The Debate Between Communism and Capitalism A Critique of Marxist Communism based on Terry Eagleton's book 'Why Marx Was Right” Aufheben

The word 'aufheben' is used primarily in the works of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as a way to explain the result of the thesis and antithesis interacting, via the term 'sublation'.

Terry Eagleton's book Why Marx Was Right seems to prove the old adage that 'defenders of a faith often do more damage than detractors.' The adage here is taken to mean it's a sign that an old paradigm is falling away when defenders cling to it. 1.Terry Eagleton: Why Marx Was Right (Yale University Press) hereafter referred to as W.M.R.

Eagleton claims to be a Marxist, but he is no street radical. He would seem to fit better with the genteel seventeenth century Utopians like Tobias Hess and Johann Valentin Andrea, who were waiting for a group of physician-magi to arise and heal society. Eagleton makes the points that capitalism is a necessary step for communism, because there can be no communism without capitalism to reject (WMR pgs. 57-63), that Karl Marx even had some positive feelings for Colonialism because it would bring about the needed conditions for communism (WMR pgs. 218-221), and that communism must ride on the back of capitalism (WMR pg. 235). This sounds like a nice way of saying that communism is a parasite on capitalism. Eagleton even says communism needs capitalist resources (WMR pg. 57), and that it was Stalin and not Marx that thought communism could generate wealth (WMR pg. 236). There seems to be a big problem with communism if it cannot even be the hero in it's own drama. Communism is a protest against the abuses of capitalism. Communists share much the same relationship that devil worshipers have with Christianity-without Christianity there can be no devil worshipers. Capitalism must be prior not only historically but ontologically to Communism.

The reason for this is wealth creation. If your purpose is to spread the wealth, there must first be wealth, and this is what communism cannot do. It cannot create wealth. Eagleton even goes as far as to say that capitalism is like the 'Sorcerer's Apprentice'-able to create wealth out of thin air. Capitalism is not without its problems, or communism would never have grown into a world wide movement. The abuses and excesses of capitalism are the blood that communism feeds on. 
*all posts co-authored by I.Green

Spinoza, Bohme and God: Clarity Vs. Content

Spinoza, Bohme and God

Clarity Vs. Content

To compare and contrast the conceptions of God, as found in the writings of Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) and Jacob Bohme (1575-1624), that is my purpose. As can be seen from the like dates, they lived in a near same era. Neither man gained much fame in their lifetime, and both were craftsmen. Spinoza worked as a lens grinder, and Bohme was a shoemaker. Both men existed outside of academia and ran afoul of religious authorities- even though Bohme was a Christian he was still branded as a heretic.

These men may have shared similar external circumstances, but their conceptions of God were at opposite ends of the clarity/content continuum. Spinoza's God is all clarity and abstraction, while Bohme's God consists of content and emotion. Are they both anthropomorphic? Does Spinoza project the highest abstraction as God; Bohme projecting in turn emotions as God? Can there be a non-anthropomorphic conception of God?

Bohme held the doctrine of the microcosm and the macrocosm-humans resemble God.

The difference between clarity and content can be seen in their writing styles. Spinoza's chief philosophical work “The Ethics” has a very definite structure. Spinoza employs definitions and axioms, then proceeds to proportions and demonstrations. Everything is set out logically. Bohme,on the other hand, starts anywhere, jumps from point to point, and takes long diversions from the point, which he may or may not return to. He lacks any kind of systematization or template to his writing style. When we get to Bohme, we shall examine his seven natural properties. The reader should not think that Bohme lists them and then explains them, instead they are scattered throughout his books, even though they have a logical structure. Bohme stacks metaphors on metaphors, occasionally using different metaphors for the same entity. If this is not confusing enough, he uses the symbolic language of alchemy without any explanation of the terms.

Both philosophers can leave a reader's head spinning: Spinoza with his rarefied abstraction; Bohme with his labyrinth of metaphors.

Let us now turn to Spinoza. Spinoza has been accused of being a pantheist and an atheist, and there is evidence for both charges. From the above charges, one can see Spinoza is not a Christian. Spinoza starts out The Ethics with an examination of God or nature. It is important to understand that Spinoza is not using the term nature in its modern sense; instead he is using the term nature in the medieval sense. For medieval thinkers the term nature meant everything that exists. There is no non-nature, or artificial. In this first part of the book, he proves with his own definitions and axioms that there is only one substance. By substance he means there is only one individual in existence. Again, he is using a term in the ancient and medieval sense. As professor Mark Wheeler of San Diego State University has pointed out, any thinker that uses 'the law non-counterdiction as the centerpiece of his epistemology is going to end up with a One. This means there has to be an endpoint where all counterdictions are resolved and includes all entities. The next move is whether the one is an overlying One or an underlying One. In an overlying One, the One is the culmination of reason. In an underlying One, the One is below reason: a ground. An overlying One is the usual top-down system all of us are familiar with. Abstractions are more real than material things. The Forms, or universals are ontologically prior to material things. Let us look at an example drawn from Neoplatonism. The Form's humanity is the cause of and template of all individual humans, whether they be male, female, tall, short, etc. The reason for this is that no one human can express all the traits of the Form. Any defect in an individual human is due to matter. Now that Spinoza has his one thing, he has to explain why we experience many things.

The Neoplatonic parallel is the One and the many. The first thing Spinoza does is introduce what are called attributes. The term attributes is The term attributes is misleading, so here it will be translated to 'how we experience things'. An example should clear up any misgivings. We can experience a wall by bumping into it, or we can imagine a wall in our minds. This constitutes Spinoza's two attributes: thought and extension. Spinoza says there may be an infinite number of attributes, but we only know of the above two. The somethings we experience Spinoza calls 'modifications' or 'modes'.

Let us take another break with an example: Let all of mathematics be (equal) a thought or mode in God's mind. Like mathematics, everything in Spinoza's philosophy is necessary and determined; nothing is contingent. So, mathematics works itself out necessarily whether it is a Hellenistic Greek or a seventeenth century European who adds to the expression of the mode mathematics. As the reader has noticed, all emotional content has been lost by now. There is nor room for Archimedes running through the streets triumphantly shouting “Eureka! “

We lose Cantor's obsession with infinity.

