Daybreak of the Idols: A Psychological-Semiotic Examination of Hyperreality and Idolatry

Here's my Torrey paper for the semester. I know it's a bit long, but it's worth the read (or at least I think so, haha). Also, I apologize in advance for the obtuse footnoting, but it was the only way I could figure out how to do it.

In this, our modern age, we pride ourselves on being an enlightened people. Clearheaded and freethinking, acceptant of new ideas, tolerant of our fellow man, and more in touch with the reality of the universe than we have ever been before—and for this, we congratulate ourselves. After all, are we not—we who, as of yet, have carried on our backs the cause of humanism far beyond its previously fervent limits—left deserving of a pat on the back? Truly, were this the case; were we truly enlightened, had we truly done a great service to the human race, I would be the first to offer congratulations. As it stands, however, we may have fallen into the very same trap that has ensnared our kind from the beginning of time. What—is this possible? Surely we have made some kind of progress over the many millennia of our existence; surely we have taken the Oracle’s wise advice, and learned to better know ourselves, in order that we could discover the means by which we might overcome ourselves. But were I to tell you that we have not; that we have fallen prey again and again to the oldest of stumbling blocks—the stumbling block of idolatry—would you believe me? “Surely not!” you would say. “Surely we are better off than those old sots, those ancient fools that deliriously bowed the knee to blocks of wood and stone!” How I wish that this were true, that we had surpassed such foolish behavior; however, in our present condition, we differ very little from those ancient fools. It is true—we no longer bow to blocks of wood or stone, but still we bow to idols of various shape and size. The more pertinent question to ask is not, “Do we worship idols even today, even with all the progress we have made?” but rather, “With all the “progress” we have made, why is it that we still worship idols?” I believe that an answer to this question can be reached in an examination of both the psychological and semiotic theory behind the phenomenon of idolatry. More specifically, in examining the concept of hyperreality as well as the psychological consequences of mankind’s fall from grace as is told in the Biblical narrative of Genesis, it will become more clear that mankind’s tendency to commit idolatry could be more accurately be described as the desire to create hyperreality—this being driven by what I have called man’s drive for safety. (1)

What is Hyperreality?

In order to explicate the concept of hyperreality as it relates to idolatrous behavior, a cursory discussion of basic semiotic theory will first be required. In simplest terms, semiotics is the study of signs and their relation to the objects which are signified by them. More broadly, the field of semiotics examines how meaning is derived from objects in the world, and how those meanings are formed in a manner that is communicable between agents. Here, even from the very outset of the semiotic project, a dichotomy is discovered, a dichotomy highlighting the very purpose of the sign—that of communication. There is the object being signified—which cannot in itself be communicated, as it is not in the mind, but in the world—and there is the sign (or “signifier”), which points toward and is used as a communicable (mental) placeholder for the signified object. The sign, then, fulfills at least three communicative qualifications: it is communally determined, it is conceptual (or formed by the mind), and it is referential to some object. In other words, the sign must have a communally agreed-upon conceptual and referential relationship to the object that is signified in order to act in a communicative manner. This is because information about an object can only be exchanged if the object to which the information refers is one that is commonly known; this communally determined conceptual/referential relationship between the sign and the signified is what is commonly referred to as meaning.

It is on the basis of meaning that every component of language and every item of knowledge are constructed. Language and knowledge thus have a symbiotic relationship, one based upon the communally determined conceptual relation between the sign and the signified. A language is, of course, a collection of words or symbols (which are themselves collections of vocalized sounds and written letters or pictures), but more specifically, it is a collection that has been communally determined to refer to various conceptual relations of signs to their referents for the purposes of communication—a collection that has meaning. Were a language not to have this communally determined conceptual/referential relationship, it would cease to be meaningful, and would therefore effectively cease to be language.

