And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfilment.TS Eliot: Little Gidding
There is now for me a quite simple, solitary, almost reclusive life, almost ended; as if the Cosmos – Wyrd – has contrived to place me exactly where I need to be: in, with, such a situation and surroundings as makes me remember the unwise deeds of those my pasts, and which placement offers more opportunities for one fallible human being to learn, especially about how people are not as, for many decades, I with my arrogance and abstractive purpose assumed.
For now I of the aged poor have no purpose, no ideation, to guide; no assumptions founded on, extrapolated from, some causal lifeless abstraction. No politics; no religion; not even any faith. There is instead only the living of moments, one fluxing as it fluxes to, within, the next. No dreams of Destiny; no supra-personal goals; no desires of self to break the calm of day and night. Only walks, and a being, alone to mingle with weather, Life, Nature as one so mingles when happiness is there inside unsupported by some outer cause or expectation of or from another.
Few possessions, belongings, as if I am a Gentleman of The Road again, but briefly staying here in this some un-heated house; or perhaps some almost-monk of one half-remembered paien apprehension, with neither monastery nor home, who feels now the hidden meaning of life: that this is all that there is or should be, this peace brought because there is a freedom from desiring desires. Someone sad, burdened by a deep naked knowledge of himself, but who and now, too sensitive perhaps, smiles too often and tries to hide the burgeoning tears of joy that sometimes seem to so betake him unawares,
as when that warm late Summer’s evening I chanced up that family, there, where a town’s centre gave way to greenful Park and when, Sun descending, young mother helped her daughter light that paper lantern. Such joy, such joy, upon those faces, there, as slight breeze carried high perhaps some wistful wish, away.
As when before that walk in rainy woods alone I chanced to smile as dog with youthful lady, towed, came via pavement to pass this old man by. Such brief contact of courteous words exchanged, a smile returned, and off they went their way, their world, to leave only a glimpse, only a glimpse of futures-present-past – and her perfume, lingering, there. I – melded with tree, sky, soil, increasing rain – feeling such a burden of promise there. And there was nothing left to do but walk-on, hoping that someone might, did, treasure the goodness captured there, presenced within one more so mortal human life…
I, now, someone – who unlike so many millions world-wide – fortunate indeed to have shelter, food adequate to feed his gauntness for a day; clothes sufficient to keep-in warmth; and health – though agely ageing, slowly fading – enough to keep him fending for, and fendful of, himself. There could be more; there was far more, but that seems long ago; unneeded now. For this is all that there is, this happiness in moments when – needs fulfilled – no lust for change, having laid in wait within, bursts forth bringing thus such breaking difference as so often causes two, more, far more, humans to break or drift apart.
Emotions governed, basic needs supplied, with memories – of lives – sufficientized for years of daily dreams, what more remains, becomes required? Little, so very little, except we being human, external still, do still so cause such suffering, so much – for what?
For there has come upon me these past few years, of this so simple living, a certain understanding. Of how I am never, was never, ever, totally alone, being only one briefly born connexion. Of just how easy it is to be content, breeding happiness in oneself and others, and how even easier it is to lapse, to fail, to fall; to let feelings, abstractions, guide, control, as when in the past I would breed discontent within myself, with loved ones and others, never satisfied with this or that. For happiness, I presumed, lay in better things – a better home some better place; better food clothes holidays finer wine; that other woman, there; and, perhaps far worse, lay with better way of life for those unknown, a way wrought by deeds done, by pursuit of lifeless ideation as if I, that temporary self, might have made some difference and that those causal shells had or might be given meaning or even by violence, blood, become somehow gifted with the breath of life.
So little self-control. So much love, hopes, lives destroyed; and how much suffering I by hubris caused. So much – for what? Some selfish passing pleasure; no external change that lasted; that ever could, would, last. Since real change, discovered, is only and ever within ourselves, alone – there, interior, ready to gently touch another, one gift of one person personally known so that only now perhaps I am with, of, the numen living.
Thus I am returned to sometimes where I so briefly was, my purpose altered, far beyond the goals I in arrogance so vainly figured. For I am nothing special, unique; only some half-remembered vague aspirations of this age, whose words, life – as so many – perhaps uncovers divinity as the divine but whose past concerned creating illusion, illusions, in expiation of a humanity then so lost.
Returned, as when I with tent, wandered, roamed. Returned, as those sunny warm days that Summer in Leeds when – before a monastery claimed me – I would walk barefoot inanely smiling so pleased to be free, young, alive. Returned as when, bus-arrived, love caught me and she that April day embraced me with such hope, such gentle hope, such simple sharing dreams that remembrance now brings so many tears of sadness. For I in selfishness broke them.
Returned as that day – so many many years on – when love for me lived within another as we two so slowly walked some Worcester streets…
How foolish, how so very foolish, to have lost such times, such love, by lust for change, by such selfish stupidity as lived within me still and still until years years further on that other dying came in May to almost break betake me.
Now, I am only someone living – a simple living – with a certain fallible inner understanding, born of suffering, deaths, distress, despair. So there is so aptly now only slow quiescent walks alone and such memories, such memories, as I hope I hope have made a better man.
David Myatt
August 2011 ce
Outside, rain and the un-warm wind of December, with no Sun – no Summer – to warm and bring that joy of wakeing to see the sky deep full of blue so that one smiling is eager still, as youth again, to egress forth toward the sea.
Now I in a rainy month – and approaching my three score and ten – possess both an internal and an external knowing of just what the passing of earthly Time doth to we fragile biological beings, for:
I am an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces
And yet the flow of Life flows on, here – there – when the outer husk, failing, dies, so that I reminded of what I pastly wrote to a friend, having now been so gifted with the gifts of one more solar year:
What, therefore, remains? What is there now, and what has there been? One genesis, and one ending, of one nexion whose perception by almost all others is now of one who lived and who wrote ἐξ αἰνιγμάτων.
τό θ᾽ ὑπέργηρων φυλλάδος ἤδηκατακαρφομένης τρίποδας μὲν ὁδοὺς
στείχει, παιδὸς δ᾽ οὐδὲν ἀρείων
ὄναρ ἡμερόφαντον ἀλαίνει. [1]
For there does seem much worth now, a special new species of slowly-joy, to so and so shadowly wander, supported by a stick, since Time itself, unmeasured, stills and one is able to feel the numinous as if flows through, with, such presencings of Life as one meets, greets, passes. As when that other day I walked to wander – never now far from home – and that young unknown stocky man, girlfriend beside and smiling, bade me compliments of the season. Such life there, such potential there, in both, and one was glad to be alive, still, even if no Sun broke forth in warmth. Or glad as when in slow walk in woods nearby wind shook trees to breathe again one’s wordless connexion with this living Earth, so strong so strong it became as if one could go back there to where one’s loved ones lived, unbroken by such selfish deeds as might have saved them or at least made happier their so short time on Earth. And I was so happy, so happy there remembering those good times, shared, with them.
There has thus grown, within because of age, both a new knowing of how needful is our need for compassion and of a new if sad perception: of just how many many centuries we forgetful biological beings may need. But all I can do now is walk, remembering, hoping: my words, my dreams, a bridge.
For I am no enigma, my life bared by writings such as this. For words live on to tell just one more story, of redemption. But who will read them when life lives within this husk no more?
David Myatt
December 2011 CE
[1] Thus, he of great Age, his foliage drying up
And no stronger than a child, with three feet to guide him on his travels,
Wanders – appearing a shadow in the light of day.
Aesch. Ag 79-82
The Day’s Consecration: A painting by Richard Moult
Below is a link to the revised (eleventh) edition of my autobiography, Myngath, subtitled Some Recollections of A Wyrdful Life, published November 2011 CE.
Myngath
The Autobiography of David Myatt
(pdf)
Image Credit: To The Distant One, a painting by Richard Moult
For thousands of years, we human beings have been aware – or could discover, for ourselves – a certain wisdom, a particular conscious knowledge concerning our own nature.
From Aeschylus to Sophocles to Siddhārtha Gautama, from the mythos of the Μοῖραι [1] to the postulate of samsara, from the notion of Fate to the Sermon on the Mount, and beyond, we have had available to us an understanding of Δίκα [2]: of how we human beings are often balanced between honour and dishonour; balanced between ὕβρις and ἀρετή; between our animalistic desires, our passions, and our human ability to be noble, to achieve excellence; a balance manifest in our known ability to be able to control, to restrain, ourselves, and thus find and follow a middle way, of ἁρμονίη.
For several Aeons, this understanding, this middle way, was of two essential things. First, of how such a middle way enabled us to avoid causing or contributing to that suffering which our own πάθει μάθος – our learning from the sorrows of personal experience – informed us was unwise because contrary to the natural balance (the numinosity) that such πάθει μάθος intimately revealed to us. Second, of how this balance – this self control – was preferable for us, as individuals, since to upset this balance – for example to go beyond the limits established by our ancestral customs – was: (1) to invite a personal retribution (or misfortune) from the gods; or (2) to invite punishment from a supreme deity; or (3) condemn us to be reborn again and thus have to toil yet again to obtain reward (karma) enough to progress in accord with the bhavacakra.
As Sophocles wrote, over two thousand years ago – ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον [3]. That is, ὕβρις (hubris) plants the τύραννον, although the sense of τύραννος here is not exactly what our fairly modern term tyrant is commonly regarded as imputing. Rather, it refers to the intemperate person of excess who is so subsumed with some passion or aim or a lust for power that they go far beyond the due, the accepted, bounds of behaviour and thus exceed the limits of or misuse whatever authority they have been entrusted with. Thus do they, by their excess, by their disrespect for the customs of their ancestors, by their lack of reasoned, well-balanced, judgement [σωφρονεῖν] offend the gods, and thus, to restore the balance, do the Ἐρινύες take revenge. For it is in the nature of the τύραννος that they forget, or they scorn, the truth, the ancient wisdom, that their lives are subject to, guided by, Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες.
Λυκοῦργος and the Ἐρινύες
Thus the knowledge that our pride, our arrogance, our uncontrolled desires, our lack of σωφρονεῖν, are the genesis of the disruption of the natural balance – both within ourselves, and exterior to ourselves.
Or, as Dante Alighieri expressed it in the terms of one particular mythos:
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose guile,
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived
The mother of mankind.
The received wisdom was personal avoidance of the error of ὕβρις because we, we individuals and possibly our immediate family, would suffer: either in this life (by for example receiving bad luck, inviting misfortune, or having some tyrant foisted upon our community) or in some afterlife we believed in. Hence what we would now describe as ethical behaviour, for individuals – our control of our instincts, our desires – essentially derived from something supra-personal, such as ancestral customs, some belief in some gods, some faith in some supreme deity, or acceptance of some postulate such as karma or nirvana. In the terms of Christian theology, the belief being that we need to replace the guidance, the temptations, the guile, of The Infernal Serpent with the guidance, the love, of Christus Redemptor.
More recently, we human beings have committed a new kind of ὕβρις. Or more correctly perhaps, our ὕβρις has acquired a new form, new manifestations. That is, we have manufactured causal abstractions – ideals, ideas, -isms and -ologies – which we have identified with and/or striven to attain, both for ourselves, and for others; so that it has become apposite to write that causal abstractions are the genesis of suffering, for both ourselves, and for others. because such abstractions disrupt the natural balance of Life [ψυχή]: the life within us, within other sentient beings, and the Life that is presenced to us as Nature, leading thus to a loss of ἁρμονίη. This kind of ὕβρις also plants the τύραννος, but the impersonal kind of τύραννος that lives in the practical implementation of such abstractions, internally and externally – so that, for instance, we allow ourselves to become subjects of some -ism or some -ology (whether described as or deemed to be political, social, or religious) or we become actual subjects of some impersonal entity such as a State, controlled, constrained, by laws, taxation, and the ever-present threat of the use of force by the ‘officially appointed’ minions of such an entity, so that such an impersonal entity has, in all but name, usurped our older gods, our Μοῖραι, our God, our karma.
Thus, the reality now is often of either (1) obedience to the dictat of some entity such as The State, our government, or the mandates of some supra-national body such as the United Nations, because to dissent would render us liable to punishment; or (2) a belief in – an acceptance of – such entities as the provider of ‘good fortune’, of ‘justice’ [4], and of prosperity, for us and our family.
Here, the threat of exterior, practical, punishment – the always present threat of imprisonment, the use of force against us by such entities as the Police, and ultimately the armed forces – has largely replaced the interior threat we hitherto might have imposed upon ourselves by our acceptance of such things as retribution from the gods, or punishment from some supreme deity. That is, ethical behaviour, for individuals still essentially derives from something supra-personal involving an us and them, the others.
