhong Yong中庸 (Pound’s The Unwobbling Pivot) reads as follows:

Thence the man of breed cannot dodge disciplining himself. Thinking of this self-discipline he cannot fail in good acts toward his relatives; thinking of being good to his blood relatives he cannot skimp his understanding of nature and of mankind; wanting to know mankind he must perforce observe the order of nature and the heavens. 30

We see therefore, that Confucius’s thinking represents for Pound a model interaction necessary for the artist to develop a communicative aesthetics through which his contributions may be received widely within society. Moreover, as Schwartz also asserts:

In Athens, it was, perhaps paradoxically, the democrats who had faith in tradition because of their conviction that the average citizen could be a bearer of the genuine wisdom embodied in tradition. Socrates' enemies believe that they are defending the wholesome religious traditions of the Athenian past. To Confucius, a learned vanguard is essential. Yet the learning itself is much more humanly accessible than is Plato's science. 31

The contrast between the Confucian (modernist) "learned vanguard" providing a "humanly accessible" knowledge with Plato's 'less accessible science' might be clarified by two of Pound's own concepts published originally as 'Definitions etc.' 32 Definitions 3 and 4 read as follows:

“3. The aim of state education has been (historically) to prevent people from discovering that the classics are worth reading. In this endeavour it has been almost wholly successful. 4. .... The only way a nation can render itself safe is by civilizing its neighbors. The duty of aristocracy is to educate its pleb; failure in this simple precaution means its own bloody destruction. History presents no more imbecile a series of spectacles than the conduct of aristocracies. Without whom civilization is impossible. And after one imbecile lot of these lepidoptera [a large order of insects comprising over 165,000 species of butterflies and moths] is destroyed the whole of woodenhead humanity has to concentrate its efforts on production of another lot, equally piffling and light headed.” 33

Through these excerpts and notwithstanding the irony, Pound declares two principal tenets of his own understanding of society. First, he upholds the pre-eminence of some individuals over others something he terms "aristocracy"; second, he advocates the necessity, if only for the sake of survival, of universal education. These two principles of governmental behaviour are fully attuned to the requirements of both Confucian philosophy and Jefferson’s own understanding.

Leave a comment

We ask therefore, in what sense can a "learned vanguard" provide a 'more humanly accessible learning' to humanity than that offered by constant meticulous study of reasons and rationality?

Within what Schwartz labels "Plato's science", as he well notices, a wholly individual approach to understanding and perception has been built. The results are commensurate with the effort and, more importantly, with the conceptual intelligence of the candidate.

The Platonic claim would have it that influence must always be measured against the effectiveness of its rhetoric and therefore finds validation only within language. Electioneering in all active democracies exemplifies this point clearly. The emphasis of the large majority of politicians and parties is to effectively build marketing campaigns that sell their propositions on the basis of slogans to be shared, even forced onto the electorate.

Ideas, motos, and concepts are banded around without much regard to facts, evidence, or implementation feasibility with the sole purpose of getting a specific individual or party into power. Stepping into a representational or significant language that directly addresses the reality of the world and thus compromises its purely conceptual formulations, conjectures, and refutations, is avoided. Within this model, the reality is surely represented by that ‘untouched idea’ casting its image inside the Platonic cave. Or, As Mario Cuomo would have it:

'You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.' 34

For the Confucian candidate, on the other hand, effort and conceptual intelligence are also important. They are not however, unique in their claims to wisdom and the attainment of harmonious living. Schwartz's "learned vanguard" upholds tradition as a living instrument, and its first prerogative is to keep 'urging' life into such tradition. Thus, the effort of the Confucian intelligence is directed towards a reality which is not only outside the scope of a purely private concern but nurtures an ongoing relationship with everyday practices both old and new.

In this sense, Confucian practice, although based on sage-hood and clear hierarchical tenets, remains far more immediate to the commoner's life, demanding of the leader/ruler proof of their mastery through effective practice and implementation, yet affording at the same time a body of knowledge that is capable of catering for a conceptual complexity such as that present in the Platonic world of ideas.

In this context, Robert Eno's remarks on Confucianism will prove useful in bringing together once again the Poundian and Confucian views of the world. In the section entitled 'Practical Totalism: The Ruist Doctrine of Sagehood', Eno writes:

Early Ruism 35 shares with a number of other systems of thought the belief that an extraordinary level of understanding exists, attainable by man, which can comprehend the phenomenal world as a whole. When this level of understanding is attained, any significant phenomenon will be perceived as possessing a clear meaning because it will be understood in its relation to the whole. In other words, the multiplicity of the world makes sense, and it is possible to understand the holistic sense of it, and so to understand any part in relation to the whole.

We will refer to this type of doctrine as "totalistic," a term that signals both the impulse toward holism in the portrait of a universal level of meaning in the world and the force of the associated imperative to grasp the universe in its entirety. 36

Although Eno's definition does much to sanction our comments above, and the suggested affinities between Confucius and Pound, it is vital to note some philosophical and hermeneutical points of distinction to widen our viewpoint.

Share

Eno's representation of the Confucian 'system of thought' is almost totally immersed in a Western understanding of the Chinese classics. Although implications and definitions such as his are useful for the purpose of comparison and illustration, the fact that the writings attributed to Confucius do not stand as a declared or structured 'system of thought', nor do they claim directly but by implication only that 'the phenomenal world can be comprehended as a whole', should alert the reader to the presence of Western appropriative qualities. Therefore, their usefulness needs to be set aside for the time being to further specify the terms of the truly autochthonous Confucian discourse and perhaps draw an even more intimate parallelism to Poundian practice.

