Edward Moore, S.T.L., PhD (c) 2014
I.
[T]he Valentinian Gnostics] say that some [people] are by nature good, and others by nature evil. The good are those who become capable of receiving the [spiritual] seed; the evil by nature are those who are never able to receive that seed.
. ~ Irenaeus of Lyons
Pessimism versus optimism: that old and cliched debate that pops up during dinner conversations as well as in freshman philosophy classes, even at bus stops and in supermarkets (as I can attest from personal experience). Is suffering the norm? Pleasure a mere accident? Or is this world -- and the persons in it -- inherently good, with 'evil' or badness being a relatively rare aberration? Or is evil an active force, something never to be eradicated -- unless one believes in divine intervention at some indeterminate future date?
Ancient Neoplatonists, like Proclus in the fifth century CE, insisted that all fully existing things (including humans) are essentially good (kalos), and that evil (kakos) is the absence of good (born of ignorance or lack of contemplation), and is not in itself a substance, but a non-entity, a lack of true being.[1] St. Augustine, in his Enchiridion, wasn't very far from Proclus when he declared that "the only cause of evil is the falling away from the unchangeable good of a being made good but changeable, first in the case of an angel, and afterwards in the case of man" (ch. 23). Of course, the main difference between the 'pagan' philosopher and the Christian theologian was the doctrine of "original sin." Augustine continued to explain the presence of evil, stating in chapter 27 that, after the fall of Adam and Eve, the "whole mass of the human race was under condemnation, was lying steeped and wallowing in misery, and was being tossed from one form of evil to another, and, having joined the faction of the fallen angels, was paying the well-merited penalty of that impious rebellion."[2] The position of Proclus did not make much of personal responsibility for the persistence of evil; it was, for him -- as for most Middle and Neo-Platonists -- a metaphysical or ontological condition of the material cosmos, unavoidable but controllable, through the exercise of philosophical virtue: theoria, hesukhazo,etc. Augustine, however, and the mainstream Christian tradition in general, placed the responsibility for purging this world of evil squarely on the shoulders of humanity, who were and are free to accept the grace of God through Christ. It was the loss of goodness on the part of humanity, through the misuse of free will,[3] that brought about evil; and according to Platonizing theologians like Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, evil is a temporary condition, to be rectified in the eskhaton, the "end of days."
Later in the Christian Platonic tradition, St. Maximus the Confessor viewed the entire cosmos as having fallen into moral decay, and called upon enlightened persons to act as stewards of the cosmos, engaging with all living things -- animals and plants included -- for the purpose of deifying this fallen world.[4]
[T]he soul is a middle being between God and matter and has powers that can unite it with both, that is, it has a mind that links it with God and senses that link it with matter. (Maximus, Ambiguum 10, 1193D, tr. L. Thunberg)
The cosmic dimensions of Maximus' theology can be traced back to Origen and, to an extent, to St. Gregory of Nyssa, whose crypto-Origenism is expressed in this passage from his treatise On the Soul and the Resurrection: "We shall be like God so far that we shall always contemplate the Beautiful in Him. ... God will thus be 'all in all'; yet the loved one’s form will then be woven, though into a more ethereal texture, of the same elements as before."[5]
Maximus, as I have shown in previous writings, took this theosis doctrine (deification or divinization of the human soul) to a nearly Monophysite extreme. Maximus wrote, in his Chapters on Knowledge (2.88), that in salvation "only God shines forth through the body and soul when their natural features are transcended in overwhelming glory."[6] Such extreme Platonic mysticism, finding a home deep within the confines of the most elaborate and philosophically astute Christian theology ever developed (I refrain from discussing Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite here, only because he is relatively well-known), may seem strange -- even offensive -- to some devout Christians; to others, it may seem like a glorious melding of two noble traditions. Either way, the question remains: Does it make any existential sense?
The Gnostics of the first few centuries of the Christian era were, in my view, more clear-sighted in their judgment of, and attitudes towards, their fellow human beings and their ultimate destiny. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear cannot, in good faith, deny that this world is primarily a place of suffering. We are relieved occasionally by snatches of beauty, whether in nature or in art; we are given solace through love which, alas!, often ends in heartbreak; we find comfort in some notion of legacy, be it through offspring or our life's work (be it what it may) ... Yet the absurdity of existence often falls upon me, not like a hammer-blow, but like a soft shroud inviting sleep.