The Pursuit of Wisdom
Despite these approaches, ancient and modern – that is, despite the ethical behaviour these two approaches encouraged and even demand, or tried to encourage – human beings, en masse, do not seem to have significantly changed. Thus, the world is still replete with individuals who cannot control their desires and who thus commit dishonourable deeds, the error of ὕβρις. For every minute of every day, year following year, human beings are murdered, brutalized, bullied, raped, injured, tortured, humiliated, abused – just as deception, theft, robbery, fraud, and malfeasance, occur with monotonous regularity.
The world is still rife with bloody murderous conflict, except that new causes of conflict have been added to the ancient ones of personal greed, personal dishonour, and the desires of some τύραννος or other. For the new entities that we have manufactured – such as nation-States – have themselves caused suffering, of a magnitude arguably greater than caused by some τύραννος and far greater than could be caused by individuals unable to control their dishonourable urges, their greed. For example, conflicts between the modern nation-States of the West, and internal conflict within such States, have resulted in the deaths of an estimated one hundred million human beings in just over a century [4].
Thus, it seems as if the ancient wisdom of Δίκα has remained the preserve of a minority, and thus that the accumulated πάθει μάθος of millennia – manifest in such things as literature, Art, music, ancestral culture, and spiritual Ways of Life – has little or no relevance for or been a significant influence upon the majority, even in those modern States which have had, for nigh on a century, compulsory education for children. [5]
Since murderous conflict, the error of ὕβρις, and a lack of reasoned judgement, and thus suffering, remain – despite a variety of middle ways over millennia to divert us from such things, and despite numerous individuals over millennia, in their own ways, understanding Amr bil Maroof wa Nahi anil Munkar [6] – it is perhaps pertinent to consider if there is, or might be, a better expression of that wisdom, that particular conscious knowledge, concerning our own nature and how we might find and express that balance which enables us to restrain ourselves and avoid the error of ὕβρις.
That is, is there a Way which does not mean or imply a belief in some ancient mythos, or demand of us some faith in some supreme deity and some afterlife, or involve us in obedience to some supra-personal entity whose authority ultimately derives from the threat or the use of force or acceptance of some suffering-causing -ism or -ology whose nature is enshrined in the cliché that the abstraction of happiness, the abstraction of the welfare, the abstraction of the security, the abstraction of the prosperity, of the majority is more important than the fate of some individuals, and that thus for such abstractions to be obtained, in some (mythical) future the suffering of some or even of many individuals is an ‘acceptable price’ to pay?
In brief, a Way which does not of necessity involve us in considering matters as we have hitherto almost invariably done: by whether or not we, as individuals, are rewarded or punished (in this life, or in some believed in afterlife). That is, which does not of necessity posit some personal abstraction for us to accept or believe in – be such an abstraction some personal prosperity or some peace (in this or some next life such as Heaven or Jannah), or some supreme deity, or some notion such as nirvana or even some mythos such as Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες.
For such things – and the middle ways derived from them in the past – are, correctly appreciated and thence understood, only pointers toward a deeper truth, which is that of the error of the self, and an error revealed by the nature of the causality implicit in this individual desire to seek some reward and avoid punishment, or, in Buddhism, avoid the periodicity of samsara.
Even in Buddhism, where this truth concerning the self has been dis-covered, revealed, in a rather rational manner, the practical reality for the majority is of individual striving, and the assumption of a goal for individuals. Hence the reason of the individual doing what they do – meditation, giving alms, striving to avoid causing suffering, for example – because they themselves seek liberation, nirvana; because they are concerned about their karma. Thus there is still a judgement based on the concept of individual reward. Hence, also, the striving for a posited goal, a striving exemplified by the bhavacakra.
The Error of The Self and The Natural Balance of Empathy
The error of the self is the error of a simple cause-and-effect predicated on the separation of living beings and upon a separate goal which the separated individual could attain by a given causal process.
Thus, and for example in Buddhism, the goal is nirvana and the process the Eight-Fold Path; in Christianity the goal is Heaven and the process is acceptance of Christus Redemptor; in Islam the goal is Jannah and the process is complete submission to Allah (and acceptance of Quran, Sunnah, and Shariah); in Hellenic culture the goal was ἀρετή (and thence a good place in Hades) by means such as avoidance of ὕβρις. In modern times, for the plethora of agnostics and atheists, the goal is happiness/prosperity by means such as The State, whether actively or passively accepted [7].
This assumption of self – of the separation of living beings, and such a causal process – is inherent in most if not all hitherto spiritual Ways which posit and require a praxis, and in the modern abstraction of The State, and also forms the basis of the ethics deriving from such Ways as well as the ethics of that modern abstraction. That is, either (1) The State defines what is moral, by means such as enforceable laws, or (2) such spiritual Ways posit what is moral based on their particular given goal and their given causal process and praxis of achieving that goal.
Why is this assumption of self an error? Because of empathy, which uncovers the nature of Being and beings that has hitherto been obscured by such spiritual Ways and by abstractions such as The State. For empathy – the innate (if still little used and underdeveloped) human faculty of συμπάθεια [συν-πάθος] – reveals the separation of living beings for the assumption, the limitation, it is.
For empathy reveals the a-causal nature (the numinous nature) of living beings – and the nexions that they are to Being, thus establishing a human ethics independent of the hitherto assumed cause-and-effect of separate human beings striving for some assumed goal by means of some given causal process.
Empathy thus establishes a new (or possibly a re-expressed older) understanding of our human nature – both existing and potential – and a new (or possibly a re-expressed older) knowing of how we might avoid ὕβρις and thus the suffering that ὕβρις brings. This understanding and knowing is of the numinous manifest in the indivisibility of living beings: of how the joy, the pain, the sorrow, the suffering, the very life, of what has hitherto been causally perceived as the-separate-others is in essence our joy, pain, sorrow, suffering, and life. For this, this natural balance, this ἁρμονίη, is what empathy, in the living moment, reveals – or rather what empathy by its very nature naturally and wordlessly and effortlessly moves us toward: what empathy brings-into-being.
Hence the empathic human being avoids Al-Munkar (and thus avoids causing suffering), and inclines toward Al-Maruf, just by being human – by using the faculty of empathy in the same way the faculties of sight, smell, taste, touch are used. That is, naturally as wordless perceptions of what-is, and not of what is assumed or believed. There is thus no naming and no ideation necessary or involved in this use of empathy; only a living in the transient moment. For it is not correct to give names to – to denote by names and terms – some-things, some existents; since such naming, such denoting, implies the causality of separation between subject and object, and it is this causality that empathy transcends.
There are therefore no given or assumed causal means – no techniques, methods, or teachings, no praxis, no texts, no faith in some-thing or some-one – as there is no goal, assumed and/or to be striven for. There is only empathy, and its development and use: only the empathy of the living changeful transient moment, and us-as-Being (The Numen, the acausal Unity, The Cosmos) presenced, temporarily, as one living nexion (one being) on one planet orbiting one star in one Galaxy.
How then to develope, to cultivate, empathy? By letting-go of all abstractions (all -isms and all -ologies). By ceasing to denote living beings by causal terms but instead perceiving them wordlessly in the moment of our perception. By ceasing to prejudge other human beings, either by some outer perceived form/appearance or by some assumption or assumptions manufactured or made by others – and instead relating to them as hitherto newly-known beings in the natural immediacy of the moment of our meeting with them. By placing ourselves in The Cosmic Perspective – that is, by an acceptance of ourselves as but one fragile fallible microcosmic nexion only temporarily presenced on one planet orbiting one star in one Galaxy in a Cosmos of billions of Galaxies. This is the essence of wu-wei – a knowing, a feeling, of Being; a knowing, a feeling, of The Numen, the acausal Unity, the Cosmos itself; and a knowing, a feeling, once described in that ancient wisdom termed Tao, and yet which even then, as now, could not and cannot be described by or contained within that one, or any, particular term.
David Myatt
2011 CE
Notes
[1]
τίς οὖν ἀνάγκης ἐστὶν οἰακοστρόφος.
Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες
Who then compels to steer us?
Trimorphed Moirai with their ever-heedful Furies!Aeschylus (attributed), Prometheus Bound, 515-6
[2] In respect of Δίκα, see for example my Principle of Δίκα, and also my essay Quid Est Veritas?
[3] Oedipus Tyrannus, 872
[4] The modern notion of an impersonal abstract ‘justice’ – said to be obtainable by the making and enforcement of laws – has replaced the older, wiser, personal notion of the natural balance which was manifest in Δίκα and in the Ἐρινύες.
[4] For example, sixty million people in the Second World War, sixteen million in the First World War, and over twenty million in the Soviet Union mostly as a result of Stalin. Estimates of the number of people killed by the Mongol tyrant Genghis Khan range from a possible fifteen to twenty million, to a speculative eighty million.
[5] For an overview of the failure of the modern State, refer to my polemical essay, The Failure and Immoral Nature of The State.
[6]
وَلْتَكُن مِّنكُمْ أُمَّةٌ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى الْخَيْرِ وَيَأْمُرُونَ بِالْمَعْرُوفِ وَيَنْهَوْنَ عَنِ الْمُنكَرِ وَأُولَـٰئِكَ هُمُ الْمُفْلِحُونَ
(Quran, 3:104) ” Let there rise among you a group Calling others to Al-Maruf [the honourable] and forbidding Al-Munkar [what is dishonourable], for these are the ones who will achieve success [Jannah].” Interpretation of Meaning
[7] Such happiness/prosperity of the majority – together with what is termed their ‘security’ – may be said to be the stated or the assumed raison d’etre of The State. Given that in modern times most human beings live in areas where States have assumed or obtained ‘authority’ over them, by whatever means, it might well be argued that The State with its aims and goals (based on some and various -isms and -ologies, including that of δημοκρατία) has, for those uncommitted to spiritual Ways, become an idealized weltanschauung supplanting more spiritual Ways, and a weltanschauung when not actively affirmed is at least passively accepted by a majority of such uncommitted, non-religious, ones – and even by many religious ones in agreement with that modern abstract division between State and Religion which many supporters and/or theorists of The State assume exists or believe should exist.
This item is covered by the Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0) License
A Brief Numinous View of Religion, Politics, and The State
The Numinous View
The essence of the numinous view – of the ethical way posited by the Philosophy of The Numen – is empathy and thus the acausal (the affective and effecting) connexion we, as individuals, are to all life, sentient and otherwise, with empathy being the foundation of our conscious humanity.
The practical criteria which empathy implies is essentially two-fold: the criteria of the cessation of suffering, and the criteria of the individual, personal, judgement in the immediacy of the moment. For the Philosophy of The Numen, these two criteria manifest the natural character of rational, conscious, empathic, human beings and thus express the nature of our humanity and of human culture, and which nature is manifest in a practical way in compassion and in personal honour.
Hence these two criteria are used, by The Numinous Way – by the Philosophy of The Numen - to judge our actions, our personal behaviour, and also all the abstractions we manufacture or may manufacture and which thus affect us, as individuals. Among such abstractions are The State, organized religions, and those things that have been described by the term politics.
- The criteria of suffering directly derives from our natural, if still rather undeveloped and undervalued, sympatheia with other human beings and other life; for the nexion we are makes us feel, and aware of, the suffering we by our actions, our words, can cause to other life, with this feeling, this awareness – the translocation of ourselves into the being of other life – making the suffering of others our suffering. Thus, what contributes to or causes or which does not alleviate the suffering of any living being – sentient or otherwise – is morally wrong, and indefensible; with there being one exception – and one exception only – to this. This singular exception relates to the use of force – including lethal force – in defence of one’s self, or others nearby, in a personal situation where one is dishonourably (unfairly) attacked or where those others, nearby, are unfairly attacked, with our empathy – our conscious humanity – revealing to us the knowing and the nature of what is fair, and unfair.
- The criteria of the individual, personal, judgement in the immediacy of the moment derives from the nature of empathy itself. For empathy is only and ever direct, personal – only living, being presenced, in the personal moment; in one particular moment of causal Time where one is in close personal contact with another human being or another living being. Empathy cannot, by its very nature, be abstracted out from such a personal interaction in a particular moment. It cannot be objectified, for it is numinous – that is, organic; dependant upon an immediate interaction between two living beings.
Empathy thus has no rules; no dogma; no guidelines; as it cannot be or become the object of any “official” recognition, examination, certificate, or award – or be the subject of any academic study. For such things miss, or try to make abstract, what is always and only numinous and living and directly personal, since empathy – correctly understood – is a human faculty, like our sight and smell.
Empathy, therefore – and the pathei-mathos which derives from it [1] – establishes a new weltanschauung, a new perspective for individuals, and has important implications for the way individuals lead their lives and how they view and judge such human-manufactured things as The State, organized religions, and what has been described by the term politics.
A Numinous View of Politics
For The Numinous Way, politics is irrelevant – because (1) empathy does away with all artificial, human-manufactured, divisions and categories based upon a causal separation of beings, and (2) empathy itself, and the judgement arising from it, can only and ever be personal, direct, and in the immediacy of the living moment, and thus cannot be collective, or be organized in any supra-personal manner, with some other person or persons, or some group or organization (or whatever) making judgements on our behalf.