Now we have to move to Spinoza's epistemology if we are to understand him. To do the work, we shall have to use another example. Imagine a young woman who plays the triangle in a band. The woman has dropped out of school to join the band, and has missed math class. She has no knowledge of geometry at this point in time. She likes her triangle; one might say she even has an emotional attachment to her triangle. Her father had given her the triangle, and she has used it since then in all her performances. This fondness for her triangle has given her a fondness for all equilateral triangles. She has pins and patches in the form of these triangles. According to Spinoza, she has incomplete and inadequate knowledge of triangles. For Spinoza, all emotions are incomplete or inadequate knowledge. He distinguishes three degrees of knowledge. The first kind of knowledge is things represented through the senses in a way which is confused and mutilated, because it lacks order and reason. There is also an upper degree to this first kind of knowledge: things we read or hear, things we imagine but without necessary knowledge. The second kind of knowledge are common notions and adequate ideas of the properties of things. In other words, qualities. This,however, is not the necessity involved with knowledge and still involves sense perception. The third kind of knowledge happens when we understand the essence of a law or laws of an entity. To return to the young woman's triangle, she has no idea that the essence of a triangle is a closed figure whose angles must add up to 180 degrees. The young woman has the first kind of knowledge and a tinge of the second, but none of the third kind of knowledge. Now, the reader has a better understanding of why everything in Spinoza's philosophy must be necessary and determined; it would be impossible to have knowledge of a contingent entity. Anything that seems random or contingent to us seems that way because we lack complete and adequate knowledge of that thing.

Let us move back to those entities or things we experience, and have knowledge of: modes. We will use the same example we used for the Neoplatonics: the form of humanity. It is tempting to say modes are individual things, but that is not Spinoza's view. Humanity again contains all individual humans, whether they are male and female, tall or short, etc., but Spinoza cannot put defects down to matter. Everything has to be perfect, necessary and determined. Why is it then we find some people are defective and/or lacking? The reason for this is that we have not reached the perfect necessary knowledge. Complaining or getting angry and frustrated is like complaining that all triangles are equilateral, or that we find isosceles and scalene triangles inferior to an equilateral triangle. There should be no element of emotion or sense perception to our knowledge. We should know that all triangles are the expression of the formula that all closed figures with three angles that equal 180 degrees are triangles. If we are still fond of the shape of a triangle like the young woman from our example, this indicates we have not yet reached the perfect necessary knowledge.

What exactly has Spinoza done then? He has taken the Neoplatonic metaphysics of a hierarchy of realms and smashed or telescoped them down to one realm. Instead, there is a hierarchy of ways to experience things or entities. So, what Plotinus saw as a form is just another way to experience a mode. Everything is in one realm. The alert reader might have already figured out where the Neoplatonic One is. The One is everything: God, substance, nature. The only reason we experience the One is because we do not have the right state of consciousness. This leads us to our next topic: Spinoza's idea of blessedness and immortality. It is surprising that Spinoza has a theory of blessedness and immortality. Since we are part of the One we are already immortal, we just don't realize it. If we could stay in a state of consciousness that was the third kind of knowledge, we would see everything as the One. Spinoza said we can get glimpses of this kind of knowledge or experience, and that we should try to stay in that state of consciousness for as long as possible. It is the One being conscious of itself. Immortality, then, is where everyone is a necessary ratio in the One; some people are just more aware than others. They are the blessed.

We come to the question of whether Spinoza was an atheist or a pantheist. Most agree he was an atheist, unless he regarded God as a mathematical ratio. Spinoza's philosophy seems unsatisfying. We lose the bewitching beauty of Cleopatra and Mata Hari, the joy of Archimedes, and the triumphs and tragedies of human life. We lose those experiences that make life worth living. Let us now turn to Jacob Bohme.

Bohme is often called the God taught philosopher. He was subject to rather mystical states, but we should not make too much out of Bohme's lack of education. Somewhere, he picked up the knowledge of Paraclesus and alchemy. Spinoza's main influence was Rene Descartes; Bohme's main influences were Martin Luther and Paraclesus. However, Bohme didn't write the fierce invective of either one.

As Spinoza wanted to take us to the highest abstraction, so Bohme wants to take us to the highest pitch of emotion. Here I shall give a brief review of Bohme's natural properties. The term 'natural properties' is misleading. They should instead be looked upon as potentials in all things. Bohme held the doctrine of the microcosm and macrocosm- so these properties are not only found in God, but in all creation including humans. Anything in order to exist must be a counterdiction. Bohme uses the metaphor of a giant eye looking into a mirror. In the beginning, there is desire and imagination or whimsy. Everything is contingent, and even God has a sense of whimsy.

