Aristocracy of the Spirit: The Path of the Priest. Part II
The Dialectic of Indeterminacy and Determined Forms
3. Philosopher-Sage and Sage-Philosopher
Two dispositions of one and the same reality, differing only in where the center of gravity lies: in indeterminacy or in determination.
The philosopher-sage knows that every new determination of what is happening is already something that has begun to cool the moment it is determined. Such a position allows him to remain a philosopher—that is, to resist becoming fixed, to resist cooling into a settled form, and not to become a servant of a cult. This position presupposes a continual return to the point of radical questioning.
The sage-philosopher, by contrast, is one who, although aware of the point of radical questioning, nevertheless remains on the side where wisdom has already become determination. For him, the point of global questioning serves as a means of resurfacing and producing what comes after wisdom; he has no desire to remain on the side of indeterminacy.
Such a sage (for example, Confucius) may become the founder of a new Subjectia. More precisely, a group of such sages are those who preserve something drawn out from there (or from here), giving it boundaries and form. Sages may form a priestly corporation, establish a cult, and create an entire way of life that follows from it.
The Dialectic of the Philosopher and the Sage
Let us suppose that philosophers serve Truth, while sages serve a determination of truth—that is, a determination concerning what is happening. Yet Truth is always stronger than any determination, because every determination presupposes a side, circumstances, a standpoint, or something that has already begun to cool.
As a result, those who move between determination and indeterminacy may become something—or may refuse to become anything at all; that is, they may refuse to determine the path (Dao). They may refuse to acquire a settled form.
And in a certain sense, every philosopher is a sage, and every sage a philosopher. The passage between the two takes place continually, throughout an entire lifetime.
3.1. The Philosopher Who Is Cooling into Determination
Wisdom always presupposes wisdom about something. Wisdom about nothing is foolishness. Even Diogenes, who lived in a barrel, was wise—wise in his negation of the meaning of ordinary life.
The philosopher is a metaphysician, and the metaphysician is a philosopher (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle...).
Yet the philosopher may also be a poet, a writer, an inventor, a painter, or a sculptor. He is one who is capable of looking to the other side and bringing something back from there into what is happening here—something distinctive, something artificial, something that joins what has already perished with perpetual becoming.
What is thus grasped becomes a point of passage, making it possible to stand in two worlds at once. And this is precisely what distinguishes genuine art from what may be called mere craft, daubing, or graphomania.
The philosopher-warrior or warrior-philosopher (Alexander, Romulus...). The philosopher-strategist—geopolitical or economic: Halford Mackinder, Karl Haushofer, Lionel Curtis, Edward House, Henry Kissinger. The philosopher as statesman (Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu), intelligence officer, diplomat...
The philosopher-financier: Bernard Baruch, Paul Warburg, George Soros—those who occupied such a position. The philosopher-entrepreneur, the philosopher-economist: Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours.
The philosopher-scientist is one who creates something genuinely new or breakthrough-like within science: Gauss, Einstein, Heisenberg, Rutherford. Such scientists are always aware that their theories are something weak compared to what is actually happening. It is precisely this awareness that allows them to remain unconventional rather than becoming people wholly determined by rigid schemes.
Yet the philosopher may also be a physician, a teacher, an engineer, a carpenter, a programmer, a sailor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a chemist, a merchant, an artisan, a sculptor, or a hermit...
Any determination of the priestly condition may become his role.
Ultimately, philosophers are those who tomorrow will determine what is happening through the meaning they have managed to grasp. They determine it within the particular context in which they work.
3.2. The Cooling Sage
The situation presupposes the following necessary elements.
A determination of meaning, or a theory of cooled adequacy, which subsequently, in its stronger sense, comes to determine what is happening and to prescribe how one ought to act within what is happening.
The framework for such a strong determination may be almost anything, including a scientific theory: physical, biological, or perhaps socio-political.
The servant of the cult.
Cooled wisdom, a cooled answer to the question What should be done? or Where should one go?, always becomes, sooner or later, something established: what is happening, how one ought to live, and how one ought to act.
This is how a cult emerges—a system of values and rules conditioned by a particular foundation.
A temple of adequacy emerges, and together with it appear the servants of already-attained adequacy—or, in other words, the servants of the cult.
With time, or sometimes immediately, some kind of gathering forms around the grasped adequacy, and most often this gathering takes the form of a Subjectia.
A Subjectia, after a time, as always, passes under the control of warriors. This becomes the cause of the servants of the cult being subordinated to the concrete governance of the warrior estate.
As a result, yesterday's sage-philosophers, having become servants of the cult, gradually transform, through hollowing-out and institutional ossification, into servants of a cooled cult within an increasingly ossified structure of rule.
And this, in the future, becomes one of the causes of the destruction of the entire grasped construction.
The servants of the cooled cult.
When you begin to hear that enough of "these conversations" has been had and that one simply needs to live—just live normally—then everything is already over.
It means that the teaching is dead.