Politics, of whatever kind or orientation, is a process -
- which involves pursuing some abstract goal, objective or aim (designated as political and/or as social)
- which requires some or many individuals to deny their own empathy and judgement and instead rely on the judgement of others (some leader, organizer, or representative, elected or unelected)
- which entails some or many individuals individuals in exercising or exerting some kind of authority or control over other individuals.
The goals, objectives and aims of politics are, by their very nature, based on human-manufactured divisions and categories deriving from a causal separation of beings: that is, which involve denoting individuals on the basis of some principle of inclusion/exclusion, and which principle of inclusion/exclusion (of separation of human beings) is immoral because un-numinous.
This principle is un-numinous because at best it obscures the acausal connexions between human beings which empathy reveals, while, at worst, it severs that connexion and replaces living empathy with lifeless causal abstractions. [2]
Since the numinous view is, as mentioned above, that empathy is the basis, the measure of, the criteria for, our conscious humanity, so it is by means of empathy, in the immediacy of the personal moment, that we manifest our true human nature and our conscious, our sentient, humanity: that wisdom, that understanding, which pathei-mathos has revealed to us over millennia, and which wisdom, which understanding, we manifest when we use our conscious will, our faculty of reason, to act in a compassionate and honourable way.
Our true human nature, our sentient humanity, is not therefore manifest – and cannot ever be manifest – in any causal abstraction deemed political, such as the causal abstraction that has been termed “human (or unalienable) rights”, which it has been said can be contained in some creed, pronouncement, declaration, charter, or laws. Instead, our humanity is manifest in our individual, our living, personal and direct interactions with other human beings and with other life – in our awareness of ourselves as one affective and effecting nexion to the living being or beings we so interact with.
Thus, to be human is to be empathic, in the immediacy of the living moment, and to act upon the knowing that empathy reveals to us and which is manifest in a practical way by means of compassion and personal honour. There is therefore no need for “political action”, no need for emotive speeches, rallies, or political manifestos, or even for any political organizations or movements for “social change”. All that is needed is the cultivation, and the practical application of, empathy, by individuals.
In effect, therefore, empathy renders politics, and all political asbrations, obsolete, and in place of the old, un-numinous, way of politics there is the numinous way of individuals developing and using their individual, unique, faculty of empathy, and thus using and relying on their own natural judgement and reason.
A Numinous View of The State
The State has been defined as:
” The concept of both (1) organizing and controlling – over a particular and large geographical area – land (and resources); and (2) organizing and controlling individuals over that same geographical particular and large geographical area by means of the use of physical force or the threat of force; by means of the central administration and centralization of resources (especially fiscal and military); and by the mandatory taxation of personal income.” [3]
The State, by its very nature, is predicated upon the immoral (the un-numinous) principle of inclusion/exclusion of human beings. That is, it occupies, or claims to occupy, a certain designated territory (most often with defined borders), and which territory it seeks to control by the use of force or which territory it has come to control by the use of force, and which force almost without exception involves or has involved the suffering and the killing of human beings.
The State by its supra-personal nature usurps both empathy and our personal judgement, and thus is inherently immoral, unethical, and contra to our humanity.
For instance, and in respect of judgement, The State appropriates to itself – to its Institutions and its savants, its officials – the right to judge, to punish, and to inflict suffering on other human beings, as it also demands, on pain of the use of force, loyalty and obedience from its citizens, for its citizens are expected to obey the laws The State makes.
In brief, The State demands that individuals relinquish their own judgement and instead rely upon the judgement of others – that of some leader or dictator, or that of some representative, elected by vote or otherwise chosen; and which leader or dictator or representatives are said to embody or represent “the will of the people” or some such abstract nonsense.
In addition, The State is almost the complete antithesis of empathy – for its very raison d’etre is supra-personal organization, the control, of individuals, and a centralized planning imposed upon people.
In addition, The State – and the nation, preceding it [4], and the Tyrannos preceding the nation – has and have been responsible for appalling human suffering and deaths, from the horrors of the French revolution, to the brutality of the Russian revolution, to the nationalist First and Second World Wars, to the ideologically-driven Vietnam war and the recent invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Empathy, however, nullifies all causal abstractions, and in place of abstract supra-personal goals, manufactured or imposed by others, there is only the awareness of the personal moment, a personal dwelling in a particular locality, and the personal exercise of compassion and honour.
In effect, therefore, empathy renders The State (and by extension, the nation) obsolete, and in place of the old, un-numinous, way of The State there is the numinous way of individuals developing and using their individual, unique, faculty of empathy, and thus choosing for themselves – based on a direct and personal knowing of people – how to interact with, and rely on, other human beings in a social manner.
Possibly one of the best ways for individuals to so numinously interact is by means of extended families co-operating in their own local areas – that is, by clans and tribes, and which clans and tribes are defined by a numinous dwelling in a particular locality, by living ties of kinship, and by a personal loyalty deriving from a personal judgement and a direct personal knowing of the individual so given such loyalty. For it is through such a local dwelling, such ties, and such a personal loyalty that we can best express – and have best expressed – our human nature.
A Numinous View of Religion
Just like The State, an organized religion by its very nature is predicated upon the un-numinous principle of inclusion/exclusion of human beings, with an individual human being relying on this organized religion for guidance (moral and otherwise); with the individual expected to conform in certain matters of personal behaviour, and belief; and with the individual expected to perform certain duties and obligations, often of a public or social nature.
In essence, an organized religion provides an individual with certain answers to questions about life – a means whereby individuals can view, and come to relate to, Reality; to understand themselves, and their relation to other human beings. It is estimated that almost three-quarters of all human beings rely on conventional organized religions (such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism) to provide some answers to fundamental questions about life and/or to provide them with some guidance on how to behave and interact with other human beings.
Organized religion is quite distinct from a particular localized and numinous Way of Life by virtue of such a Way of Life being based on a quite local distinction between what is regarded as sacred (the numinous) and the profane, with such a distinction involving Nature; that is, a certain area or areas of land where, or near to where, the folk upholding such a Way dwell or have dwelt for generations. That is, such a numinous Way of Life involves an individual and communal understanding – sometimes intuitive or empathic, and sometimes by means of myths, legends, and local ceremonies – of their connexion to Nature (manifest in the area or area of their dwelling), their connexion to other human beings, and often thence to the Cosmos beyond, with this understanding involving an awareness of the necessity for balance, for maintaining the natural harmony of Life. Often this awareness of balance becomes expressed in a reverence for ancestors who are considered to connect the individual, the family, the local community, to Nature (or to have become embodied in or become a part of Nature). To upset this natural balance is regarded as unwise, and the bringer of misfortune – either personal, or for one’s descendants. For there exists a natural feeling of continuity with – a connexion to – one’s descendants, with one’s ancestors, one’s dwelling in a certain locality, and with the perceived cycles of natural phenomenon, such as weather, and with personal and communal good fortune and misfortune.
In contrast, an organized religion abstracts meaning and understanding into precepts and dogma, independent of a localized dwelling and a direct feeling for the numinous, as there is reliance upon and/or a veneration of texts, with the consequent need for such “sacred texts” – or some written words of guidance – to be interpreted.
Thus, instead of a personal engagement with the numinous – instead of the direct, and of necessity local and natural, knowing of our connexion to Nature, to other Life, to the Cosmos that empathy directly reveals – there is or there arises an attempt to explain or define or understand the numinous either by reference to some text (revealed or otherwise), or by means of some causal abstraction: that is, as being the effect of some posited and general cause. This attempt to so explain or define or understand the numinous either actually obscures the numinous, or abstracts it out of individual awareness, substituting instead precepts, dogma, and ritual – and thus obscures, or severs or comes to sever, the living connexion that the individual is to all other Life: to the acausal. In place of the numinosity of the personal acausal moment – the understanding of a personal and of an ancestral pathei-mathos founded in a local dwelling – there arises a lifeless cause-and-effect.
Hence, an organized religion such as Christianity posits God as the ultimate cause, with it being said that this cause led to the incarnation (the revelation) of Jesus to effect our salvation – that is, which enables we human beings to achieve the goal which is Heaven. To achieve this effect – of our salvation – we need only to follow or do what has been laid down or prescribed for us, by others: some guidelines contained in scripture; some prayers said or some ritual religiously undertaken; and so on. All this is entirely un-numinous because independent of both the pathei-mathos and the dwelling, ancestral or otherwise, of the believer. That is, the connexion to and the knowing of the numinous is or is required to be or is expected to be other than ours; other than deriving from our empathy, our personal experience, our intuitive knowledge derived from longevity of our local dwelling. Instead, the personal experience, the pathei-mathos, of the believer has to or should be related to the tradition or some tradition within or of such a conventional religion, so that, for instance, personal pathei-mathos has to be comparative, compared to similar experiences of past believers and accepted or rejected based on such a comparison.
Empathy, however, nullifies this lifeless cause-and-effect and such an un-numinous impersonal required comparison. For empathy by its acausal immediacy of nature reveals the numinous to us directly. There is no need for some posited cause-and-effect, or some posited causes-and-effects – for there is only our personal awareness of ourselves as an acausal connexion to other Life: to the locality of our human, terrestrial, dwelling; to other human beings known and interacted with in the immediacy of the personal moment; to our own pathei-mathos, and to the pathei-mathos of our ancestors, our folk.
What thus becomes numinously revealed by such connexions is the simple need for a personal balance, for the compassion and the personal honour which manifest such a balance and which are always, by their very numinous nature, direct, personal, and of the immediacy of the interacting moment.
In effect, therefore, empathy renders organized religion obsolete, and in place of the old, un-numinous, way of such religions there is the numinous, empathic, way of individuals and the learning deriving from pathei-mathos: our own, and that of others.
Conclusion
Politics, The State, and religion have contrived, by their causal nature, their breeding of abstractions, to distance us from the immediacy of the numinous moment – from that intuitive and empathic knowledge derived from longevity of our local dwelling and from our own pathei-mathos, our own learning deriving from the personal experience of suffering and from sympatheia. Sympatheia makes us aware – makes us feel, know – the suffering of others, so that there is an acausal connexion between the pathei-mathos of our ancestors, manifest in a particular human culture, in human culture in general and our own pathei-mathos, so that such cultures can learn us, as our own pathei-mathos can.
Having this knowledge of culture, accumulated over millennia, having the gifts of such culture, and having the faculty of empathy which we can and should develope, we simply no longer need politics, The State, and religion.
The primal mistake of the past has been to seek to strive after illusive abstractions rather than to seek to change ourselves in the necessary numinous way, with such a striving after such abstractions being the primary cause of the suffering we human beings have inflicted upon others, upon ourselves, and upon the other life with which we share this planet.
To be human – to manifest the reasoned humanity that our pathei-mathos and the pathei-mathos of human cultures have revealed to us – is, quite simply, to be empathic in the immediacy of the living moment, so all that is needed is the cultivation, and the practical application of, empathy, by ourselves, as individuals. This is wu-wei: a living numinously, and a living which, over a certain duration of causal Time, will aid the cessation of suffering and bring-into-being new, more human, ways of living. To attempt to speed this process up – to abstract it – would only cause more suffering and undermine and then remove us from our numinous, human, essence. For the numinous future we so desire only and ever begins with and within ourselves.
David Myatt
February 2011 CE
Footnotes
[1] Pathei-mathos (πάθει μάθος) means a learning from adversity. That is, the personal learning and understanding that arises from direct, often harsh, personal experience – and which may also be numinously understood (felt), and thus appreciated, by some numinous work of Art or and importantly through some intuitive understanding of – a sympatheia with – the pathos-mathos of another human being, recorded or transmitted in some form or recounted by some means.
Pathei-mathos thus possesses a numinous authority over and beyond the supposed authority of conventional religions, and all other abstractions, such as politics.
For a brief overview of pathei-mathos, refer to my essay Quid Est Veritas? and my The Classical Foundations of The Numinous Way.
[2] For more in respect of the principle of inclusion/exclusion (a principle also prevalent in conventional philosophy) see, for example, my Notes Concerning Causality, Ethics, and Acausal Knowing, and also Introduction to The Philosophy of The Numen.
[3] The definition is taken from my somewhat polemical article, The Failure and Immoral Nature of The State.
[4] The origin and nature of the modern Nation is outlined in The Failure and Immoral Nature of The State.
to someone enquiring about the philosophy of The Numinous Way.
Since you enquire about the veracity of my Numinous Way, I should perhaps emphasize – as I have mentioned several times over the past few years – that this Way represents only my own fallible answers born from my own pathei-mathos, and that I am acutely aware that the answers of many other Ways, such as Buddhism and the answers of conventional religions such as Catholicism, also in their own particular harmonious manner express something of the numinous and may thus for many people provide a guide to living in a more numinous way.
