Posted on 12/20/2005 8:18:22 AM PST by Noumenon
Doubting Thomas was an apostle, too.
However, I would hasten to add that his doubt was a perilous obstruction to his spiritual life. Indeed, Jesus specially proved Himself to Thomas so that he could believe:
As soon as Jesus heard the word that was spoken, he saith unto the ruler of the synagogue, Be not afraid, only believe. - Mark 5:36
Beautifully put, dear Cornelis. Certainly Aristotle did not regard himself as autonomous "from any higher force above him."
Aristotle expresses his "non-secular humanism" wonderfully in De Partibus Animalium. An excerpt:
...Of things constituted by nature some are ungenerated, imperishable, and eternal, while others are subject to generation and decay. The former are excellent beyond compare and divine, but less accessible to knowledge. The evidence that might throw light on them, and on the problems which we long to solve respecting them, is furnished but scantily by sensation; whereas respecting perishable plants and animals we have abundant information, living as we do in their midst, and ample data may be collected concerning all their various kinds, if only we are willing to take sufficient pains. Both departments, however, have their special charm. The scanty conceptions to which we can attain of celestial things give us, from their excellence, more pleasure than all our knowledge of the world in which we live; just as a half glimpse of persons that we love is more delightful than a leisurely view of other things, whatever their number and dimensions. On the other hand, in certitude and in completeness our knowledge of terrestrial things has the advantage. Moreover, their greater nearness and affinity to us balances somewhat the loftier interest of the heavenly things that are the objects of the higher philosophy. Having already treated of the celestial world, as far as our conjectures could reach, we proceed to treat of animals, without omitting, to the best of our ability, any member of the kingdom, however ignoble. For if some have no graces to charm the sense, yet even these, by disclosing to intellectual perception the artistic spirit that designed them, give immense pleasure to all who can trace links of causation, and are inclined to philosophy. Indeed, it would be strange if mimic representations of them were attractive, because they disclose the mimetic skill of the painter or sculptor, and the original realities themselves were not more interesting, to all at any rate who have eyes to discern the reasons that determined their formation. We therefore must not recoil with childish aversion from the examination of the humbler animals. Every realm of nature is marvellous: and as Heraclitus, when the strangers who came to visit him found him warming himself at the furnace in the kitchen and hesitated to go in, reported to have bidden them not to be afraid to enter, as even in that kitchen divinities were present, so we should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful. Absence of haphazard and conduciveness of everything to an end are to be found in Nature's works in the highest degree, and the resultant end of her generations and combinations is a form of the beautiful....Seems to me Aristotle held the pneumatic and noetic modes of perception in fruitful correspondence and balance. Certainly, he is no "secularist."
"Knowing in part" is mandatory, given the human condition. It seems to me the more I know, the more I realize how much I don't know.
But life's for learning....
Thanks so much for writing, dear Cornelis! It's great to see you again.
Voegelin translates apperzeptionsverweigerung as "the refusal to apperceive." (I stuck in the italics there.) But what is "apperception?" According to Leibniz (and I gather, Voegelin), it is the word denoting the introspective or reflective apprehension by the mind of its own inner states. Apperception contrasts with "perception," which is awareness of something external to the mind, of something "out there" in the world external to the thinker that becomes fodder for sensory perception (so to speak).
If a person "apperceives" the Good, wouldn't he be at least mildly interested in its authentic Source? I mean the Good — a universal — does not just spring up out of the soil like mushrooms, nor of any material process in Nature. And if you do not know the Source, then how can you say the Good is "good?"
This is what puzzles me: I don't understand how a pneumatic experience of the Good — which is and must be an apperception — if exposed to "epistemological pressure" — to noetic analysis — increases the risk of "the disease of aversion." Aversion to what? The Good?
It seems to me that apperzeptionsverweigerung is closely related to Cicero's aspernatio rationalis, or "contempt of Reason [Nous]." I also see the kinship of this idea with the Greek word anoia: "folly, oblivion, [I'd say 'to be out of one's mind' in modern parlance]."
Voegelin, in Book V of Order and History [p. 43], draws the major implication of such "folly": Forgetfulness of one's partnership in the great hierarchy of being — God–Man–World–Society — and, consequently, the transformation of assertive participation in this community into self-assertion: Man, not God, then becomes the measure (ratio) of all that there is [to pan].
I agree with Alamo-Girl's observation: "I suspect many who call themselves agnostic are not seekers [after truth] but rather are simply disinterested [in truth]." An agnostic — arguably someone who suffers from anoia — is "a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena; a person who claims neither faith nor disbelief in God."
Well jeepers, if you postulate that right up front, you can surely save yourself a whole heap of trouble!!! But I just call this "mental laziness, lassitude, or — taking my cue from Heraclitus — 'dreaming.'"
Of Heraclitus, we have only a few tantalizing, often puzzling fragments. The following — among my favorites — are clear enough, and I hear them echoing in Plato — especially his insights into the Logos, the "ratio" to which my dearest sister in Christ alluded in a recent post:
But though the Logos is common, the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own. [2]In conclusion, I believe the "disease of aversion" finds its root in a deformed psyche — precisely one that refuses to apperceive — not in epistemological analysis. Historically, it has mainly taken the form of the forbidding of all questions that a "master of aversion" — such as Marx, Comte, et al. — does not want asked. And that "forbidding" is absolute, streng verboten!!!
Those who are awake have a world one and common, but those who are asleep each turn aside into their own private worlds. [89]
It is not meet [fitting] to act and speak like men asleep. [73]
Those who speak with the mind must strengthen themselves with that which is common to all, as the polis does with the law and more strongly so. For all human laws nourish themselves from the one divine — which prevails as it will, and suffices for all things and more than suffices. [114]
Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it — not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time. That is to say, although all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it — at least if they are judged in the light of such words and deeds as I am here setting forth. My own method is to distinguish each thing according to its nature, and to specify how it behaves; other men, on the contrary, are as forgetful and heedless in their waking moments of what is going on around and within them as they are during sleep. [1]
Aristotle famously avers that "all men desire to know." Well jeepers, as a denizen of a collapsed and corrupt culture, who listens to what "men" have to say these days about their position in the world at large (to pan) and as they are in themselves, I'd have to say Aristotle's claim borders on the fatuous.
It seems to me the School of Athens has the more profound insight: "Know Thyself."
It seems to me "epistemology" begins precisely there: To "know thyself" is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. And mainly this instruction is pointing to knowledge about movements in apperceptive experience; that is, to primary movements in psyche, a/k/a the human soul, which presumably can respond to divine Nous (Reason) via human nous (reason).
IF, that is, the human soul is "open" enough to have such experiences, and to be able to reflect upon them noetically; i.e., by Reason.
FWIW! Thanks so very much for writing, dear cornelis!
The Heraclitus quotes very quite interesting.
A "biological robot" indeed, a human being reduced to a machine, as part of a still larger machine.... Deeply troubling. It seems many are prepared to sacrifice their own humanity to the "findings" of metaphysical naturalism.
Thank you so very much for your observation, dearest sister in Christ, and for your kind words of support!
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