Eros as Revelation

Revelation and response as the cycle of love. ‘I have seen your beauty; I have seen you as you are; would you allow me to be in your life?’

The unconditional gift of love, the total gift of self as a response to the revelation of who the beloved truly is. 

Agape presupposes eros; precedes eros. Eros is the condition of agape.

God sees us as we are for He made us. God gives Himself to us absolutely unconditionally. We image Him as best we can. This is how we grow in love.  This is the intrinsic structure of love. 

In a postlapsarian world, the eros of the lover towards the beloved is a revelation of the goodness of the beloved to the beloved herself, who is blinded by the effects of original sin from fully seeing the truth of whom she is and who cannot behold the "truth of her being" without the revelation of the lover.[1]

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[1] Originally notes from 24 Jan 2018, 7:55AM-9:49PM

Baroque Music and the Paradox of Tragic Beauty

J.S. Bach's Violin Concerto #1 in A Minor (BWV 1041) expresses perfectly one of the special properties of Baroque music generally and Baroque violin in minor key specifically. It captures a sense of beauty, with the high notes of the violin deeply moving the soul; at the same time these high notes have a sense of tragedy; of a piercing wound, not of the body, but of the soul. As the piece reaches the highest point, the other instruments become lighter allowing the violin to come to the forefront and emphasize the deeply personal nature of the tragic emotion. In a special way, Baroque music is able to capture the paradox of tragic beauty.[1]

 

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[1] Originally an assignment for Music 201, 30 August 2013.

Makeup and Unmaking

I have long held plastic surgery procedures that irrevocably alter a person’s visage or other bodily features for no other reason than the person’s disdain for their natural appearance to be fundamentally immoral (in contradistinction to reconstructive surgeries that restore the creative work of God to its original beauty, in a manner akin to the restoration of an Old Master painting to its original beauty after it had been damaged by fire or flood). Makeup practices are non-permanent and therefore far less drastic than plastic surgery, but the same corrupt notion is at play—the hubristic presumption to ‘correct’ God’s masterpiece, as if a 5^th grader assumed the artistic competence to pass corrective judgement upon a masterwork of Michelangelo.

Makeup as such cannot be deemed immoral, anymore than wearing beautiful clothing or cutting one’s hair in an accentuating style can be. Vestis virum reddit—“Clothes make the man”. Makeup is like a frame on an Old Master painting; no one goes to an art museum to view the frame, but without the accentuation of the golden wood surrounding the art itself, the piece would appear less luminous. Makeup qua accentuation of Divine Beauty inherent in the created physical person is indeed a morally commendable, though optional, act in adornment of the Temple of the Holy Spirit. But when makeup becomes a true ‘remaking’—a deconstructive practice whose specific goal is the desecrative correction of Divine Creation—it takes on the character of an impermanent pseudocosmetic unweaving of the Cosmos. Cosmetology for its own sake partakes of Satan’s repugnance for the created order and echoes the Satanic ‘Non serviam’.

Philosophiæ Doctor a Scientist Doth Not Make

Must one be a Doctor of Philosophy to be a Scientist? A philosophical question.

An engineer of '90s PBS Kids fame by the name of Bill Nye “the Science Guy” has recently made many controversial headlines, contrapositioned by those within the “Scientific Community” who dismiss him and his statements as the simple opining of a mere engineer (pronounced with a lethal dosage of vitriolic venom). While this post takes no position with regard to the specific content of Mr. Nye’s statements, the recent controversy occasions a brief inquiry into the nature of what precisely constitutes the nature of “Scientist”—must one have been degreed a Philosophiæ Doctor (Ph.D.) to be a Scientist properly so called?

The Scientific Method prescribes certain criteria for a theory of natural phenomena to be held as generally valid, including rigorous and independently reproducible hypothesis testing. Such methodology necessarily presupposes peers of specialized, professional competence; hence the relegation of Natural Philosophy to the See of Academia, possessing plenary and exclusive jurisdiction over the theologians of “all things visible”.

With science thus wholly professionalized, all those lacking degreed credentials regulated by authority of the Academic See were henceforth declared anathematized. The scientific writings of non-scientists were systematically declared heretical by the Censor Scientiæ, and those claiming the title “Scientist” without the sanctioned ordination of the Academic See were declared excommunicated latæ sententiæ, notwithstanding the validity of specific truth-claims so advanced.

Those who dare defy the monopolistic power-grab of the Scientific Community are henceforth declared schismatic pseudo-scientists, wolves maliciously misleading the flock of secular citoyens.

But in the beginning it was not so.

The term scientist has a recent etymological gestation, brought to birth by the quasi-pontifical high priest of secular social theory Auguste Comte in the 1800s. Long before the Christian Era up until the dawn of the Modern, Natural Philosophy was the area of philosophic enquiry whose specific content encompassed the workings and wonders of the natural world. Natural Philosophy predates the Scientific Method, originating in Presocratic Greece, refined by Medieval Scholastics, and systematically developed by Renaissance thinkers of Neoplatonic Keplerian ilk.

Paradoxically, in the age of tyrants, monarchs, emperors and autocrats, the domain of licit scientific inquiry remained open to all persons, while in our own egalitarian age of parliaments, republics, populists and popularizers, democratic claim to legitimate science has been all but eradicated by the crippling totalitarian clutches of academic autocracy.

