Repost: Christopher Morrissey, The Christian Humanism of Marshall McLuhan

Postmodern intellectual culture is perhaps best characterized as adhering to the thesis that all reality is socially constructed. Many have mistaken Marshall McLuhan for being a prophet of postmodernity, this new era of technological change marked by a new media domination of the global theatre. But McLuhan himself said:

“I am a Thomist for whom the sensory order resonates with the divine Logos. … Analogy is not concept. It is community. It is resonance. It is inclusive. It is the cognitive process itself. That is the analogy of the divine Logos. … [I]mmediate analogical awareness … begins in the senses and is derailed by concepts or ideas.”[1]

When he paid homage to his hero G.K. Chesterton, who influenced his conversion to Catholicism, McLuhan indirectly revealed something about himself, and how he wished to emulate his model:

“The specific contemporary relevance of Chesterton is this, that his metaphysical intuition of being was always in service of the search for moral and political order in the current chaos. He was a Thomist by connaturality with being, not by study of St. Thomas. And unlike the neo-Thomists his unfailing sense of the relevance of the analogy of being directed his gaze not to the schoolmen but to the heart of the chaos of our time”.[2]

Exasperated with their inability to appreciate his own efforts in this regard, McLuhan wrote to John Atkin that he was “a bit peeved at the local Thomists for leaving it to me to discover the meaning of their own thoughts instead of helping me—they held me up for years” (McLuhan to John Atkin, 16 March 1971).

Still, he resolved late in life to make charitable efforts in this regard; as McLuhan wrote to his friend, the Thomist Fredrick Wilhelmsen: “I am going to do some further work on translating myself into Thomistic terms. It is a commentary on the Thomists that I should have to tell them how to relate themselves to the contemporary world” (McLuhan to Fredrick Wilhelmsen, 10 March 1971).

McLuhan had even argued back in 1954 that “the role of the Catholic humanist is to cultivate a more than ordinary reverence for the past, for tradition, while exploring every present development for what it reveals about man which the past had not revealed. To be contemporary in this sense is no mere snobbism, not a matter of faddishness. It is an arduous but rewarding business.”[3]

With these latter remarks, I believe we find a decisive clue as to McLuhan’s own philosophy of history, implicit in his subsequent intellectual explorations. Regarding how a Thomist ought to make use of Aquinas in our time of postmodernity, McLuhan said that:

“[W]hereas St. Thomas was a great abstract synthesizer facing a unified psychological world, the modern Thomist has an abstract synthesis of human knowledge with which to face psychological chaos. Who then is the true Thomist? The man who contemplates an already achieved intellectual synthesis, or the man who, sustained by that synthesis, plunges into the heart of the chaos? I say ‘sustained’, not guided by, that synthesis; because the Catholic Thomist does not know the answers to contemporary problems in social and political ethics. He knows only when a particular line of action is promising and analogically consistent, whether it will tend to support a valid solution, and whether it is in conformity with reason and being.” (ibid xvii)

No doubt these remarks about Thomism are lesser-known facts about McLuhan. To those who heard him during the height of his fame, his much more famous pronouncements apparently failed to reveal these, his deepest concerns.

Most think of McLuhan simply as a prophet who predicted the Internet and announced the demise of nature, with the message that there is no escape from technology’s media extensions to our nature, no escape from this alteration of our relation to the rest of nature.

Indeed, McLuhan seems to be giving voice to the postmodern, “everything is socially constructed” thesis, when he says things like this about nature:

“Twenty-five hundred years of rational culture are in the process of dissolution. Age-old habits of conceptualization will not serve to train observation on the effects of the new man-made forms of energy. Since Plato, philosophers and scientists have attributed constant forms and patterns of action only to the world of ‘Nature.’ Both Plato and Aristotle, and their followers, as well as all the other schools of philosophy, have refused to recognize any patterns of energy arising from man-made technologies. Having invented ‘Nature’ as a world of rigorous order and repetition, they studied and observed only ‘natural’ forms as having power to shape and influence psyche and society. The world of man’s artifacts was considered neutral until the electric age. As the electric environment increasingly engulfed the old Greek ‘Nature,’ it became apparent that ‘Nature’ was a figure abstracted from a ground of existence that was far from ‘natural.’”[4]

At first glance, this would seem to say there is no nature; it seems to say that everything is constructed. But note the crucial qualifying word in the above passage: “only.” It suggests that McLuhan, rather, is asking us to go beyond Greek thought and extend our inquiry into nature into the places where we have not been accustomed to take it.

McLuhan wishes to draw our attention to the fact that our tools shape us: they shape our perception of what is natural. That technological mediation, altering the sensory grounds of input, is what is missing from the Greek philosophers’ notion of nature. It is not that he recommends we abandon their notion, but rather that we develop it more rigorously, because we have to contend with the way nature and culture are blended in the immediate web of our environmental perception.

A philosophy of history has to take into account both mind-dependent reality (socially constructed realities) and mind-independent reality (for example, natural units, such as rocks, trees, and horses). What is history, after all, if not an awareness of the blend, the ongoing mutual influence, between both?

McLuhan’s philosophy of history is founded on this key idea: we shape our environment, and it shapes us. History obviously encompasses the interaction of both realities: the mind-independent and the mind-dependent.

The task of a Catholic humanism is thus to think about nothing less than all of reality, in its entire scope.

Notes:

[1] McLuhan to John W. Mole, 18 April 1969.

[2] McLuhan, introduction to Paradox in Chesterton, by Hugh Kenner (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1947), xi–xii.

[3] McLuhan, “Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters,” [1954] in The Medium and the Light, 158–59.

[4] McLuhan and Nevitt, Take Today: The Executive as Dropout (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972): 7.

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Source: Christopher Morrissey, "The Christian Humanism of Marshall McLuhan," The Imaginative Conservative, last modified January 7, 2016, accessed June 6, 2017, http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/01/marshall-mcluhans-catholic-humanism-a-thomism-for-the-chaos-of-our-time.html.

How Relation Is Crucial

How Relation Is Crucial in Human Knowledge, the Sacraments, Signs, and History

In 1970 Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his book Introduction to Christianity,

Christian thought discovered the kernel of the concept of person, which describes something other and infinitely more than the mere idea of the “individual.” Let us listen once more to St. Augustine: “In God there are no accidents, only substance and relation.”¹ Therein lies concealed a revolution in man’s view of the world: the sole dominion of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality.”²

When I first came across this quotation, I was studying Thomistic philosophy at Gonzaga, and although I wasn’t a traditionalist at the time, my first reaction to this quotation was a kind of unreflective outrage. I just felt within me that Ratzinger was saying something philosophically wrong, that some sort of liberal or modernist tendency of his was polluting pure Thomistic natural philosophy, which obviously placed substance as primary and accidents as secondary. Now, a few years later, I must admit that he was right, and his insight contains a key component of the solution to the modernist crisis.

