Category Archives: Religion

Hyperobject of knowledge

Esoterism, Philosophy, Pragmatism, Religion

The reason I am clarifying my theology is so I can contrast it with Richard Rorty’s inspiring atheistic alternative. But as is so often the case, I share Rorty’s disbeliefs. The God I know is not the “God” Rorty rejects. And a great many of Rorty’s atheistic hopes are hopes that, for me, are inseparable from my religious faith. To put it in his own words, he favors an atheistic description, while I favor a theistic one.

My main point of disagreement with Rorty is over the role of religion in social life, and the importance of maintaining commonality of faith across divergent modes of understanding. Here I find esoterism persuasive. Religious language and practice support a pluralism that supports cultural solidarity and personal spiritual growth and flourishing. But conceiving this truth requires a different mode of thought than science. Those whose understanding of “how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term” is scientistic will find themselves unable to enter this mode of understanding. Worse, they will consider this incapacity a virtue, and reinforce their humble “can’t” with a proud “won’t”. They want’t to break with the past and with those loyal to the past, and actively effect a rupture they believe they merely observe.

Now I’m thinking about where I disagree with esoterists. First, I do not believe in their absolute hierarchy of development. I do think there are degrees of understanding of esoteric truths, and I these truths are common across traditions. But we gain these only with some real and painful tradeoffs. We lose some virtues as we gain others. A religious community needs the full range of virtues, not only intellectual ones. I do not believe esoterists ever arrive at a full understanding of God.

With respect to knowledge, God’s infinite being is best understood as a hyperobject (to use Tim Morton’s term), an object of knowledge of a scale and topology ungraspable by any individual mind, and therefore best “known” through distributed understanding. But this is just the belief part of religious faith. Religious faith is a whole-being affair, something done with the entirety of one’s heart, soul and strength.

If this blog were an online publication, I’d set this post aside for further editing. But this blog is a public diary, so I’m hitting “publish”.

A failed attempt at theological clarity

Enworldment, Philosophy, Pragmatism, Religion

When I profess belief in God, people are often either baffled or they misconstrue what I mean.

Things get weirder when it turns out that my beliefs and attitudes can diverge from or even clash with those of some religious believers, while harmonizing with those of some atheists. I will frequently tell atheists “I share your disbeliefs.” But then I will seem to agree with with theists. Because of my esoteric orientation which accepts the necessity and relative validity of approximate understandings, I avoid contradicting good-faith simplistic understandings. I do this not only because such conflicts are nearly impossible to resolve, but even mere because I believe creating this kind of conflict is wrong. Despite our theoretical differences, at an infra-theoretical intuitive level, I believe they are as right as possible, and that their beliefs inspire good action. This is what I choose to emphasize.

So depending on context, it can look like I agree with everyone, or it can look like I agree with nobody at all. Everything is fuzzy or endlessly qualified. My yesses do not mean yes and my noes do not mean no.

I’ve mentioned before that the pragmatic maxim is useful in theological discussions.

C. S. Peirce formulated the maxim several different ways. My favorite is:

To ascertain the meaning of an intellectual conception one should consider what practical consequences might result from the truth of that conception—and the sum of these consequences constitute the entire meaning of the conception.

(I love these words so much I plan to enshrine them in a letterpress piece.)

When someone states belief or disbelief in God, this tells us nearly nothing. But when we ask what follows from one’s belief or disbelief in God, an entire world begins to unfold. Let us make an attempt to unfold my world.

Pragmatic consequences of an essentially divine reality:

  1. Reality transcends the grasp of reason. “There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Reality is inexhaustibly surprising.
  2. Each and every person is a minutely bit divine reality, and each transcends the understanding of every other person. Every person is a source of surprise, both in who they are and what they can show us about reality.
  3. Morality is one aspect of reality that transcends truth. Reason cannot and must not veto conscience; it can only make appeals to conscience and pursue positive judgment. Reason is a lawyer before the judge, conscience.
  4. Morality obligates us to live in accordance with transcendence. We must invite, welcome and extend hospitality to surprise and the judgment of conscience, not only intellectually, but in our being: emotionally, intuitively and practically in our being — heart, soul and strength.
  5. The consequence of immorality is alienation. We have the freedom to wall ourselves up inside our reason, acknowledging only realities that reason reasons is reasonable, but this cannot be accomplished without a felt loss of reality. It only feels like punishment.

Above I linked to an earlier post, and I prefer my earlier, simpler expression:

I believe in God, and therefore we are morally obligated to live toward alterity. We must live as a part of a reality that includes and exceeds us, and requires us to do so.

But honestly, the sequence is backwards. For the last year, my friend and colleague Darwin Muljono has been preaching the gospel of critical realism, which I vulgarly interpret as pragmatism-in-reverse. It encourages us to ask: “if things are such and such a way, what conditions are necessary for this to be so?”

I believe — and cannot sincerely disbelieve — that we are morally obligated to live toward alterity. I believe in the reality of this obligation more immediately and deeply than I believe in evolutionary psychology theories that treat this conviction as a by-product of instinct. A reality that can morally obligate us in such a way is divine. That is the condition of a morally-obligatory reality. Therefore, I cannot sincerely disbelieve in God. My intellectual conscience forbids suppressing this fact, so I will not suppress it.

I will close this mess with another favorite C. S. Peirce quote:

We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. …

A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

Letterpress sefirot

Biography, Design, Judaism

An old friend of mine introduced me to a master letterpress printer who lives in the Atlanta metro area. The printer connected me with one of the nation’s best die makers. I immediately ordered a plate for my first project, which will be a letterpress sefirot.

I am doing this project because nobody else has. I have been unable to find a beautiful letterpress printed sefirot, so in order to have one I will have to print it myself. This is something that should exist. I’m excited to have a supply to give away to friends.