Likewise, knowledge consists of those communal conceptual relations between signs and their referents to which language refers. This is simply to say that an individual’s knowledge—that is, the set of those propositions that one knows—is given meaning by the conceptual relations between signifiers and their signified objects that have been established by their community for the purposes of communication. Was this not the case, knowledge itself would cease to be knowledge because it would cease to have any sort of meaning or conceptual relation to a referent—one could not know a proposition that had no meaning. It follows, then, that because both language and knowledge are conceptually driven into a state of meaning by the consensus of the community that uses them, that which is referred to and communicated by language and knowledge—that being reality—is in some manner also conceptually driven into meaning by the consensus of that same community. Regardless of whether or not there is an actual or correct metaphysical reality independent of our conceptions of it, the means by which we would have access to that reality, language and knowledge, depend fundamentally and irrevocably upon the meanings—that is, those conceptual relations between signs and their referents—that our community has assigned to it.

From this conclusion, we now have the necessary ingredients for what the French postmodern philosopher Jean Baudrillard labels in his text Simulacra and Simulation as simulation. He claims that we have entered an era where signs no longer point to the states of reality which they originally signified, and that this has caused a lapse into what he calls the state of hyperreality. Within hyperreality, he claims, what we refer to as “real” and “imaginary” no longer exist because any meaningful difference between the two has ceased to exist. (2) But really? The real has ceased to exist? Admittedly, this concept appears somewhat obscure and far-fetched, and this is not helped by Baudrillard’s overly florid and eccentric prose, but I believe that, once examined properly, Baudrillard’s ideas and critiques are quite enlightening, particularly in regards to the phenomenon of idolatry. I shall therefore attempt to clarify the problem at hand with an analysis of simulation and the process of the creation of the hyperreal.

The first stage of the process of simulation is that of the disconnection between the sign and what it signifies. This takes place when a sign no longer refers to that which it used to refer. An example might be useful to clarify. Suppose I have a cat, and after studying my cat very thoroughly, I have learned how to mimic his meow so well, that one can no longer tell the difference between us simply by listening to our meows. Now, the sign of the meow, which used to point to or signify the cat, can no longer be said to be connected to the cat except in an arbitrary fashion, because the meow could just as easily point to me instead. This is what is meant by the disconnection of the sign and the signified. In theory, it is easy enough to say that this is the case, but could something like this actually happen? Make no mistake: it can happen, and—in my opinion—it already has.

Take, for example, the pornography industry. They and those on whom they have their hold have now vividly demonstrated to us that sex no longer need refer to love. What was once a sign of a deep mystical union between two beings can now just as easily point to just another form of masturbation—one that instead uses that other being as a sex toy. Similarly, with the dawn and rise of the age of the Internet and the cell phone, one no longer feels the weight of being in proximity to another person. A person could now easily live in the comfort of his home with the amenities of a king without ever having to go to the grocery store. He is enabled to sit on his couch playing any number of Internet role-playing games and never actually have to verbally speak to another person. Thus, now communication itself, even while attaining heights never before reached, has lost its referent—that of human relationship. No longer do the lines of communication require persons to enter into relationship with each other. Now, they merely serve as the means for the transfer of information, as a highway for ones and zeroes; when communication does still refer to personal relationship, it does so arbitrarily. These are just two examples of how signs become—and already have become—disconnected from their referents.

The next step on the road to complete simulation occurs when referents disappear altogether, and the above examples continue to serve as excellent models for this process. It does not seem ridiculous in the least to assert that it is likely, for most people in Western society, that personal relationships—that is, the actual spiritual connection between persons—are something absolutely unheard of. For most of our society, the referent of both sexual intercourse and of verbal communication, personal relationship, has disappeared. I believe this to be symptomatic of a larger neglect on our part, that being the neglect of the metaphysical and spiritual realms in general. To be sure, the metaphysical and spiritual may still “exist,” but as has been said, if we have ceased to be in relationship to them, either in our language or in our knowledge, how “real” could they actually be to us? They have vanished; to us, they have ceased to meaningfully exist.

At this point, we have effectively entered the state of simulation. Now, there is no metaphysical “behind” or “underneath” to support the infrastructure of signs that make up our picture of reality; these signs have no grounding to give them meaning. This infrastructure no longer points to a referent, it only points back toward itself. For, if there are no referents at which to point, what remains but an infinite regression of signs? Signs no longer refer to a signified object, they can only refer to more signs—and infinitely so. Because signs in and of themselves have no meaning, they have the property of being infinitely translatable. They can be created in any shape or form, and so, without any signified object to give them meaning, without a referent to delineate difference in value between them, they are rendered completely homogeneous.