Let me turn to another thinker, quite different than Ratzinger, the Canadian philosopher John Russon, who is well known for his philosophical and historical work on Hegel. Russon states what has become of the modern man:

One of the ideas with which we are most comfortable in our everyday life is the idea that we are self-enclosed, independent beings. We strongly defend our claim to being self-possessed, insisting that “it’s my view, and I have a right to it”, or “that’s mine”, or “I’ll do what I like”. In each case, we identify ourselves as the “I” who is in charge of its own affairs, which means an “I with a unique point of view, with a unique body, and with a unique will to initiate actions. On this view, it is up to each one of us to determine who we are and what we shall do. If this is what we are really like, then tradition has little intrinsic value: if we are in full self-possession, then traditions do not bind us or direct us or generate us, but are at most amusing objects of observation.³

We see contained in this statement a summary of all modern political philosophy, such as is found in Rousseau, and philosophy of human nature. We see in it the inevitable separation between Church and state. All liberalism and modernism, the nominalism of Ockham, the immanence of Luther and the Reformers, the rationalism of Descartes are contained here. Here is the mentality of the “cafeteria Catholic,” who picks and chooses according to his internal whims. Here is the pseudo-spirituality of the New Age as for example in practitioners of The Secret, who judge the value of any pursuit with whether they feel that they are remaining in a state of “high vibration,” which is simply the subjective sense of an absence of stress and the presence of pleasure. Here is the viral popularity of the idea that one can “love Jesus and hate religion,” a notion which excludes the social, traditionally defined aspects of spirituality for the sake of an individual relationship defined by the arbitrary decisions of the individual. This is what happens when man’s real relation to reality is severed.

I believe that on a fundamental level, all of reality can be understood in terms of substances with their accidents and the various kinds of relations that exist on different levels of reality. The reason for this is that reality is a faint reflection of its Creator, and its Creator is a single Divine substance and a Trinity of relations. Hence in creation, it is substance and relation at its root. This needs fleshing out and careful qualification, all of which cannot be done in a short talk, so for today, I want to consider two main points:

1. Changes in the conceptual understanding of relation has had significant impact on the development of Western civilization.

2. The health of a society may be judged by the relations it maintains in its philosophical worldview, in politics, and in religion.

The earliest systematic discussion of relation begins with Aristotle in chapter 7 of his short work the Categories. In this work, Aristotle is seeking to establish the different ways in which reality exists by itself and can be spoken about intelligibly. He’s looking at the largest “categories” of mind-independent reality, the dimensions that cannot be reduced to others. He arrives at his basic distinction between substances and accidents. Substances are individual, existing things. Accidents are properties or characteristics existing in substances, properties such as quantity (having a certain height or weight), quality (being a certain color), location, time, position (seated or standing), etc. One of those categories is relation.

Aristotle defined relation as being towards something else (pros ti). The Latin phrase is ad aliquid, towards something. Relations are that by which something is related to another thing.

Now how are relations related to Sacraments, knowledge, history, etc.? After Aristotle, the idea of relation is covertly imported into theological discussions about the nature of the Sacraments, which are quickly seen to be a kind of symbol or sign. Even in the New Testament, St. Paul speaks of how Baptism and the Eucharist refer not only to the effects they bring about but how they also symbolize certain aspects of Christ’s life. For example, Baptism is a symbol of participating in Christ’s death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-11). The Eucharist is a symbol of the unity of the Church (1 Cor. 10:17). Marriage is a symbol of the bond between Christ and the Church, His Bride (Eph. 5:22-23).

In other words, the Sacraments are signs. What is the unique nature of a sign? Origen in his commentary on the Letter to the Romans says, “A sign is a visible something that suggests the idea of another invisible thing.”⁴ St. Augustine defines sign in a similar manner in book 2 of De doctrina christiana: “A sign is a thing which causes us to think of something beyond the impression the thing itself makes upon the senses” (Signum est enim res praeter speciem, quam ingerit sensibus, aliud aliquid ex se faciens in cogitationem uenire).⁵ What we see in this definition of sign is the reality of relation. Without relation, which brings one thing towards another, a sign could never bring us to another thing.

As St. Augustine and many other Church Fathers show, there are multiple relations in a Sacrament: the relation of matter to form, the relation of the sacramental rite to the spiritual effects that it causes, the relation of the sacrament to the church in general. But essential to the notion of Sacrament is that it is a sign of a certain sort. In fact, the importance of defining a Sacrament in terms of the sign led the theologian Pierre Pourrat to state, “[W]henver the definition departed from the idea of sign, it lost something of its precision.”⁶ It is from these theological considerations, along with debates on how God relates to creation and the nature of the Trinity, that the notions of relation and sign were further developed in the medieval era.

I will pass over the various complexities, but suffice it to say, the scholastics quickly realized that Aristotle’s account of relation was inadequate and admitted of numerous exceptions. Aristotle’s definition of relation applied to what the scholastics called “predicamental relation,” a real relation existing between two physical subjects. This tree is similar to that tree. But if the second tree were cut down, the relation would cease because there no longer is a second tree to compare to. However, the scholastics noticed at least two other forms of relations that Aristotle did not account for: relations between two mental entities, such as concepts in the mind, such as in mathematical equations, and relations between one physical entity and a mental entity, such as the knowledge of the value of a coin.

Key insights developed during the 13^th century on the nature of knowledge that form the basis of realism as opposed to future epistemologies based on faulty philosophical views. The immediate object of sensory awareness is the external world. In this process, the human observer enters into multiple relations with his environment. Scholastics realized, however, that the relation between man and his environment in the process of knowledge was one more form of relation that went against Aristotle’s defintion! Nothing on the part of physical reality is modified by our coming to know it, but we change as we come to know reality; hence there is no such thing as the “right side of a column” except relative to someone viewing a column from the right side: the change is in the perceiver, not the column.

14^th century nominalism changes things. Ockham begins a process sometimes called the “progressive ‘mentalization’ of sign.”⁷ Peter of Ailly summarizes this shift by saying that the concept is “the very act itself of knowing the thing.” This move, which flattens the process of human cognition, beginning with pre-conceptual sensation and moving to successive levels of differentiation in perception and then intellection, is precisely what leads to Descartes’ rationalism when the latter claims that “ideas are the only immediate objects of my sensory awareness” (“Sixth Meditation,” n. 6). Ockham rejects the notion that relations exist independently of the mind and without realizing it, thus cuts man off from external reality. On the other hand, Ockham strangely upholds the notion that things can be related to each other independently of the mind, the rejection of which would mean that there could be no such thing as act and potency, causality, or identity:

The intellect does nothing to bring it about that the universe is one, or that a whole is composed [of its parts], or that causes in spatial proximity [to their effects actually] cause [their effects], or that a triangle has three [sides], etc. …any more than [the intellect] brings it about that Socrates is white or that fire is hot or water cold.⁸

It is likely that Ockham’s involvement in the political-religious dispute between John XXII and the Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV of Bavaria prevented Ockham from realizing the full implications and almost self-contradictory aspects of his thought. For if relations themselves are merely products of the mind, then man is immediately cut of from reality.

We come now to the second contention of mine, namely, that the health of a society may be judged by the relations that issue from its collective worldview, especially philosophical, political, and religious. The progression from late scholastic nominalism towards the principle of immanence, in which man is the source and measure of all reality, is very straightforward. Due to the severing of man and reality because of the mentalization of the sign and the reduction of relations to mere beings of reason, which are products of the mind, man can no longer be informed by external reality. He now exists on his own. Thus we return to the dawning of modern thought, the core of which is immanentism.