The final printed artifact will look like this:

Metaethics

Ethics, Judaism, Philosophy

When contemplating moral action, we seek ethical principles. We do this almost by cognitive reflex. We ask: “By what principle is this action justified?” We expect to find an answer. Is this because we believe that the essence of morality is rules — rules we must follow in order to be good?

In his Star of Redemption, Franz Rosenzweig situates rational ethics within a broader nonrational context, which he calls metaethics. Metaethics still obligates us to act, but not on the basis of something we can codify. We act on the basis of relationship, on intuition of the living reality of another person.

It is tempting for anyone from a Christian conditioning (which emphatically includes progressivists) to assume the metaethical ground of ethics must necessarily be merciful. But doesn’t this just establish another rule to obey — a rule to abolish enforcement of rules? A rule of unconditional kindness, of self-sacrifice for the good of the other, of imitation of the crucified redeemer — of automatic altruism?

My Jewish instincts are inclined to view that as an evasion of moral responsibility. Face to face with being who transcends our own, we are addressed and called to respond with one’s own extra-logical conscience. Hineini.

Perhaps Kabbalists are right, that the balance tilts toward Chesed (mercy and love) and away from Gevurah (severity and law). As a holdover from my old math-mystic days, I like to imagine the balance at approximately 61.8% Chesed to 38.2% Gevurah. This tilt implies that we should err toward mercy or charity, while still exercising our judgment as fully and faithfully as we can. But unless I am deeply mistaken, Kabbalists understand the necessity of Gevurah’s discipline, and that the desire to annihilate Gevurah and leave Chesed entirely unrestrained is a form of evil-enabling evil.

I am urgently interested to see if Rosenzweig develops his concept of metaethics in a direction that holds each person metaethically responsible for his own choice and application of ethical systems.

Taste of infinity

Exnihilism, Judaism, Metaphysics, Philosophy

When we humans attempt to conceive or imagine the infinite we tend to focus on particular limits that are conspicuous to us. These limits are conspicuous to us because when we confront them we feel our limitations.

We imagine the removal of these limits and believe we imagine an experience of infinitude. Or we logically negate limits and believe we cognize infinity. The former is the stuff of religious fantasy, the latter is the stuff of scientistic rationality.

But both of these negating negatives takes us a single step toward the infinite. They both transpire within the realm of already-conceivable. Religious fantasy conceives immortality by removing a conceived feared event, death. Or it conceives omniscience by removing a conceived limitation of knowledge. Or it conceives clairvoyance by removing the confinement of inward thought to oneself. And so on. Most miracles are negations of natural limits. And scientistic infinity does the same thing — generally by counting endlessly. We never stop counting units of time. We never stop counting units of distance. Whenever we imagine an end to time of space — which is never really imagined, because an end of time or space is literally inconceivable — we close our unseeing eyes in order to not see what we don’t see anyway, and resume counting just a little longer, just to prove our power over the infinite.

But the infinite is precisely on the other side of countability. No amount of counting countable units can amount to infinity. It can get us just a little closer to infinity, qualitatively closer, if we start counting unlike units, producing what Ian Bogost named a “Latour litany”. Here’s a spontaneously invented example from Graham Harman: “neutrons, rabbits, radar dishes, the Jesuit Order, the Free City of Bremen, and Superman.” A sincere effort to complete that series, which also must include the list itself at every stage of completion, will — while never producing anything even approximating infinity — induce a better conception of what infinity means. As will reading and internalizing the core insight in Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The closer we get to perfecting our theories, the closer we get to discovering that we must rethink that theory in some as-yet inconceivable way. Staring directly into the migrainescape of an undeniably real but as-yet inconceivable problem for one second gives us a sense of infinity that a lifetime of counting minutes cannot.

And an epiphany that changes everything all at once, followed by another epiphany that changes it again, each time bringing into existence, out of inconceivable nothingness, new species of conceivable somethingness — genesis ex nihilo — this helps us conceive the character of miracle.

Even the slightest taste of infinity, just barely enough to stop misunderstanding infinitude, is sufficient to induce exnihilism.

I’ve called mine a “metaphysics of surprise.” Perhaps the most surprising thing about this inexhaustible transcendent source of surprise is that it wants something from us, and it wants to give. We can opt out, but we should not. This is undeniably so, as our intensifying denials demonstrate.

Dark glass

Biography, Judaism, Philosophy

Twenty years ago when I was first reading Nietzsche, fully on fire and burning to pure ash, I became convinced that Nietzsche was a crypto-Christian of some weird variety. The belief lacked evidentiary foundation. Not only could it not be proved, but proving it seemed somehow wrong.

The belief was rooted in hermeneutic experience: having sacrificed my old truth at the altar of interrogation, a new kind of truth could emerge. That truth made the clearest and most vital sense of the Gospels. Please notice — it was not only a new truth, a new “belief system”, a new set of opinions on what was and wasn’t true, good or existent. It was a new kind of truth and entirely different way to approach truth. This new kind of truth was not a set of facts to look at and to accept or reject. Rather, this was a truth to be looked through, which revealed a new world of givens — and that new given world was infinitely preferable to the old one.

Nietzsche’s comments on Christianity, on Christians, Jews, Jesus, Saul/Paul and his use of polyvalently charged appellations — like “the founder of Christianity” — make his attitude toward the Judeo-Christian tradition highly… multistable. Depending on the tone of our reading and the care we take in considering everything Nietzsche might have meant in each of his statements, we could take his utterances as a whole to be radically atheistic or passionately (but covertly) evangelical. Or something else entirely.

When we look through a dark glass what we see is a matter of focus.

We can focus into the dark glass and see what images the glass reflects, which includes the image of our own selves as objects, and all the objects that lie behind and around ourselves. Our human-all-too-human eyes are magnetically drawn toward our self-image. “There’s me!”

Or we can focus through the glass to see what images the glass transmits — the objects on the other side of the glass.