As is often the case, it is not the meaning put across but the manner in which it is expressed that leads a reader into certain assumptions. This is exactly what Eno seems to be doing when he tries to explain the very nature of the Western habit of appropriation. He writes about 'totalism' confirming the above remarks:

Nowhere in the Analects is there a systematic description of a totalistic consciousness, and the text can be read without introducing the idea. However, to read the text in this way is to encounter a bewildering concatenation of independent moral virtues and imperatives, which leaves the impression that Confucius' philosophical achievement was the laborious piling on of ad hoc rules. It has traditionally been recognized, however, that an important unity is created by the textual dominance of the word "jen" [ren] in the Analects, and this is, in fact, the key to discerning the notion of the Sagely totalism in that text. 37

The Analects and all the other Confucian classics must in fact be read without such a 'totalising idea' being introduced. The idea is inherent in the text but does not need to be pre-imposed upon the profusion of "concepts" and the disconnectedness among many of its utterances. It is precisely this disconnectedness which induces the reader to thread 38 the propositions advanced not into the idea of 'totalism' but into his/her own mental activity, however disconnected and variegated the propositions themselves may be.

The suggestion that ‘an idea’ might hold the whole of Confucian classical utterance (or any other for that matter) under its metaphoric umbrella 39 does a disservice to the material comprised within it. Eno's Platonic self – a ‘self’ Westerners will surely find useful and easy to identify with – allows for a reading of the Chinese classics which, though not deceptive of the general conceptual formation of Confucian philosophy, 40 curtails the impact of the texts themselves by attaching an undue Western formalism to the explanation. Moreover, what Eno calls "independent moral virtues and imperatives" are only so if considered outside the context in which they are formulated.

Subscribe now

Confucius was speaking to his itinerant student-followers and to the rulers of his time and, in more than one sense, his words were those of a father/protector of his children, a fact that not only shifts the perspective from pure conceptual speculation to notions of care and coexistence but is also one of the most important tenets xiao (孝or filial piety) of Confucian thought, whether it be political or social. 41

The following excerpt from R. P. Peerenboom's Law and Morality in Ancient China accurately illustrates this point:

For Confucius, one becomes a human being, a humane [ren] person, by virtue of participation in society; personhood and humanity are functions of socialization .... If one does not or is not willing to participate in society, to enter into harmonious relations with others, one not only makes it more difficult for society to realize its potential by depriving the community of one's unique talents but one remains oneself at the level of a beast – of human qua member of a biological species. 42

Therefore, and in so far as Confucian and Poundian concerns show a distinct predilection for social matters and the running of government in a structure which favours popular access through the guidance of an enlightened elite, not only do the ideological connections to some of the previously reviewed modernist tendencies 43 take on a distinct shape, but Pound's particular ideological affinity with U.S. policy making and the political activities of presidents Jefferson and Adams also gain in clarity.

Pound's interest in politics and the theories of power and government was focused and further intensified through his readings and observations on the concept of money and the facts of economics. It is in this area of debate that he found the closest affinities to figures such as Adams and Jefferson, and it is also within this field of study that he was able to secure explicit statements of ideology from the Confucian classics, particularly from the book of Mencius.

We need not go far into the Mencian text to find very explicit statements about the nature of Confucian government. In Book I, Chapter 1, sections 4-6 (in Legge's translation) Mencius answers King Hui of Liang's invitation to speak on matters of administration and what is profitable for his kingdom with the following words:

4. If your Majesty say, 'What is to be done to profit my kingdom?' the great officers will say, 'What is to be done to profit our families?' and the inferior officers and the common people will say, 'What is to be done to profit our persons?' Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit the one from the other, and the kingdom will be endangered. In the kingdom of ten thousand chariots, the murderer of his sovereign shall be the chief of a family of a thousand chariots. In a kingdom of a thousand chariots, the murderer of his prince shall be the chief of a family of a hundred chariots. To have a thousand in ten thousand, and a hundred in a thousand, cannot be said to be a large allotment, but if righteousness be put last, and profit be put first, they will not be satisfied without snatching all.

5. There never has been a man trained to benevolence who neglected his parents. There never has been a man trained to righteousness who made his sovereign an after consideration.

6. Let your Majesty also say, 'Benevolence and righteousness, and these shall be the only themes.' Why must you use that word - 'profit'? 44

Legge's "benevolence" is a translation of 仁 ren, and righteousness corresponds to 義yi, elsewhere translated respectively as 'humanity' and 'justice'. Although Legge is right to translate these two words in terms of their corresponding, inner, or psychological qualities, the reader should not lose sight of the wider social and political implications of the words, especially when the recorded dialogue specifically addresses the topic of government.