As I wrote many years ago:
The Numinous Way is but one answer to the questions about existence, [and] does not have some monopoly on truth, nor does it claim any prominence, accepting that all the diverse manifestations of the Numen, all the diverse answers, of the various numinous Ways and religions, have or may have their place, and all perhaps may serve the same ultimate purpose – that of bringing us closer to the ineffable beauty, the ineffable goodness, of life; that of transforming us, reminding us; that of giving us as individuals the chance to cease to cause suffering, to presence the good, to be part of the Numen itself. For what distinguishes a valuable, a good, a numinous Way or religion, is firstly this commitment, however expressed, to the cessation of suffering through means which do not cause more suffering; secondly, having some practical means whereby individuals can transform themselves for the better, and thirdly, possessing some way of presenting, manifesting, presencing what is sacred, what is numinous, thus reconnecting the individual to the source of their being, to their humanity.
In my fallible view, any Way or religion which manifests, which expresses, which guides individuals toward, the numinous humility we human beings need is good, and should not be stridently condemned.
For such personal humility – that which prevents us from committing hubris, whatever the raison d’être, the theology, the philosophy – is a presencing of the numinous. Indeed, one might write and say that it is a personal humility – whatever the source – that expresses our true developed (that is, rational and empathic) human nature and which nature such Ways or religions or mythological allegories remind us of. Hence the formulae, the expression, Soli Deo Gloria being one Western cultural manifestation of a necessary truth, manifesting as it does one particular numinous allegory among many such historical and cultural and mythological allegories. Just as, for example, the sight of King Louis IX walking barefoot to Sainte Chapelle was a symbol of the humility which the Christian faith, correctly understood, saught to cultivate in individuals.
As I mentioned in my essay Humility, Abstractions, and Belief,
One of the great advantages – a manifestation of humanity – of a Way such as Islam and Christianity and Buddhism is that they provide, or can provide, us with the supra-personal perspective, and thus the humility, we human beings require to prevent us veering into and becoming subsumed with the error of hubris.
As it says in the Rule of Saint Benedict:
“ The peak of our endeavour is to achieve profound humility…” Chapter 7, The Value of Humility
As it says in the Quran:
“ The ‘Ibaad of Ar-Rahman [Allah] are those who walk on earth in humility.” 25:63
As it says in the Dhammapada:
“ Yo bâlo maññati bâlyaè paúóitovâpi tena so bâlo ca paúóitamânî sa ve bâloti vuccati.”
” Accepting of themselves, the simple person in their simplicity is wise, although if they pride themselves they are wise, they are simply full of pride. “
Furthermore, such Ways provide such a supra-personal perspective in a manner which is living – that is, these Ways are presented to us as something which has a historical genesis and which lives among us, in our own times, in and through those devoted to them in that dignified manner which makes such people living examples of those tenets, of those Ways. That is, the dignified people who follow such Ways – who are inspired by those Ways to practice humility in their own lives – thus manifest the numinous, the sacred, among us, and so can provide us with practical, and personal, guidance, and a sense of belonging.
Thus, I now have, partly from practical experience, come to apprehend a certain unity, a certain common insight, behind many outwardly differing Ways and religious forms, to the extent that I personally have been considered by some people to be some kind of Buddhist-Taoist-Muslim-Sufi-Catholic-NuminousWay-pagan-mystic hybrid. But in truth, I am merely someone who as a result of pathei-mathos knows their limitations, their fallibility, and thus who empathically resonates with past and present emanations of the numinous, often because of struggling to answer certain questions about our human nature, about our mortal existence, and about the nature of Reality which many others over millennia have also saught to answer.
Since you especially ask about Catholicism in relation to the Numinous Way, all I can say in my experience – having been raised a Catholic and having spent some time as a Catholic monk – is that Catholicism did manifest, and to an extent still does manifest, aspects of the numinous and therefore this particular guide to human living is one which I understand and appreciate as one style of earthly-harmony.
As I wrote a year or so ago:
” The Latin Tridentine Mass of the Catholic Church [...] evolved over a certain period of causal time, and became, for many Catholics, the main ritual, or rite, which imbued their ordinary lives with a certain numinosity – a certain awareness of the sacred, with attendance at this rite involving certain customs, such as modest and clean dress, and women covering their heads with a veil. This rite was, in essence, a Mysterium – that is, it embodied not only something holy and somewhat mysterious (such as the Consecration and Communion) but also was wordlessly un-mundane and so re-presented to most of those attending the rite, almost another world, with this re-presentation aided by such things as the use of incense, the ringing of the Sanctus bell, and the genuflexions. In addition, and importantly, the language of this rite was not that of everyday speech, and was not even, any longer, a living changing language, but rather had in many ways become the sacred language of that particular Way.
The Catholic rite endured for centuries and, indeed, to attend this particular rite marked, affirmed and re-affirmed one as a Catholic, as a particular follower of a particular Way, and a Way quite distinct from the schism that became Protestantism [1], a fact which explained, for instance, the decision, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth the First of England, to punish by fine or imprisonment those who attended this rite, and to persecute, accuse of treason, and often execute, those who performed this rite.
However, the reforms imposed by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican replaced this numinous rite, this Mysterium, with rites and practices redolent of un-numinous Protestantism. Why? Most probably because those involved in such planning and producing and implementing such reforms were swayed by the causal abstractions of “progress” and “relevancy” – desiring as they did and do to be in accord with the causal, material, Zeitgeist of the modern West where numbers of adherents, and conformity to trendy ideas and theories, are regarded as more important than presencing The Numen in a numinous manner. When, that is, some profane causal abstractions come to be regarded as more relevant than experiencing and manifesting the sacred as the sacred.
Yet this does not mean that Catholicism, before the reforms imposed by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, was or remained a Way, per se. Only that, of all the variants of what are now termed Christianity, it retained a certain numinosity expressed by the original Way; that, through its Mysteriums such as the Tridentine Mass, it still presenced something of The Numen; and that it managed to avoid the worst excesses of the religious attitude, maintaining as it did a monasticism which by its own particular way of life encouraged the cultivation of a genuine, non-dogmatic, humility.” Source – Concerning The Nature of Religion and The Nature of The Numinous Way
As this quote – and the associated footnote – make clear, it is my personal opinion that traditional Catholicism, with its Tridentine Mass and its particular conservative traditions, was a somewhat better, more harmonious, expression of the numinous (a necessary and relevant expression of the numinous), than both Protestantism and the reforms introduced by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, and which reforms served only to undermine the numinous, to untwist the threads that held together its “hidden soul of harmony”.
However, what really matters in my view in respect of considering how we judge and evaluate other Ways and other styles of earthly-harmony (that is, what are often regarded as religious expressions of the numinous), is not so much their veracity as perceived and/or assumed by us during one span or certain spans of causal Time, but rather how those Ways, those expressions, affect people and predispose them toward or guide them toward living in a more numinous manner. That is, by criteria such as humility, avoidance of hubris, compassion, fairness toward others: by those things which express, which manifest, the numinous in us, in terms of our character, our behaviour. Not, that is, by some abstract criteria which we posit and which we with arrogance use to condemn or malign, often based on some vainglorious assumption or need that our own beliefs, our own answers, are the correct ones.
There is thus a tolerance, a respect; a desire not to stridently condemn; an awareness of our own fallibility deriving from our own pathei-mathos and from the numinous perspective, the silent wordless clarity, that such a personal learning from the suffering of experience brings.
All I have tried to do in respect of The Numinous Way is present what I hope is an alternative style of earthly-harmony, and saught to clarify how this alternative differs from others. For instance, in the matter of empathy, of honour, and of seeking to avoid the dogma arising from some causal abstraction or other. As to the veracity of my personal answers, I admit I do not know.
David Myatt
June 2011 CE
Footnotes:
[1] Catholicism (before the reforms imposed by the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican) represented, in my view, the original Way known as Christianity, and was – at least before those reforms – quite distinct from those schisms which are now known as Protestantism and Orthodox Christianity. Indeed, distinct enough – until those reforms – to be considered a different Way of Life, a Way evident, for example, in Catholic rites (such as the Tridentine Mass), in monasticism, in Papal authority, in the use of Latin, and in the reverence accorded The Blessed Virgin Mary.
Furthermore, it is my view that the schism now termed Protestantism was a classic example of the religious attitude predominating over numinosity – and thus that it is and was redolent of attempts to reduce The Numen to linear causal abstractions. Thus, Mysteriums such as the Tridentine Mass became replaced with recitation of Scripture in the vernacular and with attempts to rationally explain – according to some abstract causal theory – the mystery of the consecration.
Selected Writings Concerning The Numinous Way
The link below is to a pdf document (98 pages) containing a selection of my writings about what I have termed The Numinous Way.
The Numinous Way is a weltanschauung whose genesis was over forty years of experiential learning. Thus this weltanschauung represents my own pathei-mathos [πάθει μάθος] and I make no claim to its veracity other than this. It is simply one personal answer – among many answers – to questions such as Quid Est Veritas.
Philosophically, for The Numinous Way, veritas is empathy, and this particular Way is thus the numinous/esoteric/mystical philosophy of both acausal and causal knowing, and also the practical cultivation of, or the development of, a culture or cultures of ἀρετή where πάθει μάθος – having a numinous authority – replaces abstractions, dogma, ideations, and all -isms and -ologies.
Hence The Numinous Way is the individual Way of Empathy, Honour, and Compassion – since both πάθει μάθος and empathy are only and ever individual and thus express the very individual nature of how I have deduced the numinous is or can be presenced by and to us, as individual human beings.
Thus, quintessentially, The Numinous Way – this Philosophy of The Numen which the Μοῖραι seem to have guided me to dis-cover – is the Way of the numinous and individual authority of πάθει μάθος where one’s own empathy and one’s own learning from practical experience take precedence and are considered a means for us to become a friend of σοφόν and thus acquire the virtue and the skill that has been termed wisdom.
David Myatt – Selected Writings Concerning The Numinous Way
(pdf 1.7 Mb)
David Myatt
October 2011 CE
Below is a link to a pdf file of De Novo Caelo et Nova Terra. As I write in the Preface:
“ This work contains some of my, often brief, personal writings and missives from the past nine years; writings and missives which some others have described as mystical – or, as I might discrybe it, the scribblings of someone for whom individual empathy (in the personal immediacy of the moment) is now an apprehension of a truth beyond causal abstractions but who was so enamoured for so long by such abstractions that it took him nine years, and the tragic suicide of a loved one in 2006 CE, to finally free himself from them.
Some of the writings and missives included here are graveolent of the sorrowful self-learning that I seem to have acquired following that tragic death, and a learning betaking me far from the arrogance, the hubris, of my previous thirty, and more, years of political and religious involvements. A learning and acknowledgement, thus, of my mistakes, and of many other things.
So it is that I gently sense that the new Earth – the new home – we human beings do so seem to need might have its genesis in that new heaven, that new paradise, we find after we have ventured inward, via pathei-mathos or by choice, and finally through such an interior searching discovered who we are: one fragile fallible microcosmic nexion; only one mortal presencing of Life on one obscure planet around one star in one small Galaxy among so many billions of such systems of stars; but one aorist ensample of the Cosmos living and changing as the Cosmos lives and changes, and one ensample connected in an affective way to all others, everywhere.
A discovery thus of The Cosmic Perspective, sans some deity, supreme, supra-personal, creator, or otherwise; sans some belief, some faith, in some personal after-life manufactured by or promised by some supreme-creator being. And even sans a personal, individual, striving for some-thing, such as nirvana.
A discovery, instead, of The Numen, of Life, as I in my admitted fallibility, and in the past few years, have intimated it may be: no striving; no goal. Just a simple numinous life, lived moment to moment, grounded in empathy and thus in living honourably. “
David Myatt – De Novo Caelo
(pdf 1.1 MB)
David Myatt
October 2011 CE
Image Credit – Earth from Apollo 17 (NASA)
This article is available in pdf format here - moral-problems of-ns.pdf
Λυκοῦργος and the Ἐρινύες
The Philosophical and Moral Problems of National-Socialism
Introduction
This essay is a brief analysis of the National-Socialist weltanschauung, as manifested in National-Socialist Germany, and according to the philosophical and ethical criteria of my Numinous Way, and which criteria derive from the principles of empathy, compassion, and personal honour.