And at that very moment, the lovers of piglets and molasses begin, at an accelerated pace, to fill the entire space all the way to the top, eventually replacing even the high priests themselves.
And this becomes the cause of the liquidation of the entire structure of meaning.
The new one who has gone off the rails is always someone who emerges from the priestly estate itself.
Possessing the capacity to turn toward the other side, he notices that everything which has been stopped, fixed, established, and determined is not what is happening.
This sense of the unhealthiness of what had become established becomes the cause of a new turn and of the destruction of yesterday's cooled determinations.
Thus a new foundation emerges.
And the cycle repeats itself.
4. The Absence of Pure Types and All of This: Spirit
None of these positions exists in a pure form. Movements, crossings, and transformations occur constantly.
And in such a context, how can one fail to recall Alexander the Great's desire to discover philosophers like himself?
One might also call them intellectuals — those capable of turning toward the other side, those who know of their own metaphysical nature, though it may later reveal itself differently, through other occupations and other forms of activity.
The higher formations, especially in times of ascent, are most often filled with precisely this substance.
The particular occupation of those who participate in them is merely a simplification of themselves for application within what is essentially taking place.
The greater the presence of those who know the value of uncovered knowledge and possess independent thought, the stronger the formation becomes.
4.1. Meaning and Cooling Knowledge
Scientists work with knowledge, whereas the pure priest works with meaning.
A knowledgeable scientist may analyze what has been drawn out and divide it into its constituent parts, or simply "play the glass bead game."
The priest produces a meaningful description of what is happening. He does so through the work of spirit, through the uncovering of what is happening by means of a meaning once grasped from the other side.
The priests of art are those who are capable of drawing meaning from the other side and bringing it into this side, transforming it into an act of art.
A priest may draw out a meaning and give it form — the form of a word or some other form.
Tomorrow, this will become something cooled, a cooled construction, passing through indeterminacy into determination.
And what has become determined will tomorrow become knowledge.
And when this knowledge becomes nothing but a scheme, no longer preserving a grasp of that with which meaning once came into contact, then death comes.
5. Final Cooling
Final cooling implies the death of some powerful theory of adequacy, without which the Subjectia no longer exists, and in whose place something else is already present.
When the higher formation becomes filled with those who despise the globally indeterminate condition — philosophy itself — or when there is no longer the capacity to understand that what is happening is not a sum of formulas or other schemes; or when the filling of the higher formation is deliberately accomplished through the penetration of those who can no longer be called intellectuals, this is a sign that the formation represented by that upper assembly is already something subordinate, something degraded, something captured.
5.1. Tired Forms
Let us introduce a certain simplification for the sake of thought.
Suppose there are those who have absolutely no desire to know what is happening as an instance of infinite indeterminacy — and this, after all, is nothing other than the discovery of metaphysicality.
These are those who wish to work only with the schematic.
Those who wish to manipulate schemes and schematic knowledge, yet have no desire to grasp meaning.
But there are also those who are capable of working with meaning and who know the price of everything, yet happen to find themselves within a declining gathering. And so, for the sake of survival, they are compelled to adapt themselves to existing realities.
And this, too, in the end, becomes a cause of the forgetting of meaning.
Almost a Sage, Sometimes a Rhetor
A merchant of worn-out wisdom. One capable of teaching an endless sum of unnecessary answers to every conceivable everyday question. And such "wisdoms" are not really answers at all, but something useless. Yet to distinguish graphomania from poetry requires independent thought. And where such thought is absent, the ordinary man may, alas, be deceived by every sort of loftiness. Something bordering upon this type is the specialist in everyday rhetoric, the manufacturer of solemn but useless speeches, grand congratulations, and other banalities which are sometimes mistaken by ordinary people for the presence of a wise mind.
The Sophist
A specialist in the sweet and the sour. One capable, through the mastery of logical entanglements, of producing counterfeit knowledge. And sometimes the public display of such things arouses admiration among ordinary people. But this sparkling knowledge, however brilliant it may appear, is emptiness. It only appears strong.
The Sanctimonious One
One of the forms assumed by absent meaning. One who knows that he expresses nothing. One who knows that he himself is merely an empty form of something that was once powerful. Nothing more than the outward expression of a strong, but already dead and cooled wisdom.
The "Komsomolets"
They appear under every regime and at the birth of every new theory of adequacy. First they enthusiastically applaud the first. Then the second. Then the last. And then the next order as well. Fervent defenders. Passionate denouncers. Loud fighters. But whenever genuine work becomes necessary, they are nowhere to be found. And genuine work means precisely this: to produce, to govern, to invent, to create, to immerse oneself in a problem. Having entered any organization, they are capable, over time, of gathering around themselves an entire circle of agitators, plunging everything into a perpetual state of agitation. And this eventually becomes the cause of the structure's incapacity. The "Komsomolets" themselves come in many varieties. Agitators. Fighters. Overthrowers. Denouncers. Provocateurs. Informers. Flatterers. A fully developed collective of "Komsomolets" invariably contains the entire spectrum. Unlike the servant of the cult, who still serves some cooled wisdom, the "Komsomolets" despises wisdom itself. He believes in the ordinary man's theory of relativity — in thing-centeredness — and in his own peculiar knowledgeability: an enlightened nihilism.