From the outset, the Mencian concern is with maintaining the unstated interconnectedness of things economic with certain moral and social priorities, what we called at the beginning of this piece ‘a potentially fairer system of government where the people can operate not under a structure bent on the levying of taxes but within a model of sound administration and monetary impartiality on the part of the state’. 45

We will quote one of many extremely precise and clear examples of what Confucianism prescribed on the subject of taxation from which, we dare say, much could be learnt today:

Mencius said, 'If a ruler give honour to men of talents and virtue and employ the able, so that offices shall all be filled by individuals of distinction and mark - then all the scholars of the kingdom will be pleased, and wish to stand in his court. If, in the market-place of his capital, he levy a ground-rent on the shops but do not tax the goods, or enforce the proper regulations without levying a ground-rent - then all the traders of the kingdom will be pleased, and wish to store their goods in his market-place. If, at his frontier-passes, there be an inspection of persons, but no taxes charged on goods or other articles, then all the travellers of the kingdom will be pleased, and wish to make their tours on his roads. If he require that the husbandmen give their mutual aid to cultivate the public field, and exact no other taxes from them - then all the husbandmen of the kingdom will be pleased, and wish to plough in his fields. If from the occupiers of the shops in his market-place he do not exact the fine of the individual idler, or of the hamlet's quota of cloth, then all the people of the kingdom will be pleased, and wish to come and be his people. If a ruler can truly practise these five things, then the people in the neighbouring kingdoms will look up to him as a parent. From the first birth of mankind till now, never has any one led children to attack their parent, and succeeded in his design. Thus, such a ruler will not have an enemy in all the kingdom, and he who has no enemy in the kingdom is the minister of Heaven. Never has there been a ruler in such a case who did not attain to the royal dignity.' 46

It is such interconnectedness between economics and philosophy, between "profit", "righteousness" and "benevolence" which Pound will use in his approach to economics and his review of the administrative activities of Jefferson and Adams.

Mencius does not avoid answering questions about the practical administration of the state – his works are filled with such advice. What is essential for him is to set the priorities from the point of view of the benefit to humanity or the people at large. The commoner comes up again and again through the Mencian texts as the measuring rod for true and just government.

Moreover, there are instances in Mencius that suggest a form of government that necessitates the approval of the people for the monarch or sovereign to find the just and exact way of action.

Subscribe now

In Chapter VII, sections 2-6 (Book I), Mencius comes close to suggesting a plebiscite as the only guide to right government in matters such as the appointment of men to office and the adjudication of the death penalty.

2. The king said, "How shall I know that they [ministers] have not ability, and so avoid employing them at all?

...

4. [Mencius answers] "When all those about you say, - 'This is a man of talents and worth,' you may not for that believe it. When your great officers all say, - 'This is a man of talents and virtue,' neither may you for that believe it. When all the people say, - This is a man of talents and virtue,' then examine into the case, and when you find that the man is such, employ him. When all those about you say, - 'This man won't do,' then examine into the case, and when you find that the man won't do, send him away.

5. "When all those about you say, - 'This man deserves death,' don't listen to them. When all your great officers say, - 'This man deserves death,' don't listen to them. When the people all say, - 'This man deserves death,' then inquire into the case, and when you see that the man deserves death, put him to death. In accordance with this we have the saying, 'The people killed him.'

6. "You must act in this way in order to be the parent of the people." 47

It is in this context that Pound's often repeated remarks about the seriousness entailed in running state affairs and the direct and preeminent importance of policies to the people at large must be examined. Pound was fond of quoting Chapter IV, sections 1 and 3 of Mencius' entretien with King Hui of Liang. Here is Legge's translation:

1. King Hwuy of Leang said, "I wish quietly to receive your instructions."

2. Mencius replied, "Is there any difference between killing a man with a stick and with a sword?" The king said, "There is no difference."

3. "Is there any difference between doing it with a sword and with the style of government?" "There is no difference," was the reply. 48

These comments by Mencius are by no means the most extreme within his work in terms of ‘speaking truth to power’. Chapter VI in Book I is perhaps a better example of how far the audacity, the independence and courage of the travelling scholar could go in the days of easy summary executions.

“1. Mencius said to the King Seuen of Ts'e, 'Suppose that one of Your Majesty's ministers were to intrust his wife and children to the care of his friend, while he himself went into T'soo to travel, and that, on his return, he should find that the friend had caused his wife and children to suffer from cold and hunger; - how ought he to deal with him?' The king said, 'He should cast him off.' 2. Mencius proceeded, 'Suppose that the chief criminal judge could not regulate the officers under him, how would you deal with him?' The King said, 'Dismiss him.' 3. Mencius again said, 'If within the four borders of your kingdom there is no good government, what is to be done?' The king looked to the right and left and spoke of other matters.” 49

Focused concern for and attention to the priorities of the commoner rather than the self-interest of those in power is the prerogative of both Confucianism and Democracy. Consequently, it is deplorable that so little is understood and so much is misrepresented about what both these idealistic forms of political management embody. Regrettably, much is being done, at the most distinctive homes of both these philosophies to denigrate, disrupt, and even destroy the rationale of their original intent, and the world at large must necessarily be worse for it. 50

Share

Leave a comment

Freedom of speech can only exist and be validated in the shared act of a successful communication or exchange. Without a successful communication event, free speech has no relevance.

Freedom of speech only exists in ‘getting through’ to those who are willing to listen, not just in being able to speak out.

This pushes back the argument over free speech to the speaker who, in being listened to, must and will consider and most likely respect their interlocutor in order to achieve success in communication.

Human expression (oral, mimetic, or written) is a forthcoming effort to communicate with another. As such, its effectiveness and validity rely on the successful transfer of information between both active parties - speaker and listener - as essential participating entities, regardless of what is achieved or not by the communication itself.

The individual’s need to carry out, to put forward such expression is encapsulated in the very term ‘free speech’ and remains at the root of the problems societies face in dealing with it.

Attempting to define or restrict freedom of speech in terms of what an isolated individual says or should not say allows little if any room for freedom of any kind to prevail – whether that of the listener or that of the speaker – in any society.