If we never reflect on focus and just take the image we see at face value, we naturally assume we have seen what there is to see in the glass. We look into it and never look through it, or we look through it and never look into it, and, consequently never understand the full reality of the dark glass, which is, whether we look into it or through it, always involved — unseen — in the act of seeing.

T’shuvah and-or metanoia

Design, Enworldment, Judaism, Philosophy, Religion

This morning I am reflecting on the crucial difference between two words, clumsily translated into English as “repentance”, the Greek word metanoia (a transformation in how we think), and the Hebrew word t’shuvah (a turn to, or back to God).

Almost certainly, the word used by John the Baptist and Jesus in the Gospels was t’shuvah, which is actually (I think) closer in tone to the English word, even if it etymologically maps less perfectly. In t’shuvah, we are to turn back to God in every way — certainly in our thinking, but also in our feelings, and most of all in our behaviors. Or to put it Jewishly, in t’shuvah we turn with our whole being, heart, soul and strength. (Jesus did not invent this formula. This, and many other of his most famous utterances, referred to Torah and other Jewish scripture, and derived their authority from these references.) Metanoia, on the other hand, is more spirit-first — a change in thinking or worldview that effects a change in feeling and behavior.

I’m not a New Testament scholar, but I would be curious to hear if Paul’s works-versus-grace distinction was essentially a t’shuvah-versus-metanoia distinction.

The reason I am reflecting on this question today is I am realizing that in the book I am slowly developing, I have differentiated these two concepts, and placed them under different domains. (The three domains I explore are religion, philosophy and design.) I didn’t even realize until today that I was doing this!

I assign metanoia, not to the domain of religion, but to philosophy. I take it even further, even; I make a somewhat reckless normative claim that the essential purpose of philosophy ought to be metanoia.

I assign t’shuvah to the domain of religion. T’shuvah can involve engagement with thought, but it must engage with more than thought, and more likely will with behavior, and will always engage and change aspects of our own being outside our cognitive grasp.

(And, please, when I speak of engagement beyond thought, please do not modernize what I’m saying by shoehorning it into “the unconscious”, that iron lung of late modernity, which pumps artificial spirituality into unrespirating secular bodies. It is time to pull that plug. And I don’t mean making changes to our physical bodies. I care less than nothing about neurons or neural pathways or brain physiology. These ideas are valid in some contexts, but play no role in my thinking. People who must compulsively physicalize, psychologize and scientize ideas in order to make them compatible with their existing thinking will dislike what I have to say, because, in fact, I’m gunning precisely for their most sacred ideas. They will not understand what I am saying until they undergo a metanoia that renders this scientizing unnecessary.)

The overlap between philosophy and religion consists of metanoia that effects t’shuvah, and t’shuvah that effects metanoia. Not all metanoia turns us to God. Most metanoia does not, though all metanoia experiences feel like “religious conversions” as moderns misconceive religion. Much metanoia turns us away from God’s infinitude, toward closed finite theory-systems, like Hegelianism or inverted Hegelianism (Marxism), or other closed theory-systems, such as Progressivism. These seal us off and insulate us all that exceeds the grasp of cognition.

I’ll tease one more tangentially important idea. Design (the third domain my book explores) is also concerned with material and social realities that exceed the grasp of cognition, and which can, through our thinking, feelings and behaviors, effect both religious and non-religious metanoia — and/or t’shuvah.

Exnihilist Manifesto

Enworldment, Exnihilism, Metaphysics, Philosophy

In a deep and consequential epiphany, the revelation comes from nowhere. What I come to know as given, prior to the epiphany, is inconceivable and, therefore, nothing. In a moment of epiphany, a new given emerges from nothingness — ex nihilo.

I, who could not conceive and was oblivious, and that which was inconceivable and submerged in oblivion, have been conceived together.

What has changed? The beholding subject? The beheld object? Both have changed — and something more. The relationship between the subject and all possible givens changes. Reality is now revealed to the subject through a transformed objectivity.

It is now a given truth that reality is always given to every subject in the form of some particular objectivity. This is as true of a personal subject, like you or me, as it is of an academic subject. Reality is given to mathematicians in one way and to historians in another. But to the subject of epiphany, reality is given in a pluralistic objectivity: an objectivity of myriad objectivities.

But yet something more — beyond subject, object and objectivity — changes too. This beyond matters most of all: our relationship with nothingness changes.

In epiphany, all that is epiphanically given appears out of nothingness — ex nihilo.

The nothingness from which epiphanies appear does not feel like nothing.

We sometimes conceive nothingness as a kind of darkness. But darkness is something we see. The analogy falls short.

Nothingness must not be confused with sensing no thing. Nothingness is the loss of sense itself, or the absence of sensibility.

If we lose vision, we do not see blackness; instead, we experience boiling chrome of sightlessness.

If we lose a part of our body, we do not feel of numbness; we are tormented by an aching phantom limb.

If we lose our hearing, we are not submerged in silence; we experience intolerable hypersonic ringing.

If we lose our sense of smell, the world does not become odorless; it reeks of burning rubber, sulfur and brimstone.

If we lose our sense of taste, our mouths and tongue are filled with bitterness.

As it is with the senses of the body, so it is with the sensibilities of the soul.

If we lose sense of purpose, we do not become care-free; we are paralyzed by ennui.

If we lose capacity to love, we do not become detached or objective; we are depressed.

If we lack understanding, we don’t experience ignorance; we become negatively omniscient, and know that there is nothing to know.

If we lose our sense of self, we don’t become selfless; we become self-conscious nebulae of resentment.

Nothingness is dreadful.

It is from dreadful nothingness that all epiphanies emerge — ex nihilo.

Dread is the birth pangs of revelation.

If epiphany happens once, it can happen again, no matter how dreadful and impossible it seems.