Empathy, as understood by my philosophy of The Numen [1], establishes a particular ontology and epistemology; Being, the source of beings, as both causal and acausal, and of an acausal knowing distinct from the causal knowing of conventional philosophy and empirical science [2]. The ethical criteria are manifest in both compassion and honour [3], so that:
“the morality of The Numinous Way is therefore defined by a personal honour, a personal compassion, and the personal virtue of justice. For justice is not some abstract concept, but rather a personal virtue, as εὐταξία is a personal virtue. For justice is the personal virtue of fairness; the quality of balance.” War and Violence in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way
The National-Socialism evident in NS Germany was a way of life centred around concepts such as duty, kampf, nation, and race. Thus, the individual was judged by, and expected to judge others by, the criteria of race, with particular races assigned a certain value (high or low), as individuals were judged by how well they adhered to the duty they were expected to do in respect of their nation (their land, their people) and the race they were said to belong to or believed they belonged to. In addition, kampf between individuals, races, and nations was considered healthy and necessary, with such struggle revealing the worth of individuals and thus those considered fit to lead and assume positions of authority.
Collectivism, Nationalism, and Race
The National-Socialist way of life was – given such concepts as kampf, nation and race – a collective one, with one of the highest virtues being the willingness of individuals, if necessary, to sacrifice their own happiness and welfare, and even their lives, for the good of their people, their land, their race. The necessity of this virtue was explained, in part, by the belief that the German volk had an historic mission, a particular destiny, so that – coupled with the ideas of race and kampf - the individual was expected to define themselves, to understand themselves, as Germans and as having particular duties and obligations; in effect, to replace their own self-identity with the collective identity of the volk.
In order to establish, maintain, and expand this collectivism, certain measures were regarded as necessary, as morally correct, with such measures including military conscription, laws designed to criminalize certain activities, both political and personal, and harsh punishment of those contravening such laws.
In addition, the führerprinzip was applied to most aspects of life, with individuals expected to accept and obey the authority so established, since such authority was considered to manifest the will, the ethos, of the volk. Hence the loyalty individuals gave, as an expression of their recognized duty as Germans, was personal; not to ‘the State’ nor even to ‘the nation’, and certainly not to some government, but rather to individuals who were regarded as embodying the will, the identity, of the volk. In practice, this meant Adolf Hitler and those appointed by him or by his representatives, and it was this collectivism, this binding of the volk by the führerprinzip, that Heidegger tried to philosophically express in his now controversial remarks regarding the Volksgemeinschaft and by quoting some words attributed to Aeschylus [4].
There are thus six elements that, from the philosophical and ethical viewpoint of The Numinous Way, may be said to define the National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler. These are: (i) a collective identity and its acceptance; (ii) authority and its acceptance manifest in specific individuals and expected obedience to such authority; (iii) mandatory enforceable punishment of those contravening or not accepting such authority and the laws made by such authority; (iv) the use of particular abstractions (for example nation and race) as a criteria for judgement and for evaluating individual worth; (v) the use of particular abstractions as a criteria for identity; and (vi) the use and acceptance of a particular abstraction – kampf – as an embodiment and expression of human nature.
Contra The National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler
In purely practical terms, the acceptance and use of the principle of kampf together with the acceptance of Hitler as embodying the collective will of the volk, inevitably led to the military defeat of NS Germany. For all mortals are fallible and military defeat is always inevitable, given time and even if such a defeat has internal, not external, causes. For tyrants and monarchs die, are overthrown, or are killed; Empires flourish for a while – a few centuries perhaps, at most – and then invariably decline and fade away; oligarchies come and go with monotonous regularity, lasting a decade or perhaps somewhat longer; rebellions and revolutions will break out, given sufficient time, and will often succeed given even more time – decades, centuries – and even following repeated and brutal repression.
Thus, philosophically, the general error here by Hitler and his followers was the obvious one of ὕβρις. A lack of understanding, an unknowing, of the natural balance – of δίκη - as well as a lack of empathy, manifest as this unknowing, this lack, was in the arrogant belief of a personal and a volkish ‘destiny’ combined with a belief in kampf as a natural and necessary expression of human nature. And ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον - that is, ὕβρις plants, is the seed of, the τύραννον. Thus, symbolically, we might justifiably say that the Ἐρινύες took their revenge, for Hitler and his followers had forgotten, scorned, or never known the wisdom, the truth, that their fallible mortal lives are subject to, guided by, Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες [5]. Thus their fate was destined, a fate that Sophocles expressed so well in respect of Oedipus, tyrannus:
ὦ πάτρας Θήβης ἔνοικοι, λεύσσετ᾽, Οἰδίπους ὅδε,
ὃς τὰ κλείν᾽ αἰνίγματ᾽ ᾔδει καὶ κράτιστος ἦν ἀνήρ,
οὗ τίς οὐ ζήλῳ πολιτῶν ἦν τύχαις ἐπιβλέπων,
εἰς ὅσον κλύδωνα δεινῆς συμφορᾶς ἐλήλυθεν.
ὥστε θνητὸν ὄντα κείνην τὴν τελευταίαν ἰδεῖν
ἡμέραν ἐπισκοποῦντα μηδέν᾽ ὀλβίζειν, πρὶν ἂν
τέρμα τοῦ βίου περάσῃ μηδὲν ἀλγεινὸν παθών. [6]
In effect, therefore, and in general terms, the National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler was un-wise; based on a mis-understanding of human nature, and he himself shown, despite his remarkable achievement of gaining power, as lacking a reasoned, a well-balanced, judgement [σωφρονεῖν] – since such a balanced judgement would, as Aeschylus explained in the Oresteia, reveal that πόλεμος [7] always accompanies ὕβρις and that only by acceptance of the numinous authority of πάθει μάθος (the new law presented to mortals by immortal Zeus) could the tragic cycle of ἔρις be ended.
A Numinous View of The National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler
Let us now consider the six points enumerated above, in respect of the philosophical and ethical viewpoint of The Numinous Way.
As mentioned in my essay A Brief Numinous View of Religion, Politics, and The State:
” The essence of the numinous view – of the ethical way posited by the Philosophy of The Numen – is empathy and thus the acausal (the affective and effecting) connexion we, as individuals, are to all life, sentient and otherwise, with empathy being the foundation of our conscious humanity.
The practical criteria which empathy implies is essentially two-fold: the criteria of the cessation of suffering, and the criteria of the individual, personal, judgement in the immediacy of the moment. For the Philosophy of The Numen, these two criteria manifest the natural character of rational, conscious, empathic, human beings and thus express the nature of our humanity and of human culture, and which nature is manifest in a practical way in compassion and in personal honour.
Hence these two criteria are used, by The Numinous Way – by the Philosophy of The Numen - to judge our actions, our personal behaviour, and also all the abstractions we manufacture or may manufacture and which thus affect us, as individuals.”
(i) A collective identity and its acceptance.
Empathy, as a natural if still under-used and under-developed human faculty, is only and ever individual and of the immediacy of the living moment. [8] It is always personal, individual, and cannot cannot be abstracted out from an individual living being – that is, it cannot have any causal ideation or be represented by or expressed by someone else.
There is the personal, individual, freedom that the knowing that empathy uniquely presents to the individual, and therefore no need of, no sense of, belonging to other than one’s immediate surroundings, and no sense of identity beyond the personally known, for all human beings encountered are encountered and empathically known as they uniquely are: as individuals with their own lives, feelings, hopes, and with their own potential and their own past.
Which in essence means The Numinous Way is the way of individuals, and an individual manner of living to be accepted or rejected according to the individual. Thus such a collective identity – and a desire for and acceptance of such an identity – is contrary to this very individual numinous way.
What matters for The Numinous Way is the individual; their empathy, their honour; their personal judgement. What does not matter are supra-personal manufactured abstractions such as a ‘nation’. Consequently, the empathic, honourable, individual only has a duty to themselves, to their immediate kin, and to those personally given a pledge of loyalty: not a duty or obligations to some manufactured collective identity however such identity be expressed.
(ii) Authority and its acceptance manifest in specific individuals and expected obedience to such authority.
As I wrote in Authority and Legitimacy in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way:
” For The Numinous Way, it is the exercise of the judgement of the individual – arising from the use of empathy and the guidance that is personal honour – that is paramount, and which expresses our human nature.
That is, it is honour, the understanding that empathy provides, and the judgement of the individual, that are legitimate, moral, numinous, and thence the basis for authority. This means that authority resides in and extends only to individuals – by virtue of their honour, their empathy, and manifest in their own personal judgement, and therefore this always personal individual authority cannot be abstracted out from such personal judgement of individuals. In practical terms, this is a new type of authority – that of the individual whose concern is not power over others but over themselves, and which type of power is manifest in a living by honour, and thence in their self-responsibility and in how they interact with others.”
Thus, such non-individual authority, acceptance of and obedience to such authority, is contrary to The Numinous Way.
(iii) Mandatory enforceable punishment of those contravening or not accepting such authority and the laws made by such authority.
Given that, for The Numinous Way, authority and justice are individual and manifest in individual judgement and through personal honour, such mandatory punishment by some abstract authority is quite contrary to The Numinous Way.
(iv) The use of particular abstractions (for example nation and race) as a criteria for judgement and for evaluating individual worth.
According to both empathy and honour, such a judgement of others, such prejudice, on the basis of some abstraction such as perceived race or ‘nationality’ is immoral [9]. The only moral, honourable, criteria is to judge individuals as individuals, sans all abstractions, on the basis of a personal knowing of them extending over a duration of causal Time. To judge en masse, without such a direct, personal, extended, personal knowing of each and every individual is reprehensible.
In addition, it is immoral – unempathic, uncompasionate, dishonourable – to treat people on the basis of their assumed or alleged race or nationality. Thus, the enforced herding of people into ‘concentration camps’ on the basis of alleged, assumed, race or nationality is quite unjustifiable, inhuman.
(v) The use of particular abstractions as a criteria for identity.
Empathy inclines us toward the acausal-knowing of life, human and otherwise, and this knowing is of ourselves as but one fallible, biologically fragile, mortal, microcosmic nexion, and thus of how our self, our perceived self-identity, is appearance and not an expression of the true nature of our being [10]. Hence empathy inclines us toward – or should incline us toward – acting with empathy and honour in the knowledge that our actions affect others or can affect others, directly, emotionally, and acausally. That their joy, their pain, their suffering, is ours by virtue of us as a connexion to them – as a connexion to all life; as one emanation of ψυχή [11].
(vi) The use and acceptance of a particular abstraction – kampf – as an embodiment and expression of human nature.
As mentioned previously, in the Contra The National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler section, kampf as principle, as abstraction, is a manifestation of the error of ὕβρις and of a lack of empathy.
For empathy, and the cultivation of σωφρονεῖν, incline us toward – or should incline us, as individuals, toward – a letting-be; to wu-wei; to a living in the immediacy-of-the-moment. To being compassionate and honourable human beings, concerned only with our own affairs, that of our family, and that of our immediate locality where we dwell, work, and have-our-being.
In addition:
” In The Numinous Way, a distinction is made between war and combat in that combat refers to gewin – similar to the old Germanic werra, as distinct from the modern krieg. That is, combat refers to a more personal armed quarrel between much smaller factions (and often between just two adversaries – as in single combat, and trial by combat) when there is, among those fighting, some personal matter at stake or some personal interest involved, with most if not all of those fighting doing so under the leadership of someone they personally know and respect and with the quarrel usually occurring in the locality or localities where the combatants live.
Thus, war is contrary to The Numinous Way – to the Cosmic Ethic – not only because of the impersonal suffering it causes, but also because it is inseparably bound up with individuals having to relinquish their own judgement, with them pursuing some lifeless un-numinous abstraction by violent means, and with the development of supra-personal abstract and thus un-numinous notions of ‘justice’ and law.
Hence, there is, for The Numinous Way, no such thing as a ‘just war’ – for war is inherently unjust and un-numinous. What is just and lawful are honourable individuals and their actions, and such combat as such individuals may honourably and personally undertake, and such violence as they may honourably and of necessity employ in pursuit of being fair and ensuring fairness.” War and Violence in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way
Conclusion
It should thus be quite clear why The Numinous Way is contrary to and incompatible with the National-Socialism of Adolf Hitler that was manifest in National-Socialist Germany.
David Myatt
January 2012 ce
Notes
[1] Refer, for example, to Introduction to The Philosophy of The Numen and also The Natural Balance of Honour – Honour, Empathy, and Compassion in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way, from which this is a quote:
“As used and defined by The Numinous Way, empathy – ἐμπάθεια – is a natural human faculty: that is, a noble intuition about another human being or another living being. When empathy is developed and used, as envisaged by The Numinous Way, it is a specific and extended type of συμπάθεια. That is, it is a type of and a means to knowing and understanding another human being and/or other living beings – and thus differs in nature from compassion.”
[2] See: (i) An Introduction To The Ontology of Being; (ii) Some Notes Concerning Causality, Ethics, and Acausal Knowing; (iii) Acausality, Phainómenon, and The Appearance of Causality.
[3] qv. The Natural Balance of Honour.
[4] In his 1933 speech at the University of Freiburg, where he quoted the following verse (v.514) from Prometheus Bound [my translation] –
τέχνη δ᾽ ἀνάγκης ἀσθενεστέρα μακρῷ.