By and large, ‘not to listen’ and ‘not to speak’ when spoken to are being misunderstood as ‘rights’ of the individual. In fact, they only represent a ‘choice’ against communication regardless of the cause or reason for refusal in the exchange.

Some individuals interpret these isolated positions where communication is not engaged upon as ‘wisdom’, others find them to be a way to avoid displaying their own ignorance or their lack of interest in the topic being broached, or else a way to avoid arguments or injury.

Freedom as defined by the scope of a potential action by an individual is easily understood. Freedom is something that resonates intrinsically with humans regardless of upbringing, culture, intelligence, or education. Nobody questions the existence or validity of freedom in their day-to-day life.

Generally speaking, humans assume a position of individual freedom unless this be curtailed or restricted in some obvious way (imprisonment, oppression, persecution). However, even in those extreme cases that negate individual or group freedom, freedom’s mental reality appears to survive and, in many cases, even proliferate in some transcendental way. Therefore, freedom is innate to the individual.

So far, these are observations pertaining to individual freedom of speech. But I have made clear up front that freedom of speech is irrelevant without another, without the listener, without the counterpart in communication. And that is why things get complicated.

When any other party, a third-party, becomes involved in the reality of enacted freedom of speech, whether they be individuals or institutions, 1 unless they are actively engaging with all sides involved in the communication, they can only, despite their intentions, become obstacles to the process of communication and to free speech itself through interference, neglect, corporate bias, or censorship.

We often see free speech being heralded as a ‘right’ of the individual within democratic societies. I argue here that free speech is not a right, but it is important to highlight some conceptual distinctions that will help clarify the relevance of claims for absolute free speech.

‘Freedom’ is one thing, ‘choice’ is another, a ‘right’ is yet another thing.

‘Freedom’ gives us ‘choice’ but does not give us a ‘right’ to do anything, including to speak out freely.

Essentially, if we are to achieve successful communication, our individual freedom of speech ends where that of our interlocutor starts. Measuring the ‘distance’ between individual freedoms is a complex process, especially when more than one party or a society as a whole become part of the equation.

The balance between individual freedom and social responsibility underlies a position traceable to the French Revolution and which was made popular by expressions such as John B. Finch’s (USA’s Chairman of the Prohibition National Committee in the 1880s):

“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.” 2

Perhaps more significantly, French novelist and politician Victor Hugo’s characterisation of Grantaire’s and Enjolras’ ‘republican spirit’ in Les Misérables (written between 1845 and 1862) will provide a more tangible view of what the expression of individual freedom in society require of individuals themselves:

"What about me?" said Grantaire. "Here am I."

"You?"

"I."

"You indoctrinate republicans! you warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle!"

"Why not?"

"Are you good for anything?"

"I have a vague ambition in that direction," said Grantaire.

"You do not believe in everything."

"I believe in you."

"Grantaire will you do me a service?"

"Anything. I'll black your boots."

"Well, don't meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe."

"You are an ingrate, Enjolras."

"You the man to go to the Barrière du Maine! You capable of it!"

"I am capable of descending the Rue de Grès, of crossing the Place Saint-Michel, of sloping through the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, of taking the Rue de Vaugirard, of passing the Carmelites, of turning into the Rue d'Assas, of reaching the Rue du Cherche-Midi, of leaving behind me the Conseil de Guerre, of pacing the Rue des Vieilles-Tuileries, of striding across the boulevard, of following the Chaussée du Maine, of passing the barrier, and entering Richefeu's. I am capable of that. My shoes are capable of that."

"Do you know anything of those comrades who meet at Richefeu's?"

"Not much. We only address each other as thou."

"What will you say to them?"

"I will speak to them of Robespierre, pardi! Of Danton. Of principles."

"You?"

"I. But I don't receive justice. When I set about it, I am terrible. I have read Prudhomme, I know the Social Contract, I know my constitution of the year Two by heart. 'The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins.' Do you take me for a brute? I have an old bank-bill of the Republic in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a Hébertist. I can talk the most superb twaddle for six hours by the clock, watch in hand."

"Be serious," said Enjolras.

"I am wild," replied Grantaire.

Enjolras meditated for a few moments, and made the gesture of a man who has taken a resolution.

"Grantaire," he said gravely, "I consent to try you. You shall go to the Barrière du Maine." 3

The expression of individual freedom within society starts with communication among those involved. It then progresses into the creation of an informal agreement between the individual parties involved, before being instituted into a formal charter which purpose is to delimit and restrict the extent of individual freedom for the purpose of achieving some level of societal harmony.

The new ‘Working group on Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia definition’ launched by the UK government is an example in point and is introduced as follows:

• It is the first duty of government to keep its citizens safe

• New group set to deliver a definition of Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia within six months as incidents of anti-Muslim hatred reach the highest number on record in 2024

• The definition will provide guidance to government and other bodies to support further action on tackling religiously motivated hate, delivering on the Plan for Change safer streets mission

A new working group has been established to provide government with a definition of Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia, supporting a wider stream of work to tackle the unacceptable incidents of anti-Muslim hatred.

It will advise government on how to best understand, quantify and define prejudice, discrimination, and hate crime targeted against Muslims.

With incidents of anti-Muslim hate crime at record high in England and Wales, the group’s work will support wider and ongoing government-led efforts to tackle religiously motivated hate crime – delivering on the government’s Plan for Change mission for safer streets. 4

This is the consequence of an actual incidence of proportionally exceptional cases of individuals who, in their freedom, make the choice to go beyond their own rights and breach the rights of others, as well as because of the associated fear that such unrightful behaviour may become the cause of a loss in the desired level of harmony maintained within a given community or society.

