This is the big term paper I wrote for my class on the Philosophical/Theological Psychology of Soren Kierkegaard. I feel like a lot of good thought came out of this project, even if it was a beast to finish. Enjoy.
"O! Thou Dangerous Dialectic!:
An Analysis of the Relationship Between Self-Knowledge and Self-Deception Within Despair in The Sickness Unto Death"
In the introduction to the section of The Sickness Unto Death where he expounds despair as defined by consciousness, Kierkegaard directly relates the degree of despair in a person to the degree of consciousness in that person. He says, “The ever increasing intensity of despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is proportionate to its increase: the greater the degree of consciousness, the more intensive the despair” (1). Consciousness and despair, then, are directly proportionate to each other; whenever they are found together (that is, whenever a self is not in faith, or resting transparently in the power that established it), one’s increase or decrease is marked by the other’s increase or decrease, respectively. To illustrate this point, Kierkegaard gives the example of the despair that is suffered by Satan: “The devil’s despair is the most intensive despair, for the devil is sheer spirit and hence unqualified consciousness and transparency; there is no obscurity in the devil that could serve as a mitigating excuse” (2). This point is well-taken, for it similarly seems true that—as Kierkegaard himself will quickly address in this section—one who is hardly conscious of being a self can hardly despair, at least in despair proper as defined by Kierkegaard.
But what is it of which a person is growing in consciousness as that person also grows in despair? Kierkegaard believes that this consciousness is that of his despair itself. He says, “To the extent that a person has the truer conception of despair, if he still remains in despair, and to the extent that he is more clearly conscious of being in despair—to that extent the despair is more intensive” (3). Thus, as long as one remains in despair (that is, as long as one is misrelating himself to himself and to the other), the more he understands despair, the greater his despair will be. Likewise, as one grows in despair, one grows in the knowledge of one’s despair. If this is true, and despair is the misrelation of the self to the self and the other (including God), then it appears that, as one becomes further and further despairing, one will come to a further knowledge of himself and the other (including God). This is so because in order to know how one is in misrelation to a thing, one must know how one ought to be relating to that thing, and in order to know how one ought to be relating to a thing, one must have at least some knowledge of oneself and that thing.
Thus, as one grows in despair, one will grow in the knowledge of oneself and the other. But how can this be? It seems intuitive to me that as one grows in despair, as one becomes further misrelated to oneself and to the other, one further skews his picture of reality—one further deceives himself. Further, after establishing that sin is intensified despair in the second main section of The Sickness Unto Death, when refuting the Socratic definition of sin as ignorance, Kierkegaard himself says, “That is why Christianity begins in another way: man has to learn what sin is by a revelation from God; sin is not a matter of a person’s not having understood what is right but of his being unwilling to understand it, of his not willing what is right” (4). Thus, when in sin, one is not only ignorant, but is himself willfully ignorant concerning the truth. Is it possible, then, that as one deepens in despair (sin), one grows in knowledge of self and other and simultaneously deceives oneself concerning this knowledge? What are we to make of the phenomenon of self-deception in light of Kierkegaard’s analysis of the different forms of despair? My project is thus to further exegete and analyze these different forms of despair as laid out by Kierkegaard, particularly in terms of how self-deception plays a role in them, hopefully in order to determine how it is that self-knowledge and self-deception relate both to each other and to the phenomenon of despair.
“The Despair That Is Ignorant of Being Despair, or the Despairing Ignorance of Having a Self and an Eternal Self”
It is here, in Kierkegaard’s treatment of what he describes as the lowest form of despair, that I hope to establish a model for how self-knowledge and self-deception relate in despair, and then later apply, test, and if necessary, revise that model in regards to the various, more advanced forms of despair. Being that this form of despair is firstly and primarily marked by the ignorance of being in despair, Kierkegaard begins this section with a treatment of ignorance in relation to what he calls “the obstinacy of truth” (5). He says,
"That this condition is nevertheless despair and is properly designated as such manifests what in the best sense of the word may be called the obstinacy of truth. Veritas est index sui et falsi [Truth is the criterion of itself and of the false]. But this obstinacy of truth certainly is not respected; likewise, it is far from being the case that men regard the relationship to truth, relating themselves to the truth, as the highest good, and it is very far from being the case that they Socratically regard being in error in this manner as the worst misfortune—the sensate in them usually far outweighs their intellectuality" (6).
Thus, the obstinacy of truth presents itself in truth being both its own standard as well as the standard of falsehood—truth insists on having its own way and will not accept anyone else’s. This is perhaps what Kierkegaard means when he says that this obstinacy is “in the best sense of the word.” He goes on to say, however, that this truth-imposed standard of truth is more than often not given proper respect—it is often ignored. Most men, says Kierkegaard, do not care enough about truth and their relation to truth to be properly related to it, primarily because they do not view being in relation to truth “as the highest good.” Further, he says that this is due to the disproportionate importance that these men place upon their sensual desires, rather than their intellectuality. Men ignore the truth and thus become ignorant to it.
Kierkegaard goes on to further describe the ignorant man’s relation to truth:
"For example, if a man is presumably happy, imagines himself to be happy, although considered in the light of truth he is unhappy, he is usually far from wanting to be wrenched out of his error. On the contrary, he becomes indignant, he regards anyone who does so as his worst enemy, he regards it as an assault bordering on murder in the sense that, as is said, it murders his happiness. Why? Because he is completely dominated by the sensate and the sensate-psychical, because he lives in sensate categories, the pleasant and the unpleasant, waves goodbye to spirit, truth, etc., because he is too sensate to have the courage to venture out and to endure being spirit" (7).
This ignorant man, according to Kierkegaard, believes himself to be happy, but only because he is ignorant—that is, this man is happy only because he does not know of his despairing state. Truly, ignorance is bliss for this man. Were this man to stumble across the truth, or were truth to be forced upon him, he would more than likely do everything in his power to continue ignoring the truth, for “he is usually far from wanting to be wrenched out of his error.” Why? Why does truth and any truth-bearer become his enemy? It is because, as Kierkegaard says, “it [truth] murders his happiness.”
