Nick_A wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 3:19 am
Do you consider the following to be metaphysical or psychological? From Jacob Needleman's book "The American Soul"
Our world, so we see and hear on all sides, is drowning in materialism, commercialism, consumerism. But the problem is not really there. What we ordinarily speak of as materialism is a result, not a cause. The root of materialism is a poverty of ideas about the inner and outer world. Less and less does our contemporary culture have, or even seek, commerce with great ideas, and it is the lack that is weakening the human spirit. This is the essence of materialism. Materialism is a disease of the mind starved for ideas.
Throughout history ideas of a certain kind have been disseminated into the life of humanity in order to help human beings understand and feel the possibility of the deep inner change that would enable them to serve the purpose for which they were created, namely, to act in the world as conscious individual instruments of God, and the ultimate principle of reality and value. Ideas of this kind are formulated in order to have a specific range of action on the human psych: to touch the heart as well as the intellect; to shock us into questioning our present understanding; to point us to the greatness around us in nature and the universe, and the potential greatness slumbering within ourselves; to open our eyes to the real needs of our neighbor; to confront us with our own profound ignorance and our criminal fears and egoism; to show us that we are not here for ourselves alone, but as necessary particles of divine love.
These are the contours of the ancient wisdom, considered as ideas embodied in religious and philosophical doctrines, works of sacred art, literature and music and, in a very fundamental way, an indication of practical methods by which a man or woman can work, as is said, to become what he or she really is. Without feeling the full range of such ideas, or sensing even a modest, but pure, trace of them, we are bound to turn for meaning.
I would answer 'essentially metaphysical'. It seems to me that we require a perspective based in metaphysics in order to make sense of our material situation. Or put another way if we do not have a metaphysics, if we cannot even conceive of a visionary perspective (a perspective from which we look down on or look over 'our world') we will inevitably exist in a non-empowered state. We will be victims, in one way or another, of circumstances. In Platonic language I suppose that would mean that we'd be in thrall to
becoming because we could not situate ourselves in
being.
The entire critique that Needleman deals on in those paragraphs reminds me of
The Crisis of the Modern World by René Guénon. And as it happened, and after reading Robert Bork's
Slouching Toward Gomorrah, I began reading the writings of the 'traditionalists'. I think Guénon is one of the most lucid. His view -- or my interpretation of his view -- is that behind each system (Christianity, Vedism, Islam, etc.) there are metaphysical truths that can be discerned. But to propose that metaphysical truth exists is to posit something that is only perceived by minds of a certain sort. It involves both imagination and intuition and then attempts to condense or concretize what is abstract and invisible into a system that is then applied to a world in which 'metaphysics' is
meaningless. You have to agree to accept the tenets of metaphysics; you have to be
schooled in them. I quoted Sir John Davies (early 1600s) in a previous post:
This substance, and this spirit of God's owne making,
Is in the body plact, and planted heere,
That both of God, and of the world partaking,
Of all that is, Man might the image beare.
God first made angels bodilesse, pure minds,
Then other things, which mindlesse bodies be;
Last, He made Mn, th'horizon 'twixt both kinds,
In who, we doe the World's abridgment see.
The
image, of course, refers exclusively to what is metaphysical. And man is a point of conjuncture between the sensible and the non-sensible world. My view is that once people have lost the ways and means to even discern 'metaphysical meaning' that they then fall into a sort of thralldom to purely material powers.
Similar to Guénon but more controversial because of his association with Italian fascism is Julius Evola (who was influenced by Guénon.)
“Nothing is more evident than that modern capitalism is just as subversive as Marxism. The materialistic view of life on which both systems are based is identical; both of their ideals are qualitatively identical, including the premises connected to a world the centre of which is constituted of technology, science, production, "productivity," and "consumption." And as long as we only talk about economic classes, profit, salaries, and production, and as long as we believe that real human progress is determined by a particular system of distribution of wealth and goods, and that, generally speaking, human progress is measured by the degree of wealth or indigence—then we are not even close to what is essential...”
― Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist
“The essential task ahead requires formulating an adequate doctrine, upholding principles that have been thoroughly studied, and, beginning from these, giving birth to an Order. This elite, differentiating itself on a plane that is defined in terms of spiritual virility, decisiveness, and impersonality, and where every naturalistic bond loses its power and value, will be the bearer of a new principle of a higher authority and sovereignty; it will be able to denounce subversion and demagogy in whatever form they appear and reverse the downward spiral of the top-level cadres and the irresistible rise to power of the masses. From this elite, as if from a seed, a political organism and an integrated nation will emerge, enjoying the same dignity as the nations created by the great European political tradition. Anything short of this amounts only to a quagmire, dilettantism, irrealism, and obliquity.”
― Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins: Post-War Reflections of a Radical Traditionalist
Yesterday I began reading
Proper Studies (Huxley, 1929) again and realized that it had influenced me quite a bit. And I would have to also point out that Needleman, Evola and Guénon (and you in certain respects!) are dealing in Utopian idealism. The Utopians have a tendency to insist that man is or can be essentially different from what man actually
is -- if thus-and-such would only occur. They tend not to see man as man really is but as they imagine he should be -- or could be or would be if they directed man's affairs: "From this elite, as if from a seed, a political organism and an integrated nation will emerge, enjoying the same dignity as the nations created by the great European political tradition. Anything short of this amounts only to a quagmire, dilettantism, irrealism, and obliquity."