We now move to the first natural property: contraction. Contraction is introspective desire. This is hard, sharp and cold. This is the person who desires to be alone, the person who hardens themselves and lives in gloom. The second natural desire is expansion: the desire to move outwards, but with no goal. This is the person who speaks nosily for no reason and has the overwhelming desire to move, is agitated, has nervous energy, etc. These two desires work against each other. One seeks to contract and the other seeks to expand. Both have no goal. These two desires cannot escape one another. This is like the beginning of a person's inner life. Since they cannot escape, they are forced to collide. This brings about the third natural property, which is rotation. Since neither contraction or expansion can escape, they cause oscillation and revolution, but not a harmonious rotation. It is a frenzied rotation, much like a wheel that is out of balance and on fire. Bohme uses the term wheel to symbolize minds. As both seek to free themselves they are forced into a frenzied whirling. We still use the expression today that someone is 'spinning their wheels' or is 'unbalanced.' This is the obsession of Cantor, of Van Gogh. This is the mind that spins out of balance-on fire, full of heat and smoke but no light. This is a movement that can come to no end. It is madness, it is the insoluble problems that keep one up at night. It is the searching for an escape that is not there. This is the first of Bohme's trios, it is the wheel of fire. It is the problem that cannot be solved and cannot be escaped. There is no solution in the wheel of fire. Our next natural property is lightening. This is a sudden illumination after a long and painful fermentation. This is Archimedes screaming through the streets. This is the prisoner released from torture. It is also the born again experience common in Christianity. It also holds fear and terror when entering an unknown territory. The joy of the light and illumination triumphs over the fear, terror and obsession. Bohme says again and again that every life born in fear is enjoyed in freedom, and again perishes in agony. The first trio is called the dark principle or fire wheel that is vanquished by illumination and the higher natural properties. The fifth natural property is sometimes called wisdom, or light and water. This is the vanquishing of terror, fear, and frustration. This is seen in the ability to articulate your feelings, to be able to put into words emotions and feelings that have been plaguing one. This is the feeling of an artist when creation flows right through them, or the author who feels that their book wrote itself. The alert reader might have recognized that the fifth natural property seems like the Son in the Trinity of more orthodox theology. The fire wheel or dark principle is usually identified with the Father in the Trinity. Of course, Bohme did not think God had a beginning in time, but in this realm of existence it was the only way to express that which was eternal. Another use Bohme gives the wheel is to symbolize eternity. The fourth and fifth natural properties are the Son in the Trinity. As a note, Bohme sometimes uses alchemical language to express the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; this would be Sulfur, Salt and Quicksilver. To return to the fifth natural property, the water symbolizes cooling the vanquishing of negative emotions, or the cool, calm streams of Heaven. The sixth natural property is the spoken or audible word. This is the Holy Spirit of the Trinity. This is the wisdom shaped into creation. The Holy Spirit is often associated with bonding, or love. This is much like the creation of family, community, and other bonding that creates something good. The fourth, fifth and sixth natural properties are the wheel of water or mildness. These are the trios in God. In God the fire wheel is never actualized. Evil only gets actualized in worldly matter and humans, because they are fallen. With the fire wheel and water wheel we are finished with God proper. The seventh natural property is usually given the name kingdom. For God these are the things he did not consciously create, such as his throne, Heaven, his appearance, etc. For humans it would be one's haircut, wardrobe, etc.

Bohme asserts that these properties are present in everything that exists, but one usually predominates. Now we come to Bohme's conception of immortality. Bohme is foremost a Christian, so he believes in Heaven. Bohme's idea contains some unusual characteristics that have become influential. As an example, a quote from The Three Principles of the Divine Essence: 'Death and this earthly flesh is swallowed up, and we all live in the great and Holy Element of the body of Jesus Christ, in God the Father, and the Holy Ghost is our comfort; and with this world and with our earthly body, all knowledge and skill of this world perishes; and we live as children, and eat of the Paradisaical Fruit for there is no Terror, Fear, nor Death anymore; for the Principle of Hell together with the Devils (in this last hour) is shut up; and the one [Principle] cannot touch the other any more in Eternity, nor conceive any thought of the other. The Parents shall no more think of their wicked Children that are in Hell, nor the Children of their parents; for all shall be in Perfection, and that which is in Part shall cease.' Bohme makes no distinction for worldly skills or family relations. The other idea to take of is that the blessed live as children. Bohme's vision has gone in and out of fashion. He influenced Kant, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer. Most of his influence on Kant came through Kant's being raised in a Pietist household; the other three men read and studied Bohme. Today he is largely a forgotten figure, but if psychological metaphysics is ever to make a comeback, his writings will be there waiting.

As long as there are Christians there shall be some who find Bohme satisfying. The trouble is in many ways he seems too dated and bizarre. It would be hard to find a starker contrast to Spinoza. Spinoza strives to be a model of clarity, and Bohme's conceptions of God tell us more about Bohme than of God.  

Bonaventure and Kant: Metaphysical Psychology and Transcendental Schema

The aim of this essay is to illustrate the metaphysical psychology of Bonaventure and the transcendental schema of Kant by comparing and contrasting the two systems.

Bonaventure (1221-1274) was a Franciscan monk and theologian. He would rise to become the Minister of the Franciscan order. Like all medieval thinkers, Bonaventure would hold the doctrine of the passive and active intellects; this doctrine was held by almost all medieval thinkers in some form. According to Bonaventure we are all born in a state of nudity before experience. Bonaventure rejected innate ideas but did not reject innate abilities. Bonaventure regarded the passive and active intellect as two sides of the same substance or individual. Averroes and Alfarabi regarded the passve and active intellects as two different substances or individuals. The active intellect was regarded as an emanation from God by the Islamic Neoplatonists-this is why they were regarded as monopsychists in the West. As stated before, the human intellect was thought to be in a state of nudity before nature. Objects act upon the sense organs and this produces a sensible species. The sensible species in turn act upon the faculty of sensation, where at last we have a perception of the object. This is known as a particular object. This is not yet a reflective judgment; we have not yet moved to the active intellect. The passive intellect, individual sensations of color , hardness, etc. are put together to form a particular object. This creates subjective knowledge of an object. For the medieval mind, subjective referred to the material realm. Objective knowledge was the stuff of mental objects. (similar to mind v.s. body.) Particular objects are then preserved in the imagination- like a form in God's mind. What the medievals called imagination, moderns call consciousness. The imagination is the everyday stream of consciousness. When we see an object, we are reminded of similar objects, or feelings and emotions associated with it. An example should prove illustrative. A man walks down the street and sees a car. If he sees one that is the same make and model as one he used to own, he is reminded of his old car, and the memories and emotions associated with his old car.

The active intellect then takes over, still working with the passive intellect. The particular object is compared with other objects, in turn coming up with categories and universals. This is possible through natural reason. Bonaventure defines natural reason as the capability to identify pleasure and pain. From our natural reason we develop formal reasoning and logic, enabling us to turn particulars into universals. This is known as abstraction. For example, a articular red, sweet tasting sphere becomes an apple. It has now become universal and objective. It becomes objective because even though particular apples vary in size, taste, color, etc. the universal idea of an apple is the same for everyone. It is important to note here that to Bonaventure, universals are real, not merely linguistics. We must now take a short detour to another Franciscan: Duns Scotus. He serves to help us understand Kant. Scotus laid down a criteria for a universal. A universal existing cannot violate the law of non-counterdiction and it must be used as a middle term in syllogisms.

We return to Bonaventure. For Bonaventure universals are real, not just linguistic entities. If universals are real, are we directly perceiving the Forms in God's mind or are they a reflection of the divine Forms? The former position is ontologism and the latter explanation is exemplarism. Bonaventure chose exemplarism, the orthodox Christian view. The universals in our minds are analogies of the Forms in the divine mind. Bonaventure held that when the analogies become close enough, we would receive illumination from God, giving us certainty of our knowledge.