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
That Time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
~ Shakespeare
II.
Hear the cry of the ... mother at the hour of giving birth, see the struggle of the dying at the last moment: and say then whether that which begins and that which ends like this can be designed for pleasure.
~ Kierkegaard
One of my favorite analogies for human life is that given by some anonymous Anglo-Saxon bard, or scop, from the seventh or eighth century CE. That singer of poetry, and obviously no mean philosopher, likened our life to the flight of a sparrow through a mead hall on a dark and blustery night. The bird entered the hall at one window, experienced a brief moment of light and warmth, and then exited by the other window, out again into the wild and windy loneliness.
Blaise Pascal likened our existence to that of prisoners changed in a dungeon. Each day one of the group was taken away, never to return. The prisoners spent the remainder of the day wondering who would be next. And so it went ... The life of humanity.
Speculation about our origins excites the minds of the curious, and has given rise to many branches of science that have deepened life's mysteries, given us fodder for thought, as it were, and caused a humanism to emerge (this going back, of course, to the Renaissance) that is not only analytical and empirical, but also aesthetic, emotional, and constitutive of an authentically moral life. By that I mean a life based not on fear of divine retribution as an impetus to 'goodness' or 'virtue'; rather, a life based on appreciation of the accomplishments of our fellows, and the splendor that 'mere humanity' has brought into this world. Yet the more splendor we produce, the more anxiety we feel over the inevitable end of our species. As I write this, I am listening to Beethoven's Missa solemnis. It is inconceivable, to me, when I hear the Agnus Dei prepare the sonic space for the sublimity of the Dona nobis pacem, that such glory will ever pass from the earth.
Yet all I see around me is moral and intellectual decay -- or worse, indifference. By this I do not mean licentiousness, perversion, promiscuity, greed, etc. ... These vices have been with us since the beginning, and aren't going anywhere any time soon. What I am referring to is the lack of deep insight, the routing of curiosity in favor of the speedy attainment of dubious status. Morality, properly speaking, is the manner in which we engage with the contents of our minds. Are we delving into those roiling depths, trekking into those dark corners where our personality deposits difficult or uncomfortable noemata? If the answer is no, then we cannot claim to be a moral being. If we follow the ancient dictum of the philosophers, "know thyself," then we are on the track of morality. If this impulse to self-knowledge arises in the dark cell of our inwardness, even our loneliness and lack of love, then the value -- I believe! -- is incalculable. For some people, of course, an external compulsion is required: religion, family, a sense of duty to community. Then we have entered the realm of ethics. The paradox is this: It is possible to be an ethical person (aiding one's community, caring for family, friends, being a good spouse, a reliable employee, etc.) and yet be morally bankrupt. I think this is what the Gnostics had in mind when they divided humanity into three types: the "spirituals" (pneumatikoi), the (literally) "soulish" (psukhikoi), and finally the "materials" (hulikoi). The first are those, I believe (when we sufficiently de-mythologize the Gnostics' mytho-poetical style of philosophy), who have understood both the splendor of their minds and the residue of inhumanity that must be scraped away by insight and self-discipline; the second are those who live outwardly, ignoring the base instincts and unworthy appetites that distract one from the intellectual life, yet are still concerned about their reputation, and perhaps even get an inkling of authentic existence through the salvific experience of love; the third group, however, are the ones beyond hope: they react without thinking, insight is foreign to them, and even mocked -- violence, aggressive sex, mind-altering substances, and the acquisition of material wealth is all they live for, and desire no more.
The uncomfortable truth, however, is that we, each of us, contain something of these three types, no matter how intellectual, moral, and ethical we may be. This is why Plato, in the Republic, refers to the human being as a "tripartite beast": the intellectual part of us is the true human being, the passionate part is called a lion, and the part of us that generates the various base appetites he calls a dragon. It is the role of reason, according to Plato, to force a balance between these parts of the soul, and thereby form a well-rounded, moral and ethical person. The Gnostics took the individual "soul in conflict with itself" and transferred it to the mass of humanity, dividing the human world into three distinct types. Who was right?