Truth is a category of spirit, and thus it calls the man beyond the immediate sensate categories of “the pleasant and the unpleasant”; it calls man to deny himself the immediate, the purely sensate pleasures, to “have the courage to venture out and to endure being spirit,” and thus to suffer through the despair of consciousness. But as has been said, this sensate-driven man will do everything in his power in order to continue ignoring the truth. He will construct elaborate systems—systems “embracing the whole of existence, world history, etc…” (8) as if to be sheltered within these systems from the harshness of truth and reality. However, as says Kierkegaard, we are surprised on one level to find that this sensate man cannot live as though the systems he has created for his shelter are actually true. Thus, the man “himself does not personally live in this huge, domed palace but in a shed alongside it, or in a doghouse, or at best in the janitor’s quarters” (9). On another level, this behavior is not surprising at all, for we can see that as truth begins to impress itself upon him, and as his consciousness of despair may be beginning to grow, the ignorant man may no longer be able to hold up his façade of a palace. He may be no longer able to convince himself that the shelter he built for his protection and distraction from reality will actually protect and distract him because truth itself—the truth that is impressing itself upon him—is revealing to him that this shelter is only a figment of his imagination.
But still he must fight this increasing knowledge, this increasing violation of truth upon his ignorance, in order that he may protect his immediacy, or else his “spiritless sense of security” (10) will collapse upon itself. As Kierkegaard says, “when the enchantment of illusion is over, when existence begins to totter, then despair, too, immediately appears as that which lay underneath” (11). How can this champion of immediacy maintain his illusion so as to not have to come to terms with the emptiness, the despair that lies beneath it? Simply enough, he must will even more strongly to ignore the truth about himself. He must resolve even more firmly to deny the real as the real presents itself even more firmly to him. This, I believe, is the model of the relation between self-knowledge and self-deception within despair—that of the irresolvable tension between complete dialectical opposites. When one is in despair, as one grows in the knowledge of oneself and of the other—and in the knowledge of despair itself—one must simultaneously harden and strengthen one’s resolve to ignore those truths and deceive oneself.
A necessary condition for the growth of one’s despair, then, is the growth of the tension of the opposition between self-knowledge and the will to ignorance (12). It could be also that as one grows in the consciousness of despair, that growing awareness, that ever-growing feeling of despair, may in fact be a phenomenology of that very opposition. As one grows more despairing, one may feel the ever-increasingly grating tension between those things that one knows about oneself, and those things that one cannot accept as being true about oneself for fear that they, being true, will destroy the already fragile self-security provided by remaining within one’s false immediacy. Thus, in order to protect his immediate happiness, maintained through his sensate categories of “pleasant” and “unpleasant,” this man must even more fervently will his own ignorance—his ignoring of the truth—and thus continue to willfully deceive himself.
We can easily see what kind of monstrous dialectical trap in which this man has been caught by reflecting upon the doubly-antithetical nature of his situation. Not only is he dialectically caught between his increasing self-knowledge and his immediacy, and thus is resigned to having to “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (13), but this suppression is by nature self-defeating. The tension found within in this suppression, this self-deception, clashes essentially with the goal of the immediacy to which the suppression is in service, that of his happiness. So, in the attempted protection of his immediate happiness, this man actually sets it up in a dialectic of opposition with his own growing self-knowledge, potentially suspending the fulfillment of both of them infinitely. He is trapped in the limbo between the two, never able to attain either.
Here, for the sake of clarity, it will be helpful to consider a potential counter-argument to our present hypothesis. It might be argued that this dialectical tension is in fact impossible because it appears impossible to simultaneously come to self-knowledge and suppress that knowledge on the same level of consciousness (14). Fundamentally, this objection comes down to a simple affirmation of the law of non-contradiction, for it seems that one cannot know a proposition about oneself (affirming A) and simultaneously deny that proposition (affirming ~A). This is true enough, but this is not what occurs within this dialectic of opposition between self-knowledge and self-deception. Rather than both occurring simultaneously, the two interplay with each other in a coextensive, indefinite succession—that is, they incessantly dialogue. The person in this dialectical tension, in despair, is constantly torn back and forth between the inescapable truth and the necessity of its suppression. Thus, this counter-argument simply does not apply to our hypothesis.
“The Despair That Is Conscious of Being Despair and Therefore Is Conscious of Having a Self in Which There Is Something Eternal and Then either in Despair Does Not Will to Be Itself or in Despair Wills to Be Itself”
At this point, obviously, we will not yet be able to witness the full effects of how this dialectical tension plays out in the deeper forms of despair because we have still only dealt with despair that is unconscious of its being a state of despair—despair that has its immediacy still intact, that has not yet entered the dialectical opposition between self-knowledge and the will to ignorance. Technically speaking, then, we have not yet witnessed this dialectic at all for the same reasons; we have seen only the possibility of the beginning of this dialectic, as truth first begins to impress itself upon the man who has not yet come into any knowledge of himself as spirit. As a reminder, the present reflections upon this possibility have arisen from our reflections upon the indignation of immediate man toward any who would disturb his immediacy by presenting him with that which transcends his immediacy—truth. In order to truly see this dialectic at work, we must begin investigating the forms of the despair as defined by consciousness that are actually conscious of being despair, beginning with the despair that does not will to be oneself.