How so very feeble Craft is before Compulsion!
[5]
τίς οὖν ἀνάγκης ἐστὶν οἰακοστρόφος.
Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες
Who then compels to steer us?
Trimorphed Moirai with their ever-heedful Furies!Aeschylus (attributed), Prometheus Bound, 515-6 [My translation]
[6]
You natives of Thebes: Observe – here is Oedipus,
He who understood that famous enigma and was a strong man:
What clansman did not behold that fortune without envy?
But what a tide of problems have come over him!
Therefore, look toward that ending which is for us mortals,
To observe that particular day – calling no one lucky until,
Without the pain of injury, they are conveyed beyond life’s ending.Oedipus Tyrannus, vv. 1524-1530 [My translation]
[7] In respect of πόλεμος see my The Abstraction of Change as Opposites and Dialectic where I suggest that as used by Heraclitus it implies neither kampf nor conflict, but rather – as a quote from Diogenes Laërtius suggests – what lies behind or beyond Phainómenon; that is, non-temporal, non-causal, Being. πόλεμος is thus that which is or becomes the genesis of beings from Being, and also that which manifests as δίκη and accompanies ἔρις because it is the nature of Πόλεμος that beings, born because of and by ἔρις, can be returned to Being (become bound together – be whole – again) by enantiodromia.
[8] Refer, for example, to Introduction to The Philosophy of The Numen
[9] See Empathy and The Immoral Abstraction of Race and also On The Nature of Abstractions.
[10] Refer for example to Acausality, Phainómenon, and The Appearance of Causality and also An Introduction To The Ontology of Being.
[11] Correctly understood – and as evident by the usage of Homer, Aeschylus, Aristotle, et al – ψυχή implies Life qua being.
This essay had its genesis in some questions recently asked of me, by an academic, in regard to my former political involvements and how I now judge National-Socialism and Adolf Hitler given the development, over the past three or so years, of my mystical philosophy of The Numinous Way.
Preface
As explained in the notes that originally accompanied the translations, I have deliberately transliterated (instead of translated) πόλεμος, and left δίκη as δίκη – because both πόλεμος and δίκη should be regarded like ψυχή (psyche/Psyche) as terms or as principles in their own right (hence the capitalization), and thus imply, suggest, and require, interpretation and explanation, something especially true, in my opinion, regarding δίκη. To render such Greek terms blandly by English terms such as ‘war’ and ‘justice’ – which have their own now particular meaning(s) – is in my view erroneous and somewhat lackadaisical. δίκη for instance could be, depending on context: the custom(s) of a folk, judgement (or Judgement personified), the natural and the necessary balance, the correct/customary/ancestral way, and so on.
The notes to the following translations have been collected together in a pdf file entitled Heraclitus – Some Translations and Notes.
David Myatt
2012 ce
Fragment 1
(Partial)
τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον
Although this naming and expression, which I explain, exists – human beings tend to ignore it, both before and after they have become aware of it.
Fragment 39
ἐν Πριήνηι Βίας ἐγένετο ὁ Τευτάμεω, οὗ πλείων λόγος ἢ τῶν ἄλλων
In Priene was born someone named and recalled as most worthy – Bias, that son of Teutamas
Fragment 53
Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους.
Polemos our genesis, governing us all to bring forth some gods, some mortal beings with some unfettered yet others kept bound.
Fragment 80
εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα [χρεών]
One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη, and that beings are naturally born by discord.
Fragment 112
σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαίοντας
Most excellent is balanced reasoning, for that skill can tell inner character from outer.
Fragment 123
Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ
Concealment accompanies Physis
From Diogenes Laërtius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers
πάντα δὲ γίνεσθαι καθ᾽ εἱμαρμένην καὶ διὰ τῆς ἐναντιοδρομίας ἡρμόσθαι τὰ ὄντα (ix. 9)
All by genesis is appropriately apportioned [separated into portions] with beings bound together again by enantiodromia
Note: I have used here a transliteration of the compound Greek word ἐναντιοδρομίας rather than given a particular translation, since the term enantiodromia in my view suggests the uniqueness of expression of the original, and which original in my view is not adequately, and most certainly not accurately, described by a usual translation such as ‘conflict of opposites’. Rather, what is suggested is ‘confrontational contest’ – that is, by facing up to the expected/planned/inevitable contest. Interestingly, Carl Jung – who was familiar with the sayings of Heraclitus – used the term enantiodromia to describe the emergence of a trait (of character) to offset another trait and so restore a certain psychological balance within the individual.
License and can be freely copied and distributed, under the terms of that license.
Attic Vase c. 480 BCE, depicting Athena (Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany)
This selection of recent (2010-2011 ce) essays of mine – available as a pdf document from the link below – provides a reasonable overview of my weltanschauung (deriving from my pathei-mathos of some forty years) and which weltanschauung I have termed both The Numinous Way and The Philosophy of The Numen, given that, perhaps somewhat pedantically, I use the term philosophy to refer not to some modern academic subject or subjects but rather to the learning and knowledge of and acquired by a philosopher, where a philosopher, as the etymology of the word suggests, is someone who is a friend of – whose companion is, who seeks to find, to acquire, to follow – σοφόν. Thus in this sense, a philosopher is someone seeking to acquire both a certain skill and a particular knowledge, and a skill and a knowledge acquired through both learning and from practical experience, from life; a dual sense evident from the meaning and usage of σοφός.
The particular knowledge – as Cicero mentioned in De Officiis (Liber Secundus, 5) – is of Being and beings (rerum divinarum et humanarum) and their genesis; and the certain skill is σωφρονεῖν - of having a reasoned, a balanced, a prudent, a wise, personal judgement and thence a balanced, a wise, personal character; a skill acquired, quite often, from pathei-mathos.
In many of the essays included here, as elsewhere, I have sometimes used terms from Ancient Greek because such terms, in my view, are informative and comparative, with there thus being a link between the philosophy of The Numen and the weltanschauung of early Hellenic culture, embodied in and manifest as this was by the works of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Heraclitus, Sappho, and many others.
Thus, it would be fair to assume that the ethos of my weltanschauung is both indebted to and a development of the ethos of that Hellenic culture; an indebtedness obvious in the centrality, in the Numinous Way, of personal honour and notions such as δίκη, and a development manifest in notions such as empathy.
David Myatt
January 2012 ce
JD 2455944.913
Contents
^Preface
^In Pursuit of Wisdom
^The Principle of Δίκα
^A Brief Numinous View of Religion, Politics, and The State
^War and Violence in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way
^Authority and Legitimacy in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way
^Notes Concerning Causality, Ethics, and Acausal Knowing
^Honour, Empathy, and Compassion
^Toward Understanding The Acausal
Attic Vase c. 480 BCE, depicting Athena (Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany)
A Learning From Physis
Life is or can be so beautiful, it is just that we humans seem to have a propensity to undermine or destroy or not even see this beauty, especially manifest as this beauty is in Nature, and in and through a mutual personal love between two human beings.
But why – just why – do we human beings have a propensity to so undermine or destroy or not even see the beauty of Life, of Nature, of love? Because of our desires, our selfish desires, and because of the abstractions – the lifeless, un-numinous, abstractions we human beings have, in our hubris, manufactured; which lifeless abstractions we pursue, or we place before such beauty, such a numinous apprehension and appreciation of Nature, as Nature is – a natural unfolding (φύσις) and a very slow natural change – without our interference and our arrogant desire to change things quickly according to some abstraction such as “progress” or according to some “plan” or some “destiny” or scheme we in our arrogance, insolence, and haste have devised or believe in.
However, I am as responsible as anyone for having committed the error of hubris – having pursued, for most of my adult life, some abstraction or other, and thus placed some manufactured goal, or some idealized perceived duty, before the beauty of love, and before that letting-be which allows us to appreciate, to feel, the numinosity of Nature.
As Sophocles wrote, several thousand years ago:
ὕβρις φυτεύει τύραννον:
ὕβρις, εἰ πολλῶν ὑπερπλησθῇ μάταν,
ἃ μὴ ‘πίκαιρα μηδὲ συμφέροντα,
ἀκρότατον εἰσαναβᾶσ᾽
αἶπος ἀπότομον ὤρουσεν εἰς ἀνάγκαν
ἔνθ᾽ οὐ ποδὶ χρησίμῳ
χρῆται.
Insolence [hubris] plants the tyrant:
There is insolence if by a great foolishness
There is a useless over-filling which goes beyond
The proper limits -
It is an ascending to the steepest and utmost heights
And then that hurtling toward that Destiny
Where the useful foot has no use.
In retrospect, life, for me, has been in so many respects enjoyable and replete with joy – a joy sufficient and often innocent enough to keep me mostly balanced through many times of personal tragedy and loss, and also in situations when I myself suffered the consequences of some dishonourable act or acts by some human beings who seemed to have lost or not to even have possessed the human qualities of empathy and honour.
Now, as I recall and review over five decades of conscious living, I am also aware of just how selfish I have been, and in particular aware of how I, through focussing on abstractions, ideals and supra-personal goals, have personally hurt people who loved me, and personally caused or been the cause of suffering in this world. But I like to believe that I have, finally, learnt and understood some important things – especially about myself – as a result of my diverse rather adventurous and sometimes strange life.
Thus it is that I find, through and because of such a recalling, that what I value now, what I feel and sense is most important, is a direct, personal, mutual love between two human beings – and that such love is far far more important, more real, more human, than any abstraction, than any idealism, than any so-called duty, than any dogma, than any cause, however “idealistic”; more important – far more important – than any ideology, than any and all -isms and -ologies be such -isms and such -ologies understood conventionally as political, or religious or social. For it is the desire to love, to be loved – and the desire to cease to cause suffering – which are important, which should be our priority, and which are the true measure of our own humanity.
What, therefore, shall I personally miss the most as my own mortal life now moves toward its fated ending? It is the rural England that I love, where I feel most at home, where I know I belong, and where I have lived and worked for many many years of my adult life – the rural England of small villages, hamlets, and farms, far from cities and main roads, that still (but only just) exists today in parts of Shropshire, Herefordshire, Yorkshire, Somerset and elsewhere. The rural England of small fields, hedgerows, trees of Oak, where – over centuries – a certain natural balance has been achieved such that Nature still lives and thrives there where human beings can still feel, know, the natural rhythm of life through the seasons, and where they are connected to the land, the landscape, because they have dwelt, lived, worked there year after year, season after season, and thus know in a personal, direct, way every field, every hedge, every tree, every pond, every stream, around them within a day of walking.
This is the rural England where change is slow, and often or mostly undesired and where a certain old, more traditional, attitude to life and living still exists, and which attitude is one of preferring the direct slow experience of what is around, what is natural, what is of Nature, to the artificial modern world of cities and towns and fast transportation and vapid so-called “entertainment” of others.
That is what I shall miss the most, what I love and have treasured – beyond women loved, progeny sown, true friends known:
The joy of slowly walking in fields tended with care through the hard work of hands; the joy of hearing again the first Cuckoo of Spring; of seeing the Swallows return to nest, there where they have nested for so many years. The joy of sitting in some idle moment in warm Sun of an late English Spring or Summer to watch the life on, around, within, a pond, hearing thus the songful, calling birds in hedge, bush, tree, the sounds of flies and bees as they dart and fly around.
The joy of walking through meadow fields in late Spring when wild flowers in their profusion mingle with the variety of grasses that time over many decades have sown, changed, grown. The joy of hearing the Skylark rising and singing again as the cold often bleak darkness of Winter has given way at last to Spring.
The simple delight of – having toiled hours on foot through deep snow and a colding wind – of sitting before a warm fire of wood in that place called home where one’s love has waited to greet one with a kiss.
The joy of seeing the first wild Primrose emerge in early Spring, and waiting, watching, for the Hawthorn buds to burst and bloom. The soft smell of scented blossoms from that old Cherry tree. The sound of hearing the bells of the local village Church, calling the believers to their Sunday duty. The simple pleasure of sitting after a week of work with a loved one in the warm Summer quietness of the garden of an English Inn, feeling rather sleepy having just imbued a pint or two of ale as liquid lunch.
The smell of fresh rain on newly ploughed earth, bringing life to seeds, crops, newly sown. The mist of an early Autumn morning rising slowly over field and hedge while Sun begins to warm the still chilly air. The very feel of the fine tilth one has made by rotaring the ground ready for planting in the Spring, knowing that soon will come the warmth of Sun, the life of rain, to give profuse living to what shall be grown – and knowing, feeling, that such growth, such fecundity, is but a gift, to be treasured not profaned…
These are the joys, some of the very simple, the very English, things I treasure; that I have loved the most, and whose memories I shall seek to keep flowing within me as my own life slowly ebbs away…
For it is to the now almost lost England of such things that I belong, that I have always belonged, even though for many years I, in my profane often selfish stupidity, forget this, subsumed as I was in my hubris with un-numinous abstractions.