Freedom of speech allows us the choice not to respect another’s freedom and attempt to force them to listen, but their own freedom will guide their choice in that event one way or another. Their freedom does not impact the other’s choice. Nor does the other’s theirs.

An argument may be made for regulation of free speech when individuals considered to be vulnerable or disadvantaged, underage or belonging to specific minorities and their respective rights are considered. However, ‘regulation for the few’ indirectly implies ‘regulation for all’, especially in our age of rapid, massified communication.

In effect, the rights of minorities will, by default, unavoidably become the rights applicable to all members of such society and the relevant regulatory structures will inevitably be drawn from the minorities’ standpoint thus seriously restricting the rights of all the members of society while increasing the regulatory and implementation burden 5 for all in a colossal way.

It is important to distinguish between the concepts being discussed here and summarise their import for the purposes of the discussion on free speech.

‘Free speech’ represents an innate individual expression that cannot be regulated upon practically unless centralised access to and monitoring of the individual mind is achieved and implemented.

‘Choice’ is the individual un/ethical bringing into practice of convictions, beliefs, interests or ideas/desires such as right & wrong, good & bad, green or blue, large or small, and an infinite array of alternatives.

A ‘right’ is an instituted rule or regulation that, depending on where the individual lives, will impact on their choices and the exercise of their freedom, if they choose to abide by it.

‘Rights’ are formal conceptual structures created and agreed upon by humans to regulate generic human behaviour according to the law of the land (constitutions, bills of rights, case law, etc.). They ebb and flow depending on the various forms of government, cultural influence, and historical prerogatives.

Rights transcend the individual and are distinct from ‘choice’ and ‘freedom’ in as much as they depend on successful communication and agreement within a large cohort of individuals, a community, a nation, an institution.

Ultimately, rights are of no consequence to individuals unless individuals themselves choose to surrender their freedom to the communal agreement. That is why free speech cannot be effectively regulated at the individual level.

Yet, in their actual application, rights attempt to monitor and control the infinite number of choices, and the innate freedom of millions of individuals. This, in itself represents an untenable paradox.

Similarly, the individual often chooses to agree to restrict the extent of their freedom by not impacting the freedom of others in the society they are a part of, and does that to the best of their ability.

Neither the institution of rights nor the individual’s own restraint are or may be expected to be full-proof mechanisms to avoid individual cases of offense or harm through the use of free speech.

Based on the above, ‘to speak freely’, ‘not to listen’ and/or ‘not to speak’ do not represent ‘rights’ per se, they are only curtailments of the individual’s freedom of speech arrived at through the means of individual choice.

To confuse freedom of speech and directly associate it with a ‘right’ represents a misconception and misrepresentation of the individual’s ‘choice’ to abide or not by the rules agreed by their community or society.

Based on their freedom of speech, an individual may choose to speak in ways that injure others, promote or provoke harmful activities. This will be considered to be affecting the ‘rights’ of others and possibly breaking the laws/regulations within specific contexts. The rights of others, however, in such cases, do not essentially curtail the individual’s innate freedom to speak.

If free speech communication is to take place between two or more individuals, it must be left to the play of their respective freedom and to the decisions or choices of the individuals involved without seeking recourse to what the regulation and laws, the rights of humans approve or don't.

If, on the other hand, rights are enforced on individuals to curtail their freedom of speech, it will become impossible - once the legal structures and monitoring practices are fully erected - for any individual to make sense of or even recognise their own freedom.

When individual freedom of speech is defined, expressed and implemented on the basis of communal agreements, of rights, and not on the grounds of the individual’s own choices based on their own innate freedom, the result is an unavoidable dominance of institutions and states based on those pre-agreed (majority-agreed in the best of cases), or dictatorially imposed ‘rights’.

Additionally, if still intent on exercising their freedom of speech within a society where rights take precedence, the individual’s only route to actual freedom becomes, by elimination, something outside the law.

The most important and aberrant consequence of the phenomena outlined above is that individuals may now effectively be required to prove the rightful legality of their daily free speech activities because of the palpable separation that has been effected between their rights (and those of others) and their freedom. 6

In this type of scenario, not only will individuals effectively be pushed into a process which will require them to deny their innate freedom to speak without governmental intervention, but they will in fact be forced to pay for such loss of freedom through the cost of state regulation on the taxpayer.

It may be conjectured that, in the foreseeable future, the tables will turn. Freedom of speech and of choice will no longer depend on the individual but on the rights of the communal other. Freedom of speech will have a price tag attached to it and will no longer be free.

If the ultimate responsibility for individual acts of free speech rests with the individual, what is the purpose of regulating free speech for the masses?

Share

Leave a comment

The following analysis of Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’ was prompted by the work of two Substackers (whom I thank here):

@theorygang who recently wrote in her engaging post The Paradox of Autonomy Week 25:

“The opposite would be the opinions of thinkers like BF Skinner and even Baruch Spinoza who have a more deterministic outlook: we have zero autonomy. Everything we do is shaped by nature. Personally, I find this style of argument to be nonsensical. A system can’t be complete without contradictions, so therefore we have to have some level of autonomy.”

and @maxleyf who provoked a quick comment from me to his excellent Note summary of Baruch Spinoza’s philosophy.

The interrelations between an understanding of God, human nature, human shortcomings, human freedom, and the workings of the mind represent the subject matter of Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’. In his book, Spinoza does not appear to be speaking about concepts alone but, when he does, it is always – whether through exemplification or logical reasoning – in terms of their relation to the material reality they are meant to embody.