It is important to notice that in the short introduction to this subsection of the first part of The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard himself notes something like what we have explicitly labeled as the dialectic between self-knowledge and self-deception. He begins this introduction by describing how growth in despair in necessarily accompanied and aided by the growth in the knowledge of what despair is. As we too have noted, this is because, in growth in the knowledge of the nature of despair, one begins to understand the reality of despair as being a condition of the eternal self. However, the full understanding of this reality does not come immediately upon one’s first encounters with despair. On this, Kierkegaard says, “On the one hand, then, the true conception of despair is indispensable for conscious despair. On the other hand, it is imperative to have clarity about oneself—that is, insofar as simultaneous clarity and despair are conceivable” (15). Thus, from the language he is using, it appears that Kierkegaard himself believes that there is some dialectical tension between the clarity that presents itself as self-knowledge and the self-deception found within despair. Going on, he says of the despairing man,
"To some degree, he is aware of being in despair, feels it the way a person does who walks around with a physical malady but does not want to acknowledge forthrightly the real nature of the illness. At one moment, he is almost sure that he is in despair; the next moment, his indisposition seems to have some other cause, something outside of himself, and if this were altered, he would not be in despair" (16).
Here, it appears that Kierkegaard is implicitly assuming the kind of dialectic—that coextensive, indefinite succession of self-knowledge and self-deception—that we have previously described. The man with this despairing sickness has a moment of clarity; he understands that he is in fact sick with the sickness unto death, and that he himself is the continuing cause of this illness. This self-awareness, however, is quickly replaced by the thought that the illness, “his indisposition,” is not being and could not be caused by himself and the dialectical tension growing within him. He could not truly “acknowledge forthrightly the real nature of the illness”, being within his own eternal self, and act upon that, for that would require him to abandon his immediate happiness—it would require him “to venture out and to endure being spirit” (17). He must distract himself from the reality that his own self presents him with, by trying “to keep himself in the dark about his state through diversions” (18). Even more explicitly, Kierkegaard says shortly later in the section, “There is indeed in all darkness and ignorance a dialectical interplay between knowing and willing…” (19) that is, a dialectical interplay between coming to knowledge and willing to ignore or suppress that knowledge. Thus, the man in despair enters the tension of this dialectic of opposition.
Despair that does not will to be itself can be further broken up into the categories of the despair over the earthly or something earthly, and the despair of the eternal or over oneself, and it is here that this dialectic between self-knowledge and self-deception begins to rear its ugly head. This earliest form of conscious despair—that is, the despair over the earthly or over something earthly—is birthed out of the immediacy of the despair that is unconscious of being despair. Since in this self, there is yet “no infinite consciousness of the self, of what despair is, or of the condition as one of despair…” (20) Kierkegaard says that this despair “is only a suffering, a succumbing to the pressure of external factors; in no way does it come from within [the self] as an act” (21). Thus, the dialectic must be begun from the outside, since the self, being trapped in its immediacy, will simply continue in its immediacy; it is only from the outside that the self can be given dialectical inertia, since that which is at rest tends to stay at rest. Conscious despair—the dialectic of opposition between self-knowledge and self-deception—thus begins passively. In the same vein, Kierkegaard remarks shortly thereafter,
"Now something happens that impinges (upon + to strike) upon this immediate self and makes it despair. In another sense, it cannot happen at this point; since the self has no reflection, there must be an external motivation for the despair, and the despair is nothing more than a submitting. By a “stroke of fate” that which to the man of immediacy is his whole life, or, insofar as he has a minuscule of reflection, the portion thereof to which he especially clings, is taken from him; in short, he becomes, as he calls it, unhappy, that is, his immediacy is dealt such a crushing blow that it cannot reproduce itself: he despairs" (22).
As before, Kierkegaard here affirms the violent nature of the onset of this despair; something “impinges” or strikes upon the immediacy of the self, causing this immediacy to shatter, and throwing the self into despair. This despair is thus completely passive in its nature, as we have remarked. But what, then, is acting upon the self, shattering its immediacy?
I argue that this force is truth itself, both because truth is not a category of the immediate, but rather of the eternal, and because truth is obstinate (that is, it insists on entering center stage and setting the standard for all), and thus is not easily ignored. In revealing itself to a person of immediacy, truth, in its eternality, forces open the door on the happy illusions that distraction and complacency has allowed him to maintain, both transcending and crushing his categories of “the pleasant and the unpleasant.” As soon as this person’s illusions—“the portion [of his immediacy] to which he especially clings”—clash with reality, the truth concerning how he has misrelated himself to himself and to the other leaps into the spotlight, and if he is capable of any reflection at all, the self-presentation of this truth launches him into the dialectic of opposition between growing self-knowledge and growing self-deception. If the person is in fact incapable of reflection, if he is one of those “happy” few, then, as Kierkegaard says, he will simply suffer the duration of the despair, and once the immediacy in question is restored, he will return to his previous “happy” state, though nonetheless still unconsciously despairing (23). It matters not how large or small are the first steps onto this dialectical path, how great or insignificant the first inconsistency between illusion and reality, how blatant or subtle the first revelation of the misrelation; once the reflection upon the truth concerning oneself has taken hold, the dialectic also takes hold and begins to have a life of its own.
Once this first step has been taken, and the man begins to despair and reflect on his despair, he attempts to take measures to save his self from it. However, “his struggles are in vain; the difficulty he has run up against requires a total break with immediacy, and he does not have the self-reflection or the ethical reflection for that” (24). This man cannot simply will away his despair and transcend the despairing dialectic of opposition because he cannot transcend his need for immediacy, his need for the protective shroud of his illusion for the sake of his immediate happiness. Thus, rather than transcending the dialectic, he must perpetuate it by providing the response—he must will to suppress the truth about himself and deceive himself. He attempts to temporarily abandon himself, hoping that the problem will go away when he does so. As Kierkegaard says, “As long as the difficulty lasts, he does not dare, as the saying so trenchantly declares, ‘to come to himself,’ he does not will to be himself; presumably this will pass, perhaps a change will take place, this gloomy possibility will probably be forgotten” (25). This man wishes to escape himself because he has identified himself with the immediacy which has been called into question by the revealing of the truth of the misrelation of his self to himself and the other; thus, this man is in the despair to will to not be himself. If the truth about this man’s misrelated self does not further present itself to him—if truth never equally or superiorly answers his will to deceive himself—then it may be that he succeeds in suppressing this knowledge, and will actually forget that “gloomy possibility,” thus passing back into the immediate “happiness” of ignorance he once possessed (26). It is possible, however, that if he is never able to restore his former “happiness,” and thereby deceive himself back into immediacy, he will continue to despair over the earthly for the rest of his life. We ought to note, though, that if this is the case, the dialectic will be suspended, and thus this man will never slip into deeper forms of despair, just as if he were to pass back into his previously undisturbed immediacy. Before we think of this as a good thing, however, we must remember with Kierkegaard that this will also suspend this man’s journey to salvation.