We now move to Immanuel Kant. (1724-1804) We shall see if Bonaventure's metaphysical psychology can shed some light upon Kant's transcendental schema. Kant sets up a duality of what can be known and what cannot be known. We begin with what cannot be known: 'things in themselves'. We cannot directly experience how things are in themselves, instead experience is built up by the subject;the object is unknowable, although we do know there are things independent 'things in themselves.' This process of building or constructive experience is the transcendental schema. We begin with the transcendental aesthetic. The transcendental aesthetic is a form of perception. It differs from the categories of the transcendental analytic in that it is passive. The reason for this is because the form of perception is not dependent on the law of non-counterdiction. The form of perception is space and time; we must perceive everything in a spatial way and a temporal way. This grants every sensation a location and a duration. This spatial-temporal data Kant calls intuitions. Space and time are what they are, They are not proven by the law of non-counterdiction. They are instead a given, they are space and time a priori. So far, this sounds like the passive intellect, but with the twist of space and time not in the object, only in the subject. This demonstrates a break between the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental analytic. To examine an example of Kant's, a man is walking through the snow and spies a cabin. Upon approaching the cabin, he feels heat. After feeling the heat, he sees a stove. What Kant is saying is that we are still at a subjective state in the transcendental aesthetic. Feeling the heat before locating its source is the subjective feeling. The category of causality is not yet operative.

The transcendental analytic is active; it is where we find the categories Kant is famous for. These would be causality, reciprocity, and so on. The reason the transcendental analytic is operative is because the categories are dependent on the law of non-counterdiction. The categories act as a series of syllogisms that experience is put through to come up with universals. Now the reader should understand why a detour to Duns Scotus was taken. Kant has made Duns Scotus' criteria an innate power in the subject. To the modern reader, this seems odd that formal logic is regarded as innate in human minds. The first question one asks is, “how did the categories come about?” Kant answers by a transcendental deduction. In other words, Kant announces that they are because he needs them. This seems even stranger to a modern reader, but Kant was writing for an audience that had no knowledge of Darwin and evolutionary theory. Instead, his model was Issac Newton. Newton's announcement of gravity is much like the announcement of transcendental deduction. Newton does not tell us how gravity came to be.

We return to the transcendental schema. The spatial-temporal subject of the categories give us objective universals much like Bonaventure's active intellect. We have reached the fork in the road of reality that Bonaventure reached with exemplarism and ontologism. Kant regarded both as examples of the transcendental dialectic. The transcendental dialectic is illusion. Illusion is produced when we go beyond our observations, so Kant rejects them both. Instead, he finds a third tine in the fork: universals are what our everyday experience is constructed through. It is the world of science, the transcendental schema is universal to all subjects. This is the objective world of science and everyone. These universals have no metaphysical reality, they only belong to appearance. They do not exist as a thing in itself. Here is Kant's Copernican revolution. Reason and logic do not lead us to higher realms (them ind of God) , instead they only construct the everyday world of experience. Emotional sentiments lead us to the Real.

Where Copernicus flipped the place of the sun and the Earth, Kant flipped the place of reason and emotion.  

