Harry Baird wrote: ↑Sat May 20, 2023 9:58 pmThere might have been some misunderstanding here. I do make the distinction between a story and any principles that might be abstracted from it, but I also contend that both stories and principles can qualify as metaphysical - insofar as they satisfy the criterion of "pertaining to that which transcends physical reality".
In the case of Christianity, the Story does meet this criterion and thus is metaphysical, even before any (also metaphysical) principle(s) that can be abstracted from it. Do you agree?
OK, I think then that what you are saying is simply that a story can be a metaphysical one, perhaps as opposed to one devoid of either metaphysical assertion or allusion. However, in the way I create a separation between *story* and *metaphysical principles* I therefore place story on a lower rung. Again, my reference is to the concept behind Plato's Cave. Those who are *chained* to what they see can only see the flickering images, and they must believe them real. Yet they are not real, they are images that allude to true things.
My view is that no matter where we sit (where we are located) we receive a Story and we are brought into a visualization -- let me here mention that I am thinking of the Gospel story specifically -- which we take as being real. I.e. being an actual history and a recounting of that history. Some will say "No, this really & truly happened" and another might say "It did not actually happen", but here is the key: for you and for me, those who are looking back and looking in to a recounted series of events, it does not matter if it actually happened or did not happen. Because we are engaging with a Story that is replete with principles, metaphysical principles. First, we have to identify what those metaphysical principles are, and then to decide to what degree with will align our terrestrial will with living in accord with them.
But the curious thing is that no matter what no person can live and experience that time when the principal figure in the Gospel story actually lived, spoke and acted. So how do we enter into the content? Through the engagement of our imagination. Imagination, then, receives a very special emphasis. The faculty of the imagination, or the sphere of imagining, is the metaphysical territory.
Now, I assume that what I am describing is intelligible to you and others reading. But it is important to notice the contrast between 'an imagined world' (Richard Weaver's *metaphysical dream of the world*) and the
real world. The real world *out there* -- the world of nature, or vast space, or colliding galaxies, and all the phenomena, is non-metaphysical. Our earth and all its natural processes are just that, natural processes. They do not *allude* to anything else. But along comes man and man *sees* through the imagining faculty, or you could also say perceives, what we refer to as higher metaphysical dimensions. Are these *real* or are they *unreal*? What one actually is asking is are they real or are they hallucinations and false ones at that.
If one asserts that metaphysics is false then one is making declarations about what is
really true, and if one denies metaphysical reality (the realness and the power of principles in our human world) one then, necessarily and without any further choice, must
reduce our being to purely physical reality. When metaphysics is destroyed one walks back into a prison. The prison of a mutable, meaningless world in which one is powerless. When I say *powerless* I mean that in a world ruled by physical principles that mirror the (cruel) reality of nature, one cannot put together an argument against those who apply natural principles to your control.
A wasp of a certain species stings a spider and puts it into suspended animation. The larvae of the wasp gestate inside the body of the still-alive spider and when the larvae hatch they consume that body. What 'argument' could the spider concoct to oppose what the wasp does? Similarly what 'argument' can any one of us concoct to oppose our own (say) victimization by more powerful entities that seek to overpower us and control us?
So it has become clear & obvious to me that all value and all meaning hinge on metaphysical principles. Yet they are *invisible* or perhaps I must say *insubstantial*. Devoid of substance. To say *they do not exist!* seems to me the height of stupidity. They obviously and demonstrably exist even though they are insubstantial and abstract.
I am not saying that you claim to be Christian: I am saying that you claim to value Christian metaphysics, and that you have claimed as much for a long time, but that despite this claim of yours, you reject every essential element of the Christian Story-with-a-capital-S.
I am, then, prompting you to reflect on whether or not you continue to claim to value Christian metaphysics. I don't see how you can, because the only "Christian" metaphysics that you endorse are those principles which you have abstracted from the Story, but (in my opinion), they are so much abstracted that they no longer genuinely qualify as "Christian".
Does that make sense now? If so, does it prompt any reflections?
My position, at least largely, remains pretty much the same as when I first chimed in here: I see Christianity and Catholicism as being the bedrock, the essential material, the organizing substance, and perhaps the impetus, of our civilization. It is also the *stuff* or the structure through which our very Self has become the entity that it is. If *it* is destroyed, the Self annihilates. Why do I say this? What *evidence* do I have? That would be harder to prove through some direct evidence and what I have (and can refer to) is indirect evidence. I weave this into everything I write and especially through literary references.
When man is reduces to mere physical processes all *meaning* must collapse. And when *meaning* collapses all *value* also collapses. Or what is valued and valuable is itself reduced to stuff and quantity. But the Self and the value of the Self had been created and uplifted from out of the phenomenological mire through all sorts of metaphysical processes. I challenge you or anyone to examine this assertion. I believe you will find it true and solid.
When the Self is undermined -- that is when the metaphysical principles that undergird it are no longer seen as 'real' and validatable -- I assert that the Self begins to collapse. It falls back from being understood as being eternal (immortal if you wish) to being merely an epiphenomenon and essentially unreal. The Self and then everything human is invalidated and reduced to meaninglessness. You need not look much further for profound evidence of this when, say, you examine the core predicates of individuals like Iambiguous and Dubious. At least this has been my take-away. These are men who cannot conceive of the *realness* of metaphysical principles. Thus they cannot predicate any other world but the world of mutability and becoming (I refer here to Platonic terms). They then *fall back* or are sucked back into a prison -- the prison of the world devoid of metaphysical principle seen, understood and believed in as
real.
Now, I must mention that I have been rereading a book that had a strong influence on my Rama P. Coomeraswamy's
The Destruction of the Christian Tradition (1981). It is an anatomy of how the Catholic tradition was undermined and what then replaced it. It and Weaver's
Ideas Have Consequences, Guénon's
The Crisis of the Modern World and Basil Willey's
The Seventeenth Century Background, have been the most influential in developing the *operative ideas* I now work with and which are foundational to my present view.
Now, you challenge me by saying that I hold to metaphysical principles (say those that are Christian) while I simultaneously deny or refute everything that pertains to Christian belief. But this is not quite so. There are many things I am constitutionally incapable of believing (honestly) -- and we have talked at length about these things in this thread -- but yet I find that I do indeed hold to the metaphysical constants that stand behind the story-line.