When passing from the despair over the earthly into the despair over oneself (and of the eternal), the dialectic between self-knowledge and self-deception does not change in nature, but rather in intensity. While despair is technically always of the eternal, as Kierkegaard points out (27), there is indeed a shift in moving from the despair over the earthly to the despair over oneself in that the awareness—the consciousness—of one’s despair is fundamentally deepened. This shift is a further movement in self-knowledge because, for the first time, the object of despair—that is, the self itself—is recognized, and not merely recognized as such, but recognized as the source its own despair. For whatever reason, probably due to some monumental poignant failure of the person—a failure highlighting a fundamental weakness of the person—the person in despair comes to understand that he himself is the problem, as he misrelates himself to himself and to the other. Of this consciousness of one’s weakness, Kierkegaard remarks, “Consequently, there is only a relative difference, namely, that the previous form has weakness’ consciousness as its final consciousness, whereas here the consciousness does not stop with that but rises to a new consciousness—that of his weakness” (28). Before, in the despair over the earthly, the man in despair was certainly despairing in weakness; he simply did not yet know it. Following this previously mentioned failure, the man is finally made aware of his own weakness, and despairs even further in that awareness.
The poignancy of this failure and its corresponding weakness has made the growth in the knowledge of self-as-misrelation nigh impossible to avoid. This step is thus the next natural movement in the dialectic of opposition between self-knowledge and self-deception. For, once the truth concerning oneself-as-misrelation has been suppressed in the previous manner—that is, in separating from oneself until immediacy is restored—truth’s proper response in raising the stakes is to reveal that the thing from which we had attempted to escape is not only the problem, but also that it is in fact inescapable. Thus, upon reaching this level of despair, there is understandably an enormous intensification of the dialectical tension, such that whether one simply sits in this immediacy-smashing self-knowledge, or can somehow manage to find the strength of spirit within himself to continue the dialectic of opposition and will his own self-deception even in the face of such a revelation, he is miserable. On this revelation, Kierkegaard states, “He now becomes more clearly conscious of his despair, that he despairs of the eternal, that he despairs over himself, over being so weak that he attributes such great significance to the earthly, which now becomes for him the despairing sign that he has lost the eternal and himself” (29). We can see here that the self from which the despairing person previously attempted to distance himself was in fact his real self, his eternal self, which he rejected in favor of the false self in which he could preserve his immediate happiness. And now, fearing that he may have lost that which was eternal in him, he despairs. Of course, looking in from the outside, we can see that he does still have his eternal self, this being evidenced by the simple fact that he has had the strength and resistance of spirit to continue the dialectic and reach such depths of despair.
But what of the other option? Could it be possible to continue the dialectic of opposition still further yet, and summon up such strength of spirit as to will one’s own ignorance in the face of such blatant self-knowledge? This is possible only by standing truth on its head, by making oneself the standard of the true, and by judging the world according to this standard. This is precisely what occurs in the man, who, still unwilling to submit to faith, despairs to will to be oneself in defiance. Here, as Kierkegaard says, “If the person in despair goes one single dialectical step further, if he realizes why he does not will to be himself, then there is a shift, then there is defiance, and this is the case precisely because in despair he wills to be himself” (30). Thus, the man who in despair wills to be himself defies all of truth and reality because it will not let him retain that in which he finds his immediate happiness (those categories of “pleasant” and “unpleasant”). Further willing his own ignorance, he reassembles reality is a way that suits that which he wills himself to be. “On closer examination, however,” Kierkegaard says, “it is easy to see that this absolute ruler is a king without a country, actually ruling over nothing; his position, his sovereignty, is subordinate to the dialectic that rebellion is legitimate at any moment” (31). We clearly see, then, that this man is truly the most deceived of all, even though he has had the most self-knowledge, become a stronger spirit, and participated in the eternal far more than those who are ignorant of their despair. In fact, it is precisely because he has seen more of the truth and continued to will to reject it (and not only that, but he willed to remake it) that he is the most deceived of all.
Thus, in examining how it is that self-knowledge and self-ignorance could exist together within the phenomena of despair, we have seen that the relationship between these two states within despair is one of dialectical opposition—a coextensive and indefinite succession of opposites. This dialectic is ever building, raising the stakes at every exchange. It begins with truth’s first appearance, breaking into the immediacy of ignorant despair, and culminates in the defiance and complete self-deception of the man who in despair wills to be himself, thus casting an image of reality in his own image. This man has perfected the despairing dialectic of opposition, rather than transcending this dialectic by submitting to his maker in faith, and thus fully given himself over to the sickness unto death.
Endnotes:
1. The Sickness Unto Death, trans. Hong and Hong, pg. 42.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., pg. 48.
4. Ibid., pg. 95 (emphasis mine).
5. Ibid., pg. 42.
6. Ibid., pg. 42-43.
7. Ibid., pg. 43.
8. Ibid. Kierkegaard certainly seems to be referencing Hegel’s philosophy in saying this. This would imply that Kierkegaard believes that Hegel’s motives in doing speculative philosophy are primarily derived from his sensate-psychological need to repress, ignore, or perhaps to distract himself from reality. Whether this was actually the case for Hegel, I know not. However, if Kierkegaard is truly referring implicitly to Hegel in speaking on the repressive nature of philosophical systems, that Kierkegaard thought this was the case appears to follow.
9. Ibid., pg. 43-44.
10. Ibid., pg. 44.
11. Ibid.
12. Whether this is a sufficient condition for the growth of despair is another matter, and obviously remains to be proven.
