Not sure where a piece like this sits in your hierarchy of personal preference, Justin, between the reluctant takemanship and the experimental metafiction, but this reader would be glad to see more of this kind of thing.
And I was reminded of a wonderful sermon I heard last summer from a Swedish priest in a tiny, middle-of-nowhere church. She was preaching on the lost sheep and she said, "It always seemed to me that the ratio was wrong. There are ninety-nine obedient sheep and one lost sheep? That just doesn't sound like humans as I know them. And then I found a commentary in one of the Church Fathers, suggesting that the flock is the whole of creation, and the lost sheep is the humans."
Curiously enough, I'd heard a similar thought from a First Nations man, not long before. "Among all the creatures," he said, "the humans are the only ones who forget how to be what we are, and so the task of the elders is to find ways of remembering."
Thank you for this great text Justin. I particularly enjoyed what I'd like to call your "history of hope" in the religious field, as well as the attention paid to the meaningful difference between "cosmos" and "space", which was, for me, a real eye opener. And it is refreshing to read a writer who calls himself a "christian philosopher". Apart from Ricoeur, I don't know many who express it so clearly. The whole creation explained from this personal point of view is very dynamic and interesting. Although the very concept of "sin" never ceased to puzzle me. Finally, the paintings by John Sloan added a beautiful touch to the whole essay. Sloan was interested by the start of cinema, as Monet was, but in a different way : Monet was attracted by light and movement, while Sloan seemed to favour the mixture of both worlds and arts, cinema and paintings. Sloan asks questions about the new technology, new points of view, echoing the ones we can read here in your essay.
A while back you wrote an essay on Bruno Latour, which was my introduction to him. I've been reading him recently and detect quite a bit of resonance here. Thanks for leading me in that direction!
I like the intellectual ambition of a perfectly overlapping magisteria, after all if different disciplines make claims of reality, it has to be the same reality they're referring to, and accepting to be tested against. But I'm not sure how possible it really is! The natural sciences thrive on repeated observations and guarded abstractions. Religion thrives on grand visions and subtle feelings, impelled by one-off extraordinary events. The modes of engagement are so different (not to mention those of esthetics, philosophy, etc.), that it's not really surprising that they hardly manage to talk to each other.
On the topic of the Fall, there's the related observation of an 'axial age' with its widespread thought that the world as we know it is somehow wrong. I like to think that it might have been the result of abstract moral thought looping on itself. The Fall talks of knowledge of good and bad, but that surely can't be about everyday norms and their enforcement, that is too old and basic. But what happens when a person, or a whole culture, starts wondering whether its own norms are good? Abstract thought turns upon itself in doubt, and glimpses a bottomless abyss. You lose the anchor of common usage, but there is no deeper, solid ground to be seen. The result could well be a kind of ethical anxiety that we were never prepared for, that only a full-on sense of 'revelation' could quell. And now in our post-traditional times, we're re-experiencing this same anxiety again.
In any case, we're in transitional times, but I'm also not buying the techno-futurist vision of Bostrom et al.
FWIW, I am most intuitively attracted to the idea that after death comes "reabsorption of the person into nature". Cf. Zhuangzi, 18.15-19:
"Zhuāngzi’s wife died. When Huìzi went to mourn her, he found Zhuāngzi squatting with his legs splayed, drumming on a tub and singing. Huìzi said, ‘You lived with her, raised children, and grew old. It’s enough not to bewail her death, but to drum on a tub and sing—isn’t that going too far?!’
Zhuāngzi said, ‘It’s not like that. When she first died, how could I not grieve like everyone else? But I contemplated how at first she originally had no life. Not only had she no life, she originally had no physical form. Not only had she no physical form, she originally had no vital breath. All mixed up amidst the indistinct vagueness, something altered and there was vital breath. The breath altered and there was physical form. The physical form altered and there was life. Now there’s been yet another alteration and she’s arrived at death. These alterations are to each other as the procession of the four seasons, spring and autumn, winter and summer. She was going off to sleep peacefully in a vast room, while I followed along bawling and wailing. I took myself to be incompetent concerning fate, so I stopped’." (Chris Fraser's translation)
I know, I know, that my memory and consciousness will not survive this last seasonal alteration, but I find the idea of "sleeping in the vast room of nature" beautiful nonetheless.
I was also thinking that Zhuangzi was also somehow relevant to this post! This quote sounds almost Stoic though. I guess in JSR's classification these all count as pagan, although maybe not of the barefooted kind!
The latest deus ex machina to save the day—a homeostasis of knowledge expressed through theomorphism—an AI that knows all we think, say, and do, will bring peace at last…if we let it. . . 🤔
Not sure where a piece like this sits in your hierarchy of personal preference, Justin, between the reluctant takemanship and the experimental metafiction, but this reader would be glad to see more of this kind of thing.