Ratzinger rightly noted the ever increasing emphasis or tyranny of substance in metaphysics. Descartes defined substance as a “thing that exists in such a way that it doesn’t depend on anything else for its existence”⁹ and thus rendered substance as absolutely self-existing, without the need of God. Spinzoa in fact would notice this logical consequence of Descartes’ definition and from it develop his own philosophy of monistic pantheism. Leibniz, describing his own version of substance, called a monad, famously said that they “have no windows,” that is, no relation to external reality. He wrote:

Strictly speaking, one can say that no created substance exerts a metaphysical action or influx on any other thing.¹⁰

And:

There is no way of explaining how a monad can be altered or changed internally by some other creature, since one cannot transpose anything in it, nor can one conceive of any internal motion that can be excited, directed, augmented, or diminished within it, as can be done in composites, where there can be change among the parts. The monads have no windows through which something can enter or leave.¹¹

Not only man, but every substance in reality becomes increasingly isolated and cut off from each other. Every man for himself. The traditional Catholic writer Roger Buck points out that this all leads to what he calls Enlightenment Despair. He cites the poem “Aubade” (pronounced: oh-bawd) by Philip Larkin:

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.

Till then I see what’s really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. […]

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

As Buck strikingly puts it, “Here is the work of a man in hell—suffering acutely from the deathly vacuum [that] materialism has generated. May God have mercy on his soul and the souls of all those afflicted by the same terrible dread, ennui and meaninglessness.”¹²

The late Neothomistic philosopher W. Norris Clarke, SJ, said that being naturally enters into relations with other beings because it is the means by which a being shares its “ontological richness” with another, a process necessary for the sustaining of all substances.¹³ Clarke along with a few other philosophers developed the insight based on St. Thomas’s metaphysics that every being in its respective manner simultaneously contains self-perfective and self-communicative dynamics.¹⁴ If it is intrinsically self-communicative, then that being is intrinsically relational; thus esse in is simultaneously and always esse ad aliud, being towards or for another, and being towards implies being from (esse ab alio). Communicativity implies the capacity for receptivity (esse ab) as a complement even if the former is not always actually attained between subjects. Receptivity, then, is a necessary condition, for without it a being could not advance towards its full development. Thus there is a micro-trinity within substance: esse in, which is the substance itself, but also esse ad and esse ab, for every finite substance comes from something else and will be the agent of different causal chains, or at least potentially can be. And the whole arrangement and relation of each substance to each is necessary for the flourishing of all finite being, at least when all is properly ordered according to their natures. Of course, given the fallen state of creation, this doesn’t always attain, but its potential remains rooted in the natures of things, which are both existing in themselves as a unity and existing towards others as a relation.

The recovery of the universality and import of relations not only in abstract metaphysics but in day-to-day relations, in religion, in politics is an essential task for Catholics. We say that man is a microcosm of the universe, but we must also see how man is a microcosm of the Trinity, and when in a state of grace, he actually contains the Trinity and stands in a supernatural relation with the Trinity, a relation that all men are called to by the mercy of God. Virtue, prayer, and the proper formation of the intellect all orient man back into reality and establish him more and more firmly in relation to his end, which perfects him. If civilization is the fruit of the habitual orientation of a society in right relations with God, each other, and each man to himself, then it is the re-establishment of these right relations that will restore civilization.

This leads us to the importance of tradition. Tradition is the means by which each generation is related to the past, to the intellectual and cultural riches of the past, and from this relation to properly orient ourselves to the future. And here also is the importance of Sacred Tradition. We defend Sacred Tradition because it is the only sure means to come into a proper relationship towards God, and by means of which save our souls as St. Ignatius put it at the beginning of his Spiritual Exercises. Maintaining right relations in the present depends on following the sound wisdom and accumulated knowledge of the past, which forms the intellect and guides it to maintain a proper perspective of reality as it enters the future.

Footnotes:

1 St. Augustine, De Trinitate, 5.5.6.

2 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity (New York, NY: Herder & Herder, 1970), 132, 137.

3 John Russon, “Hegel and Tradition,” in Hegel and Tradition: Essays in Honour of H. S. Harris, ed. by Michael Baur and John Russon (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 3, quoted in John Deely, Four Ages of Understanding (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 658.

4 Origen, In epist. ad Rom., 4.2.

5 St. Augustine, De doctrina christiana, 2.1.1.5-7.

6 Pierre Pourrat, Theology of the Sacraments: A Study in Positive Theology (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1910), 36.

7 Stephan Meier-Oeser, “Medieval Semiotics,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, accessed 28 Jan. 2017.

8 William of Ockham, Ordinatio I, d. 30, q. 1 in Opera Theologica iv, 316-317.

9 René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, ed. Jonathan Bennett, http://www.ahshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/descprin.pdf, I.51.

10 Leibniz, Primary Truths (1689), A 6.4:1647/AG 33.

11 Leibniz, Monadology, n. 7, G VI 607: AG 213-214.

12 Roger Buck, Cor Jesu Sacratissimum (Kettering, OH: Angelico Press, 2016), 36.

13 Cf. Norris Clarke, “Person, Being, and St. Thomas,” Communio 19 (Winter 1992), 605.

14 Cf. W. Norris Clarke, The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).

The True Self

Here's an excellent essay: https://www.academia.edu/12250379/_Kierkegaardian_Deconstruction_and_the_Paradoxes_of_Faith

I had a realization: when one realizes that "just be yourself" doesn't mean anything, and even if there were some static "true self," most people lack the self-reflection and sensitivity to even know what that true self entails. Why else do we have to "find our passion," as though passions are pre-packaged dimensions of our selves and not reactions to experience? If I already have a set of passions, shouldn't I already know what those are?

From where does the static notion of the self arise? Why do we speak of the majority of social or intellectual traits as being genetic, inborn, innate, "natural" rather than learned, studied, trained, practiced? Why do we possess down to the dot a complete package that is unalterable and to which we must be true? Do we?

It will further be interesting to consider Kierkegaard's definition of the self as a relation relating itself to itself in light of semiotics.

The Being of Identity

What is identity? It is not substance. Is it a quality? Is it a relation?

I propose that identity is the accumulation of actions, passions, qualities, and relations by and in which one not only tends to characterize oneself but is characterized by others. The relations that arise from these changes remain accessible in the memory and are re-asserted when relevant.

Hence identity is not identical with a full understanding of my being and its history, an understanding possible only when every transcendental relation arising from the subjective modifications of inherent accidents are taken into account objectively. In fact, identity may go contrary to transcendental relations that arise regarding my subjectivity; e.g. I identify myself as a certain gender or sex when this assertion has no correspondence to the transcendental relation that exists suprasubjectively, i.e. independently of my thoughts, beliefs, or feelings regarding my identity. Thus, identity is further characterized by what I assert or say of myself and what others say of me.

But identity isn't merely what others say of me, which is reputation and perception. Identity is principally self-perception and the expression of that self-perception with an accompanying acceptance from others regarding this self assertion. Secondarily, since how others perceive me and my assertions is not entirely within my control, identity must also encompass something of these uncontrollable variables.

Identity as self-perception and expression of that self-perception carries with it the implicit desire that others accept this self-perception. Hence this desire of acceptance is constitutive of identity. A person who describes herself with a certain label is upset when people deliberately mischaracterize that identity characteristic.

Because identity exists in the order of ens rationis, that is, the objective, cognitive constructions natural to the species-specifically human form of semiosis, identity will for all concrete purposes be inextricably tied up with the influence of cultural symbols. A person's identity is always expressed with language, with labels, words created and agreed upon by a larger society to mean certain things, and hence, even if identity is primarily self-perception, expression of self-perception, and desire for acceptance, its sources are always outside the cognitive activity of the subject forming the identity.