13. Romans 1:18 NKJV
14. I am indebted to Michael Garten for his very astute thoughts, both in this specific counter-argument, as well as his valuable feedback and conversation in regards to this paper as a whole.
15. SUD, trans. Hong and Hong, pg. 47.
16. Ibid., pg. 48.
17. Ibid., pg. 43.
18. Ibid., pg. 48.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., pg. 50-51.
21. Ibid., pg. 51.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., pg. 52-53.
24. Ibid., pg. 55.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., pg. 55-56.
27. Ibid., pg. 60.
28. Ibid., pg. 61.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., pg. 67.
31. Ibid., pg. 69.
Love and Peace in Our Lord Jesus Christ,
Garrett
Monday, December 15, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Spring '09 Schedule
No emoting today; just my schedule for the last semester of my undergraduate career!
PHILOSOPHY
Symbolic Logic (PHIL 312); Monday 1:30-4:20 PM, Tom Crisp.
Philosophy of Religion (PHIL 414); Wednesday 1:30-4:20 PM, Tom Crisp.
Advanced Studies: Self Deception (PHIL 435); Thursday 10:30-1:20 PM, Gregg Ten Elshof.
Senior Thesis (PHIL 450).*
GEN. EDUCATION
Biola Chorale (MUSC 001); Monday/Wednesday 10:30-12:20 PM, Friday 11:30-12:20 PM, Shawna Stewart.
Beginning Basketball (PEED 110E), Tuesday/Thursday 9:30-10:30 AM, D. Holmquist.
* I'm most likely going to be writing on a phenomenological/teleological view of metaphysical objectivity (maybe throw some Quine on ontological relativity in there, etc.).
PHILOSOPHY
Symbolic Logic (PHIL 312); Monday 1:30-4:20 PM, Tom Crisp.
Philosophy of Religion (PHIL 414); Wednesday 1:30-4:20 PM, Tom Crisp.
Advanced Studies: Self Deception (PHIL 435); Thursday 10:30-1:20 PM, Gregg Ten Elshof.
Senior Thesis (PHIL 450).*
GEN. EDUCATION
Biola Chorale (MUSC 001); Monday/Wednesday 10:30-12:20 PM, Friday 11:30-12:20 PM, Shawna Stewart.
Beginning Basketball (PEED 110E), Tuesday/Thursday 9:30-10:30 AM, D. Holmquist.
* I'm most likely going to be writing on a phenomenological/teleological view of metaphysical objectivity (maybe throw some Quine on ontological relativity in there, etc.).
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Unapologetic
Once again, after a months-long hiatus of blogging, here I am. It seems pretty pointless at this point to make yet another resolution to blog on a more regular basis, as I think I may just not be cut out for that. Who knows? Whatever the case may be, it seems pretty clear that it simply is not a large enough priority for me to actually put the required time and effort into it when push comes to shove.
It's unclear as to whether anyone even reads this anymore, as I've really given the minute readership I may have once had no reason to stick around. As that seems the most likely case, I think any blogging I here do will be for myself; this will undoubtably be unapologetic in nature, to say the least - perhaps for the purpose of processing my thoughts on hard issues (probably spiritual in nature), perhaps for simply getting things off my chest.
If you're still here... well... thanks? I can't say you'll like what you see because, well, you may end up seeing nothing, as you have seen here for the past several months, as well as for the several months previous to that. If you do see something, it will may very likely be something that won't be pretty, well thought out, or even necessarily intelligent. I've got a lot of things on my mind, things that showcase my spiritual ugliness. Lord have mercy.
It's unclear as to whether anyone even reads this anymore, as I've really given the minute readership I may have once had no reason to stick around. As that seems the most likely case, I think any blogging I here do will be for myself; this will undoubtably be unapologetic in nature, to say the least - perhaps for the purpose of processing my thoughts on hard issues (probably spiritual in nature), perhaps for simply getting things off my chest.
If you're still here... well... thanks? I can't say you'll like what you see because, well, you may end up seeing nothing, as you have seen here for the past several months, as well as for the several months previous to that. If you do see something, it will may very likely be something that won't be pretty, well thought out, or even necessarily intelligent. I've got a lot of things on my mind, things that showcase my spiritual ugliness. Lord have mercy.
Monday, April 28, 2008
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,
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
The Same, Yet Different
An essay I wrote last semester for a seminar class, in response to Thomas Morris' "The Logic of God Incarnate":
In this essay I will attempt a solution to the following problem: How could God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth be identical? I will argue that contra the approach using the theory of relative identity, a solution to the numerical identity of God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth can be found within the confines of the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals. I will first examine Morris’ treatment of several solutions to this problem, focusing on a solution from the theory of relative identity. After rejecting this approach, I will go on to argue that a solution to the problem can be found by restricting the domain of the sets of properties between God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth being called identical to those of personhood.
In the first chapter of his book The Logic of God Incarnate, Thomas Morris broadly examines the charge that the orthodox understanding of the doctrine of the Incarnation is logically incoherent. Many of those who claim that the orthodox understanding of this doctrine is logically incoherent do so on the grounds that the doctrine violates what we understand about the nature of identity. Many have thought that to say that the incarnate man Jesus of Nazareth is one and the same individual as the second person of the Trinity contradicts the very laws of logic, and some have even said that such a statement is actually meaningless. To combat this charge, Morris takes a look at several approaches to solving the problem.
After rejecting the idea that we should accept the seeming contradiction at work here as a sign of its supernatural descent, and thus devalue all of human logic, Morris next examines the case of those who would reject only those logical doctrines that would cause trouble for the doctrine of the Incarnation, most specifically the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals. The principle of the indiscernibility of identicals says that if x is identical to y, then x and y have all the same properties. To avoid certain logical contradictions within Christian doctrines, philosophers such as A. P. Martinich have argued for a relative theory of identity, in which the indiscernibility of identicals is denied. In summary of the theory, Morris says this: “Simply put, the relativity thesis is that identity is sortal relative. Every statement of the form ‘a is b’ or ‘a is the same as b’ is said to be incomplete. In every such case, we are told, it needs to be asked, ‘The same what?’” Morris then explains further that, under the theory of relative identity, a and b could be the same F but not the same G. Thus, Martinich (as construed by Morris) believes that, in the case of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father and the Son could be the same God, but not the same person.