So this is Peace:
As the Sun of warm November
Warms and the grass grows with such mildness.No strife, here;
No place beyond this place
As Farm meets meadow field
And I upon some hessian sack sit, write
To hear some distant calls from hedged-in sheep:
No breeze
To stir the fallen leaves
That lie among the seeds, there
Where the old Oak towers, shading fence
From Sun
And the pond is hazed with midges.So this is the peace, found
Where dew persists,
Flies feed to preen to rest
And two Robins call from among that tangled brambled
Bush
Whose berries – unplucked, ripened – rot,
While the Fox-worn trail wobbles
Snaking
Through three fields.So, the silent Buzzard soars
To shade me briefly:
No haste, worry, nor Homo Hubris, here
Only that, of this, a peaceful peace
Rising
When we who wait, wait to walk with Nature.So there is much sadness, leaving
As the damp field-mists of morning
Have given way
To SunThe Sun of Warm November
David Myatt
2010 CE
Addendum – A Note Concerning Physis
The phrase Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ – attributed to Heraclitus – expresses something of the true nature of Physis [ Φύσις ]. See, for example, my brief essay Physis, Nature, Concealment, and Natural Change, where I suggest that the phrase implies something akin to Concealment accompanies Physis, or Concealment remains with Physis, like a friend (or, The natural companion of Physis is concealment.)
We, as thinking human beings – who can use λόγος – can not only uncover Φύσις but also conceal it again by our use of ideation, and by our “naming” of things. Why is why Heraclitus also said:
τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον
Although this naming and expression, which I explain, exists – human beings tend to ignore it, both before and after they have become aware of it. (Fragment 1)
An understanding also expressed by Hesiod (Theog, 27-28):
ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,
ἴδμεν δ᾽, εὖτ᾽ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι
We have many ways to conceal – to name – certain things
And the skill when we wish to expose their meaning
Image Credit: The Day’s Consecration, by Richard Moult
Three Essays In Praise of Empathy and Honour is a pdf compilation (available below) of three recent essays of mine, and which essays elucidate certain important matters concerning my philosophy of The Numinous Way; in particular, moral questions regarding war, violence, authority, and the relation between empathy, compassion, and honour.
The three essays are:
- War and Violence in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way
- The Natural Balance of Honour
- Authority and Legitimacy in the Philosophy of The Numinous Way
Three Essays In Praise of Empathy and Honour (pdf)
(303 Kb)
Attic Vase c. 480 BCE, depicting Athena, in Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany
The Legitimacy of Authority
Authority is: (1) the direct power to enforce compliance and obedience upon others, ‘the subjects’, or (2) the indirect power of (a) manipulating others so that they are compliant and obedient, or (b) having influence over others of such a sufficiency that others are compliant and obedient.
It is from such power – however obtained, presumed, or acquired – that someone, or some many, assume or claim they have a mandate to rule, govern, and command, and thence also claim that they, and those appointed by them, represent or are an, or are the, legitimate authority, and thus claim to possess the moral right, the duty, to command, lead, and decide what is lawful and unlawful and punish those who do what that authority has decreed is unlawful.
Thus, what is legitimate and what is lawful is or become what those who have power decide or decree is legitimate and lawful, with there being the expectation, the assumption, or the demand, that ‘the subjects’ accept what is, in effect, this imposed legitimacy.
Before the rise of the now almost ubiquitous nation-State [1], power was most usually direct power, acquired by individuals and groups through physical force; for example, by victory in combat or war or by the violent removal of someone or some many who already had power over others in a certain geographical area or territory. Once obtained by such means, such power was often legitimized and transferred by those having power decreeing that their progeny – or those appointed by them – were ‘the rightful rulers’/the legitimate authority, with such decrees, and the authority of the powerful, being enforced if necessary by the use of physical force, the threat of such force, and the punishment, by execution or imprisonment, of those actively opposed to such a transfer of power.
That is, those with the authority acquired by such force – initially or subsequently – relied both on their subjects being compliant and obedient, and on the use or the threat of physical force in order to enforce such compliance and obedience.
With the rise and the development of The State direct power has, for the most part, been replaced by indirect power; that is by some person or some minority influencing or persuading or manipulating a sufficient number of people to accept some leader/clique/minority/representatives as the legitimate authority. One of the mechanisms developed to enable some person or some minority to so gain and exercise power is the abstraction that is modern democracy where political parties compete for votes (from those entitled to and interested in voting) with such party representatives – said to be ‘of the people’ – being invested with power and influence usually by gaining the most votes, and with the leader of the political party that gains the most representatives usually assuming the primary role in governance.
However, the authority of those who acquire power by such indirect, non-forceful, means is – like the authority of those who acquire power through physical force – still an authority where there are subjects who are expected to be compliant and obedient to ‘a higher authority’, and where there is the use or the threat of physical force in order to enforce such compliance and obedience.
For elected governments always reserve to themselves, and their appointed officials or functionaries, the right, should they deem it appropriate, to use physical force, and imprisonment, as a means of curbing dissension and unrest among the subjects (the citizens) of The State. That is, those with such power regard themselves as the legitimate authority and thus as invested with the lawful and moral authority necessary to use force to quell public disorder. In addition, they invest themselves with the authority to declare war on another State or States, so that a legitimate (or just) war is considered to be one declared and fought by such State authorities.
In effect, therefore, The State/the government is of necessity predicated on the assumption of the obedience/acquiescence of individuals; that is, on the assumption that individuals within the territory controlled by The State accept its authority and accept that such authority is legitimate – whomsoever is deemed to be or appears to be the government – even though most of the individuals in that territory have given no formal personal pledge of allegiance or pledge of loyalty to the ruling authority.
In practical terms, the subjects of The State – just as much as the subjects of some potentate, tyrannos, or some monarch – are expected to defer to those in authority in certain and important matters of judgement. Hence it is The State – on the assumption that the government is the legitimate authority of the territory of The State – which judges when the people should go to war or when its armed forces can use lethal force in some land in pursuit of some goal or aim. [2]
Indeed, The State increasingly expands the matters on which, and where which, it expects its authority to be obeyed (on pain of arrest and punishment). Thus in a modern State such as Britain the individual is expected to defer to the authority of the government in all manner of personal matters; for example, where, when (or even if) they can assemble to protest; in what places they can smoke cigarettes or a pipe of tobacco; in what and what is not ‘an offensive weapon’; if and under what exact circumstances a parent or a teacher may discipline an unruly child or pupil; and so on etcetera.
Judgement, The State, And Authority
This usurping of individual judgement and this presumption or imposition of authority by others on individuals – be these others some government, some State, some monarch, some ‘people’s representative’, some military commander, in the ‘name of democracy’ or whatever, and be such usurping, presumption or imposition done by direct or indirect power – is a perpetuation of a primitive way of life and a concealment and suppression of our true human nature.
It is a primitive way because it involves the control and manipulation of individuals by others, and the use of or the threat of using physical force and punishment in order to ensure or obtain compliance, obedience, or acquiescence. It is primitive also in that the main method of punishment employed is imprisonment and which imprisonment is the praxis of the bully and the abandonment of those imprisoned to a life governed by primitive instincts, brute force, intimidation, and physical restraint and control. All modern nation-States employ and indeed rely on imprisonment as a punishment, as a ‘deterrent’, and as a means of social control.
This usurping of individual judgement and this presumption or imposition of authority by The State is a concealment and suppression of our true human nature because we possess the ability, the potential, be make our own decisions using our own judgement. To so make and to so exercise our own judgement, to act honourably, is the basis of our freedom as human beings: that is, of being free from servitude and being responsible for ourselves [3].
For, in practical terms, The State – as did potentates, monarchs, and others of that ilk – treat people, their subjects, as children. Restraining them; manipulating and influencing them; telling them what they can and cannot do; threatening to punish them if they misbehave; deciding how and in what manner they should be ‘educated’; placing restrictions of where they can and cannot go; making judgements and decisions on their behalf; and so on. That is, it is those in authority who manipulate, influence, and who constrain us, and who decide what our liberties will be, and who possess the power to restrict or deny such liberties when it suits them or when their judgement (not ours) deems it necessary.
Abstractions As Manipulation
The indirect power of modern governments – and thus of nation-States – and thence their presumption of authority, is mostly the result of two factors: (1) the manipulation of people by a minority by means of causal abstractions [4]; (2) the influence of such causal abstractions on people. Once power is attained, such abstractions are used to enforce compliance and obedience; that is, to provide some sort of assumed moral legitimacy for the actions and the policies of those who have gained or assumed power.
Thus, abstractions are used to provide a pretext for authority, with some abstractions being regarded as having or as representing a certain moral worth which other abstractions do not possess.
Thus, the system of governance that is called democracy [5] is regarded, by its theorists and supporters, as possessing a certain moral worth and indeed as representing what is ‘good’ and allowing for, or producing, or promoting, a way of life which it is said is preferable to and/or better than that produced or promoted by others means of governance. Hence these theorists and supporters of democracy invest this system of governance with a higher moral value than, for example, what has been termed anarchism [6] with many further claiming that democracy is the only moral, legitimate, way of governance so that a nation-State with a democratic government has the moral authority to not only declare war (a ‘just war’) on those considered to be non-democratic but also a duty to instigate ‘regime-change’ and that such violence as is used, and such suffering an deaths as may be caused, are morally justifiable [7].
Basically, abstractions have been and are used as a means of control, as mechanisms of manipulation and compliance. Thus, instead of some person – some monarch, prophet, or some tyrannos, for example – being said to have some ‘divine right’ or some ‘destiny’ to rule and thus being possessed of authority, it is said that some abstraction has worth and authority. Then it is assumed that those individuals striving to implement this abstraction are imbued with its authority so that what they do is ‘right’ and moral – provided their actions are in accord with, are a mimesis of, or approximate to this abstraction – and that they and others like them have a ‘right’ and a moral duty to lead and to govern and thus to exercise authority on behalf of this abstraction.
Among such moral-giving abstractions are and have been democracy, the Führerprinzip, capitalism, socialisme (society-before-self), communism (collective ownership), and religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Authority In The Numinous Way
For The Numinous Way, it is the exercise of the judgement of the individual – arising from the use of empathy and the guidance that is personal honour – that is paramount, and which expresses our human nature.
That is, it is honour, the understanding that empathy provides, and the judgement of the individual, that are legitimate, moral, numinous, and thence the basis for authority. This means that authority resides in and extends only to individuals – by virtue of their honour, their empathy, and manifest in their own personal judgement, and therefore this always personal individual authority cannot be abstracted out from such personal judgement of individuals. In practical terms, this is a new type of authority – that of the individual whose concern is not power over others but over themselves, and which type of power is manifest in a living by honour, and thence in their self-responsibility and in how they interact with others.
Hence, The State, and all governments – elected or unelected – are not considered a legitimate authority since there can be no compliance to others other than that which is mutual, agreed, which arises from a personal knowing and a mutual personal respect, and which allow for the exercise of both empathy and personal honour.
For it is honour and empathy – not the authority, the laws, of some government or some State – which set the mode, the boundaries, for such agreement and such cooperation between individuals, and in practice this means a co-operation on a non-hierarchical basis, with empathy providing the personal knowing of another while honour determines how that knowing is made real through one’s personal behaviour and interaction with others.
Thus The Numinous Way is the way of such numinous authority – of the individual authority of empathy, of personal judgement, of honour, and of personal responsibility. A way quite different from that of religions, States, governments, potentates, monarchs, and others of such ilk, who and which all expect and who and which often demand the compliance and obedience of individuals, on the threat of punishment; who and which expect/demand that individuals forsake their own judgement in favour of that of some ‘higher authority’; and who and which place their own manufactured un-numinous laws before the natural human and numinous principle of personal honour.
David Myatt
November 2011 CE
Notes
[1] The State may be defined as the concept of both (1) organizing and controlling – over a particular and large geographical area – land (and resources); and (2) organizing and controlling individuals over that same geographical particular and large geographical area by: (a) the use of physical force or the threat of force and/or by influencing or persuading or manipulating a sufficient number of people to accept some leader/clique/minority/representatives as the legitimate authority; (b) by means of the central administration and centralization of resources (especially fiscal and military); and (c) by the mandatory taxation of personal income.
The State thus divides people into those so governed and controlled – subjects – and those who govern or who are employed by those who govern to organize and control the subjects, with both subjects and those who govern or who are employed to organize and control the subjects being regarded as citizens of The State. In addition, The State designates and decides what is public and private (for example, in relation to land, or particular places) as it appropriates to itself the authority to control what it has so designated as public.
Given that the modern State controls and assumes authority over a certain geographical area, and given that these geographical areas are described by the term nation, a useful alternative term for The State is the nation-State.