The Positivist Scientist
A truncated philosopher who does not wish to know the source of his own knowledge. He understands the branch entrusted to him — a branch once developed by someone who was capable of working with meaning rather than merely with what remains of it now. Yet such a specialist in schemes does not know that all his knowledge is merely a considerable simplification of what is actually happening.
The Analyst and Expert on...
This is the next simplification of the positivist scientist. The positivist scientist, at least, does not seek to extend the conclusions of his branch to what lies beyond the boundaries entrusted to him. The physicist acts within the limits of a particular simplification of reality, where a point moves through abstract space. Another scientist isolates some formula of what is happening, while remaining within the confines of that abstraction. But unlike them, the analyst-expert transfers his limited conclusions to reality as a whole, to everything that is happening. And thus, in the end, he produces forecasts which are simultaneously global and useless.
The Productive Propagandist
He is capable of creating something. But only within the limits of an already existing scheme. What is happening, in its stronger sense, is never called into question. Something may indeed be brought forth. But only within the contours of an already established understanding of the world.
The Propagandist-Transmitter (Journalist-Analyst)
One who takes a wisdom already invented by someone else and, without truly understanding what it is, transmits it further. And this position does not exclude a certain talent. Nor does it exclude the ability to invent something sharp, almost rhetorical, and, of course, something destined to last no longer than a day.
The Man of Art
Another offshoot of the propagandist. One capable, through what is called art, of elevating some concept into the position of ultimate truth.
The Esotericist, or "Mystic"
These are those who have heard something of wisdom. And something of philosophy as well. And, in a certain sense, they have heard something of meaning. Yet their schematic knowledge is little more than an invention of the other side. Though it sometimes happens that such inventions become the source of a blow against the mentality of fools.
The Ordinary Man
The ordinary man is the bearer of a wisdom that has long since cooled. A wisdom which, more often than not, was once produced by priests. And then, having cooled, it passed through countless mediating links into different minds, cooling across many generations. And after centuries — sometimes millennia — it becomes something ordinary. Something commonplace. Something cooled within men's minds. The ordinary man does not wish to live without such long-cooled, weary, and purely objective determinations. He wishes to be finally determined and understandable to himself. He wishes to know why he rises in the morning and why he lies down at night. He has no desire to dwell in a state of global indeterminacy. The ordinary man does not know that all his knowledge — received from his ancestors, from the mass media, from education, and even from the words through which he determines what is happening — is not living truth itself. The ordinary man sometimes desires to know something. But everything that is given without effort, and everything that can be understood without strain, will inevitably be supplied by the types described above. The ordinary man may possess a university education or even an academic degree. Yet this alone provides no way out of his condition as an object among objects and a thing to be manipulated. And in order to cease being an ordinary man, independent exertion is required. As is the desire to produce one's own independent thought.
And Finally
Once again, as always, one must remember:
every thought,
every act of tearing something out,
and even what is presented here,
are merely attempts to reduce something to a scheme.
But they are not that stronger reality of what is happening itself —
that which exists before every scheme,
and survives every scheme.
References and Notes
Recommended Material
- Alexander M. Pyatigorsky — Lectures on Philosophy: Introduction
Mentioned Figures and Concepts
- [vi] Diogenes of Sinope: Ancient Greek Cynic philosopher.
- [vii] Halford John Mackinder: British geographer and founder of classical geopolitics.
- [viii] Karl Haushofer: German geographer and geopolitical thinker.
- [ix] Lionel Curtis: British historian, imperial strategist, and advocate of federal imperial governance.
- [x] Edward M. House (Colonel House): American political adviser and diplomat, close confidant of President Woodrow Wilson.
- [xi] Henry Kissinger: American statesman, diplomat, and geopolitical strategist.
- [xii] Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal Richelieu: French statesman and chief minister of King Louis XIII.
- [xiii] Bernard Baruch: American financier, investor, and presidential adviser.
- [xiv] Paul Warburg: German-American banker and one of the principal architects of the Federal Reserve System.
- [xv] George Soros: Investor, financier, and founder of numerous philanthropic and political initiatives.
- [xvi] Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours: French political economist, writer, and founder of the Du Pont family tradition.
Notes
- [xvii] Subjectia: A subjectia is that which strives toward a goal. A gathering endowed with an integral vision. A gathering oriented toward a particular dream. (Retained as a technical term).
- [xviii] Governance: Governance is a vertical structure of power — a "pyramid." Every subjectia, through the process of cooling and institutionalization, eventually becomes governance.
- [xix]: The expression is borrowed from Bret Harte's novel The Waif of the Plains.
- [xx] Sources on the Lives of Philosophers: Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers.
- [xxi] On the Concept of the "Glass Bead Game": Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game.