Morris expresses concern with this approach to a solution to contradictions found within the doctrine of the Incarnation, and with good reason – the theory of relative identity is, as Morris points out, highly controversial and tends to lend itself to more contradiction than it solves. Morris himself simply glances over the topic without much more than the brief dismissal in his book, but a much more in-depth treatment of the theory as proposed by Peter Geach is given by John Hawthorne in his essay simply entitled “Identity.” In this article, Hawthorne gives several potent objections to the relative identity theory, the most pointed of which deals with the absurdity caused by the theory when it is put into practice. As an example, Hawthorne deals with Geach’s use of the relative identity predicate ‘is a surman,’ where x is the same surman as y iff x is a man, y is a man, and x and y have the same surname. Under this predication, John and his father Patrick Hawthorne would be the same surman (John Hawthorne calls the surman ‘Bob’). However, Hawthorne argues that if this is the case, a myriad of logical problems and contradictions arise. For instance, if John has brown hair, but Patrick has black hair, then what color is Bob’s hair (if he indeed has hair at all)? To defend relative identity here, we would be forced to accept the two following contradictory propositions as true:
Bob has brown hair.
It is not the case that Bob has brown hair.
What are we to do with this? Suppose further that John changes his surname to ‘O’Leary-Hawthorne’ and then changes it back to ‘Hawthorne.’ Similar problems begin to arise here. Now, there are two surmen, Bob and the ‘O’Leary-Hawthorne’ surman (call him Sven). To which of them is John identical? If both, we are forced to accept the following syllogism as true:
If a = b, and b = c, then a = c.
If Bob = John, and John = Sven, then Bob = Sven.
If we accept this as true, as the relative identity theory would have us do, why make the distinction between Bob (‘Hawthorne’) and Sven (‘O’Leary-Hawthorne’) in the first place? What distinguishes each one from the other? These are just two of the problems that Hawthorne points out in the usage of the theory of relative identity. These problems as well as many others need to be worked out if relative identity is going to be a useful theory in metaphysics.
Still, a problem seems to remain in the logic of the doctrine of the Incarnation. However, because the theory of relative identity appears to be a bad solution to our problem, we must not assume that the reasons for attempting to use it were bad ones. Remember back to Morris’ exposition of Martinich’s solution to the seeming contradiction he found in the doctrine of the Trinity. Martinich believed that, in order to make sense of the doctrine, Christians must reject the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals (hereafter referred to as ‘Leibniz’s Law’), and he thus proposed a solution with the somewhat-faulty theory of relative identity. Though his proposed solution seems to cause more contradiction than it solves, Martinich might not have been so wrong to be wary of Leibniz’s Law. For, just as Martinich pointed out in regards to the doctrine of the Trinity, the Law seems to make trouble for the doctrine of the Incarnation as well. Leibniz’s Law states that two things are identical iff they share all the same properties. What then are we to make of God the Son, who before becoming incarnate was incorporeal, becoming the Incarnate Jesus of Nazareth? The two surely differ in at least one property, that of having a body. Morris, however, overlooks this problem completely. He says,
"The only purpose of denying indiscernibility would be to all that there are some properties Jesus had but God the Son lacked, and vice versa. It is hard to see how in the end such a view could avoid the condemnation of Cyril, bishop of Alexandria…. And of course it was the view of Cyril which become recognized as orthodoxy at Chalcedon."
It seems intuitive that the pre-incarnate Son of God and the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth do not share all the same properties, for it would surely be absurd to say that God the Son had hands, feet, nose, or eyes before he was incarnate. Even the Council of Chalcedon would not deny this fact. It must either be shown that they actually do share all the same properties (which seems doubtful considering the act of Incarnation), or Leibniz’s Law must be abandoned or sufficiently reworked to allow for this kind of status change. It is granted that Leibniz’s Law is meant to apply only to objects that are strictly numerically identical. This, however, should not change our perspective on its bearing on the doctrine of the Incarnation, as tradition has held that God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth have had that strict numerically identical relationship. But if this is true, then what are we to make of the fact that the pre-incarnate God the Son and the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth hold two different sets of properties, the difference between those sets being those properties that accompany being embodied? If Leibniz’s Law is true, a contradiction cannot help but arise between those propositions that affirm both the numerical identity and differing properties of Jesus of Nazareth and God the Son.
It is at this point that we must specify what it is exactly that is being identically preserved in the Incarnation between the pre-incarnate God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth. As has been said, it is obviously true that the sum total of all the properties of God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth differ greatly. However, if we were to restrict the numerical identity of the pre-incarnate God the Son and the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth to the person who is both, the contradiction found in subjecting the proposition ‘God the Son = Jesus of Nazareth’ to Leibniz’s Law disappears. No longer are we holding that the sets of the sum totals of all the properties held by the being that is the pre-incarnate Son of God and the being that is the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth are one and the same, but rather that the sets of the sum totals of all the properties of the person that is both the pre-incarnate Son of God and incarnate Jesus of Nazareth are one and the same. When this version of the doctrine is examined, one will find that it is exactly that which is affirmed by orthodoxy. In becoming the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth, the person of the God the Son took on human nature in addition to his divine nature, thereby acquiring those new properties of humanity while retaining those properties of the divine nature, as well as those of his person, God the Son. This is affirmed all while still affirming the truth of Leibniz’s Law and avoiding the pitfalls of the theory of relative identity, simply by restricting the set of identical properties in God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth to that of personhood.