These reflections make me think of a poem of Yeats, especially the lines: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity." This statement applies to all times and to all peoples. Never was there a time, not even fifth-century Athens, when the life of the intellect was given primacy. Art has flourished more vigorously in some ages than others, and even the so-called Dark Ages weren't entirely devoid of the light of learning. But as high as we climb, in what Spengler called our "Faustian spirit," we only end up leaving, as a legacy, monuments "besmear'd by sluttish time." We enter this world in a burst of pain and blood, and leave it (if we are fortunate enough to die 'naturally') a dessicated rind of our self. No amount of self-deprecation, no physicist or evolutionary biologist telling us that we are energy and mass that just happened, one day, to start thinking, no irritating optimist encouraging us to admire a sunrise, can take away the sense that human life begins and ends in meaninglessness and despair. And we would not despair if there was not something, deep inside of us, that knows, with the power not of mind but of emotion, that we are meant for more. Therefore, I disagree with Horace Walpole, who famously said: "The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel." It is quite the opposite. The tragedy of life is that too few people think, but rather laugh as they prostitute their minds to the paltry grub of this mutilated world.
III.
All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed,
And luckier.
~ Walt Whitman
It would be an example of ill-breeding, I suppose, to end this little essay of mine on a bitterly pessimistic note. Whitman was a poet with a rare gift: he was able to compose lines that suggested loftiness and a celebration of the human experience, yet a closer look sometimes betrays a severely embattled person, struggling to "wring lilies from the acorn." Beauty surprises, beckons, inspires, and sometimes even saves. Occasionally it scorns and transforms, like the demoness in Keats's Lamia. Whitman sought beauty in himself, and by so doing, took his personal journey, literally, to the front lines of terrible conflict. Perhaps that was his salvation. Speaking of salvation ...
St. Clement of Alexandria, who defined the "Gnostic" as one having insight into him- or herself, and into creation in general, through deep contemplation of God's teachings (not to be confused with the Gnostics of whom I have been writing in the first two sections of this essay), taught an acceptance of the natural order of things as primarily pedagogical. He wrote, in his Stromateis:
[T]hough disease, and accident, and what is most terrible of all, death, come upon the Gnostic, he remains inflexible in soul,—knowing that all such things are a necessity of creation, and that, also by the power of God, they become the medicine of salvation, benefiting by discipline those who are difficult to reform; allotted according to desert, by Providence, which is truly good. (Clement, Stromateis, VI.11 [ANF volume 2])
Clement was, to my knowledge, the first Christian theologian to refer to Plato and other virtuous 'pagans' as "Christians before Christ." Natural revelation, as St. Paul discussed, is the idea that certain people have the law inscribed in their hearts due to some inclination towards peace, beauty, and love, that cannot be accounted for by nature or nurture ...
Such people possess artistic souls, for whom love is the highest attainment in this life, and beauty its greatest expression. The greatest artists are the greatest lovers. And the greatest philosophers are the ones who wonder why that is so.
Notes:
1. See his Treatise on the Subsistence of Evil. [Surviving only in a mediaeval Latin translation which is itself an Arabic translation from the Greek original. -- EM] Translated T. Taylor, in Proclus: Ten Doubts Concerning Providence, and On the Subsistence of Evil (Ares Publishers 1980).
2. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (ed. Philip Schaff) [hereafter abbreviated NPNF] series 1, volume 3.
3. As St. Gregory of Nyssa neatly summarizes in his Great Catechism: "Moral beauty was to be the direction in which his [man's] free will was to move; but then he was deceived, to his ruin, by an illusion of that beauty" (from his Summary of Chapters XXI., XXII., XXIII [NPNF, series 2, volume 5]).
4. See Edward Moore (2004), "The Christian Neoplatonism of St. Maximus the Confessor" (in Quodlibet: http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/moore-maximus.shtml).
5. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection, "Argument" [NPNF, series 2, volume 5]. Cp. Origen, De Principiis, III.6.1 ff., in Ante-Nicene Fathers (ed. Schaff) [hereafter ANF] volume 4.
6. Translated Berthold. Cf. Moore (2004), op. cit.
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