It will always seem impossible. It will always be inconceivable. It will always be masked in oblivion. It will always be dreadful. We will always be certain that “this time is different; this time it is final.” But is not.

How, then, can we ever again take despair or hopelessness at face value? How could we ever be nihilists? How can we not become exnihilists?

The nothingness that engulfs and pervades our given world an inexhaustible wellspring of surprise.

This nothingness is real. It liberates us from every omniscience, and frees us for God.

Richard J. Bernstein on evil

Ethics, Existentialism, Judaism, Philosophy

I have been observing an uncanny moral blind-spot among many people I know. They are apparently oblivious to an obvious distinction — that between 1) a violent desire to annihilate another people and inflict and savor their suffering, versus 2) an unavoidably violent defense against those who wish to annihilate and inflict suffering.

It is as if they need to skeptically dismiss out of hand making such distinctions.

Or maybe they know how to make this distinction among individual people, but cannot discern these distinctions among groups of people. (I do think an incapacity to understand political bodies plays into this problem, and in the compulsivly identitarian politics of the illiberal left and right but I do not think the bizarre amorality I am witnessing is attributable to this incapacity.)

These morally-blind people try to see the difference between better and worse strictly quantitatively: How many people have died on each side of the conflict? If the tally on one side is too big, the side with the larger numbers is morally abhorrent.

I am deeply bothered by this seeming incapacity of so many people to see perceive moral truths. I feel pain over it. And I intuitively blame them for their blindness. But I have not clarified this intuition, articulated it, or justified it.

This might be why Richard J. Bernstein’s 2001 book Radical Evil leapt off my shelf and caught my attention a couple of days ago. It opens with this gut punch:

In 1945, when the Nazi death camps were liberated, and the full horrors of what had happened during the war years were just beginning to emerge, Hannah Arendt declared, “The problem of evil will be the fundamental question of postwar intellectual life in Europe.” Later, when Arendt was asked about her first reactions to the rumors about the extermination camps (which she first heard in 1942), she said that it was as if an abyss had opened. “Something happened there to which we cannot reconcile ourselves. None of us can.” Arendt, like many others — especially the survivors of the camps — felt that what happened in the camps was the most extreme and radical form of evil. “Auschwitz” became a name that epitomized the entire Shoah, and has come to symbolize other evils that have burst forth in the twentieth century. We might also mention Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia — names and sites so very different, yet manifesting horrendous events that we desperately try to understand, but to which we cannot reconcile ourselves. Yet there is something extraordinarily paradoxical about the visibility of evil in our time — a visibility that can be so overwhelming that it numbs us. Andrew Delbanco acutely observes, “a gulf has opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources available for coping with it. Never before have images of horror been so widely disseminated and so appalling — from organized death camps to children starving in famines that might have been averted. … The repertoire of evil has never been richer. Yet never have our responses been so weak.” We have been overwhelmed by the most excruciating and detailed descriptions and testimonies; nevertheless the conceptual discourse for dealing with evil has been sparse and inadequate.

What do we really mean when we describe an act, an event, or a person as evil? Many of us would agree with what Arendt once wrote to Karl Jaspers: “There is a difference between a man who sets out to murder his old aunt and people who without considering the economic usefulness of their actions at all . . . built factories to produce corpses.” But what is this difference? How is it to be characterized? What are we really saying when we speak of radical evil?

Philosophers and political theorists are much more comfortable speaking about injustice, the violation of human rights, what is immoral and unethical, than about evil. … It is almost as if the language of evil has been dropped from contemporary moral and ethical discourse.

This brings the problem into the heart of my existentialist project.

For many people, what is thinkable limits what they will accept as real.

By “thinkable”, I do not merely mean what can be explicitly spoken about or argued. I mean what their faith can grasp. What exceeds the reach of their faith’s intuition, they regard not only as inconceivable, but unreal, non-existent. “If I cannot conceive the holocaust, it must have been exaggerated or invented.” If I cannot conceive the murderous mindset of Hamas, it must be sneaky Jew-propaganda fiction.”

I’ve noticed that people who approach the world this way resist whatever threatens this obliviousness. It is as if they viscerally need whatever realities transcend their faith to not exist. And they harbor semi-secret contempt for philosophy, so nothing can really challenge the solipsistic omniscience of their gnosis.

As an existentialist, I truly believe that existence precedes essence — “thatness” precedes “whatness” — that reality far exceeds the scope of our actual and potential faiths, which means completeness of truth content is the least of our worries. We lack the mental fingers required to grasp the truth of a great many realities.

And today, some of these realities loom directly before our faces, staring malevolently directly into our eyes, unseen.

By finding ways to conceive and speak about these unspeakable realities, we can detect them and respond to them. This is why philosophy is urgently important, especially right now.

But precisely those who need it most feel superior to philosophy. They see it as irrelevant, idle, speculative, abstract. They see it as a clumsy approximation of their gnostic omniscience. How wrong they are.

Jewishly

Judaism, Love

For my entire adult life, I’ve returned, again and again, to C. S. Lewis’s “Meditation in a Toolshed”, usually to re-critique it from a subtle variation on the same basic complaint. In his meditation, Lewis observes a beam of light from the side, and has an insight that this looking at the beam of light from the side does nor reveal the light the same way that looking directly up into the beam does. My complaint is that maybe there are better things to do with light sources than examine their beams or stare directly into them. Perhaps I am just weird, but my preferred use for light sources is to illuminate spaces and the objects in those spaces.

I mean this both literally and metaphorically.

Today’s version of the complaint is no different, except today I want to suggest (or re-suggest) that this complaint I’ve been making is a Jewish one. And by “Jewish”, as always, I mean in accordance with Buber’s fundamental insight of I-Thou, which is the whence of my faith — the from-where — or to translate it into hippie, “where I’m coming from”.