The entire purpose of meaning—that conceptual relation of sign and signified—is to delineate differences of value between various ideas or objects. However, because of the aforementioned infinite translatability of signs, and the lack of a referent from which to derive meaning, the concept of difference is put to death and value is obliterated. Meaning is completely liquefied and homogenized into a fluid nothingness. There is now no “real” or “imaginary” because there is effectively no difference in meaning between the two—now there is only the hyperreal. We have thus come to definitions of the states of simulation and hyperreality, those being: simulation is the condition of any language code in which meaning has suffered a complete homogenization; hyperreality is, more specifically, the condition in which the signs “reality” and “imaginary” cease to have meaningful metaphysical referents (where the term “meaningful” is indicative of an actual delineation of conceptual value as is made possible by difference), and so are made homogeneous. In both cases, difference is not actual—it is merely simulated—and those signs that continue to feign difference are called simulacra.

Behind the Phenomenon of Idolatry

Now that we better understand the natures of simulation and of hyperreality, we can explore hyperreality in regards to the origins of idolatry. But how might a technical concept of postmodern semiotics relate in any way to the origin of a pseudo-religious phenomenon? I believe that the answer to this question lies buried deep within the human mind, and can be dug out by means of a psychological examination of the origins of man himself. Specifically, in turning one’s attention to the Biblical narrative of Genesis, one finds several particularly interesting passages linking man’s fall from Grace with what I believe to be behavior indicative of the tendency to create hyperreality.

At first glance, the narrative of the Fall is not at all complex. God creates man with the purpose of subduing the rest of the Creation, and gives him only one negatively prescriptive command: to not eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. If man does choose to eat of this tree (for man does have a choice according to the narrative), God says that he will most surely die. Along comes a serpent, who—being among the craftiest of the animals—tricks the woman Eve into eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. Eve, in turn, persuades her husband Adam to eat of the tree as well, thereby disobeying God and plunging man into the grips of sin.

Much has been said in regard to this event and its impact on redemptive history, but what of the psychological implications of this event? For surely, if one can better understand the psychological effects of an event—if one can better understand how it is that an event causes a person to think (especially an event so crucially informative in the history of humanity)—one would have tremendous insight into the behavior of that person, and would thus be able to track possible behavioral patterns arising from the psychological impact of that event. This is a formulation of a standard postulate of the practice of psychoanalysis, and this insight seems to hold true, regardless of the various controversial theories of behavior that have arisen from this practice (for these theories could simply have had incomplete data, or merely been drawn incorrectly with the data they had). With this in mind, we dive into the Genesis narrative, hoping to catch a glimpse into the patterns of thought behind man’s fall from Grace.

Beginning in the sixth verse of the third chapter of Genesis, we find a particularly noteworthy passage in regards to human psychology. It reads,

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" And he said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself." (3)

What is particularly striking about this passage is that the immediate effect of Adam and Eve’s transgression is their becoming aware of their own nakedness—their reaction to which is the desire to cover themselves, and subsequently, to hide from God in the garden. Many have suggested that this reaction is tantamount to the first experience of guilt. While this may be the case, the reason that Adam gives for his hiding is not guilt at all, but fear; and not simply fear itself, or even the fear of God, but rather a fear caused by his nakedness.

But why would nakedness be something that causes fear? After all, it seems a safe assumption to say that God created man naked, and therefore nakedness could not be something that is in itself evil, or even something to be looked down upon. Earlier in the narrative, it even says, “And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” (4) It is my belief that, here, man first experienced the reality of his vulnerability, due to his self-imposed spiritual separation from God and His love, as well of the rest of reality. This, in phenomenological terms, was the creation of the Other—that entity (if I may use that term) that exists juxtaposed against the Self as the entirety of all reality that the Self is not. (5) Before the introduction of the Other, man had no reason to fear his state of nakedness because the thought that anything could have taken advantage of his vulnerable state would have been absolutely and completely foreign to him. Post-Fall, however, in becoming aware of his nakedness (coupled with his spiritual alienation from God and the rest of reality), man also became aware that there was something outside himself capable of affecting his own wellbeing. (6) Thus, man first became subjected to the state of fear of the Other. This state of fear results in what I have come to call man’s drive for safety, or, that primal instinct within man that drives him to hide and protect himself from the Other in its many manifestations. This drive is universal in its effects; in other words, there is no man in which the drive for safety has not caused him to seek refuge from the Other.