The strange paradox arises, then, that identity is what a person asserts is most personal and yet is formed exclusively of cognitive constructs originating outside of the person and which constructs the person simply determines will be his own identity, his own uniqueness.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, our uniqueness is not and should not simply be a matter of what I say I am. My inherent accidents are unique to me not only in principle (that is, metaphysically) but in concrete; further, the transcendental relations that arise from my intersubjective activities are unique to me, that is to say, no one else in history has or ever will have the same personal history of events and behaviors. It is impossible to reproduce in principle and in concrete even if it can be imagined.

Finally, identity must be appropriated in the Christian life. St. Paul states it simply: "Now I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). Through grace and progressive union with God, we come to identify ourselves as Christ and an extension of His mystical body. But this isn't simply self-determination; it is above all cooperation, perfect cooperation through perfect docility to the interior promptings of the Holy Ghost. The transformation that occurs in our psyche must be so thorough that everything is through God, with God, and in God, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. As Aquinas so profoundly put it, grace is the beginning of eternal life.

What can we learn from this paradox of identity then, namely, that that which is most personal to me is inevitably external to me? And further, what can we learn from the fact that our ultimate identity in Christ must be founded in the self-determination, through grace, to cooperate with God's grace in progressive transforming union? We can learn that self-determination is inevitably linked with cooperation, and these two dynamics of independence and interdependence must co-exist for the proper flourishing of any living organism. This balance must be a corrective to the overemphasis in today's society on atomistic independence, the mutual apathy that follows naturally from mindless consumerism, especially of relentless social media. It is also a corrective to a lack of proper boundaries insofar as interdependence does not mean a dissolving of individuals into an incongruous whole but rather their optimal coordination with each other for their mutual and collective benefit.

The Trinity is the perfect model of this balance between independence and interdependence, where substance and relation coincide perfectly and infinitely, where self-determination and cooperation achieve a total co-incidence.

All of History

All of history is being and relation and the multifaceted ways in which the two dimensions of reality work together.

The history of errors consists in neglecting relations. The history of discovery consists in establishing them.

Politics and religion consist in right relations. Virtue is established by its relation to the rule of right reason. Right reason is relational thinking about two extremes.

Diagram of Ens Reale

Ens Reale (Greek: φύσις [physis]; mind-independent being):

Esse (To exist):

-In

--Alio (another): Accident

--Se (itself): Substance

-Ad (towards/for): Relation

Hence although relation is grouped within the accidents because it isn't substance, relation is unlike any accident insofar as it does not exist intrasubjectively but suprasubjectively, dependent upon subjectivities as its foundation yet above them. Accidents properly speaking are intrasubjective determinations that specify the substance as an individual.

Ockham's reduction of relation to similarity existing between subjectivities that possess intrasubjectively a same quality or determination (accident) is a reduction of relation as suprasubjective to intra- and inter- subjective. Relation therefore loses its proper characteristic and becomes an expression of the multiplication of some similar quality or being; if two or more beings share this quality, there is relation in the shared quality.

Relation, interestingly, is characterized precisely by its indifference to the orders of ens reale and ens rationis, mind-independent and mind-dependent being. A relation may exist even if its fundament or terminus exist either in ens reale or ens rationis; hence whether the relation is a "real relation" or just a "logical" one. For example, a relation of fictions is still a relation even though fictions are related; hence even though the fundament and terminus are within ens rationis, the relation is real (not as in "real relation" but simply as existing). But an individual that is a fiction is precisely not an individual because an individual is that which exists independently of ens rationis. Relation bridges the gap and is therefore also the bridge between culture and nature.

Relation is also the bridge between subjectivity (individuality of substances, ens reale) and objectivity (ens reale that has become an ens rationis through the awareness of a cognitive or quasi-cognitive power). Something becomes an object precisely by coming into relation with a subject that possesses some power of awareness.

Cf. John Deely, Purely Objective Reality (2009), ch. 2.

Humility and Relation

Humility depends on recognizing what is relative between us and God. God is All; relative to the All, we are nothing, purely contingent, existing solely by God's will. The more we recognize that God is All and that we are nothing, the more humble we shall be.

We must recall that the deeper a canyon is, the taller are the walls of that canyon; hence height and depth are two sides of the same coin, relative to where one stands. If one stands at the top of a canyon, the canyon is deep; if one stands at the bottom of the canyon, its cliffs are tall.

In our relation with God, we stand at the bottom of a canyon. We shall recognize that as we descend deeper and deeper through humility, God becomes more exalted through faith. But we also know through faith that God does not abandon us in our wretchedness but desires to save us. Hence the deeper we go, the more exalted God becomes, but also the more intimate and immanent God becomes through charity. The three work together simultaneously, enhancing each other. Humility, faith, hope, charity, humility, faith, etc.

Why Self-Knowledge Is Difficult

Notes from Fr. Jules J. Toner, S.J., A Commentary on Saint Ignatius' Rules for the Discernment of Spirits: A Guide to the Principles and Practice (St. Louis, MO: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1982), 41–44.

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Aside from the distorting effects of our fallen nature, there are two fundamental reasons for the difficulty of attaining self-knowledge: 1) "the natural bent of our attention"; 2) "the complexity and mobility of our psychic experience" (41).

1. Our attention wanders seemingly aimlessly, drawn by present sensibles, current feelings and their relations to their causes (beliefs, worries, anticipations, regrets, etc.). The flux of consciousness is so fast and fluid that it's hard to identify single factors and motions, unless they are especially pronounced or prolonged.  Sometimes we dismiss what is important, thinking it is unimportant, and sometimes we exaggerate what is less important or an aftereffect.

2. The inner motions of our experience are so interrelated and numerous that often it is hard to begin somewhere, and once we have begun, it is hard to isolate one motion. Hence motions that God may introduce into us for spiritual purposes may end up being passed over as said above; they are "never brought to the scrutiny of faith-enlightened intelligence and integrated into our Christian life of free choice and love" (42). And on the other hand, due to ignorance and lack of self awareness, evil motions can hold a sway over us.

It must be remembered that awareness is difficult but possible, even necessary, to advance in the spiritual life. Repeated effort will increase the capacity for self-reflection and understanding.

Those who think that they are an open book to themselves should be warned. "They are probably reading their hearts very superficially, finding what they want to find or what they have been led to expect to find. Their easy confidence may be a barrier to real self-knowledge, which is not easily achieved" (43).

There is a great need for prayer, especially to the Holy Spirit, a prayer of trust and openness. The Holy Spirit can give us a superabundance of helps to come to understand ourselves and develop self-reflection. He alone can protect us from deceptions.

Finally, we need help from others, help from, say, St. Ignatius' rules and experienced guides. These are the human helps, or natural guides, through which Providence works and perfects in order to bring us to supernatural guidance.