[2] Thus do the politicians and functionaries of The State echo the sentiment and words of Augustine, written over one and half thousand years ago, in Contra Faustum Manichaeum (XXII, 75): “The natural order, which would have peace amongst men, necessitates that the judgement about and the authority to declare war should reside in those who have authority over others [a monarch/prince].”
[3] Honour is an expression of our nature as individuals, as free human beings. It is honourable to use our own judgement, be responsible for ourselves, and not to submit to those who would oppress or constrain us. It is honourable to defy those who use force in an effort to obtain our obedience, and honourable to defend ourselves when attacked.
[4] An abstraction is:
“A manifestation of the primary error of conventional causal thinking; that is, of assuming only a causal linearality – of using causal reductionism: that simple cause-and-effect that excludes the acausal knowing that empathy provides and which knowing the numinous is a manifestation of. Implicit in abstractions is the notion of – the illusion of – the separateness of beings.An abstraction is the manufacture, and use of, some idea, ideal, “image” or category, and thus some generalization, and/or some assignment of an individual or individuals – and/or some being, some “thing” – to some group or category with the implicit acceptance of the separateness, in causal Space-Time, of such being/things/individuals. The positing of some “perfect” or “ideal” form, category, or thing, is part of abstraction.
Abstraction-ism – and the ideation that derives from it – can be philosophically defined as the implementation, the practical application, of ὕβρις.“ A Glossary of Some Numinous Way Terms. 2011 CE. Version 1.03
[5] The ideal of modern democracy is somewhat difference from the reality as manifest in modern nation-States. In reality, it is not government by the people for the people, but rather government by a rather privileged oligarchy in the interests of that oligarchy, in the interests of implementing some dogma or some political programme, or in the interest of some vested often hidden lobby group.
It is not even a fair and reasonable vote, since topics the oligarchy, the privileged elite, and the Media and the vested interests do not want to discus are not discussed, and voters are shamelessly manipulated, lied to, and shameless appeals are made to their instincts, their prejudices, their fears, with the elected government seldom if ever being truly representative of the people it governs (for example in terms of gender, occupation (or lack of it), ethnicity, standard of living) and most certainly most or all elected representatives being personally unknown to most of those who vote for them, and often or mostly voting ‘along party lines’ or according to what may benefit some interest group or lobby rather than according to the views of the majority of those who elected them.
It also happens that those who form the government – and thus who make decisions ‘on behalf of the people’ – do not represent the majority of voters, often receiving less votes than the combined votes of opposition parties.
In particular, all candidates of major parties liable to form a government have to undergo a rigorous ‘selection procedure’ by their already elected peers in order to ensure the loyalty of the candidate to the status quo. Thus, the candidates that the people get to vote for have all or mostly been pre-selected according to criteria which ensures they will represent their party – or some vested interests – first, rather than the people.
[6] A loose definition of anarchism is that it is that way of living which regards the authority of The State as unnecessary and harmful, and which instead prefers the free and individual choice of mutual and non-hierarchical co-operation.
[7] This was the type of argument used by the governments of America and Britain for their invasions of and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Morality of The Numinous Way
In order to understand the concepts of war and violence in terms of the philosophy of The Numinous Way, it is necessary to begin by outlining the morality of The Numinous Way, since war and violence are inseparably bound up with how one understands morality.
Morality is, for The Numinous Way, a consequence of individuals using the faculty of empathy [1] – that is, a consequence of the insight and the understanding (the acausal knowing) that empathy provides for individuals in the immediacy-of-the-moment. This insight and knowledge is of how we are not isolated human beings, but rather only one fragile microcosmic nexion and thus connected to all Life, sentient and otherwise, human and otherwise, of this planet and otherwise. Consequently, there is a cosmic perspective – a cosmic ethic – and compassion: that is, the human virtue of having συμπάθεια with other living beings, and the feeling, the knowledge, that we should treat other human beings as we ourselves would wish to be treated: with fairness, dignity, and respect.
The morality of The Numinous Way is therefore defined by a personal honour, a personal compassion, and the personal virtue of justice. For justice is not some abstract concept, but rather a personal virtue, as εὐταξία [2] is a personal virtue. For justice is the personal virtue of fairness; the quality of balance, and is linked to other personal virtues as mentioned, for example, by Cicero:
“Aliis ego te virtutibus, continentiae, gravitatis, iustitiae, fidei, ceteris omnibus.” [3]
This morality is therefore a personal one so that it is the living individual of honour – someone who possesses certain virtues – who represents, who is, the cosmic ethics of The Numinous Way. For,
“the Cosmic Ethic [...] cannot live in some law, in some Institution, in some Court, in some dogma or in some abstract theory. To be numinous, to presence the numinous, what is ethical requires a living honourable person, not some abstract theory of ethics.” The Natural Balance of Honour (2011)
Thus the source of, the authority for – and the reason for choosing – such a morality is and can only be the judgement of the individual, deriving as this judgement does from their empathy and their unique πάθει μάθος.
The Source of Authority
For The Numinous Way, there is no authority other than that of personal empathy, personal honour and πάθει μάθος. That is, the source of authority is personal, and the bounds of this authority are defined by honour, with The Numinous Way thus being:
“the Way of the numinous and individual authority of πάθει μάθος where one’s own empathy and one’s own learning from practical experience take precedence and are considered a means for us to become a friend of σοφόν and thus acquire the virtue and the skill that has been termed wisdom.” Preface, Selected Writings Concerning The Numinous Way (2011).
In practical terms, this means that the individual following or being guided by this Way relies on and is guided by their own judgement, their own experience, and a Code of Honour, and does not relinquish these in favour of some chain-of-command or in favour of accepting the authority of some supra-personal institution, of some law, or of some association, political party or whatever. In place of accepting and submitting to such external authority there is only the giving of personal loyalty according to a Code of Honour, with such giving by its honourable and personal nature never involving the individual in relinquishing their own judgement or acting contrary to that Code of Honour.
Violence, War, The State, and Leges Regiae
Used in its correct, original, non-pejorative way, violence is using physical force against another person sufficient to cause some physical injury. However, a fairly recent synonym for violence is force – a term often used by politicians and castellans and theorists of The State, among others, when they attempt to try and justify the use of violence by those persons (such as the police) such politicians and castellans (and others) believe have some ‘lawful authority’ to inflict injury on people.
The distinction that such politicians and castellans and others thus attempt to make between violence and force reveals their reliance, stated or unstated, known or unknown, on the principles of Leges Regiae. That is, on the principles used historically by kings and emperors and their courts where someone or some group assumes authority over others, and thus exercises command over them, makes decisions for or on behalf of them, and, ultimately, by the use of violence and the threat of punishment are able to force or persuade others to obey them and their commands.
Principles, for example, manifest in the ancient Jus Papirianum attributed to Sextus Papirius:
“After Romulus had distinguished the persons of higher rank from those of inferior condition, then he passed laws and apportioned the duties for each to do…
For the king, he chose the following prerogatives … to maintain the guardianship of the laws and the national customs, … to judge in person the greatest of crimes … to have absolute command in war. ” [4]
Notice how Romulus – the legendary King of ancient Rome – assumed the authority to divide individuals into categories – high and low – and how he manufactured laws, and told individuals what their duties would be, and assumed absolute command in war.
Modern nation-States have, via people such as Augustine of Hippo [5], simply replaced kings and emperors with Prime Ministers, Presidents, or representatives (or whatever) and covered or attempted to cover their use of violence (by their police forces and armies) and the threat of punishment (such as prison) by rhetoric about ‘law and order’ and by social and political theories (such as that of democracy). But the demand that individuals accept some supra-personal authority remains the same, as does the threat or the use of violence against individuals by officials appointed and approved by such personal authorities, as does the demand that individuals forsake their own judgement and rely instead on the judgement of ministers, governments officials, and on the Courts of Law of The State. In addition – as it was for the Roman kings and Caesars – the individual is expected to obey the laws they manufacture, with such laws being regarded as ‘just’ and moral.
Thus justice – far from being a personal virtue, defined by honour – becomes what some king, some Caesar, some τύραννος, or some government decrees it is according to the laws they manufacture and which their officials and their Courts uphold and enforce, by violence (or the threat thereof) and by imprisonment (or the threat thereof). Hence all the rhetoric by castellans and officials of The State that individuals “should not take the law into their own hands”, whereas true – natural, numinous, living – justice only exists in living honourable individuals and their actions.
This usurpation of personal judgement and natural justice is overtly manifest in war. War – the bellum of Latin writers such as Cicero and Livy – is armed conflict involving large opposing groups where there is acceptance, by those fighting, of some recognized chain-of-command and of some supra-personal commanding authority who or which is or are personally unknown to most if not all of those accepting such authority, and where the conflict is mostly if not entirely non-personal for all or most of those involved. That is, war mostly or entirely results from the pursuit of some abstraction, or from the desire, the beliefs, of some leader or commander, or from the political or social or religious agenda or polices of some supra-personal authority such as some government.
In The Numinous Way, a distinction is made between war and combat in that combat refers to gewin – similar to the old Germanic werra, as distinct from the modern krieg. That is, combat refers to a more personal armed quarrel between much smaller factions (and often between just two adversaries – as in single combat, and trial by combat) when there is, among those fighting, some personal matter at stake or some personal interest involved, with most if not all of those fighting doing so under the leadership of someone they personally know and respect and with the quarrel usually occurring in the locality or localities where the combatants live.
Thus, war is contrary to The Numinous Way – to the Cosmic Ethic – not only because of the impersonal suffering it causes, but also because it is inseparably bound up with individuals having to relinquish their own judgement, with them pursuing some lifeless un-numinous abstraction by violent means, and with the development of supra-personal abstract and thus un-numinous notions of ‘justice’ and law.
Hence, there is, for The Numinous Way, no such thing as a ‘just war’ – for war is inherently unjust and un-numinous. What is just and lawful are honourable individuals and their actions, and such combat as such individuals may honourably and personally undertake, and such violence as they may honourably and of necessity employ in pursuit of being fair and ensuring fairness.
David Myatt
October 2011 CE
Notes
[1] For a basic explanation of empathy, see my essay Introduction to The Philosophy of The Numen
[2] εὐταξία is what I would describe as the quality, the personal virtue, of self-restraint; of personal orderly (balanced, honourable, well-mannered) conduct especially under adversity or duress.
Regarding εὐταξία, Cicero wrote:
” Deinceps de ordine rerum et de opportunitate temporum dicendum est. Haec autem scientia continentur ea, quam Graeci εὐταξίαν nominant, non hanc, quam interpretamur modestiam, quo in verbo modus inest, sed illa est εὐταξία, in qua intellegitur ordinis conservatio. Itaque, ut eandem nos modestiam appellemus…” De Officiis, 1, 40, 142
[3] M. Tullius Cicero, For Lucius Murena, 10, 23. My translation is: ‘For your other virtues of self-restraint, of dignity, of justice, of good faith, and all other good qualities…’
[4] The quotation is from the reconstruction of the texts given in: Allan Chester Johnson, Paul Robinson Coleman-Norton, and Frank Bourne. Ancient Roman Statutes: A Translation with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary, and Index. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1961
[5] The assumed need for individuals to accept supra-personal authority is much in evidence in Augustine, especially in his De Civitate Dei contra Paganos in which he champions a order, a hierarcy, with God its pinnacle and ordinary individuals at the bottom. In between are those appointed to oversee indivuduals and ensure ‘order’ with everyone in their rightful place: “Ordo est parium dispariumque rerum sua cuique loca tribuens dispositio.” (XIX, xiii)
As Augustine writes in Contra Faustum Manichaeum (XXII, 75): “The natural order, which would have peace amongst men, necessitates that the judgement about and the authority to declare war should reside in those who have authority over others [a monarch/prince].”
In addition, his rhetoric regarding the necessity of waging war is remarkably similar to that of modern politicians:
“War is undertaken to bring about peace. Therefore, even during war, remember the value of peace so that when those you have fought are conquered you can show them the advantages of peace…” (Contra duas epistulas Pelagianorum ad Bonifacium Papam, CLXXXIX)
He also, it seems, in writing about a ‘just war’, provided them with rhetorical justification for castigating their enemies as ‘evil’, as ‘wicked’ and they themselves, even though they may cause suffering and death, as doing what is ‘right’, what God decrees, as, for example, Bush and Blair did during the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and as with the desire of some nation-States to humiliate and vanquish those deemed as enemies. As Augustus wrote in De Civitate Dei contra Paganos:
“Nam et cum iustum geritur bellum, pro peccato e contrario dimicatur; et omnis uictoria, cum etiam malis prouenit, diuino iudicio uictos humiliat uel emendans peccata uel puniens.” [ For even when we wage a just war, our enemies must be sinners, for every victory then, even though gained by evil men, results from divine decree, with the vanquished humiliated and their sins either punished or wiped away. ] XIX, 15