How might this take place? How might a shelter from the Other be built? The first option that one has is to make himself into a shelter—escaping into a fortress completely unto himself. This path was exercised by the Buddha, as well as the Stoic Sage; in the attempt to free themselves from evil, suffering and strife, they shored up the walls of the Self high enough to block out all effect of the Other completely. The Sage did this by placing an strong emphasis on what the Stoics called apatheia (root of the Eng. “apathy”), or a certain ascetic unaffectedness with which they approached daily life, which was accomplished by the cultivation of inner virtue and the adherence to reason. For the Buddha, escape from the Other was accomplished by the active retreat into and emptying of the Self through prayer and meditation. More contemporary examples of this extreme type of escapism in our culture (7) usually appear far less virtuous than these two ancient philosophies—much more like Narcissus than Chrysippus; not only utterly unaffected by the Other, but also completely unconscious of their spiritual separation from it. They have escaped so entirely that they are unaware that they have escaped, or that there was anything from which to escape.

Most measures taken for protection from the Other are not so extreme; most shelters built for the security of the Self are not as totalizing in their effects. There are, however, key similarities that, while witnessed in the most extreme cases of escapism, remain the same throughout all instances of behavior influenced by the drive for safety. The source of these similarities is an emphasis on familiarity—there is a particular degree of sameness between a person and the object in which that person derives his safety. The person has given this object the capability of causing him to feel not quite so “Other”, thus allowing the person to relax his guard over himself in the presence of the object. He is mistaken, of course; the familiar object technically remains just as much a part of the Other as it has ever been, just as alienated from the consciousness as has it has ever been, and just as unknown as it has ever been. How then can a person find safety and security in such an object? It is through the process of what I have chosen to call psychological assimilation that the Self abstracts and distills the phenomenon of the object into a security-potable phenomenon with which the Self is able to become familiar. In this sense, the person has imbued trustworthiness in the object by psychologically replacing the object with a more friendly and familiar version of itself, and fundamentally ignoring the Other-like nature of how the object actually appears. Essentially, the purpose of this process boils down to a simple matter of ensuring the ability to control reality—to tame the Other. Once this is the case, once the Other is controllable, the Self can rest easy knowing that its safety is also secure. As some have thought, this subjection of the real is not so much a matter of intellectual or psychological pride, or the result of a will to power; this assimilation, familiarization, and taming of the Other is rather the product of the human drive for safety.

Already, we can see the marks of hyperreality creeping in at the door to the human psyche. The Self has distilled phenomenological safety (8) for itself at the expense of the “pure” actuality of the phenomenon. It is important at this point to acknowledge that this act of psychological assimilation does not happen merely once, or even several times—rather, it takes place on a constant basis, at every junction in which the Self comes into contact with the Other. If the human psyche cannot help but view the phenomenon of the Real in terms of its own safety as a consequence of man’s fall from Grace, as I have hypothesized, then it must be the case that the entire phenomenon of reality itself is cast in the mold of the drive for safety of the individual into a coherent, holistic picture representing the specific felt needs for safety of that individual. In short, the Self begins the process of completely systematizing the Other through the lens of the drive for safety.

It is during the process of systematizing that the concept of knowledge is introduced. For, once reality (9) becomes systematic, stable, and static, it becomes able to be known—and once reality becomes able to be known, it becomes able to be controlled. The manipulation of reality through the means of knowledge ensures that the continued and immutable access of reality is made possible, which, in turn, ensures a secure environment in which the individual is able to feel comfortable. However, as was the case with actions of psychological assimilation on the individual level, the Self fools himself when he believes that his systemization of the phenomena that comprise reality has in any way made him safer, that his “knowledge” grants him security, or that the Other is any less unknown than it has always been. His processed and systematized picture of the real—his worldview—lacks any relationship to a referent because it exists entirely within his own consciousness; it has no meaning, and is therefore a hyperreality. Thus, that set of propositions which he calls his “knowledge” bears no conceptual difference of value from any other set of propositions—even from a set of propositions which he would claim to be utterly false. In truth, what he believes he “knows” is not knowledge at all, nor is it even anti-knowledge. (10) As is true for the entirety of the phenomena of his hyperreality, it is rather the simulacra of knowledge, because while it has given itself the semblance of being knowledge, any actual delineation of conceptual value it might have possessed has been liquefied—de-differenced by the homogenization of meaning. And, lest we forget, this has all been concocted out of the obedience to man’s one insatiable desire—the drive for safety.