Ignatius notes in his rules that these are "some rules," implying that they are neither exhaustive nor univocal. Their application must be adapted to circumstances, guided by an experienced, learned, and holy director. This application falls under the realm of prudence and discretion (44)

Dr. Rudi te Velde on the Concept of God

There is something in Thomas' conception of God as ipsum esse per se subsistens that does not fit very well into the picture of 'classical theism.' Classical theism, as it is usually understood, tends to view God as an absolute entity existing independently of the world. The theistic God looks more like a being, a 'self-contained substance' above and apart from the world, than the pure actuality of subsistent being itself. From Thomas' perspective, this would mean that the independence of God, as over against the world of finite beings, is conceived wrongly. It is as if the character of subsistence, attributed to a theistically conceived God, is a logical expression by means of which we think of God as separated from the world, as a distinct reality, while Thomas intends to express by subsistence that the being of God is separated through itself from all other beings. The difference is crucial. For Thomas, God is not 'separated' from the world as a subsistent entity conceivable apart from his causal relationship to created beings; it is as cause of all beings that God 'separates' himself from all his effects by distinguishing those effects from himself. In this sense the 'concept' of God is, in truth, the concept of the relationship of God and world, conceived as an ordered plurality of diverse beings, each of which receives its being from the divine source of being. For Thomas there is no way of thinking of God concretely outside this relationship. The independence, or absoluteness, of God characterizes the way He relates as cause to all other things; it is the independence of the perfect goodness of God, who is not under any obligation or necessity to fulfill himself by creating, but who acts out his own goodness, establishing all other things in being by letting them share in his own perfection.

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Source: Rudi te Velde, Aquinas on God: The "Divine Science" of the Summa "Theologiæ" (Hants, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2006), 85.

Fiction Disproves Nominalism

If there is no such thing as a mind-independent relation, i.e. relations that obtain independently of my awareness of them, then there is no such thing as the distinction between fiction and reality.

Fiction is purely objective reality, depending totally on mind-dependent relations. If there are no mind-independent relations, one is left with mind-dependent relations alone, hence total solipsism and hence also fiction. The distinction of fiction from reality would then itself be a fiction.

The Never-Ending Argument and Service Work

The desire to end the discourse, to have the final say, is the same dynamic that feeds a never-ending argument. A never-ending argument is neither constructive nor dialogical; open, rational discussion, while creating space for voicing disagreement, clarification, and proof, is not argumentative even if it may continue on forever. An argument, on the other hand, misses the point of what was being discussed; it is an act of battering each other with crystalized concepts cut off from their proper referent in reality.

Both of these phenomena are rooted in a form of solipsism, an overemphasis on esse in, the substance itself as an atom, disconnected from those around us.

Personal transformation is a positive manifestation of esse in; it acknowledges and respects the individual and seeks to improve it by admitting its poverty. The admittance of poverty, or in other words, humility, is also the necessary foundation for mutual transformation, the transformation of individuals in a network, a corporate body, a society. The collective transformation of esse in through esse ad, being towards or for another, enriching the other with each of our respective riches.

What, then, becomes of the status of service work when an individual who serves others at the same time treats other individuals with contempt, impatience, condescension, etc.? It's a contradiction. How might it be explained? The service, the movement to enrich another, whether it be an individual or collective, somehow loses its proper referent. Service properly speaking must always acknowledge and respect the other, in spite of disagreements and annoyances. But if service loses its proper referent, the impetus of service, which is esse ad, returns to esse in, or solipsism. Service then becomes an unconscious form of self serving.

In order to avoid the selfishness that creeps into service, it is therefore necessary to always return the referent of service to its proper object, the other in poverty, in need of enriching, and this referent must extend to all without discrimination with respect to the sharing of qualities of mutual support: patience, generosity, gentleness, kindness, consideration, affirmation. Of course, the extent of this support depends on context and circumstances, but the willingness to share and its equal distribution irrespective of persons is the condition by which esse ad refuses to remain esse in. It is the condition required to avoid the never-ending argument. It is the condition required to be willing to have an ongoing discussion, to resist the desire to have the last word.

Circumstance as sign and opportunity

We often view circumstances in a fatalistic way. Circumstances "happen." The famous bumper sticker comes to mind. Circumstances are interpreted as beyond our control, or otherwise they are placed in an evaluative framework of what is in our control and not.

Maybe it is not so. Maybe circumstances are very deliberate processes, deliberate but not deterministic. Maybe circumstances are the expressions of conscious processes, meeting, connecting, bouncing off of and bumping into each other.

If we take it as true that all things are governed by God's Providence, then a thread of intelligibility, of love, of wisdom, runs through all things. All things have a conscious direction even if asymmetrical. Perhaps intelligibility doesn't equate with symmetry and balance, but perhaps reality as intelligible is intelligible precisely as a mixture of symmetry and asymmetry, of order and chaos, of articulate and ineffable.

Maybe, then, circumstances even those circumstances that are not apparently caused by human consciousness are nevertheless not things we can try to control or fall under the control of but rather the sort of possible encounter that reality proposes to us here and now.

I am sick. In the common view of circumstance, my sickness is not under my control, but I do everything I can to alleviate it. I complain of its grasp on my life, my livelihood. Perhaps sickness is something else; perhaps it is a link in a chain of possibility, connection both to God, to myself, to others, to the underlying intelligibility of the universe, an opportunity for transcending myself here and now.

I am late. Therefore I try to speed to work. Maybe there is something else going on here; maybe the circumstance is a symptom, a sign.

If circumstances are signs instead of chance events, then I can dialogue with circumstance and draw it up into a greater conversation, the conversation of my life.

Repost: Seneca on the Philosopher's Relation to Society

Excerpts from Letter 5: "On the philosopher's mean."

The mere name of philosophy, however quietly pursued, is an object of sufficient scorn; and what would happen if we should begin to separate ourselves from the customs of our fellow-men? Inwardly, we ought to be different in all respects, but our exterior should conform to society. [...] Let us try to maintain a higher standard of life than that of the multitude, but not a contrary standard; otherwise, we shall frighten away and repel the very persons whom we are trying to improve. We also bring it about that they are unwilling to imitate us in anything, because they are afraid lest they might be compelled to imitate us in everything. [...]

"Well then, shall we act like other men? Shall there be no distinction between ourselves and the world?" Yes, a very great one; let men find that we are unlike the common herd, if they look closely. If they visit us at home, they should admire us, rather than our household appointments. He is a great man who uses earthenware dishes as if they were silver; but he is equally great who uses silver as if it were earthenware. It is the sign of an unstable mind not to be able to endure riches.

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Dr. Jeffery Bell's commentary:

The overarching concern that motivates Seneca’s fifth letter is that philosophy, by its very nature, is already contrary to the customary concerns of the “multitude.” Philosophy, in other words, is untimely and at odds with the concerns and motivations that are common to the time in which one lives. It is for this reason, no doubt, that Seneca recognizes that philosophy is already “an object of sufficient scorn,” and hence the philosopher would be best served by avoiding reinforcing this prejudice by willfully living contrary to the norms of society. Unlike the philosopher who broadcasts their untimely status through “repellent attire, unkempt hair, [and a] slovenly beard,” the philosopher should inwardly be “different in all respects” but outwardly “conform to society” if they are to encourage others to the benefits of philosophy. And benefits indeed are to be had, Seneca argues, for philosophy enables a person to live a higher life, a life that is different from the common life, the life of the multitude, but a life that is not contrary to the “fellow-feeling with all men” that comes with the “sympathy and sociability” that philosophy can engender. Philosophy, in short, enables a higher level of adaptability to the present in that it encourages one to think through the relationship with ourselves and others in the present, to take what is “most essentially ours” and “lay hold of today’s task” rather than live with excessive thought for the events of the past or future [....]

If done right, this laying hold of our present is a philosophical task that constitutes what Seneca sees as a “happy medium between the ways of the sage,” who Seneca describes as one who foregoes all of the customary goods of society, including those that can be had “at no great price,” and “the ways of the world at large”—that is, the ways of the multitude whereby one largely engages with the thoughtless pursuit of luxuries and goods without concern for how well they adapt us to the present.

