Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Oct 24, 2024 3:01 pm
henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2024 12:35 amIn context: we're talking about the Creator, the Prime Mover, literally The First Principle. It's not right, then, to say morality extends from, or issues from, or was established by, God. God is morality. He is the Measure.
My own view is tinged with a type of dualism. I have written about this a lot. It runs through all my thinking. I see it like this:
If we say *God created this world* we have to accept that God created a rather terrible, violent, uncompromising, cruel world. That is, the world of Nature. It is a world where creature consumes creature in a terribly process where energy, and being, is consumed and which cycles in what we note as *the ecological system*. In that world there is no morality -- not in any sense comparable to our human, social moralities. It seems to me that this is plain as day, and as such it is a frightening truth to face. Gary, it seems to me, struggles mightily with this problem. It is a dog eat dog world. Or, as the Rishis of ancient India thought, it is a fish eat fish world.
Now, our morality, and our sense of supernaturalism, always has to do with a countermanding Idea. That Idea, that sense of what is right and good, directly opposes *the way of the world*. It is established, in this sense, as operating *against the world*. And when the world is seen in that light, the world is *the domain of Satan*. The more that one gets subsumed into the *world*, the more one becomes naturalistic, as opposed to supernaturalistic. The more earthly you get, the more realistic you get in naturalistic terms, and the more involved in real power-dynamics.
In a nutshell, that is how I interpret Nietzsche's rebellion against the supernatural order. He recognized that this Christian (and Jewish) morality is an idealistic rebellion against *reality*. He could not find or see *God* insofar as he focused on the fury and immorality of the earthly systems, the biological order into which, like it or not, we are all subsumed.
When IC says that that Earth is *good* and it is man who screws things up I think he is quite mistaken. His view, and the Christian view, requires that belief in a *fall* from a ideal state that was said to exist and toward which we must incline again. And that the fault is
all man's.
But this is just a superimposition of an Idea over the reality that we live in a violent system:
“And do you know what “the world” is to me? Shall I show it to you in my mirror? This world: a monster of energy, without beginning, without end; a firm, iron magnitude of force that does not grow bigger or smaller, that does not expend itself but only transforms itself; as a whole, of unalterable size, a household without expenses or losses, but likewise without increase or income; enclosed by “nothingness” as by a boundary; not something blurry or wasted, not something endlessly extended, but set in a definite space as a definite force, and not a space that might be “empty” here or there, but rather as force throughout, as a play of forces and waves of forces, at the same time one and many, increasing here and at the same time decreasing there; a sea of forces flowing and rushing together, eternally changing, eternally flooding back, with tremendous years of recurrence, with an ebb and a flood of its forms; out of the simplest forms striving toward the most complex, out of the stillest, most rigid, coldest forms striving toward the hottest, most turbulent, most self-contradictory, and then again returning home to the simple out of this abundance, out of the play of contradictions back to the joy of concord, still affirming itself in this uniformity of its courses and its years, blessing itself as that which must return eternally, as a becoming that knows no satiety, no disgust, no weariness: this, my Dionysian world of the eternally self- creating, the eternally self-destroying, this mystery world of the twofold voluptuous delight, my “beyond good and evil,” without goal, unless the joy of the circle is itself a goal; without will, unless a ring feels good will toward itself— do you want a name for this world? A solution for all of its riddles? A light for you, too, you best-concealed, strongest, most intrepid, most midnightly men?— This world is the will to power—and nothing besides! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing besides!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
When I refer to *the metaphysical* and *the supernatural* I am referring to that imposition that comes from outside the world and makes demands on it. I.e. makes demands on us.
Now, how do we reconcile the God who fabricated The World as it actually is, with the God of *goodness*? It is certainly just a wee bit of a problem!
As I say: The metaphysical principle is the rule.
In my view one must awaken
to the principle by awakening "intellectus". But note that I have a strong streak of dualism, as I have just pointed out.
Further, to the degree we play interpretation games with this metaphysical principle, we distance ourselves from the principle. More concretely, borrowing from a post I made sometime back in the Christianity thread: when we focus on the jar -- it's ornamentation, let's say -- we ignore the jar's purpose (holding life-preserving water). We're dying of thirst as we dicker on filigree.
I do not quite understand what you take away from this statement. All that I would say is that one must either awaken to that *metaphysical principle* (supernaturalism) and choose to the degree one can, to live through it, and mold the world by it, or to choose to return to *naturalism*: the power-dynamic, the realness of the will to power.
Now, if you wanted to get really the the heart of this conflict you could reference Fr Denis Fahey and, say,
The Kingship of Christ and Organized Naturalism. Christ is the embodiment of the supernatural principle, and Christ operates
against naturalism and the Domain of Satan (as Christians understood the world for about 1,000 years). It must be said, because it is true, that the influence of Fahey is undeniably visible/audible in a person like Candace Owens. The implication in the recent renewal of the statement Christ is King
has all sorts of implications.
Actuality, it's imagination.
A picture pointing to something that cannot be communicated conceptually.