We now have come to our first understanding of the nature of idolatry, that being: in obedience to the drive for safety, man creates for himself a hyperreality for the purpose of enabling the access of, familiarization with, and control over “reality.” What is truly remarkable about the phenomena of idolatry is that, by its very nature, it possesses an ability to be infinitely modally modified—one can make an idol out of absolutely anything, whether it be money, sex, cannibalism or conservative Christian family values. All of these can be used as a lens by which to subject one’s reality to the systemization caused by the drive for safety, as idolatry can be fitted to suit the felt needs for safety and security of any individual or community. (11) But as if this were not enough; as if the Other was not subjected adequately to the needs of men, idolatry in its truest form takes the process one step further. Man, in creating for himself graven images, uses these images not only to create security for himself, but also uses them to harness meaning for himself. Despite the critiques and arguments of some, man appears completely unable to live without an ideal, something external to himself that he uses to project meaning and value back onto himself, as if he himself could not give an adequate metaphysical justification for his own existence. Even the most infamous of all anti-idealists, Friedrich Nietzsche—he himself was unable to escape the trap of vicarious value! (12) Since his creation, man has required an object, whether it be conceptual or actual, that will grant him the justification for his existence and activity.

Scripture gives us an example of this idolatrous behavior as well in the book of Ecclesiastes. Here, the author describes numerous occasions in which he attempted to find a meaning for life—something that would make life worthwhile—but found that all things under the sun are vanity, nothing more than vapor. Whether one’s idol is one of the pleasures of self-indulgence, (13) hard work, (14) or even wisdom itself, (15) the author claims that (granting that we are honest with ourselves) none of them can truly grant man the justification to live, no matter how great our desire for them may be. The best that one can hope for with these vanities is to use them to psychologically escape our lack of metaphysical justification—to become drunk on wine, women, work or wisdom so as to not think about our deeper problem. Again, if one is truly honest with oneself, as is the author of Ecclesiastes, one cannot even hope for this. One can now easily see how this idolatrous phenomenon is also derived from the drive for safety. In protecting oneself from the Other, the Self must create an idol in which it is either able to escape, or which it can use to secure the reason for its own existence, as well as to ensure its own safety. In all cases, hyperreality is created because the worldview or the idol that has been created is only in relation to the infinite regression on signs—rather than to an actual referent—and it thus becomes subject to the state of simulation.

One need not think hard to see how this is the case. Take, for instance, the religious rites and rituals of a primitive culture of pagan men, and the gods which they worship. Why do they worship them? What do these gods do for their followers that makes them worthy of reverence? Precisely this: their pantheon of gods psychologically fulfills their felt needs for security. They believe that their gods protect them, and help them to prosper when they are obedient to them, but—even more importantly—that they have specially chosen them as the people with which they commune. This provides this community, as well as the individuals living within it, with an account of the metaphysical justification for their own existence. Not only did a community’s patron god(s) provide protection for this people’s way of life, their god(s) gave them a reason to exist—they gave them meaning. Of course, these people were mistaken in their beliefs, because the statues that they worshipped and the rituals that they observed had no actual referent, merely a psychological one. While differing in name, these gods differed in no way from any other deities worshipped out of the observance of the drive for safety, and were therefore only the simulacra of gods. There would have truly been no difference between the real and the imaginary for these people, and so any apparent difference between the two—between their “real” gods and the “imaginary” gods of another culture—would have been simulated.