On the Microcosm & Macrocosm in Christian Theology- Medieval to Modern

The curse of humanity since the influence of Protagoras is alienation; the palliative religion. The main way people fight their alienation is though religion. Alienation and its causes can be divided into primary alienation and secondary alienation. What separates primary alienation from secondary alienation? We shall turn our focus to secondary alienation first since it is the easiest form of alienation to understand. Imagine a new student's first day at a school where they do not know anyone. If the school is in a different country and taught in a different language than the student is used to, the alienation increases. This cause is usually remedied by the student making friends and becoming assimilated to the routine of the new school. We have all experienced this sort of alienation at a new job, or by moving to a new city.
Primary alienation is when one feels alone in the cosmos, or that one is living in an alien cosmos. This is the type of alienation religion seeks to remedy. As I have written elsewhere, this is caused by the breaking of subject and object. In the mythological paradigm this type of alienation did not exist. Humans felt themselves as part of the landscape of the cosmos: trees, rocks, and animals. The mythological paradigm was broken by Protagoras when he split subject and object. Humans became aware that the scenarios they thought in did not match the scenarios of the external world. However, they did not know this by somehow getting outside their bodies and comparing the internal and external as some sort of disembodied third form. Instead it was discovered by showing the relativity of perception that two men could stand in the same wind and have varying accounts of its temperature. The coherence of perception was lost. To maintain the coherence of the cosmos, man posited a cosmos that existed outside of human perception. The most devastating loss for humans was that emotions were removed from the cosmos and confined to internal thought. The scenarios that humans thought in no longer matched the cosmos. Why was this change so devastating to humankind? The reason is that the natural way for humans to connect the objects of thinking is by physical and emotional resemblances: when we have a feeling or emotion we remember other times we have experienced the same emotion- nostalgia. When we see an object we remember other objects that physically resemble the object. This is how humans relate to the cosmos in everyday consciousness. This is what we have called mythical thinking, and is the foundation of the world's mythologies.
When the emotions are removed from the cosmos and continued into the interior life of humans, it means one of the primary ways that humans orient themselves in the cosmos is not an intrinsic feature of the cosmos. The scenarios no longer fit together; the cosmos becomes an alien place that obeys laws or rules hidden from human consciousness. In other words, the cosmos is now seen as an alien place.
The ancient Gnostics were a good example of primary alienation. In the earlier mythological paradigm, humans were a natural part of the landscape. To the Gnostics the cosmos was an evil place controlled by demon gods. To escape their alienation in the cosmos, the Gnostics attempted to identify with a divinized mental realm- one of spirit that was totally removed from matter. For the Gnostics the human soul was a fallen entity and the spirit was created by the good God that had fallen into an evil realm of the material cosmos. The trouble with this perspective is that it is only for the few. Most people are not otherworldly enough to completely reject the material cosmos or live in a cosmos created by the imagination. For this reason Gnosticism could never have become a mass movement.
The Jesus movement had a new vision: God would return to Earth and re divinize matter; thus begins western religion. When we look at the original definition of the word "religion" we can observe its origin. The word "religion" means to bind together. Religion is an effort to bind humans and the cosmos back together to repair the break caused by Protagoras. It is important to note the eastern word "yoga" has the same definition as religion. The east seems to stay more with the Gnostic approach; that of isolated hermits working to overcome their alienation by projecting their emotions onto a divinzed mental realm. The isolated hermit loves all of humanity, but avoids associating with any members of humanity. This is not an ideal that would have much appeal in the west. Maybe it is because of the ideal of the Greek city-states that people in the west felt community was needed to overcome alienation. One could not love humanity and avoid contact with individual humans. So the ideal in western religion was to bring God back into the material realm to re divinize the cosmos. The method religion uses to overcome alienation is the doctrine of the microcosm and macrocosm. The first observable difference between the Christian vision and the Eastern-Gnostic view is that instead of isolated hermits being able to overcome their alienation, the Christian vision is one of a non- alienated community. In terms of Christian theology every Christian is part of the mystical body of Christ. Already the imagery of the microcosm and macrocosm is evident. In Christianity the state of non-alienation is called peace. For ancient and medieval Christians the term "peace " had a much more positive definition than for modern people. For modern people the definition of "peace" means the absence of conflict, but for ancient and medieval people "peace" meant to be in harmony with God and the cosmos i.e., to belong. In bringing God down to Earth the material world becomes re divinized and humans live in an a non-alienated community. with a place for all believers. The divinized community is ruled over by Christ as a human that is in harmony with nature and ruled by the intellect. Everything is in harmony- mankind, the cosmos, and God. The community becmoes the mythical body of Christ.
To test the above theory, we shall now turn to two Christian writers, one medieval and one modern to observe how they use the microcosm and macrocosm in their theology. The two writers have been chosen to provide a contrast; the medieval thinker is a first class intellect and one of the most learned men of his age, being drenched in classical learning and Neoplatonism. The modern thinker is of a far lesser class of intellect, a popular preacher, and has probably never heard of Plotinus, Iamblichus, or Proclus--much less read any of their writings. We begin with the thirteenth century professor of theology who becomes Minister of the Franciscan order in 1257: St. Bonaventure. In Chapter Two of his book "The Journey of the Mind to God", we find the following passage, "We may behold God in the mirror of visible creation, not only by considering creatures as vestiges of God, but also by seeing Him in them; for He is present in them by His essence, His power, and His presence." In the very next paragraph Bonaventure makes the doctrine of the microcosm and the macrocosm explicit. "It should be noted that this world, which is called the macrocosm enters our soul, the microcosm through the portals of the five senses, in so far as sense objects are apprehended, enjoyed, and judged." Like all medieval theologian philosophers, Bonaventure also finds the likeness of the Trinity in the human mind: "He shines forth in all creatures, here thereby led us to reenter into ourselves, that is, into our mind, where the divine image shines forth." There is the doctrine of the microcosm and macrocosm in the writings of St. Bonaventure. The criticism could have been made that Bonaventure was a medieval who was learned in Neoplatonism, so could the doctrine be found in a lesser intellect with no acquaintance with Neoplatonism and a popular appeal to the modern audience?
Let us turn to a modern popular writer on Christian theology: Joni Eareckson Tada. Tada fits our criteria, having made far less intellectual accomplishment than Bonaventure. Tada wrote a best selling book about how her experience as a quadriplegic led her to embrace evangelical Christianity . In her book "A Place of Healing" we find the following quote: "My enemy has most probably assigned some captain in his lowerarchy of Hell to harass me. My wicked adversary knows I have become accustomed to quadriplegia. He recognizes that total permanent paralysis is no longer the struggle it used to be for me. He is aware that my profound disability has helped me develop the prized characteristic of needing God desperately when I wake up in the morning. And quite frankly, he despises that." It seems quite clear that from this passage Eareckson-Tada has projected her struggles with quadriplegia onto the cosmos. Her struggles are reflected in the cosmic battle between God and Satan. Another passage: "Hence his full on attack on my body, mind and spirit, and on my friends who love me and help me. It's war- and like all war. it isn't pretty." Eareckson-Tada is an illustrative example because although she is unaware of the doctrine of the microcosm and macrocosm it shows up everywhere in her theology. We draw the conclusion that from the examples of both Bonaventure and Eareckson-Tada the doctrine of the microcosm and macrocosm is no add on to Christianity, but the very heart of religion.

On the Origin of the Gods

On the Origin of the Gods: Ancient and Modern

by E. Hoffmann

How do gods arise? What is the origin of the gods? It was asserted in my essay on the Egyptians that language and mythology arise together; now it is necessary to employ a deeper examination of the mechanism that gives rise to this state of affairs.

We notice that animals try to communicate their emotional states to each other and to us-a cat purrs, a dog growls, etc. The difference between humans and animals is that humans can imagine an activity or emotional state without preforming the activity or being in the emotional state. Although, it must be admitted that if a person spends too much time imagining an emotional state they will end up in that state in an attenuated form. We can also attach a trigger to imagine an activity or emotional state; this is the origin of language. Imagining is a process of sublation. When we can either imagine an activity or state without preforming the activity or emotional state, we have turned that scenario into a higher order thought: sublation. When scenarios and emotional states are sublated we call this thinking. In thinking we can compare scenarios, tear them apart or join them with other scenarios. This process of the imagination continues to happen when we sleep. In sleep the imagination has greater freedom, due to its being freed from the limitations of the physical or waking world. In dreams we see the strangest combinations of scenarios and emotions. It would seem emotional content drives dreams. In the dream world, we try to solve our problems in the most fantastic ways. There are stories throughout history where solutions to problems happened in dreams. This has conferred a numinous quality on the dreamworld. It is well known that the practice of incubation was the most common way to communicate with the gods in the ancient world. This caused dream imagery being used as religious imagery. To have a god, we still need one more element. That element is projection. Projection is the primary way humans deal with the world.

To illustrate the power of projection, let us look to the concept of ownership. Ownership is the process of projecting emotion onto the physical world. When we own something we project our emotion onto the owned object. Legal systems give an objective framework to this projection. The legal system tells a person what he can and cannot project his emotions on to. A man can project his emotions on his wife or house, but cannot do this for someone elses wife or house. Here we have the whole basis of law. Projection also leads to personalization. When we project emotions on to a thing, we tend to think of the thing as having the projected emotions. Observe how children project emotions onto toys. They tend to name the object they project on, and have conversations with these objects.