It is in the context of this discussion regarding the philosophical life that is a happy medium between the sage and the common life of the multitude that Seneca brings hope and fear into relationship with one another. Despite being as “dissimilar as they are,” hope and fear “keep step together; fear follows hope.” And they keep step together precisely because both belong, Seneca argues, “to a mind that is in suspense, a mind that is fretted by looking forward to the future.” A result of this fretful suspense that comes with hope and fear, Seneca claims, is that “foresight, the noblest blessing of the human race, becomes perverted.” Without forsaking foresight, therefore, the philosopher is to live a life without hope, or pursue a philosophy with no future in order to fully live with conscious engagement in the present, for the “present alone,” as Seneca closes the letter, “can make no man wretched.”

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Sources: Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, trans. by Richard Mott Gummere, Wikisource, accessed October 20, 2014, http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius.

Dr. Jeffery Bell, "A Higher Life; or No Future Revisited," Aberrant Monism (blog), April 7, 2014, http://schizosoph.com/2014/04/07/a-higher-life-or-no-future-revisited/.

Repost: John Deely, "Solipsism"

The following article on solipsism by Dr. John Deely is so fantastic and straightforward. It explains all the hesitations and frustrations I experienced while studying modern and contemporary philosophy (aside from the frustrations of actually trying to understand what was being said by the convoluted style so infamous and probably genetically passed on among philosophers). Not only does Deely provide a solution to epistemology, but he also provides a powerful framework for cultural criticism and assimilation.

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[1439] From the Latin solus ipse, “the self alone,” solipsism is the view that knowledge does not extend beyond our own subjective existence. Sometimes used to describe a pathological medical condition of a person who has lost capacity to communicate, the term is also used philosophically to name the view that all we directly know and experience reduces to a state of our own consciousness or “mind,” beyond which we have no direct access to anything at all.

The term is often associated with René DESCARTES' formula “I think therefore I am” and with Gottfried Wilhelm von LEIBNIZ's formula “Monads have no windows.” Our consciousness is a kind of bubble: We have no direct awareness of anything that is not itself a product of our own mind.

The term itself seems first to occur in Alexander Campbell Fraser's 1874 edition of Selections from Berkeley: “Berkeley's reasoning implies that we can know only our own notions… thus leading, by a reductio ad absurdum, to Egoism or Solipsism” (47). EGOISM has generally come to designate self-interest, whereas solipsism has come into general use primarily in the context of modern theory of knowledge or “epistemology.” “In this respect,” [1440] Bertrand RUSSELL, in his book My Philosophical Development, summarized: “I agree with Berkeley. The starry heaven that we know in visual perception is inside us. The external starry heaven that we believe in is inferred” ([1959] 1997, 20).

There is good reason why solipsism is connected with EPISTEMOLOGY. Both terms arise from modern philosophy 's preoccupation with the theory of knowledge. Epistemology dates to James Frederick Ferrier 's 1854 Institutes of Metaphysic: “This section of the science [of Metaphysic] is properly termed the Epistemology—the doctrine or theory of knowing, just as ontology is the doctrine or theory of being” (46). Of course, knowing being depends upon what knowing is. And what knowing is, according to modern epistemology, is precisely the intervention from within the mind of mental representations that stand between ourselves as knowing and whatever there may be around us. Bishop Berkeley, in A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge ([1710] 1948, Part I, Section 10, p. 45), advised simply that all sensible qualities are “in the mind and nowhere else.” David Hume put it this way: “No man, who reflects, ever doubted, that the existences, which we consider, when we say ‘this house’ and ‘that tree,’ are nothing but perceptions in the mind.” (Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding [1748] 1975, Sect. XII, Part I, last par. in marginal section 118).

The isolation of the knowing self within itself, generally traced to Descartes, is more properly traceable to William of Ockham's view on relation. As Julius R. Weinberg (1965) noted, all the moderns (Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, Spinoza, Kant) adopted Ockham's view that relations have no being in the order of what exists independently of our awareness. Against this background of NOMINALISM Descartes made as his first step toward a “new beginning” in philosophy the bare certainty of our own existence as thinking things. The first unmistakable version of the problema pontis, the “problem of the bridge,” resulted: How can we cross from the cognitive states of our own subjectivity to the world of things existing independently?

John LOCKE agreed with Descartes that the immediate objects of awareness are our own ideas, “mental representations.” But Locke disagreed that our first idea was the rational idea of God. Locke argued instead that ideas of sense are first. Followers of Descartes came to be called rationalists; followers of Locke, empiricists. But both lines agreed that objects as directly apprehended or known are one with our subjective cognitive states. Immanuel KANT, “Master of the Moderns” by virtue of his synthesis of RATIONALISM and EMPIRICISM, introduced a distinction between objects and ideas. But the relations between ideas and objects he attributed wholly to the working of the mind itself (the a priori forms of reason introduced into the phenomenal appearances of sense to give us the necessities of science). Thus Kant concluded that there is no possibility of a bridge passing from consciousness to “things in themselves.”

As a term designating the study of knowledge, epistemology seems straightforward. But when we consider the context of the term's introduction, in particular the assumption that is common (albeit in varying ways) to Descartes, Locke, and Kant, that the direct object of apprehension in every respect of every case involves “ideas” or (after Kant) the “phenomenal veil,” the usage carries the implication that the realm of being as existing independently is “unknowable,” that is, closed to us in principle. Study of “knowledge” reveals a closed circuit wherein the access to “being,” and hence the prospect of ONTOLOGY, is foreclosed.

John Poinsot (1589–1644), a contemporary of Descartes who received no consideration in the context out of which mainstream modern philosophy formed, presciently warned in 1632 (Treatise on Signs, Book III, Q. 2) that any assumption of the view that all awareness terminates directly in mental representations would create an insoluble “problema pontis.” Poinsot's argument (drawn from St. THOMAS AQUINAS) is that sense perception is founded on relations directly consequent on physical interactions between our bodies and surrounding bodies. The resulting awareness does not involve mental representations, but provides rather, within perception, the basis upon which only secondarily as interpretations of direct experience mental representations are introduced. “On this principle, as in a root,” Poinsot states, is founded the knowability of being as having within our awareness a directly awareness-independent dimension concomitant with the objective interpretations that we introduce through mental representations. Otherwise, Poinsot warned, there is no way out of our mind if mental representations are the whole basis of perception within experience.

Leibniz (1704) called the modern development of epistemology “the way of ideas” precisely because of the modern denial that awareness directly involves any relations that are awareness-independent. Leibniz saw at once that, given the assumption that defines this modern path, solipsism is a logically inescapable cul-de-sac—“Monads have no windows”; hence, being is unknowable.

The proposition that the “external world” is in itself unknowable, as Percy Bridgman remarked (1959), “is usually felt to be so absurd as to constitute its own refutation.” From the time of Kant to the present day, however, many have avoided facing up to this consequent, but no one has been able to explain how, starting with the thesis that what we are first aware of is a mental representation, we can get beyond solipsism. Bertrand Russell summarized the modern “epistemological dilemma” concisely. Despite the fact that, given the [1441] assumption of modern philosophy common to Descartes on the Rationalist side, Locke on the Empiricist side, and Kant in his synthesis of Rationalism and Empiricism, “we cannot witness or observe anything else at all” except “what goes on in our heads,” yet “those—and I fear they are the majority—in whom the human affections are stronger than the desire for logical economy, will, no doubt, not share my desire to render solipsism scientifically satisfactory” (My Philosophical Development, 1959).