I believe that Morris assumes something like this in this section of his book, but he does not explicitly state anything like it, thus leading to my treatment of what appeared to be a contradiction. Indeed, when he says, “The only purpose of denying indiscernibility would be to all that there are some properties Jesus had but God the Son lacked, and vice versa,” this must be the case, for such an obvious distinction between God the Son pre-incarnate and incarnate could not have actually escaped his careful and watchful eye.
In this essay I will attempt a solution to the following problem: How could God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth be identical? I will argue that contra the approach using the theory of relative identity, a solution to the numerical identity of God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth can be found within the confines of the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals. I will first examine Morris’ treatment of several solutions to this problem, focusing on a solution from the theory of relative identity. After rejecting this approach, I will go on to argue that a solution to the problem can be found by restricting the domain of the sets of properties between God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth being called identical to those of personhood.
In the first chapter of his book The Logic of God Incarnate, Thomas Morris broadly examines the charge that the orthodox understanding of the doctrine of the Incarnation is logically incoherent. Many of those who claim that the orthodox understanding of this doctrine is logically incoherent do so on the grounds that the doctrine violates what we understand about the nature of identity. Many have thought that to say that the incarnate man Jesus of Nazareth is one and the same individual as the second person of the Trinity contradicts the very laws of logic, and some have even said that such a statement is actually meaningless. To combat this charge, Morris takes a look at several approaches to solving the problem.
After rejecting the idea that we should accept the seeming contradiction at work here as a sign of its supernatural descent, and thus devalue all of human logic, Morris next examines the case of those who would reject only those logical doctrines that would cause trouble for the doctrine of the Incarnation, most specifically the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals. The principle of the indiscernibility of identicals says that if x is identical to y, then x and y have all the same properties. To avoid certain logical contradictions within Christian doctrines, philosophers such as A. P. Martinich have argued for a relative theory of identity, in which the indiscernibility of identicals is denied. In summary of the theory, Morris says this: “Simply put, the relativity thesis is that identity is sortal relative. Every statement of the form ‘a is b’ or ‘a is the same as b’ is said to be incomplete. In every such case, we are told, it needs to be asked, ‘The same what?’” Morris then explains further that, under the theory of relative identity, a and b could be the same F but not the same G. Thus, Martinich (as construed by Morris) believes that, in the case of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father and the Son could be the same God, but not the same person.
Morris expresses concern with this approach to a solution to contradictions found within the doctrine of the Incarnation, and with good reason – the theory of relative identity is, as Morris points out, highly controversial and tends to lend itself to more contradiction than it solves. Morris himself simply glances over the topic without much more than the brief dismissal in his book, but a much more in-depth treatment of the theory as proposed by Peter Geach is given by John Hawthorne in his essay simply entitled “Identity.” In this article, Hawthorne gives several potent objections to the relative identity theory, the most pointed of which deals with the absurdity caused by the theory when it is put into practice. As an example, Hawthorne deals with Geach’s use of the relative identity predicate ‘is a surman,’ where x is the same surman as y iff x is a man, y is a man, and x and y have the same surname. Under this predication, John and his father Patrick Hawthorne would be the same surman (John Hawthorne calls the surman ‘Bob’). However, Hawthorne argues that if this is the case, a myriad of logical problems and contradictions arise. For instance, if John has brown hair, but Patrick has black hair, then what color is Bob’s hair (if he indeed has hair at all)? To defend relative identity here, we would be forced to accept the two following contradictory propositions as true:
Bob has brown hair.
It is not the case that Bob has brown hair.
What are we to do with this? Suppose further that John changes his surname to ‘O’Leary-Hawthorne’ and then changes it back to ‘Hawthorne.’ Similar problems begin to arise here. Now, there are two surmen, Bob and the ‘O’Leary-Hawthorne’ surman (call him Sven). To which of them is John identical? If both, we are forced to accept the following syllogism as true:
If a = b, and b = c, then a = c.
If Bob = John, and John = Sven, then Bob = Sven.
If we accept this as true, as the relative identity theory would have us do, why make the distinction between Bob (‘Hawthorne’) and Sven (‘O’Leary-Hawthorne’) in the first place? What distinguishes each one from the other? These are just two of the problems that Hawthorne points out in the usage of the theory of relative identity. These problems as well as many others need to be worked out if relative identity is going to be a useful theory in metaphysics.
Still, a problem seems to remain in the logic of the doctrine of the Incarnation. However, because the theory of relative identity appears to be a bad solution to our problem, we must not assume that the reasons for attempting to use it were bad ones. Remember back to Morris’ exposition of Martinich’s solution to the seeming contradiction he found in the doctrine of the Trinity. Martinich believed that, in order to make sense of the doctrine, Christians must reject the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals (hereafter referred to as ‘Leibniz’s Law’), and he thus proposed a solution with the somewhat-faulty theory of relative identity. Though his proposed solution seems to cause more contradiction than it solves, Martinich might not have been so wrong to be wary of Leibniz’s Law. For, just as Martinich pointed out in regards to the doctrine of the Trinity, the Law seems to make trouble for the doctrine of the Incarnation as well. Leibniz’s Law states that two things are identical iff they share all the same properties. What then are we to make of God the Son, who before becoming incarnate was incorporeal, becoming the Incarnate Jesus of Nazareth? The two surely differ in at least one property, that of having a body. Morris, however, overlooks this problem completely. He says,
"The only purpose of denying indiscernibility would be to all that there are some properties Jesus had but God the Son lacked, and vice versa. It is hard to see how in the end such a view could avoid the condemnation of Cyril, bishop of Alexandria…. And of course it was the view of Cyril which become recognized as orthodoxy at Chalcedon."