Gods are dream images projected and personalized as controlling principles in the world or cosmos. These dream images of gods tend to take human form with the heads and faces of animals. It would seem the head or face was always regarded as a controlling feature or the key to personality from earliest times. It is often the feeling of an animal that is projected and personalized in the head or face, such as the god Sobek. Sobek can be said to be in the projected and personalized feeling of the crocodile. This is also found in demonologies. Demons in grimoires are usually depicted as having human form with animal or bestial faces.

When one of these dream images is accepted by a community of people, it is chosen because it represents the emotions and desires of the community.

F.H. Bradley when writing about religious miracles expressed the opinion that we should not believe anything happened in ancient times that does not still happen today. Let us now turn Bradley's dictum around. Do we still see this process happening today? We can answer with an unqualified yes. What diverts us from seeing the process continuation is that it no longer happens in religious institutions. The heads of the current churches are as against inspiration as the most hard headed atheist-materialist. Since organized religion takes a dim view of inspiration, it has moved into the genre of fantasy literature.

Most scholars of literature regard Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel. Mary Shelley claimed she got the inspiration to write Frankenstein in a waking dream. She is said to have had a vision of the “pale medical student” that would become the hero of her novel. This is a modern myth that has become very popular, but we still lack a god.

To find the first fantasy writer to invent a new pantheon of gods, we must turn to the Anglo-Irish writer Lord Dunsany. Lord Dunsany invented a fantasy world called Pegana, along with active gods. Again, we find Lord Dunsany's inspiration came from dreams. All the gods and the lands of Pegana are but a dream. Lord Dunsany's writings never gained much popularity outside of fantasy circles, but he was a big inspiration to other fantasy writers. One in particular will be the subject of the rest of this essay: H.P. Lovecraft.

H.P. Lovecraft had one of the most extraordinary imaginations in history. To illustrate the power of Lovecraft's imagination we must examine a condition known by psychology as Isolated Sleep Paralysis, or I.S.P. It is commonly called the “Old Hag Syndrome” or “hag attacks”. I.S.P. Occurs in every culture and age, although the imagery of the condition is conditioned by the culture the sufferer belongs to. It is undoubtedly the source for the modern alien abduction phenomenon. The best book written on the subject is “The Terror That Comes in the Night” by David Hufford. In the book Hufford breaks the phenomenon into four characteristics: Awakening from sleep, hearing or seeing someone enter the room, feeling pressure on the chest, and an inability to move or cry out. A typical case of I.S.P. Would go something like: a person wakes up and hears footsteps. She sees a figure enter the room with burning red eyes. She tries to move or cry out but cannot. She feels an intense feeling of fright. The figure settles on her chest, then it is over. The sleeper either really wakes up or is able to move around and just feels confused. Sometimes an out of body experience can occur.

Now let us turn to Lovecraft's experience of I.S.P. Lovecraft started having these experiences when he was six years old. For Lovecraft's experience we shall turn to Donald Tyson's reconstruction of the experience in his book “The Dreamworld of H.P. Lovecraft.” Tyson has reconstructed the experience from his letters; I have edited the account to save time.

“..a six year old boy lies like that on his back in bed, staring sightlessly through the impenetrable darkness, a quilt clutched under his prominent chin....his mind is fixed on one thing-to stay awake, no matter how hard the effort, no matter what the cost...but he is so very tired. His eyelids droop. They come, as they always do, sliding up the window sash and stepping noiselessly into his room, darkness against darkness, naked bodies edged with flickering silver light that defines their shapes, slanted pairs of blood-red eyes bob in the black like ghostly lanterns as they surround his bed. Never do they utter a word- how could they, for they have no mouths. Membranous wings lie folded against their backs. Slender barbed tails flick the air restlessly. Without a rustle they draw the covers off his bed. He sees them as if floating in the air above-sees his own body shiver on the sheet unable to move, unable to scream. It has happened so many times, but its inevitability only makes the horror worse.

Long black fingers clutch at the flesh of his belly, lifting him, twisting him through the opened window and into the night sky, over the city. The stars turn and roll beneath him as the creatures pass him back and forth, their touch an insidious tickling sensation..faster, higher for an eternity they carry him on, flapping leathern wings until the familiar New England landscape is transformed into something alien and terrifying. He glimpses skylines of strange domed cities and silhouettes of alien temples to unknown gods...at last tiring of their amusement, they allow him to drop...as he tumbles screaming.”

The above account should give some idea of the extraordinary power of Lovecraft's imagination. What makes this account more impressive is that Lovecraft was an atheist from an early age. Lovecraft remained a materialist and atheist throughout his life. He believed the arguments for God were on the same level as the arguments for Santa Claus.

If Lovecraft had lived in 1000 BCE he would have been regarded as a prophet, in the middle ages or early Renaissance as a warlock or possessed. Lovecraft was living in the early twentieth century, so he became a writer of fantastic fiction. Tyson speculates that Lovecraft wrote in order to gain some sort of control over his own dream life.

We must understand something of Lovecraft's fiction before examining the god Lovecraft created. Maurice Levy has written an admirable study of Lovecraft's fiction. Levy contends that the horror in Lovecraft's fiction always comes from the depths of the abyss. From far away, the alien. It may be from the depths of outer space, the deep sea, or the long dead past. The alien god s of Lovecraft are seen as evil by humans, but are not intrinsically evil. They have their own agenda, and regard humans as insects that get in their way. This is why Lovecraft is compared to Franz Kafka; humans are just not all that important. The horror of Lovecraft can also be genetic, from a corrupted bloodline. The gods of Lovecraft seem obsessed with mutiny wit humans to invade the human realm; they are so alien they cannot exist in the normal space time continuum. The most important god Lovecraft created was named Cthulhu.

The reason Cthulhu is the most important god Lovecraft created is because he is the most popular. For a god to be more than a dream image it must resonate with people.

In appearance Cthulhu has a humanoid form with the head of a squid or octopus; with a face full of writhing tentacles. Note, the comparison with the Egyptian gods and popular representation of demons. As with the Egyptian gods let us look to the head of Cthulhu to give us the clue to his personality: let us look into the face of the god in order to understand him. The octopus or squid head impresses us with his sheer alienness. The squid and octopus are both creatures of the depths. Unlike the Egyptian god Anubis with the head of a dog there is no familiarity. Cthulhu represents a new feeling projected out onto a god.