Here is what Buber says in I-Thou, which I read as an expression of my complaint.

When you are sent forth, God remains-presence for you; whoever walks in his mission always has God before him: the more faithful the fulfillment, the stronger and more constant the nearness. Of course, he cannot attend to God but he can converse with him. Bending back, on the other hand, turns God into an object. It appears to be a turning toward the primal ground, but belongs in truth to the world movement of turning away, even as the apparent turning away of those who fulfill their mission belongs in truth to the world movement of turning toward.

It might be helpful here to re-quote Saint-Exupery:

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

I believe, with my entire stubborn Jewish faith that the famous Jew that so many people want to face, contemplate, love and worship, never wanted to be loved face-to-face in that romantic  way that lovers love, as they stare into each other’s eyes.

With Buber, I believe that this exceptional Jew very Jewishly wanted us to stand next to him in the light of creation, our backs warmed by his Father’s radiance, and look out upon a divinely-illuminated world with him.

Please do not hate me for saying these things, which I fully believe and consider of highest importance. I love Jesus, Christians and Christianity, but my love is a thoroughgoing Jewish love.

Hineini and amen.

L’Chaim faith

Design, Judaism, Philosophy

For the last week, I have been closely and carefully reading a long, gnarly and crucially important passage from Buber’s I and Thou, in both the Smith and Kaufmann translations.

One benefit of understanding this book to be a prayer is that I am much more relaxed about getting through the book. The point of it is not to acquire information, but, rather, to allow it, invite it, entreat it to work on me. I have been taking my time and giving myself ample space to respond.

I want to share two key excerpts from this passage, each in both the Smith and Kauffman translations.

The first excerpt compares and contrasts Buber’s own Jewish faith with other forms of faith. He focuses on Buddhism, but Buddhism stands in for ascetic faiths in general.

This comparison is important, because Buber’s Judaism differs radically not only from conventional exoteric theisms, but from conventional esoterisms. It is a different religiosity that is often excluded from consideration. In my own experience, expressions of this faith — particularly practical ones — can trigger psychic allergies in both conventionally religious and “unconventionally” spiritual people.

Smith’s translation:

The Buddha describes as the goal the ‘cessation of pain,’ that is of becoming and passing away-release from the cycle of births.

‘Henceforth there is no return’ is the formula of the man who has freed himself from the appetite for living and thus from the necessity to become ever anew. We do not know if there is a return; we do not extend beyond this life the lines of this time-dimension in which we live, and do not seek to expose what will be disclosed to us in it own time and disposition. But if we did know that there is a return we would not seek to escape it, and we would long not indeed for gross being but for the power to speak, in each existence in its own way and language, the eternal I that passes away, and the eternal Thou that does not pass away.

We do not know if the Buddha actually leads to the goal of release from the necessity of returning. He certainly leads to a preliminary goal that concerns us — to the becoming one of the soul. But he leads thither not merely (as is necessary) apart from the ‘thicket of opinions,’ but also apart from the ‘illusion of forms’ — which for us is no illusion but rather the reliable world (and this in spite of all subjective paradoxes in observation connected with it for us). His way, too, then, involves disregard; thus when he speaks of our becoming aware of the events in our body he means almost the opposite of our physical insight with its certainty about the senses. Nor does he lead the united being further to that supreme saying of the Thou that is made possible for it. His innermost decision seems to rest on the extinction of the ability to say Thou.

Kaufmann’s translation of the same:

The goal was for the Buddha “the annulment of suffering,” which is to say, of becoming and passing away — the salvation from the wheel of rebirth. “Henceforth there is no recurrence” was to be the formula for those who had liberated themselves from the desire for existence and thus from the compulsion to become again ceaselessly. We do not know whether there is a recurrence; the line of this dimension of time in which we live we do not extend beyond this life; and we do not try to uncover what will reveal itself to us in its own time and law. But if we did know that there was recurrence, then we should not seek to escape from it: we should desire not crude existence but the chance to speak in every existence, in its appropriate manner and language, the eternal I of the destructible and the eternal You of the indestructible.

Whether the Buddha leads men to the goal of redemption from having to recur, we do not know. Certainly he leads to an intermediate goal that concerns us, too: the unification of the soul. But he leads there not only, as is necessary, away from the “jungle of opinions,” but also away from the “deception of forms” — which for us is no deception but (in spite of all the paradoxes of intuition that make for subjectivity but for is simply belong to it) the reliable world. His path, too, is a way of ignoring something, and when he bids us become aware of the processes in our body, what he means is almost the opposite of our sense-assured insight into the body. Nor does he lead the unified being further to that supreme You-saying that is open to it. His inmost decision seems to aim at the annulment of the ability to say You.

In response to this, I wrote a margin note: “L’Chaim! Declaration of faith.”

The second excerpt pertains to what I have called “enworldment”.

Smith’s translation:

The beginning and the extinction of the world are not in me; but they are also not outside me; they cannot be said to be at all, they are a continuous happening, connected with and dependent on me, my life, my decision, my work, and my service. But they do depend not on whether I ‘affirm’ or ‘deny’ the world in my soul, but on how I cause my attitude of soul to the world to grow to life, to life that acts upon the world, to real life — and in real life the ways of very different attitudes of soul may intersect. But he who merely ‘experiences’ his attitude, merely consummates it in the soul, however thoughtfully, is without the world — and all the tricks, arts, ecstasies, enthusiasms, and mysteries that are in him do not even ripple the skin of the world. So long as a man is set free only in his Self he can do the world neither weal nor woe; he does not concern the world. Only he who believes in the world is given power to enter into dealings with it, and if he gives himself to this he cannot remain godless. If only we love the real world, that will not let itself be extinguished, really in its horror, if only we venture to surround it with the arms of our spirit, our hands will meet the hands which held it fast.