Natural Philosophy maintains no monopoly on the practice of systematic inquiry into the nature of the Cosmos; sed contra the ranks of natural philosophers are by nature open to any lover of wisdom who sincerely pursues the truth of physicality.

But in our New Dark Age, the democratic light of natural philosophy has now been all but extinguished, for a Ph.D. constitutes the prerequisite for attaining the rank of “Scientist” from which Academe grants no dispensation. Remedially, the Weltanschauung of Natural Philosophy must be restored to its rightful claim as definitional defender of those who profess the work of "Scientist", for if a genuine philosophia were again demanded of those declared Teacher of the Love of Wisdom, the swelling ranks of pseudo-scientific sycophants would surely begin to thin. 

 

 

 

(Mostly written 4 June 2017, 5:30pm; completed 2 December 2017, 6:30pm.)

Some Thoughts on Love

My love for her becomes my love for myself; my love for God becomes my love for her; my love for her becomes my love for God; my love for God becomes my love for myself; the two become one in spirit and body; the love for myself, for her, and for God forms an intrinsic unity in an image of Trinitarian Love.

Philosophical Methodology vs. the Modus Vivendi of Authentic Philosophy

I’ll probably edit and expand this later, but I had this thought a few days ago[1] and just wanted to put it out there. Have a blessed Easter Sunday!

Academic “disciplines” are defined and constituted by their methodologies,^[2] but philosophy does not have a “methodology” as such; it is a way of life, a modus vivendi ("mode of living"), a pursuit of truth in the broader sense, or the “love of wisdom” in the ancient and restricted etymological sense. Wherefore philosophy is not a “discipline” since philosophy as such transcends methodology qua modus vivendi.

“Schools of philosophy” may be considered “disciplines” since very often “schools” are defined not just by their founder or his works, but by his methodology, or by the methodology of extracting his thoughts and his way of thinking from his texts.

But such a narrowly-construed “philosophy” is dubitably philosophical, for in so reducing Philosophy to this-or-that methodology—and thereby creating a “philosophical discipline” properly so-called—the movement away from the “mode of living” has already been completed, for Philosophy is relegated to the solitary confinement of the academic department, cut off from communication with the broader world of wanderers, tourists, and pilgrims on their journey to the truth.

Only a way of living in pursuit of truth that transcends academic disciplinary methodology is worthy of the name Philosophy.

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[1] Original fragment composed 25 March 2016, ~12:55-1:17am PST (Good Friday).

[2] This was a notion I argued for and discussed in my Theology 401 final essay, reproduced on Philosophical Living as “The Propriety of Magisterial Authority in Academic Theological Discourse”.

On the Necessary Similitude Between the Mythic and the Mundane

There has been much hype in the Star Wars community surrounding the infinite possibilities of havoc and hope which a Disney self-emancipated from any semblance of continuity with the entire artistic corpus of “The Maker” George Lucas—including, most especially, Lucas’ crowning masterpiece, The Prequel Trilogy—could reap upon the Star Wars franchise. But if one conjectured possibility—time travel or dimensional rifts—were admitted into Star Wars, it would fundamentally alter the similitude of “The Galaxy Far, Far, Away” (GFFA) to our own, thereby destroying the power of epic myth, in which there must be commonality and yet distance. The iconic opening line of the saga establishes the necessity of linear progression as the means of establishing a human manner of interacting with the GFFA: A long time ago in a galaxy far [, far] away… is only intelligible within the framework of our everyday experience vis-à-vis reality, that is, of a linear past and a three-dimensional expansion of space.

 

We exist in a linear progression of time; time travel would turn the epic into mere science fiction. By this I do not mean to imply that science fiction franchises such as Dr. Who, et al. are not amazing things in themselves, but nobody would contend that they contain the same power of epic myth that Star Wars always had since its very debut. These create interesting moral situations and things, but the element of time travel detaches them from our common experience of linear temporality, in which concrete actions and choices cause future results and which cannot be undone. Anakin's radical choice in Star Wars III is an example. He goes down the path of the Dark Side, and forever it "dominates his destiny". He cannot undo what he has done; he even remarks in horror at his fundamental choice "What have I done?!" while still in Palpatine's office; it is only in the linear progression of his actions and his son's actions that he is able to make a contrary choice; he cannot undo what was done, but—like us—he can make a choice for the good no matter how much evil has been done.^[1]

 

There is a fundamental distinction, however, between going impossibly large distances in a short amount of time, and going back/forwards in time itself: the former is a mere variation of degree in a thing that bears familiarity; the latter is a fundamentally distinct kind of interaction with time. While I concede that the GFFA is not of necessity subject to our physical laws and often ignores them in the Saga itself—to the horror of a post-logical modern scientific establishment baptized in the name of the logically dubious methods of induction, inference, and generalization—I maintain that the physical laws of the GFFA should, in order to preserve the necessary similitude between our experience and the experience of the epic myth, be distinguished only in degree, and not in kind, regarding the effects—and not necessarily the causes—of those laws.^[2]

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[1] The preceding originally a Facebook comment, 5:55-6pm, 3 December 2015.

[2] The preceding originally a Facebook comment, 4:46pm, 4 December 2015.