The same holds true in the idolatry of the present. One man holds up monetary success as his security and existential justification; for another, his sexual exploits grant him value; another, his code of ethics; another, his theology—but all are equally meaningless. All are signs without referents, and are therefore lost in the cycle of the liquification of meaning. All are simply used by men to satisfy their felt needs for safety from the Other, and are therefore all equally idolatrous. Thus, we have come to an understanding of the nature of idolatry: it is the process by which hyperreality is created for the purposes of enabling the access of, familiarization with, and control over the “real”, as well as the metaphysical justification of the particular existence of a given person or people group.

Concluding Remarks

Hopefully, it has been made clearer the ways in which we, in the present, are still able to participate in the practice of idolatry, and the reasons for which we do so. Truly, we hardly differ at all from the pagans of years long past, for we continue to raise up altars on which we place objects of veneration and offer up the real as our libation. Still, we bow the knee to idols of various shapes and sizes—idols of wealth, idols of power, idols of various varieties of gratification, and any other means by which we can secure our security and existential justification. There is an odd and ironic beauty in the amorphous capabilities of idolatry—for an idol can be fashioned in literally any form. It is so easy to become seduced by an idol simply because it is able to appear in any shape for which we may have need, appealing to where we are weakest in spirit. How, then, can we avoid offering up our lives in service to an idol, sacrificing reality on its altar in exchange for safety? Put simply, we must find a way to break free from the cycle of the liquification of meaning; we must find a route that does not end in the death of difference, a path by which we may reach the Referent! How might this be done? How might we transcend our tendency to create hyperreality? We must dash our idols upon the rocks and be put into direct spiritual relationship with the referent of reality, God Himself. This is possible only through a spiritual relationship with His Son and second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. Only in this way can we escape the trap of idolatry—only in this way can we escape being forever doomed to wander about in the hyperrealities created by our own consciousnesses.

Endnotes:

(1) Here, I wish to make clear that I am in no way claiming my analysis to be the final word on this phenomenon. Rather, I have come to this conclusion based on my observation of human nature, as well as the analysis of both sacred (Christian) and secular texts, and I am more than willing to be corrected in my theories in those places where they require correction. In other words, I am in no way attempting to make my conclusions into dogma—they simply seem to be the case to me.

(2) Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006.

(3) Genesis 3:6-10 (All Biblical references are to English Standard Version (ESV) unless otherwise noted).

(4) Ibid., 2:25.

(5) It would thus follow that the Other had no existence before the fall of man because man had not yet spiritually separated himself from reality. This is a somewhat speculative conclusion, I’ll admit, but one that I believe can be supported here textually, as well as in other passages of Scripture by appealing to the state of the Church through Christ (see Jn. 17 and others).

(6) It should also be said that, in committing an act of disobedience toward God, man gave himself reason to fear the Other. “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” 1 John 4:18 (emphasis mine).

(7) i.e. virtually anyone on an MTV reality television series.

(8) I say “phenomenological safety” both for the reason that the safety is found in the altered phenomena, and because the safety itself is phenomenological, that is, it at least appears to be safe.

(9) I should make clear that the term “reality” is used synonymously here with “the Other.”

(10) That which would negate, nullify, or be the antithesis to knowledge.

(11) The formation of a community is not the subject matter per se of this paper, and so I will not go into great depth as to my thoughts on the issue. However, it should at least be said that community formation has nearly has much to do with the act of psychological assimilation as idolatry does; that is to say, communities of men are formed with the goals of similarity, solidarity, and assimilation amongst their members. Ideals and imperatives are set in place based on the common understanding of how reality is to be tamed and made potable to security (i.e. various tribal/family gods and religious practices, community values of what behaviors are socially/morally appropriate, etc.). And who, above all, is excluded? The outsider, the foreigner, the aberrant, the lawbreaker—the unknown.

(12) While this is highly contested, it is my belief that, though Nietzsche attempted to account for the intrinsic value of life in the present without recourse to “something beyond”, he could not escape idealism. I would argue that even he required the concept of the eternal recurrence of all things—that idyllic imperative that radically affirms the value of the present over all other things, as if it were to repeat eternally—to justify his claim that the present earthly life was to be valued, though he claimed that the value of life was intrinsic to life itself.

(13) Ecclesiastes 2:1-11.

(14) Ibid., 2:18-26.

(15) Ibid., 1:12-18, 2:12-17.