And I was reminded of a wonderful sermon I heard last summer from a Swedish priest in a tiny, middle-of-nowhere church. She was preaching on the lost sheep and she said, "It always seemed to me that the ratio was wrong. There are ninety-nine obedient sheep and one lost sheep? That just doesn't sound like humans as I know them. And then I found a commentary in one of the Church Fathers, suggesting that the flock is the whole of creation, and the lost sheep is the humans."
Curiously enough, I'd heard a similar thought from a First Nations man, not long before. "Among all the creatures," he said, "the humans are the only ones who forget how to be what we are, and so the task of the elders is to find ways of remembering."
Thank you for this great text Justin. I particularly enjoyed what I'd like to call your "history of hope" in the religious field, as well as the attention paid to the meaningful difference between "cosmos" and "space", which was, for me, a real eye opener. And it is refreshing to read a writer who calls himself a "christian philosopher". Apart from Ricoeur, I don't know many who express it so clearly. The whole creation explained from this personal point of view is very dynamic and interesting. Although the very concept of "sin" never ceased to puzzle me. Finally, the paintings by John Sloan added a beautiful touch to the whole essay. Sloan was interested by the start of cinema, as Monet was, but in a different way : Monet was attracted by light and movement, while Sloan seemed to favour the mixture of both worlds and arts, cinema and paintings. Sloan asks questions about the new technology, new points of view, echoing the ones we can read here in your essay.
And thank you for this comment, where you capture my thoughts well.
A while back you wrote an essay on Bruno Latour, which was my introduction to him. I've been reading him recently and detect quite a bit of resonance here. Thanks for leading me in that direction!
It sounds a bit as though you may be reinventing the doctrines of The Changing Light at Sandover!
I didn’t know The Changing Light at Sandover had doctrines, exactly, but I’m happy to do anything that calls James Merrill to mind in any way at all.
I like the intellectual ambition of a perfectly overlapping magisteria, after all if different disciplines make claims of reality, it has to be the same reality they're referring to, and accepting to be tested against. But I'm not sure how possible it really is! The natural sciences thrive on repeated observations and guarded abstractions. Religion thrives on grand visions and subtle feelings, impelled by one-off extraordinary events. The modes of engagement are so different (not to mention those of esthetics, philosophy, etc.), that it's not really surprising that they hardly manage to talk to each other.
On the topic of the Fall, there's the related observation of an 'axial age' with its widespread thought that the world as we know it is somehow wrong. I like to think that it might have been the result of abstract moral thought looping on itself. The Fall talks of knowledge of good and bad, but that surely can't be about everyday norms and their enforcement, that is too old and basic. But what happens when a person, or a whole culture, starts wondering whether its own norms are good? Abstract thought turns upon itself in doubt, and glimpses a bottomless abyss. You lose the anchor of common usage, but there is no deeper, solid ground to be seen. The result could well be a kind of ethical anxiety that we were never prepared for, that only a full-on sense of 'revelation' could quell. And now in our post-traditional times, we're re-experiencing this same anxiety again.
In any case, we're in transitional times, but I'm also not buying the techno-futurist vision of Bostrom et al.
FWIW, I am most intuitively attracted to the idea that after death comes "reabsorption of the person into nature". Cf. Zhuangzi, 18.15-19:
"Zhuāngzi’s wife died. When Huìzi went to mourn her, he found Zhuāngzi squatting with his legs splayed, drumming on a tub and singing. Huìzi said, ‘You lived with her, raised children, and grew old. It’s enough not to bewail her death, but to drum on a tub and sing—isn’t that going too far?!’
Zhuāngzi said, ‘It’s not like that. When she first died, how could I not grieve like everyone else? But I contemplated how at first she originally had no life. Not only had she no life, she originally had no physical form. Not only had she no physical form, she originally had no vital breath. All mixed up amidst the indistinct vagueness, something altered and there was vital breath. The breath altered and there was physical form. The physical form altered and there was life. Now there’s been yet another alteration and she’s arrived at death. These alterations are to each other as the procession of the four seasons, spring and autumn, winter and summer. She was going off to sleep peacefully in a vast room, while I followed along bawling and wailing. I took myself to be incompetent concerning fate, so I stopped’." (Chris Fraser's translation)
I know, I know, that my memory and consciousness will not survive this last seasonal alteration, but I find the idea of "sleeping in the vast room of nature" beautiful nonetheless.
I was also thinking that Zhuangzi was also somehow relevant to this post! This quote sounds almost Stoic though. I guess in JSR's classification these all count as pagan, although maybe not of the barefooted kind!
The latest deus ex machina to save the day—a homeostasis of knowledge expressed through theomorphism—an AI that knows all we think, say, and do, will bring peace at last…if we let it. . . 🤔
Thank you for putting this in words. I'm lucky that it has found me :-)
Bravo!
This is another brilliant essay.
“Science was supposed to deliver to us the final definitive account of the world as a great swarm of physical things.”
…and then, a bit later on, your point about each era taking its technology as a model for reality…
…both make me wonder if you’ve read Ian McGilchrist’s “The Matter With Things” (original working title: “There Are No Things”).