From the complex mesh of relationships Spinoza develops in the ‘Ethics’ arises what remains perhaps the most controversial and long-standing polemic in God studies. Human freedom and ‘free will’, he asserts categorically, are “feigned seats and dwelling places” humans believe they enjoy but which are rendered inoperative in all but in name under what he calls ‘the sole causality of God’.

Leave a comment

I call the tandem consideration of these two concepts a polemic because Spinoza cannot avoid writing a full section of his book 1 about it, and because freedom is something that resonates intrinsically with humans regardless of upbringing, culture, intelligence, or education, and whose potentially illusory aspect only truly arises when considered conceptually within a philosophical framework of other concepts. Nobody questions the existence or validity of freedom or free will in their day-to-day life.

Generally speaking, humans assume a position of individual freedom unless this be curtailed or restricted in some obvious way (imprisonment, oppression, persecution). However, even in those extreme cases that negate individual or group freedom, its mental (intellectual or otherwise) reality appears to survive and, in many cases, even proliferate in some transcendental way.

The following analysis means to delve into this polemic and study some of its consequences with reference to Spinoza’s ‘Ethics’.

Spinoza writes in Part II (Of The Mind),

“By reality and perfection I understand the same thing.” 2

This makes a lot of sense to me.

On the one hand, and apart from the personal, intuited apprehension of a God 3 that – when viewed from the decidedly limited measure of the understanding humans generally display – truly garners the characteristics of immeasurability (and, therefore, omniscience), and of time-wideness (and, as such, eternality) and that supplies the human mind, simultaneously and comprehensively with an accurate and sensible measure of what may be conceived and named as real, Spinoza’s ‘perfection’ depicts the expression (or substantial definition) of that all-sufficient God. 4 Or as he himself writes, an entity for whom

“the laws of God’s nature have been so ample that they sufficed for producing all things which can be conceived by an infinite intellect” 5

Concurrently, Spinoza’s ‘reality’ finds equivalence in ‘perfection’ through that self-same personal and intuited apprehension described above, while also defining 6 where humans and the rest of creation fit precisely within such definition – in ‘perfection’ that is – as God’s creations. In Part IV (Of Human Bondage) of his ‘Ethics’, Spinoza further defines the concept of ‘reality’ as follows:

“Finally, by perfection in general I shall, as I have said, understand reality, that is, the essence of each thing insofar as it exists and produces an effect, having no regard to its duration. For no singular thing can be called more perfect for having persevered in existing for a longer time.” 7

Spinoza uses the word 'creation' (as God's creation) only once in his 'Ethics' when refuting other doctrines as a preamble to outlining his own theory of God. He writes:

"For before creation they can assign nothing except God for whose sake God would act. And so they are necessarily compelled to confess that God lacked those things for the sake of which he willed to prepare means, and that he desired them. This is clear through itself." 8

I assume therefore that my use of the word ‘creation’ here (“each thing insofar as it exists and produces an effect”) as equivalent to 'reality' is warranted and does not represent an extrapolation from Spinoza’s thought.

Spinoza has spoken of God in the following terms:

“… there is no cause, either extrinsically or intrinsically, which prompts God to action, except the perfection of God’s nature. It follows, second, that God alone is a free cause. For God alone exists only from the necessity of God’s nature, and acts from the necessity of God’s nature. Therefore God alone is a free cause.” 9

From this, I deduce that only God in God’s ‘perfection’ may be considered the independent causal origin of whatever expresses itself in the ‘reality’ of God’s creation. Therefore, freedom may not be adjudicated to humans or, for that matter, to any other sentient beings in any essential way within the reality of God’s creation.

According to Spinoza, humans are not free (or free willed) in the sense of being endowed with or achieving total freedom, and he provides ample reasoning and examples to support this assertion throughout his ‘Ethics’.

Share My GloB

Therefore, the ‘free will’ polemic I referred to at the beginning of this essay seems to be asserted and completed this far into the present analysis and finds full correlation with the statements by Spinoza himself at the outset of his treatise:

“That thing is called free which exists from the necessity of its nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone. But a thing is called necessary, or rather compelled, which is determined by another to exist and to produce an effect in a certain and determinate manner.” 10

While God is the sole entity able to act in total freedom, humans act in a manner that is “necessary”; meaning that humans act out of the necessary causal connection they have to God.

Moving forward, if, as Spinoza has now said:

“God is the sole free cause. For God alone exists by the necessity of God’s nature” 11

then, we may also conjecture that the human ‘free will’ Spinoza unequivocally considers an imagined ‘affect’, 12 together with the predestination 13 implied in God’s causal 'perfection' – since only God possesses free will that necessarily stands to govern human action – might not be considered opposing terms of reference within the parameters of ‘reality’ but corresponding attributes coming into play out of God's will as realised in human life and through the sole causality of a human existence only God can bequeath. 14

In other words, God's sole (and ultimate) causality includes the predestination of all that God creates (including, and perhaps principally, that of affected humans). Spinoza explains the extent of God’s multifaceted intervention as follows:

“… we have shown that God acts with the same necessity by which he understands himself, that is, just as it follows from the necessity of the divine nature (as everyone maintains unanimously) that God understands himself, with the same necessity it also follows that God does infinitely many things in infinitely many modes. And that God’s power is nothing except God’s active essence. And so it is as impossible for us to conceive that God does not act as it is to conceive that he does not exist.” 15