Lovecraft lived though World War I. This was a time when people began to recognize that technology was going to transform the world. World War I started out looking like most wars of history, with marching infantry and horse cavalry. It ended with tanks, air planes, and submarines. Impersonal technologies were changing the world. No longer did a soldier have to see an enemy to kill them, a gas canister fired by long range artillery killed people instead. With a new impersonality never before known to history, World War I destroyed the optimism of the nineteenth century. Now technology could kill as easily as it could help humankind. This is the feeling of Cthulhu, he is alien but he is also us. He is the projected feelings and emotions of humankind. Lovecraft's fiction is also about the transformation of individuals and groups by genetic meddling from outside forces. Is this fear of genetic meddling an intricate expression of the very real questions genetic engineering shall soon force upon us? Do we choose to become better, smarter, more beautiful versions of our present selves or do we truly become the spawn of Cthulhu?  

Appendices Part 1 and 2

The appendices Part 1 and 2 are a preview of my book "Prologue to Metaphysics", intended to be a preview of what will be published this summer. Comments, criticisms, even theological arguments are much welcomed.
-Eric Hoffmann

Appendix Part 2: On Alienation 2- Gnosticism to Marxism

“Why should not the historical childhood of humanity...exert an eternal charm as a stage that shall never recur? -Karl Marx

In the last part of the essay we observed that Plato gave humanity a new paradigm of its place in the cosmos. A paradigm that both caused humans to have greater alienation and greater abstraction. As we shall see, abstraction and alienation are much like the “scratch, itch, scratch” syndrome. As humans we try to reconcile our alienation with more abstraction , which then causes greater alienation. Now we must observe how this alienation from the mythological paradigm occurred, and how literacy was one of the main forces that caused the collapse of the mythological paradigm. Then, how literacy led to the conception of Plato's new paradigm of a divinized mental realm.

Protagoras split subject and object, but what does this mean? We think in scenarios. As we have seen from the main body of the “Prologue to Metaphysics”, the scenarios we think in do not come cut up or separated. The emotions and all the other qualities are a whole. In the mythological paradigm the scenario was believed to be the same with the world. There was no distinction, the qualities and emotions that the subject felt were believed to be in the world. There was not cutting up of which emotions or qualities were in the subject, and those that were in the object. In other words, there was no difference between the external and the internal. Emotions were believed to be in the world; one was not afraid of a crocodile, instead the crocodile was scary. The closest moderns can come to this type of thinking is to remember back to our childhood. Things were viewed in terms of scary or good and the world around us seemed illuminated. When Protagoras split subject and object there became a rupture between the individuals and the world they lived in. There now existed two scenarios instead of one: The internal and the external. Thus there was a scenario in the subject and another in the external world, which may or may not correspond.

This is the cause of alienation; the severing of the internal scenario from the external world. The most devastating aspect of this severing was that emotions were taken out of the external world. The material world was no longer numinous, instead matter became cold and dead.

How did literacy lead to this rupture of subject and object? Int he mythological paradigm humans were as much a part of the world as rocks, trees, and animals. We know most primal peoples feel themselves in partnership with the gods and nature; it is not the modern view of human against the world Story telling is the preferred method of transmitting knowledge in the mythological paradigm. Story telling is an external experience and a performance. Thus it is rooted in the time and place where it occurs. When the story is put into written form it can be accessed at any time or place. One can read a book wherever and whenever one wants. Thus the written word seemed to create another layer of consciousness or realm where the scenarios exist beyond time and space. We know humans are able to sublate scenarios and change elements in the scenario. We do this when we are trying to find either a better way or a way to accomplish some task. It should be obvious why this mechanism of imagination has survival value, in that it allows us to imagine a series of events happening differently, and provides a mechanism to bring about the desired changes. In other words, one can imagine a task being done a different way and one can try out the new scenario to find out if it works or not. It also seems to be an evolutionary mechanism to want our imagined scenarios to be actualized in the external world. The trouble with this mechanism is when the desired scenario becomes a political ideology and the group with the scenario tries to impose its desired scenario on other people.

Plato gave a metaphysical basis for this seeming layer of consciousness or realm triggered by the written word. When words are written they become eternal and beyond space and time. We have observed that the gods of the mythological paradigm can change; they are born, they die, they can even change the domains they are in charge of. When words are written in a book, the words gain a set definition. We have already observed words are triggers for imagined or actual experiences. When words are written they become set in the context in which they are used. We have also observed that Aristotle regarded the setting of definition to be of paramount importance. Through this process we have come up with a seeming layer of consciousness or realm with set definitions. These set definitions become standards or eternal Forms. Plato gave this layer of consciousness an independent existence. These eternal Forms exist independently of people and the material world. The reason Plato's theory was not dismissed as absurd is because literate people of the world were spending time in this layer of consciousness. If Plato's theory had not resonated with people it would have found no acceptance. This newly independent divinized mental realm became more real than the material world we all live in. To help us understand how alienating this was for people at the time- remember that homo sapiens have existed between one hundred thousand and two hundred thousand years; in all that time besides the last few thousand years, humans had been using some form of the mythological paradigm. Civilization is only five thousand years old. The entire history of civilization is the history of a paradigm crisis; how humans are going to deal with new technologies. With Plato's new paradigm, we observe a shift from the mythological paradigm to the top-down paradigm. Plato told us that the real world can only be accessed through the use of reason, and that the everyday sensible realm is less real than the divinized mental realm which Plato calls the intelligible. The intelligible realm is eternal. This new paradigm slowly filters down to the common people. This combined with the expansion of the Roman Empire, which had embraced the new paradigm brings about the first great wave of alienation. The response is religion.