Solipsism, in sum, is a term that precisely summarizes in the context of modern epistemology the logical consequent of the antecedent mainstream assumption that the human mind has a direct awareness only of its self-constructed mental representations.

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Source: Deely, John. "Solipsism." New Catholic Encyclopedia Supplement 2012-2013: Ethics and Philosophy. Ed. Robert L. Fastiggi. Vol. 4. Detroit: Gale, 2013. 1439-441. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 11 Oct. 2014. <http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE|CX2762500669&v=2.1&u=gonzagaufoley&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=5eb7130d8b53c771f1c1dd6321615811>.

The Definition of Faith & Invoking the Dictionary

There exists a strange tendency to use the dictionary as a source of authority for arguments in many topics. Kory Stamper, an associate editor at Merriam-Webster, wrote a penetrating blog article on this strange phenomenon whereby she shows that the dictionary's primary if not only function is and always has been to describe how language actually is used at the present moment as well as to catalogue how language has been used and evolved over time (read the article here: http://korystamper.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/the-voice-of-authority-morality-and-dictionaries/). Accepting that no one has a monopoly over language, Stamper argues that not only for sanity's sake but also for the simple fact that a rigoristic prescriptivism has always stood awkwardly and arbitrarily aloof from the rest of language users we must draw true wisdom from deeper reflection and not a "slot machine" usage of the dictionary.

What are the implications for rational dialogue? Primarily, while we can look to a dictionary to understand how a word is being used by the majority of people, we also know that in specialized fields of study, some words must take on specialized meanings that while being related to their quotidian signification will also differ from them. To take one example that comes up very frequently: faith. Atheists will very often wave the dictionary definition of faith in front of apologetic (in the Greek sense) believers so as to stop any possible conversation dead in its tracks because, after all, atheists have SCIENCE, and believers have

firm belief in something for which there is no proof (definition 2b [1], Merriam-Webster)

Hence from the start the discussion introduces a seemingly-insurmountable dichotomy between science/rationality and faith/irrationality. Of course, the attempt to point out to the atheist pseudo-scientist that the entire enterprise of science presupposes cenoscopic knowledge that transcends the scope of science while simultaneously grounding its very possibility, and that this same semiosic dynamic provides the same very psychological-intellectual framework by which the act of faith is made, leads to the response, "Nya, nya, nya, nya, nya-nya! I have science, and you have blind faith!" The irony as many theists have already noticed is that such behavior, closed to the possibility and openness of any dialogue, is reminiscent of three year olds and is itself a manifestation of the blindness that it denounces.

Unfortunately, with these sorts of people, wherever they exist, after the calm, deliberate attempt to show them their practice of invoking the dictionary as a "voice of authority" has failed, the only remaining option is to let them go on their way and to pray for them in sorrow.

Faith Changes Our Relations

Faith changes our relations with each other and ought to make us aware of these changes.

By faith we come to realize that how we treat others is not only how we treat Christ but how we treat ourselves, for we are all connected mystically by grace into the Body of Christ. Hence the second great commandment is that we love our neighbors as ourselves. Why? Because as we love our neighbors, so do we love ourselves.

Actually, we can know this principle even without divine revelation. We see that the unconscious reflects the Other and projects ourselves into the Other. How we treat others, then, unconsciously reflects and projects how we treat ourselves and wish to be treated. Hence if we wish to receive qualities of patience, consideration, and generosity, we ought to give these out and practice them ourselves.

Amazingly, divine revelation has taken this psychological-social dynamic and elevated it through grace, showing us that our relations are more profound than we ever believed. This is why sin can never be isolated, and to believe that my personal actions and choices in private do not affect others betrays a lack of faith and a lack of understanding of the unconscious. Everything I do creates and changes my relations with others, both in the natural and supernatural realms.

In this phenomenon we can also find one reason for the spiritual and psychological stagnation of so many people: they do not put in the effort to treat others in such a way as to reveal to themselves their earnest desire for transformation through virtue. The very effort to act virtuously works as a signal that effectively mobilizes the unconscious forces to cooperate with grace such that even if the initial attempts of a beginner are filled with failure and imperfections the process of spiritual transformation is nevertheless truly begun. The effort to treat others in a saintly way stimulates one to become actually a saint and to encourage others to become likewise. It in a certain sense gives permission to oneself to become holy, to let go of old habits of behavior.

Questioning the Our Father

Our Lord gave us the Our Father, the most beautiful and perfect expression of prayer possible in any human language. It begins by addressing God as "Our Father." Can we believe that this expression was arbitrary or ruled by cultural biases? Isn't such a doubt precisely that—a lack of faith in the divinity and hence the transcendence of Christ, the God-Man who unites all mankind and culture in Himself perfectly, transcending every divide, even the divides of sin and death? Is it possible that the Man who came to give us life to the full should stifle the potential growth of the spiritual life of so many because He chose a culturally-relative term rooted in Patriarchy?

Rather, if we take seriously that Jesus is God, that His self-consciousness included the divinity in all of its clarity and comprehension, and if we take seriously that God's perfections are the eminent expression of all transcendental qualities in the created order (or rather that the created order shares in and reflects these qualities that find their perfect source and expression in God's nature), then ultimately the implication of calling God our Father is that paternity finds its perfect expression in God the Father, and all fatherhood is a model of God's Fatherhood (à la Platonic philosophy).

Since the Bible uses maternal expressions, pronouns, and descriptors for God, we must also hold that maternity somehow finds its perfect expression in the inner life of the Blessed Trinity, the giver and the receiver, the male and female, the yin and the yang (to be a bit bold). Fr. Norris Clarke, S.J., explored this dimension of being's self-fecundity: all being is in itself, from another, and towards another (esse in, esse ab, esse ad).

We need to examine and understand seriously the implications of calling God our Father and that God Himself has told us to do so: the implications for the Church as a Bride of Christ, creation as a "palace for the Bride" as St. John of the Cross so beautifully put it, for each individual in relation to God, for the life of the Trinity. God bridges the infinite gap between fallen creation and Himself, and therefore He determines its parameters. Isn't it, then, a lack of faith that makes one question the validity of calling God a Father? It betrays an uncritical commitment to a specific modern, Western ideology that comes, actually and shockingly, at the expense of and to the detriment of faith.

The final reflection is that God is the universal cause who reveals Himself in the particulars of history. We are scandalized at the particularity of the Israelites—so-called chosen by God. We are scandalized by the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. We are scandalized by the origins of the Church and that it is headed on earth by a man who resides in Italy. We are scandalized that God would speak to us in our own language, adopting and purifying our own expressions so as to return them to their true referent in Himself. This is the scandal of particularity through which God has willed to reveal Himself. Shouldn't we accept it out of unquestioning faith?

Emma Watson & What Feminism Is

Emma Watson's UN speech was very articulate and surprisingly moving. A few comments to follow not necessarily on the speech but inspired by it. A prefatory comment, however, is required: to examine and question feminism critically is not in this context meant to denigrate women. That should go without saying, but unfortunately, such uncharitable antipathy happens enough that a preface is warranted.

If feminism is "by definition" the belief that in all cultural affairs (e.g. political, social, religious, economic, etc.) men and women should have equal rights and opportunities and that both sexes are equal (but with respect to what, this equality remains undefined), then the strange situation, which Watson even mentions towards the end of her speech, occurs in which people were feminists before ever self identifying as such (or ever could do so at all)—so-called "inadvertent feminists"—or in which people, after the fact of feminism, wish to maintain the belief that feminism purportedly upholds as defined above without accepting the label of feminist.