It may therefore be inferred that God’s ‘perfection’ is found in the human witness and acknowledgement of a life lived in such ‘reality’ caused by the alignment of the imagined human free will with God’s actual free will compelling humans to action, which would be equivalent to God’s predestined or necessary and expressed perfection for God’s creation. Spinoza writes:

“In the mind there is no absolute, or free, will, but the mind is determined to will this or that by a cause which is also determined by another, and this again by another, and so to infinity. The mind is a certain and determinate mode of thinking, and so cannot be a free cause of its own actions, or cannot have an absolute faculty of willing and not willing. Rather, it must be determined to willing this or that by a cause which is also determined by another, and this cause again by another, and so on, q.e.d.” 16

and,

“I explained how error consists in the privation of knowledge. But to explain the matter more fully, I shall give [NS: one or two examples]: men are deceived in that they think themselves free (NS: i.e., they think that, of their own free will, they can either do a thing or forbear doing it], an opinion which consists only in this, that they are conscious of their actions and ignorant of the causes by which they are determined. This, then, is their idea of freedom—that they do not know any cause of their actions. They say, of course, that human actions depend on the will, but these are only words for which they have no idea. For all are ignorant of what the will is, and how it moves the body; those who boast of something else, who feign seats and dwelling places of the soul, usually provoke either ridicule or disgust.” 17

According to Spinoza therefore, human lapsed and ‘affect-impacted’ conscious recognition of their own causal origin in God may then be seen to lead to all sorts of erroneous human assumptions about the iteration of causes carrying them into everyday action, as well as to the belief that it is their free-will that enables those decisions.

If we look at how Spinoza deals with such erroneous assumptions, we will discover that his approach is based on the correction of the intellect. He writes in his ‘Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione’:

I at length determined to inquire if there were anything which was a true good capable of imparting itself, by which the mind could be solely affected to the exclusion of all else; whether, indeed, anything existed by whose discovery and acquisition I might be put in possession of a joy continuous and supreme to all eternity'. 18

Spinoza upholds the ultimate, God-given tool for resolving the misleading fabrications of humans’ affected imaginations in what he calls “reason”.

“If these things are compared with those we have shown, concerning the powers of the affects, we shall easily see what the difference is between a man who is led only by an affect, or by opinion, and one who is led by reason. For the former, whether he will or not, does those things he is most ignorant of, whereas the latter complies with no one’s wishes but God’s own, and does only those things he knows to be the most important in life, and therefore desires very greatly. Hence, I call the former a slave, but the latter, a free man.” 19

He also says in the introduction to the "Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione" 20 that

“True philosophy is the discovery of the ‘true good,’ and without knowledge of the true good, human happiness is impossible.” 21

And states in his ‘Ethics’,

“To the second objection I reply by denying that we have a free power of suspending judgment. For when we say that someone suspends judgment, we are saying nothing but that he sees that he does not perceive the thing adequately. Suspension of judgment, therefore, is really a perception, not [an act of] free will.” 22

Therefore, ‘true good’ (Godly good) is the state of human wills’ perfect alignment with God's will in reality, both in their recognition of their causal dependence on God, as well as their reasonable and necessary alignment with God’s will for them.

“This love toward God is the highest good which we can want from the dictate of reason, and is common to all men; we desire that all should enjoy it. And so, it cannot be stained by an affect of envy, nor by an affect of jealousy. On the contrary, the more men we imagine to enjoy it, the more it must be encouraged, q.e.d.” 23

Some consider Spinoza an atheist 24 because he challenged orthodoxy. But, based on the above, I deduce Spinoza could not have been an atheist.

According to his own definitions, Spinoza’s God is real.

"I do not know why [matter] would be unworthy of the divine nature. For apart from God there can be no substance by which [the divine nature] would be acted on. All things, I say, are in God, and all things that happen, happen only through the laws of God’s infinite nature and follow (as I shall show) from the necessity of God’s essence. So it cannot be said in any way that God is acted on by another, or that extended substance is unworthy of the divine nature, even if it is supposed to be divisible, so long as it is granted to be eternal and infinite." 25

However, no matter how we look at this controversy – whether humans operate in ‘reality’ with an imagined free will or with a real and effective one – the ultimate compass under the God entity’s causal unity and ultimacy delivers the same result: the logical necessity of a human alignment with God’s will in order to personify ‘true good’ in ‘reality’ or ‘real good’ delivering happiness in God’s ‘perfection’.

Spinoza concludes his ‘Ethics’ as follows:

“With this I have finished all the things I wished to show concerning the mind’s power over the affects and its freedom. From what has been shown, it is clear how much the wise man is capable of, and how much more powerful he is than one who is ignorant and is driven only by lust. For not only is the ignorant man troubled in many ways by external causes, and unable ever to possess true peace of mind, but he also lives as if he knew neither himself, nor God, nor things; and as soon as he ceases to be acted on, he ceases to be. On the other hand, the wise man, insofar as he is considered as such, is hardly troubled in spirit, but being, by a certain eternal necessity, conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, he never ceases to be, but always possesses true peace of mind.” 26

If we consider Spinoza himself to be an affected human, we may then apply to him the plausibility of suffering from the same shortcomings or “bondage” he attributes to the human race as a whole, leaving the controversy potentially unresolved because of the highly likely inadequacy of the proponent.

Spinoza’s conception of his intellectually infinite God entity reflects a very common need to explain the unexplainable, the unreachable, all that is beyond the perceived inadequacy demonstrated by humans to apprehend first, understand next, and then conclude, as well as (and perhaps more importantly) humans’ inability to stop asking questions about their own existence, their origins and their purpose.