It seems intuitive that the pre-incarnate Son of God and the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth do not share all the same properties, for it would surely be absurd to say that God the Son had hands, feet, nose, or eyes before he was incarnate. Even the Council of Chalcedon would not deny this fact. It must either be shown that they actually do share all the same properties (which seems doubtful considering the act of Incarnation), or Leibniz’s Law must be abandoned or sufficiently reworked to allow for this kind of status change. It is granted that Leibniz’s Law is meant to apply only to objects that are strictly numerically identical. This, however, should not change our perspective on its bearing on the doctrine of the Incarnation, as tradition has held that God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth have had that strict numerically identical relationship. But if this is true, then what are we to make of the fact that the pre-incarnate God the Son and the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth hold two different sets of properties, the difference between those sets being those properties that accompany being embodied? If Leibniz’s Law is true, a contradiction cannot help but arise between those propositions that affirm both the numerical identity and differing properties of Jesus of Nazareth and God the Son.
It is at this point that we must specify what it is exactly that is being identically preserved in the Incarnation between the pre-incarnate God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth. As has been said, it is obviously true that the sum total of all the properties of God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth differ greatly. However, if we were to restrict the numerical identity of the pre-incarnate God the Son and the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth to the person who is both, the contradiction found in subjecting the proposition ‘God the Son = Jesus of Nazareth’ to Leibniz’s Law disappears. No longer are we holding that the sets of the sum totals of all the properties held by the being that is the pre-incarnate Son of God and the being that is the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth are one and the same, but rather that the sets of the sum totals of all the properties of the person that is both the pre-incarnate Son of God and incarnate Jesus of Nazareth are one and the same. When this version of the doctrine is examined, one will find that it is exactly that which is affirmed by orthodoxy. In becoming the incarnate Jesus of Nazareth, the person of the God the Son took on human nature in addition to his divine nature, thereby acquiring those new properties of humanity while retaining those properties of the divine nature, as well as those of his person, God the Son. This is affirmed all while still affirming the truth of Leibniz’s Law and avoiding the pitfalls of the theory of relative identity, simply by restricting the set of identical properties in God the Son and Jesus of Nazareth to that of personhood.
I believe that Morris assumes something like this in this section of his book, but he does not explicitly state anything like it, thus leading to my treatment of what appeared to be a contradiction. Indeed, when he says, “The only purpose of denying indiscernibility would be to all that there are some properties Jesus had but God the Son lacked, and vice versa,” this must be the case, for such an obvious distinction between God the Son pre-incarnate and incarnate could not have actually escaped his careful and watchful eye.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Greedy
I keep telling myself that the reason I never post on here is because I just simply don't have the time to. While that may possibly be true, my lack of time clearly doesn't stop me from doing much less productive things (such as play Halo 3 or BioShock), so as much as I might like to think my lack of blogging time is due to my diligence as a student, I won't kid myself.
I think the real reason that I don't blog often is that I'm greedy. Not greedy with money or for attention, but greedy with my ideas. I've got this silly notion that if I share one of my good ideas in anything less than a published book or article, some dumb schmuck will steal it, and then I won't get the credit for being the awesomely-smart philosopher who revolutionized the way in which the Western world thinks.
I'm silly.
I think the real reason that I don't blog often is that I'm greedy. Not greedy with money or for attention, but greedy with my ideas. I've got this silly notion that if I share one of my good ideas in anything less than a published book or article, some dumb schmuck will steal it, and then I won't get the credit for being the awesomely-smart philosopher who revolutionized the way in which the Western world thinks.
I'm silly.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Man Who Loved a Harlot
A beautiful bride, her pilfered pride brought to tears
By the Syndrome and his finest feature: an all-consuming fear.
Rape erased remorse and reason, too ravaged to recall.
"Is your phantom's love truly better than no love at all?"
We'd come to kill our hope by leaving childhood behind,
That very hope that ignites the lights in the hearts of humankind.
While he searched the streets and called her name, she'd been rendered paralyzed;
"Please don't run!"
She feared his wrath, yet he would have wiped the tears from her eyes.
"The dawn will come!"
And though she didn't understand, and lost her gift to give,
"Our hopes burn brighter than the rising sun!"
The man who loved that harlot would have died to see her live.
"I know what you have done has destroyed your peace,
But you must know that my heart pangs for your release.
I know these shadows, murky black, have dimmed your sight,
But my candle glows enough to melt this darkest night."
While he searched the streets and called her name, she'd been rendered paralyzed;
"Please don't run!"
She feared his wrath, yet he would have wiped the tears from her eyes.
"The dawn will come!"
And though she didn't understand, and lost her gift to give,
"Our hopes burn brighter than the rising sun!"
The man who loved that harlot would have died to see her live.
"Now dance with me, my Bride! Drink my Bacchic wine and play!
And all my Muses sing along as we dance the darkest night away!
Now sing with me, my Bride! Get lost in blood and joyous tears:
Our manifest eternal bliss in the blessed music of the Spheres!"
By the Syndrome and his finest feature: an all-consuming fear.
Rape erased remorse and reason, too ravaged to recall.
"Is your phantom's love truly better than no love at all?"
We'd come to kill our hope by leaving childhood behind,
That very hope that ignites the lights in the hearts of humankind.
While he searched the streets and called her name, she'd been rendered paralyzed;
"Please don't run!"
She feared his wrath, yet he would have wiped the tears from her eyes.
"The dawn will come!"
And though she didn't understand, and lost her gift to give,
"Our hopes burn brighter than the rising sun!"
The man who loved that harlot would have died to see her live.
"I know what you have done has destroyed your peace,
But you must know that my heart pangs for your release.
I know these shadows, murky black, have dimmed your sight,
But my candle glows enough to melt this darkest night."
While he searched the streets and called her name, she'd been rendered paralyzed;
"Please don't run!"
She feared his wrath, yet he would have wiped the tears from her eyes.
"The dawn will come!"
And though she didn't understand, and lost her gift to give,
"Our hopes burn brighter than the rising sun!"
The man who loved that harlot would have died to see her live.
"Now dance with me, my Bride! Drink my Bacchic wine and play!
And all my Muses sing along as we dance the darkest night away!
Now sing with me, my Bride! Get lost in blood and joyous tears:
Our manifest eternal bliss in the blessed music of the Spheres!"
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