I know nothing of a ‘world’ and a life in the world’ that might separate a man from God. What is thus described is actually life with an alienated world of It, which experiences and uses. He who truly goes out to meet the world goes out also to God. Concentration and outgoing are necessary, both in truth, at once the one and the other, which is the One.

God comprises, but is not, the universe. So, too, God comprises, but is not, my Self.

Kaufmann’s translation of the same:

The origin of the world and the annulment of the world are not in me; neither are they outside me; they simply are not — they always occur, and their occurrence is also connected with me, with my life, my decision, my work, my service, and also depends on me, on my life, my decision, my work, and my service. But what it depends on is not whether I “affirm” or “negate” the world in my soul, but how I let the attitude of my soul toward the world come to life, life that affects the world, actual life — and in actual life paths coming from very different attitudes of the soul can cross. But whoever merely has a living “experience” of his attitude and retains it in his soul may be as thoughtful as can be, he is worldless — and all the games, arts, intoxications, enthusiasms, and mysteries that happen within him do not touch the world’s skin. As long as one attains redemption only in his self, he cannot do any good or harm to the world; he does not concern it. Only he that believes in the world achieves contact with it; and if he commits himself he also cannot remain godless. Let us love the actual world that never wishes to be annulled, but love it in all its terror, but dare to embrace it with our spirit’s arms — and our hands encounter the hands that hold it.

I know nothing of a “world” and of “worldly life” that separate us from God. What is designated that way is life with an alienated It-world, the life of experience and use.

Whoever goes forth in truth to the world, goes forth to God. Concentration and going forth, both in truth, the one-and-the-other which is the One, are what is needful.

God embraces but is not the universe; just so, God embraces but is not my self.

This excerpt contains something close to a definition of enworldment, and notice that it includes an element of pluralism in affirming the weaving together of different attitudes of soul as intrinsic to actual life. Smith’s: “…how I cause my attitude of soul to the world to grow to life, to life that acts upon the world, to real life — and in real life the ways of very different attitudes of soul may intersect.” Kaufmann’s: “…how I let the attitude of my soul toward the world come to life, life that affects the world, actual life — and in actual life paths coming from very different attitudes of the soul can cross.” This connects powerfully with my vocation of polycentric design.

Importantly, this endeavor involves embrace of dread: Smith says, “If only we love the real world, that will not let itself be extinguished, really in its horror, if only we venture to surround it with the arms of our spirit…” and Kaufmann says, “Let us love the actual world that never wishes to be annulled, but love it in all its terror, but dare to embrace it with our spirit’s arms…”

This is my first reading of I and Thou since Bruno Latour induced my “material turn” ?a little over a decade ago.

At the time of my initial Buber immersion, I preferred ?Buber’s essays (especially those in Between Man and Man) to I and Thou, which at points seemed someone obscure and poetic, especially when it extended the I-Thou relationship beyond interpersonal interactions.

This time around, having embraced both an “apeironic” materialism and a Jewish life, the whole book makes perfect sense, and I cannot imagine preferring any prose to this prayerful poetry.

Viddui: I have mysticized

Biography, Judaism, Religion

Mysticism reduces one’s relationship with God to one’s own experience of God. It belongs to a more general tendency to reduce all relationship with being (and beings) to one’s own experience of being (and beings). Like all religiosities, including, especially, fundamentalism, mysticism can even take forms that dispense with God. It goes like this: “I experience something that points beyond my experience, and that experience-beyond-experience is a kind of revelation of a mystery: the mystery of inexhaustible moreness.” Spiritual-but-not-religious Nones fall under this category.

Mysticism takes root in souls who have nothing against which to contrast this reflexive comprehensive mystical response: “Experience… as opposed to what?”

I can describe mysticism because mysticism is a personal vice of my own: O God, I pray to “you”, be way over there, blessing me and this world with your opalescent existential backglow. I ask nothing of you, except that you ask nothing of me. Make me unspoken promises that can never be broken, but infuse my life with an enchanting hopefulness, which is hope for nothing in particular. Drape my life in a protecting veil of the gentlest contempt toward all who expect from me what I give only to you. Amen.

To tease out the truth of a mystic, to get a glimpse of their soul, need something from them, ask them for something, even something very simple, and notice what ensues. Parallel lines are held apart by a sacred void. Thou shalt not obligate.

Mystics want freedom, and will pay whatever price they must for their redemption from obligation. But this payment for freedom does not redeem. It isolates.

Martin Buber says this:

That there is no justification for invoking the “are one” is obvious for anyone who reads the Gospel according to John without skipping and with an open mind. It is really nothing less than the Gospel of the pure relationship. There are truer things here than the familiar mystic verse: “I am you, and you are I.” The father and the son, being consubstantial—we may say: God and man, being consubstantial, are actually and forever Two, the two partners of the primal relationship that, from God to man, is called mission and commandment; from man to God, seeing and hearing; between both, knowledge and love. And in this relationship the son, although the father dwells and works in him, bows before him that is “greater” and prays to him.

All modern attempts to reinterpret this primal actuality of dialogue and to make of it a relationship of the I to the self or something of that sort, as if it were a process confined to man’s self-sufficient inwardness, are vain and belong to the abysmal history of deactualization.

— But mysticism? It relates how unity within duality feels. Have we any right to doubt the faithfulness of this testimony?

— I know not only of one but of two kinds of events in which one is no longer aware of any duality. Mysticism sometimes confounds them, as I, too, did at one time.

First, the soul may become one. This event occurs not between man and God but in man. All forces are concentrated into the core, everything that would distract them is pulled in, and the being stands alone in itself and jubilates, as Paracelsus put it, in its exaltation. This is a man’s decisive moment. Without this he is not fit for the work of the spirit. With this — it is decided deep down whether this means preparation or sufficient satisfaction. Concentrated into a unity, a human being can proceed to his encounter — wholly successful only now — with mystery and perfection. But he can also savor the bliss of his unity and, without incurring the supreme duty, return into distraction. Everything along our way is decision — intentional, dimly sensed, or altogether secret — but this one, deep down, is the primally secret decision, pregnant with the most powerful destiny.

