Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 11:44 pm
Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Nov 22, 2022 7:52 pm
I work to locate what is metaphysically defensible in the Christian/Catholic metaphysical scheme.
Good luck.
You're going to need it.
Since my declared *project* is that of understanding our present, and ourselves in that present, I can attempt to make broad statements in the hope that they might illuminate the topics that we have delved into here. With that said, and as a way to open another avenue of inquiry, I recently received a copy of an interesting book by Ron Rosenbaum with the title
Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil. Briefly, it is an examination of the different ideas and theories that attempt to *explain* Hitler -- the reasons why he appeared; what informed his actions and choices. While it investigates those varied theories it is really about the people who try to offer explanations. So in this sense it is a book that deals on *interpretation*. A hermeneutics of evil, if you will.
Now, I am fascinated by the entire question of *interpretation*. Frank Kermode wrote an essay The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative which had a strong influence on me. From a Kirkus review:
Because all narratives share a "radiant obscurity," as we read we honor this mystery by helplessly trying to figure it out. Hermeneutics is usually the province of biblical scholarship, so Kermode resolves to start right there. Laminated with "secret texts," "midrashim," and corollaries to the Old Testament, the Gospels are a perfect ur-text: agents can be seen to become characters in the course of successive interpretation. Mark, the earliest written gospel, is a harsh story, purposely elusive, almost taunting. Matthew becomes more vivid, but also lops off edges that can make the reader/believer very edgy. Luke and John add verisimilitude—novelistic touches, necessary alignments. The synoptic Gospels, therefore, are created, Kermode argues, like any other text: they receive and consolidate sketchy mysteries, respond to the historical realities of their time (and prospective audience), and in their structures behave like any fiction: the how of the telling shapes the narrative fully as much as what's being told. Not to interpret, Kermode's argument goes, is to write off this hermetic, layered dignity of texts, to fix them to an ideology, to deny their mystery, treating them either as neutral architecture or journalistic propaganda. (There are modern references also—to Pynchon, Green, Kafka.) Though Kermode slips into jargon now and then, the thesis is well wrought, the scholarship varied and well-distributed, and the examples clear and deft.
So one idea that is always in the background to everything I write here is that we are all, all of us to a man, involved in a project of attempting to interpret our world. And additionally that we are living in a period of time in which everything seems to accelerate, or where confusions compound, and where a given *narrative* both explains, or tries to, and also obscures. What authority can we reference to provide us with a solid, a *true*, picture of what is really going on?
Cutting the the chase I suggest here that explanatory narratives fail. Yet too a problem is exposed. I will try to define it. Every explanatory narrative, and every hermeneutic, is driven by a set of interests. So allow me to take, as an example (which I will eventually tie-in to the main thrust of this essay), those events in Charlottesville Virginia. Have you successfully *interpreted* what happened there? Can you successfully *explain* what it was but also what it meant? Obviously, I have my doubts. And the reason is because those who interpret, who rush in powerfully with explanations and encapsulations, more often than not are not providing veritable explanation but are performing '
spin'
In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through knowingly providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to influence public opinion about some organization or public figure. While traditional public relations and advertising may manage their presentation of facts, "spin" often implies the use of disingenuous, deceptive, and manipulative tactics.
So I think I can fairly say that we are all aware that swirling around us are entire arrays of explanatory narratives that are sent up in order to draw us into them, to accept them, to be influenced by the perspectives offered. Explain Donald Trump. Explain the cultural and historical juncture that produced him as a man but also as a phenomenon. Explain 'the Democratic Party'. Explain 'the Republican Party'. Explain America. Explain 'George Soros'. Explain the cultural
fad (note that I just
interjected explanation!) that, like a dance-craze, or like spirit-possession is inducing children to want to, to desperately need to, alter their sexuality. The list of things that require explanation, and hermeneutics, is extensive indeed. My assertion is that we are in a period of time where our *explanatory models* fail us. Why is this? There is much that can be said about this problem certainly.
But what I actually want to bring up here is the image, the thought, the concept, of Absolute Evil and Absolute Good. I will relate this to the topic of our present conversation. It will be done jerkily but I will try to complete the thought.
We have explored, or I have introduced the idea, that what *stands behind* the god-image of Yahweh is not 'good' but 'evil'. Put in the most simple and direct terms when a god-image whispers to you, or shouts to you, that there is an entire people that you must slaughter and wipe out of existence
in order to perform 'god's will' I make the heartfelt suggestion that you resist the provocation. I must also suggest that you entertain the possibility that it is not 'god' speaking but something 'radically else'.
So I have to proceed farther with the developing thought. And what must be concluded? Think it through: the same 'evil' that was declared by the god-image speaking so explicitly in those Bible quotations, and which became part-and-parcel of a social and cultural paideia, is the same evil that animated the man known to history as Adolph Hitler. Or allow me to ask this question: what is the difference between what god demanded and what Hitler carried out?
You will have to answer this question before we will be able to move on from it.
48 Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.
49 The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand;
50 A nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young:
51 And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee.
52 And he shall besiege thee in all thy gates, until thy high and fenced walls come down, wherein thou trustedst, throughout all thy land: and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land, which the Lord thy God hath given thee.
53 And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee:
54 So that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil toward his brother, and toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave:
What conclusions am I, is one, are we to draw from this? I will make the attempt which is certainly
hermeneutic. We are dealing with a twisted mythological system. We are dealing with a mythic system that we use to cover over our *real intentions*. We dress ourselves up in robes or righteousness and link ourselves to concepts of 'absolute good' as a way to keep ourselves from recognizing that this is not the truth about ourselves at all. In this sense we are *stuck within* and *captured by* a mythological explanatory story which is, perhaps, like a neurotic projection. It represents *the world* through a false interpretive lens and when we wed ourselves to it we can then do little else but *re-enact* the narrative elements of the story.
Hitler is the most baffling and the most enigmatic figure
for Jews because --
gasp! -- he shows the very face, the most terrible face, of the very same god-image pictured right at the very root of Judaism staring and back at them.
Now the curious thing, from where I sit, is the resurfacing, the re-enunciation, the re-invocation of the Specter of Hitlerian Evil in our own time-frame. It is not a 'minor' theme' or something offhand and casual, it is in fact an extremely serious assertion about *something* operating in our present, which is to say, though they do not say it in this way, the manifestation of Absolute Evil in our midst: in us.
This evil must be
assigned. So, narratives 'point' to those who manifest this evil, who
emblemize it, who are costumed in it (?) or who provoke associations in the minds of those who fear it. But on another level narratives are manipulated for (as I have suggested) Machiavellian purposes. But note as well that *apocalyptic images* and deep-set fears are also unleashed and envelop us.
free will is an illusion IC