There is no religion in the mythological paradigm, myth is simply how people relate to the world. The first religion to try to deal with alienation is Gnosticism. When we think of Gnosticism, we usually think of its bizarre imagery, but the core of the gnostic vision is alienation from the physical cosmos. Even the planetary intelligences have become evil Archons. The Archons are another impediment for the soul seeking to return to the hidden God. The hidden and immaterial God of Gnosticism had no connection with the material cosmos. The material cosmos is the creation of an evil or fallen deity; often associated with Plato's demiurge or the God of the Old Testament. The Gnostics took Plato's new paradigm seriously, making the real world immaterial and beyond time and space. Matter is regarded as not only being dead, but evil. How far have we come from the mythological paradigm where gods, humans and animals are all partners in creation. The core of the rejection of matter is the split between subject and object; humans can no longer project their emotions and hopes on the material realm. Instead they project their emotions and hopes on the intelligible realm. The goal of the Gnostics is to escape the material realm and rise to the immaterial and eternal realm. The material cosmos is now regarded as a prison from which to escape from. The message of Gnosticism is similar to Neoplatonism and Hinduism, to rise or go up to God. With the Jesus movement we get another vision of how to escape or heal human alienation from the material cosmos. To bring God down to Earth and re-divinize matter- this is the meaning of the second coming and the rule of the Christian millennium. This becomes the first large apocalyptic movement. The reason the believers of this vision become apocalyptic is that as they identify more and more with the scenario of God coming back to Earth, they become more and more excited about the prospect, and project their excitement upon the world. Thus they mistake their growing excitement with signs of a coming apocalypse. This projecting one's excitement on to the world is the basis of all apocalyptic movements. Christians waited for the return of Jesus for several centuries. Then St. Augustine shifted the rule of Christ and the new Jerusalem to after death. Thus the first Utopia becomes the the afterlife in heaven.

This sets the heresies of the Middle Ages.

Both the Cathars and the Waldodsensians are apocalyptic movements. The Catholic Church brutally puts down both heresies. Latin Christianity had struck a balance between the top-down paradigm and people's need to heal their rupture and alienation from the material cosmos. The re-divinzied cosmos is put off till the afterlife, creating hope for a better world. This narrative held more or less till the Reformation. Two events happen during the Reformation that give life to Utopian hopes.

The discovery of America with a native population still living in the mythological paradigm, and John Calvin's Geneva. Before entering into a discussion of how native American culture and Calvin's Geneva influenced modern Utopianism, we must first examine the theosophy of Jacob Bohme. While Calvin and American Indian culture influenced now to bring about Utopia, Bohme gave modern Utopianism its master scenario of what it is to live in Utopia. Bohme is not well known among the general public, but he is and was well known in occult circles. Bohme taught that the afterlife in heaven will be like the play of children. The return to childhood fantasy is the accepted scenario of what Utopia will be like. As was said before the closest a modern can come to imagining the mythological paradigm is to think back to childhood memories. Childhood is a time before the emotions have been taken out of the object and confined to the subject.

With the discovery of the Americas the people of Europe encountered a people still living in the mythological paradigm. Then the Europeans romanticized the American Indian: the noble savage. J.J. Rousseau is the best example of this romanticizing tendency in Europe. It is romanticized because the life of primal people is harsh, brutal and ended abruptly. This encounter with a primal people left the people of Europe longing for a simpler life. In Geneva, Calvin laid out the template for all the authoritarian regimes to come. Geneva had an articulated spy network that made sure everyone remained pure in ideology and actions. No dissent in theory or in practice was tolerated. Geneva was much like the communist states of the twentieth century. Th theological state became sole sovereign and parent to the people. The state prescribed what can be done and how it is to be done. When Johann Valentine Andreae visited Geneva, it inspired him to write “Christianopolis”, Andreae's Utopian fantasy of a perfect Christian state. Andreae is also pointed to by modern scholarship as the author of the Rosicrucian manifestos, where a brotherhood of physician magi arise and heal the world. Rosicrucianism became the main Utopian movement of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. To be called a Rosicrucian in England was the same as Bill O' Rielly calling someone a left wing loon today. It meant Utopian as does the title left wing loon. Utopianism became a current in European occultism, where it was expressed as the rule of the Paraclete. The “Paraclete” is the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Notice the tri-partied division of history. The Paraclete's rule of Christ on Earth is the final age of humanity. This was a staple of nineteenth century occultism. Saint Simon and others began to bring back Utopianism into mainstream thought, but before it could be brought back to respectability it had to be shorn of its supernatural aspects.

With the Industrial Revolution came a new wave of alienation. Money became the measure of all things. Humans and their most cherished desires became an abstract unit of money. There was no use for emotions, even the abstract qualities had been replaced by quantities. Someone needed to separate Utopianism from its occult associations and make it a religion without God. Here we see Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels.

Marxism is a combination of the thinking of Marx and Engels. Perhaps Engels' name should be mentioned first. Jenny Marx often referred to Engels as Marx's evil genius. Most of what we first think of as Marxism comes from Engels. The preordination of communism's triumph and its apocalyptic tone are right from Engels' Calvinist upbringing. It is ironic most of communism admirers call Marxism scientific; how many would call Calvinism scientific? Marx never believed in the labor theory¹ of value, he was even fond of making fun of it- even though it is the main premise of “The Capitol.” Many of Marx's admirers even claim he is the originator of the labor theory of value. Of course the real originator is David Ricardo. Marx's contribution to Marxism was the primitivism, that the division of labor leads to different social classes, so no one should be an expert in only one job. Everyone should be an amateur. Marx was an admirer of Rousseau and the idea of a return to a simpler age. He wanted to deindustrialize Europe back to a pastoral society. It was Engels and not Marx that wanted to abolish all private property.²

Marx was not opposed to the small artisan owning land as long as he had no employees. Between Marx and Engels we have the birth of modern Utopianism sheared of its supernatural aspects. The people can return to a childlike state while the civil state becomes the parent. Of course this is still the master scenario of the world wide left- in the perfect state no one will have any responsibilities, and so live like children at play. This return to childhood fantasy is the main theme of the modern leftist George Lakoff.

Utopianism, Marxism, and Gnosticism are all ways people have tried to heal their growing alienation from the growing abstraction of progress. The more abstraction we reach, the more alienation, we then try to reconcile the greater alienation with greater abstraction and so on.

The choice is ours to try to fight the process of greater abstraction and alienation by trying to escape into a return to childhood fantasy, or embrace the process and find out where it leads.

1See Karl Marx: “The Poverty of Philosophy”

2The dictum “Property is Theft” is often ascribed to many nineteenth century socialists but in fact was first said by the third century Gnostic Carpocrates.