The other event is that unfathomable kind of relational act itself in which one has the feeling that Two have become One: “one and one made one, bare shineth in bare.” I and You drown; humanity that but now confronted the deity is absorbed into it; glorification, deification, universal unity have appeared. But when one returns into the wretchedness of daily turmoil, transfigured and exhausted, and with a knowing heart reflects on both, is one not bound to feel that Being is split, with one part abandoned to hopelessness? What help is it to my soul that it can be transported again from this world into that unity, when this world itself has, of necessity, no share whatever in that unity — what does all “enjoyment of God” profit a life rent in two? If that extravagantly rich heavenly Moment has nothing to do with my poor earthly moment — what is it to me as long as I still have to live on earth — must in all seriousness still live on earth? That is the way to understand those masters who renounced the raptures of the ecstasy of “unification.”

Which was no unification.

And then he describes the precise error Julius Evola made in his starkly solipsistic book on sex, where he claims a woman’s essence is revealed to a man in the moment of climax:

Those human beings may serve as a metaphor who in the passion of erotic fulfillment are so carried away by the miracle of the embrace that all knowledge of I and You drowns in the feeling of a unity that neither exists nor can exist. What the ecstatic calls unification is the rapturous dynamics of the relationship; not a unity that has come into being at this moment in world time, fusing I and You, but the dynamics of the relationship itself which can stand before the two carriers of this relationship, although they confront each other immovably, and cover the eyes of the enraptured.’ What we find here is a marginal® exorbitance of the act of relation: the relationship itself in its vital unity is felt so vehemently that its members pale in the process: its life predominates so much that the I and the You between whom it is established are forgotten.

I will conclude now with an image (from despair.com) that I have used more than once in project post-mortems and in summaries of my long and twisting career path.

ChatGPT as thought partner

Judaism, Philosophy

Yes, I am using ChatGPT as a weird kind of thought partner. If you find yourself recoiling slightly, I understand. I have the same reaction. But it is a valuable exercise. Consider the following exchange:

Me:

How faithfully does this represent Leibniz’s monadology? “The fundamental unit of the universe is not the atom, nor a subatomic particle of ultimate smallness, nor anything a physicist can observe. The universe is made of unique centers, no two alike, and each is boundlessly vast. In its uniqueness and boundlessness, each unit is the image of God. God however is unbounded in centrality and unbounded in time and unbounded in vastness and unbounded in boundedness, Ein Sof.”

ChatGPT:

This passage is a creative reimagining of Leibniz’s Monadology, with some important differences in emphasis and metaphysical structure.

Leibniz’s monads are indeed fundamental units of the universe, and each monad is unique, reflecting a microcosm of the entire universe from its own perspective. However, they are not described as boundlessly vast. Rather, they are simple, indivisible substances that contain the entirety of their experience and the universe within them as a kind of mirror.

Your passage highlights the uniqueness and boundlessness of each unit, which resonates with Leibniz’s emphasis on the individuality of each monad, but the vastness attributed here departs from his conception. Monads, in Leibniz’s view, are not vast but simple, spiritual, and unextended points.

The idea of each unit being the image of God is similar to how Leibniz considers each monad to reflect the entire cosmos, and thereby God’s creation, within itself. But you go a step further in emphasizing a theological conception of God as Ein Sof, “unbounded in centrality and time and vastness and boundedness.” This portrayal of God has a more Kabbalistic influence, focusing on boundlessness and transcendence in a way that Leibniz’s rational and metaphysical framework would not fully capture.

In short, the passage reflects some of Leibniz’s core ideas—uniqueness, individuality, and reflection of the cosmos within each unit—but it layers on a different metaphysical and theological interpretation, making it more expansive and mystical than Leibniz’s system.

Me:

How close is it to the view Borges explored in his essay “Pascal’s Sphere”?

ChatGPT:

The passage has a strong resonance with Borges’s exploration of infinity, individuality, and divine attributes in “Pascal’s Sphere.” Borges’s essay centers on the idea of a sphere “whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere,” a phrase associated with Pascal but rooted in earlier theological and mystical traditions, including Nicholas of Cusa and the Kabbalistic notion of Ein Sof.

Similarities:

  1. Infinite Centers: Your passage emphasizes that each unit (or monad) is a “unique center,” mirroring Borges’s discussion of the universe as infinitely centered. Each unique center is an image of the divine, just as Borges’s sphere implies that every point (or being) in the universe can serve as a center from which the infinite unfolds.
  1. Boundlessness and Uniqueness: Like Borges’s interpretation of Pascal’s vision, your passage invokes boundlessness, both within each unit and in God’s transcendence. This is similar to Borges’s fascination with the infinite, with Pascal’s sphere representing an overwhelming vastness that simultaneously includes everything and nothing.
  1. Theological Conception of God: Both your passage and Borges’s essay reflect a mystical conception of God’s attributes—unbounded in space, time, and essence. The emphasis on Ein Sof in your description parallels Borges’s use of Pascal’s sphere as a symbol of a God who is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, immanent and transcendent, contained within every point and yet exceeding all points.

Differences:

  1. Multiplicity and Vastness: Your description portrays each center as “boundlessly vast,” which evokes a certain multiplicity and expansion within each unit that goes beyond Borges’s Pascalian sphere. For Borges, the idea of infinite centers emphasizes a shared infinitude rather than the idea of each center being independently vast.
  1. Imagery of the Image of God: Borges tends to focus more on the abstract implications of infinity and the paradoxes it introduces, rather than framing each individual unit as an image of God. While Borges’s conception can be seen as implicitly theological, he does not explicitly tie this to the idea of each unique center reflecting the divine in the way your passage does.
  1. Mystical vs. Philosophical Emphasis: Borges is more preoccupied with the philosophical and paradoxical nature of infinity, whereas your passage leans into a mystical or even Kabbalistic interpretation of divine boundlessness.