What is to be made of this strange alienation and tension? Perhaps it may be that there is a difference between feminism "actually" and the written definition of feminism, that feminism in its totality encompasses more than what it supposedly pursues or self identifies, that feminism has the "baggage" of additional, invisible cultural signifiers that, for good or for ill, make it somewhat if not very unappealing to those who otherwise subscribe to the core belief that feminism seeks to promote, namely, the equality of the sexes.

Perhaps the very ambiguity of the notion of equality, which not only I but many have explored, creates hesitation to accept a label that has capitalized, in some cases unconsciously and in others, consciously, on this ambiguity. This embrace of the ambiguity of a notion of equality has incorporated pursuing ends through various means that I, like others, have found objectionable. Perhaps not only have the means been found wanting but the ends as well. Perhaps because a precise notion of the end of feminism (i.e. its goal/purpose and not its annihilation) and the means entailed by this end cannot be settled or have yet to be settled in the political sphere that I, like others, have hesitated to embrace the label of feminist. (Full self disclosure here, however: I would say the only labels that ultimately matter—and hence the only label that I really consistently apply to myself—are the labels of the holy and the not-yet-holy [I fall under this one] that are best encapsulated by incorporation into the Catholic Church through Baptism and faith, i.e. becoming a committed Catholic, but this is for another discussion.)

Furthermore, generalizations must be made because the culture as such generalizes about feminism; this is the unescapable reality of this movement. Indeed, whether one likes it or not, feminism is a political movement that transcends all of its sub-groups and sub-purposes; it is a mass signifier under the control of the Other. As such feminism must and always remain a generalization, and the less sophisticated (this is not to call them unintelligent; perhaps "naive" or better yet "innocent" would be better than "less sophisticated") self-identifying feminists will always resent this association that is out of their control. (Of course, the real solution then would be to give up the identity and retain the core so as to escape being associated and compartmentalized before one has even finished a sentence; yes, the assumption here is that I see no hope in rescuing the notion of feminism from how it has evolved to its present form, nor do I quite see the practical point in making the effort to do so.)

Finally, the difficulty of generalization and its cultural utility and reason for its go-to is because one is frequently met with comments such as, "For me, feminism is..." If feminism possesses the shades of every individual, then feminism as such is being used as a generalization by the very people who resent its being used as a generalization. The line must be settled: is there a difference in kind or degree among these feminisms, and how shall this difference be adjudicated?

Thus the question must be asked as it is being asked: what really is feminism? Is it simply the assertion of gender and sexual equality? What does this equality entail and why? Etc.

Emma Watson is right in this respect: feminism is culturally associated with aggressiveness, anger, hostility if not hatred towards and of men, a certain subversiveness, etc. This association transcends the power of any individual or even corporate body to control; like almost every other cultural signifier, its deep channels and chains of signification have become mostly cemented in the popular mind, for good or for ill (Watson would say for ill).

Furthermore, Watson is right when she asserts that what is important is not the word "feminism" but the "idea and ambition behind it," i.e. the reality, the impulse, the intention both individual and corporate that works for this goal of gender equality. But what is the implication of accepting this proposition that the reality is more important than the word? Perhaps Watson has overlooked that feminism—the word—has been swept up off of its own feet, out of the hands of feminists and into the public forum as more than the ambition that originally inspired it. Perhaps now the word feminism signifies not just the "idea and ambition" of the most genuine and noble feminists but everything else that is disingenuous and ignoble about the movement. One must ask Watson why she would still accept the label of feminist even after having conceded the foundational premise that leads to the above conclusions. If she is committed to the core reality of feminism and not the word and understands that the word has come to be associated with many negatives, why still push the word feminism and apply it as a personal label?

I really must stress the notion of equality with respect to what because without this clarification, the discussion can never go anywhere. All animals naturally and on the most fundamental level sort objects of experience according to a threefold schema of 1) favorable; 2) unfavorable; or 3) indifferent. Objects are thus sorted unequally. Equality with respect to this schema could mean, and I'm giving only a few variations as examples, every object is treated according only to 1), 2) or 3), or it could mean that the same number of objects are divided equally into all three categories.

Furthermore, as animals we participate in any number of simple-to-complex social games. E.g., a man walks into a bar (this isn't a joke) to find a woman to hit on, and the two are already playing a game before the man ever enters. The game is by nature zero-sum, and men and women alike will experience both rejection and acceptance. What would equality look like in such a situation? What of other games? How far down the rabbit hole does this analysis and application go? Should it go there? Who shall enforce it? How shall it be enforced?

Perhaps these last examples may be called red herrings, but I bring them up simply to draw attention to the original point that equality with respect to what is not a self-evident notion. It is heuristic and requires deep and continued reflection and dialogue. Its application is as diverse as relationality itself.

Distinction: "Lifelong Catholic" vs. Living Catholic

There is really only one use for describing oneself as a "lifelong Catholic": a statement of chronological fact regarding one's self conception. In other words, it describes a fact of time—that the lifelong Catholic was baptized soon after birth, confirmed, received First Communion, etc., continued attending Mass throughout life, receiving sacraments, perhaps praying.

But what good is a label in itself? I can call attention to any other "chronological fact" regarding myself—I'm a lifelong brown-haired male. Or I can state a fact regarding how I view myself (self-conception), a view that may change with time; e.g. in high school I believed I was ugly because I had acne.

The label and the self-conception are morally neutral, psychological qualities. These qualities may be harmful or beneficial to our flourishing and striving for happiness. There is, however, no intrinsic point in any of these labels. The labels are spoken so as to be used, to set oneself in relation to something else. Hence labels, while neutral qualities in themselves, are always concretely employed in relation to something else; hence enters their political dimension.

However, I want to draw attention to how a person will call himself a "lifelong Catholic." Usually this label is spoken in order to give moral or political weight and authority to what is said; it serves as a sometimes-very-subtle power play, a badge of honor or pride, saying, "Look at me. I've lived this all my life. My opinion therefore is worth something."

But the problem is that being a "lifelong" anything doesn't guarantee mastery. One could be a lifelong entrepreneur, manager, woodworker, painter, etc. Length of experience certainly exposes one to more possibilities, but it in itself does not guarantee mastery. Mastery requires deliberation and intentionality, usually growing through a slow, heuristic process; sometimes, however, such deliberation draws out an intrinsic genius and leads to spontaneous leaps (punctuated growth rather than gradual).

Hence, the label "lifelong x" is an expression of unconscious pride. The label of the Saint is "I am a sinner; don't listen to me but to Christ, to the doctors, to the Church" (paradoxically in so doing, the Saints then become listened to themselves precisely because they submit their experience and knowledge to the greater tradition and judgment of the Church). The self-styled expert, or "lifelong Catholic," reveals himself to be a novice. If the "lifelong Catholic" would only realize that salvation and sanctification can be lost in a single moment, a single moral act, that salvation is not guaranteed, that the grace of perseverance must always be begged for, that the mystical life, just as with any art and virtue, must be advanced upon by calm and persevering deliberation that is oblivious to time and the growth of which is not set in proportion to the length of time that has passed, then perhaps that lifelong Catholic may actually become a living Catholic, which is the only kind of Catholic that is worth anything for glorifying God, working for the salvation of souls, and being saved.