Leave a comment

What Spinoza does – as is the generalised need expressed by those asking questions – is to draw a suitable conceptual perimeter able to contain the ‘eternality’ and ‘time-wideness’ of his conception that allows him to build back a set of causal relationships towards the individual centre of his mental activity, bringing back in the process the further reaches of that conception (“eternal and infinite”) towards the reach of the material or real human.

In this process, not only does Spinoza (just as anyone else would) not exceed the reaches of his own intellect (which he willingly and effectively identifies as God) but he remains causally and, it would seem, unavoidably constrained by the affects of his own cultural and religious background (something he was excommunicated from).

Spinoza’s God, in all its magnitude and all-sufficiency, drawn as a ‘sole cause’ entity, can only be reasonably encompassed in what the God of the Hebrews said about God’s entity when first engaging in conversation with Moses on the Mountain of God (Horeb) and was then conveyed as ‘God’s name’ and God’s de facto definition, that is, the “I AM that I AM” of Exodus 3:14. 27

His reasoning, just like the reasoning Moses uses when arguing 28 with God, represents a gradual alignment of human needs with the God entity aimed at securing free and a mostly unhindered passage in the vicissitudes of human existence, in reality.

“One, therefore, who is anxious to moderate God’s affects and appetites from the love of freedom alone will strive, as far as he can, to come to know the virtues and their causes, and to fill God’s mind with the gladness which arises from the true knowledge of them, but not at all to consider men’s vices, or to disparage men, or to enjoy a false appearance of freedom. And he who will observe these [rules] carefully—for they are not difficult—and practice them, will soon be able to direct most of God’s actions according to the command of reason.” 29

In invoking the infinity of the intellectual universe and labelling it God, Spinoza treads very carefully, sure not to essentially subvert the tenets of his upbringing yet still challenging the limitations of an insufficient knowledge (as he must have considered it) contained in the biblical, scientific, and religious texts available to him.

He sets to explore the widest realms and the reasons identifiable within those extended boundaries and is brought back repeatedly to earth, to human nature, while never giving up on making the causes and effects of such God-human connection ever more tangible through his philosophy.

Spinoza represents the ideal philosopher (friend of wisdom) in as much as he refuses to abandon humanity for the idea of God he has himself conceived as Nature (‘perfection is reality’), but trusts that his God, in faith to reason and to utmost knowledge, will make God’s presence known through what he reasons and writes.

Though Spinoza was obviously not impacted by a restricting affect, by timidity or by fear 30

this affect, by which a man is so disposed that he does not will what he wills, and wills what he does not will, is called timidity, which is therefore nothing but fear insofar as a man is disposed by it to avoid an evil he judges to be future by encountering a lesser evil. 31

he was certainly affected by his passion for knowledge beyond what the past, the present, or even the future might hold for him and for humanity:

An affect which is called a passion of the mind is a confused idea, by which the mind affirms of its body, or of some part of it, a greater or lesser force of existing than before, which, when it is given, determines the mind to think of this rather than that. 32

Spinoza believes in, put his faith in a God scripted by the reasonable queries and answers of an intellect devoted to the ratification of God’s existence, an existence that makes everything real and where only God is not, cannot be questioned. This is understandable.

Though, in his conception, human freedom cannot exist due to the hindered (affected) condition of the race, alignment with God’s free will may be achieved in abiding by the tenets of virtues as uncovered and outlined by reason. This shows historical and logical correlation as well as sense.

His equation of reality with perfection still makes a lot of sense to me, yet, in negating human free will and upholding the sole and full causal validity of God, Spinoza appears to also negate the only mechanism by which his God may be approached and known.

A free-willed God, if real, would bestow the fullness of God’s nature and free will to the humans God created in order that perfection may be asserted in reality.

Share My GloB

Leave a comment

I don't think beliefs are held in the brain alone. They may need to be expressed and explained through the use of brain activity, but they're definitely not experienced in the brain alone.

If action (including the building of systems and societies, traditions and habits) does not closely adhere to or follow a belief as formulated in speech or in writing, how is it called or considered a belief in the first place?

It may be a desire or a wish, an aspiration or an expectation, but it cannot accurately be considered ‘a belief’.

“late 12c., bileave, "confidence reposed in a person or thing; faith in a religion," replacing Old English geleafa "belief, faith," from West Germanic *ga-laubon "to hold dear, esteem, trust" (source also of Old Saxon gilobo, Middle Dutch gelove, Old High German giloubo, German Glaube), from *galaub- "dear, esteemed," from intensive prefix *ga- + PIE root *leubh- "to care, desire, love." The prefix in English was altered on analogy of the verb believe. The distinction of the final consonant from that of believe developed 15c.” Source

Belief being rooted in confidence, trust, in care, denotes its clear association with both the action of the heart-mind composite (a spontaneous attachment which usually entails instinctive movement of some sort) and the material action of a practical withdrawal from or else a consequential offering of the self to another, to an idea, an ideal; that is, the factual effect of trust and faith.

As such, ‘belief in action’ or true belief (not just its intellectual representation) always goes beyond the accepted structures of habit and society because it is those traditions and that time-bound progression and their associated changes that actually generate the obstacles with which beliefs are faced day to day.

In fact, I consider belief to represent the most advanced and transcendental power instrument in the human toolkit. It is transcendental not just because it may go beyond the scope of the material realm, but because it accepts and deals with change proactively.

Share

Leave a comment