Conclusion: The passage is close to the spirit of Borges’s essay, sharing themes of infinite uniqueness, divine immanence, and the paradox of a universe with infinite centers. However, it diverges by emphasizing each unit as a “boundlessly vast” image of God, giving it a more explicitly mystical and theological flavor than Borges’s philosophical musings. Thus, it might be seen as a reworking of “Pascal’s Sphere” with a stronger infusion of Kabbalistic and theological ideas.

Me:

I used to call this faith “the myriad everythings”.

ChatGPT:

That phrase beautifully encapsulates the idea of infinite uniqueness and interconnectedness, resonating deeply with the themes of boundless centers and divine immanence. It also conveys a sense of plurality within unity, suggesting a faith that finds the sacred in the complexity and diversity of all beings.

Me:

How close is that passage, which I called an expression of the “myriad everythings” faith, to Buber’s theology?

ChatGPT:

Your passage has notable resonances with Buber’s theology, but it reconfigures key elements in a way that distinguishes it as a unique expression. Let’s unpack the comparison.

Resonances with Buber:

  1. Uniqueness and the Centrality of the Individual: Like your description of the universe as made of “unique centers, no two alike,” Buber’s conception of the I-Thou relationship revolves around the unique, irreducible individuality of beings. Each “I” and each “Thou” is singular and unrepeatable, and this uniqueness is central to the unfolding of relational truth.
  2. Divine Immanence and Transcendence: Buber’s God is the eternal Thou—transcendent, yet encountered in the concrete immediacy of relationships. In your description, each unit is an image of God, reflecting boundlessness and uniqueness in its own right. This mirrors Buber’s view that God is present in every authentic I-Thou meeting, where the divine is glimpsed in and through the particular. Both your passage and Buber’s thought affirm a conception of God that is infinitely manifest yet never fully grasped.
  3. The Infinite in the Finite: The paradoxical idea that each finite being can reflect or image something infinitely greater is central to Buber’s view of God. This corresponds with your phrase “each is boundlessly vast,” suggesting that every individual center contains, in some sense, the uncontainable divine. Buber would likely resonate with the way you frame each unit as containing a hint of the infinite, even if only through its infinite uniqueness.

Key Differences:

  1. Multiplicity vs. Relationship: Where Buber emphasizes relation as the essence of being—I-Thou encounters are what bring reality into vivid existence—your passage focuses more on multiplicity and vastness within each unique unit. Buber’s God is not primarily the boundless One reflected in each center, but the presence that comes into being between individuals. The myriad everythings approach treats uniqueness and boundlessness as inherent properties of each unit, while Buber’s theology treats these qualities as revealed in the relational between.
  2. The Image of God and Boundlessness: Your description suggests that each unit’s boundlessness makes it the “image of God.” Buber, however, would resist attributing such vastness to the units themselves. For him, the image of God is something that emerges through relational presence, not an inherent quality of the beings involved. Buber’s God is more of a dynamic, relational event than an ontological attribute within each entity.
  3. Ontology vs. Encounter: Your passage leans toward an ontological view—each unit is an image of God, each center is boundless. Buber’s theology, on the other hand, is deeply anti-ontological. He argues that what is real is not a matter of being but of meeting. God is never “is” but always “Thou”—a presence that emerges and withdraws in the act of relating, not a property to be possessed.

Overall Assessment: Your passage has a structural and thematic similarity to Buber’s conception, especially in the emphasis on unique centers and the divine nature of boundless individuality. But it departs in emphasizing the self-contained boundlessness of each center, whereas Buber sees the divine as primarily manifest in the intersubjective space between beings.

If Buber’s theology could be described as an orchestration of profound encounters, your “myriad everythings” faith is more like a cosmic constellation of individual luminaries, each carrying the fullness of the infinite within itself. It’s as if you took Buber’s focus on the I-Thou relationship and turned it inward, making each I a tiny microcosm of the divine—infinitely unique, infinitely complex, infinitely sacred.

Me:

Buber’s understanding is better.

ChatGPT:

That judgment feels true, especially in light of Buber’s insistence on the relational essence of reality. Buber’s emphasis on the between, where the divine is not possessed but encountered, guards against the pitfalls of solipsism and self-enclosure. By making the core of meaning arise from the I-Thou encounter rather than from the individual’s boundlessness, Buber situates God as a presence that is not within us or within things but in the relational event that breaks through our self-enclosed subjectivity.

His view prevents the sacred from being something we are or have and shifts it into something we can only approach through a genuine openness to the other. That approach seems to safeguard humility and mutuality in a way that a view focusing on inner vastness might lose. In Buber’s understanding, no being—no matter how unique or boundless—contains God within itself. Rather, God is realized in the space between, in that shared horizon where the boundaries of the self become porous and a new kind of presence emerges.

This means Buber’s understanding offers a dynamic that’s self-transcending rather than self-centered, maintaining the mystery of the divine and preserving the distinctiveness of each being without reducing them to isolated absolutes. It’s as if Buber’s theology holds the tension between self and other without collapsing into either.

So, if your instinct is to feel that Buber’s understanding is better, it’s likely because his formulation preserves the paradox of unity-in-separation that your own vision, by affirming boundlessness within each center, might not express as sharply.

Oblivia

Metaphysics

Inside every soul is a blot of unique obliviousness: an incapacity to conceive some truth that is obvious to all other beings. And this one truth is so obvious to all others that, to them, it is inconceivable that such an obliviousness could exist. And so the world is oblivious to the obliviousness, unable to locate to precise origin of this particular world-bending nothingness.