Divino Ecce Homo: Become Who You Are  

A response to Cassie:
Thanks for your thoughtful and stimulating response, Cassie. You made and raised so many interesting ideas and questions. I try to express my heart/thoughts reflections on some of them.

Referring to my point about the fact that historically we swing almost violently from one extreme to another, you wrote:

“This also makes me wonder: why does this pendulum swing even occur in the first place? Is it simply the "gravity" of our human condition? Why do we (almost violently) swing back and forth?”

I like your expression “the gravity of our human condition”. And I agree with your well poised words:

“In one sense (as I think you suggest here), one of the most important steps to “balancing” would be to become more self-aware of how this “swing” functions in history AND, perhaps, in our individual lives (do you agree that we can experience similar swings on a personal level, in relation to the “slings and arrows” that life serves us?) This in itself may create a greater equilibrium, a "peace" that transcends the continual violent movement between opposites.”

Yes, these extreme oscillations have come to our full attention now, in our historical maturity. It is so much so that it hurts now to know and ignore it, and it seems that if we can’t transcend it, we can’t go forward anymore. Maybe it is time to get lighter and lighter, learn from personal and historical practices, and pray to God for its Grace to help us to get ready to fly, at least a little bit. I have come to the conclusion that prayer and longing is as important as, if not more important than, our rational emotional ethical transcendence, or it is its eternal root, oil, or soul without which all our attempts will go to extremes, nihilism, and we will never reach maturity. I will come to this at the end.

One may ask: How much totalizing and reductive thinking/reactions we need in order to come to our senses and step aside from the precipice of nihilism?

How far should we go before our final annihilation?

How far, how far violent swing our souls need to suffer: to say human being is “nothing but” computing machines, to reduce our suffering ethical soul to sheer “information processing” minds?

How far should we go to say we are nothing but our “genes and environment,” leveling off humans and germs, and all living beings to some simplicity of reductive minds?

How far should we go to say that we are nothing but “historical practices” (Marx and Foucault)?

How far should we go to say we are nothing but our “sensuality” (hedonism), “consumerism”, “homo economicus”, and “speciesism” or “humanism”?

How far should we go to say we are nothing but “contingent interaction of particles”?

How far we should go to say we are nothing but a cursed and sinful soul thrown in the world?

How far should we go and suffer until we realize that our values of love, justice, mercy, and forgiveness are not mere fictions, they are as real, if not more real than scientific evidence, our reductive totalizing methods, and simple facts of our daily life?

You wrote:

“The other aspect of your letter that I found interesting was the whole idea of re-evaluation of all values (Nietzsche). After the death of God, the responsibility falls to us to reevaluate values, but that is a heavy burden and I’m honestly not sure how well we’ve handled it thus far. It’s almost as if we have entered, culturally and collectively, a metaphorical stage of “adolescence"—we collectively (even if only unconsciously) struggle against meaninglessness, depression, loss of objective "given" values (again, even if only unconsciously). Yet, maybe this is a necessary stage. We have to struggle with (and even against) ourselves, our collective identity (identities, actually). We have to (at least for a time) “reject the traditions of our parents,” even though we know on some level that their example and “teachings"—like the example and teachings of good parents—contain at least some degree of positive, life-affirming wisdom (for example, the various manifestations of the Golden Rule). Perhaps we never fully reject them, so much as doubt, question, and reevaluate them. While it may seem, and feel, as if on some level we have ceased to fully believe in the core principles of the Axial Age sages, perhaps this is only temporary—a necessary stage or condition of our “internal" growth. Going back to the adolescence metaphor, perhaps it is akin to the child learning that his/her parents (which metaphorically represent the positive and objective virtues and values) are NOT perfect, not infallible. Awakening to this realization (the imperfection) is not easy, and perhaps nihilism is a potential (and hopefully temporary) side effect.”

A point of my writing was that the cry of Nietzsche’s madman[1] is the cry of a falling soul, generation, and time in reaction to: 1) excesses of religions in a devilish deviation from the Dao of God into excessive self-righteousness and seeing evil all around itself, and 2) against religious fanaticism, which put out the fire of divine critical thinking and unbiased and impassioned observation and evidence seeking sub specie aeternitatis (from the eternal or roughly objective point of view) reflection about the enigma of life and love.

Consequently, we swung to the extreme reductive “nothing but” of crude Darwinism, hedonism, economism, measurelessness, and moral relativism or perspectivism (historical ontology).

We had to come out of the stage of “Divine Command Theory” to find the judgment of love within, the divine moral light within, and this time knowingly and lovingly abide with God. Is it not strange that all mystical traditions insist that God is within us (it is in our conscience, NOT that we are God), but they ask us to deconstruct our fictitious conscience, the voice of our parents and culturally imposed values, to come to the divine voice, which as you mentioned, is not necessarily against parents’ voice but we have to discover it in our own conscience for ourselves (with the Grace of God) rather than following them blindly; this is a sign of maturity of our moral reasoning and feeling.

You wrote:

“The really interesting question is, I think, what happens when we "grow up” and what might this look like? My views on this are perhaps a bit pessimistic, insofar as I believe we have a great deal yet to learn and experience, at least on the collective level, before we reach maturity (and by “maturity I mean, at least in part, the self-awareness and the "sense of history" to be able to see—not only intellectually, but on a deeper level—the nature of the pendulum swings. And further, to see these “swings” without identifying with them and unconsciously falling into their sway—which, as we have seen, is tricky).”

I agree, but it is optimistic, there is a sense of “direction” here (i.e., undoing the whole nihilistic project) to see the oscillations of excess clearly, to go back to the Axial Ages sages and prophets’ message, this time with better understanding in heart and making it our own: “Enowning” it partially in Heidegger’s sense [Ereigniz: the Event of Appropriation][2], and partially in Walter Benjamin’s sense[3], though it is more. It is coming back to the message of theism and the Ethical Divine Guide Within which is absent in both Heidegger and Benjamin.

You continued:

“If I can say one thing about how I envision maturity, it is something like this: we become creators (not only in the Nietzschean sense, as I think he only partially grasped what the act of creation actually meant). Rather, we see that while values may be inherently empty (where nihilism seems to stop), they are also the most important part of existence, and perhaps the most important aim in existence is breathing life (and continually breathing new life) into our values. Reaching maturity means becoming responsible creators of our values, in the same way that someone like the Buddha or Jesus or Muhammad did.”

While your general understanding is so insightful, I see a confusion here. I don’t think that Nietzsche’s revaluation of all values was bound to liberation or freedom to become mature human beings, because it starts from false premises. First, God and God given values exist and have never been empty, if they felt dead and empty, it is so because WE killed them in our excess. Second, the direction that Nietzsche offers for such a re-evaluation doesn’t come from a spirit of “completion” and “digestion” of the Axial Ages message (similar to Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammad). Nietzsche’s message is essentially disconnected from the divine source and this is a reason that it is barren and dies out in the drought of nihilism. The point of “re-evaluation” that we talk about is “essential” and attempts to “re-connect” to the source or God. I assume you too had this in mind, just wanted to clarify it.

You finish your comments eloquently with this passage:

“In other words, we need to believe in them not only intellectually, but fully, with an embodied belief. But just as they did, we must first go through a rejection, or revision, of the old beliefs, which can be painful on a personal and societal level. This reminds me of what the poet Wallace Stevens once said (and he said it much better than I am attempting to explain it here): ‘The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.’ I might change the last word to something else rather than “willingly”—perhaps “passionately” or “with everything you are” or “lovingly”—in other words, something that conveys that it is not simply an intellectual belief based on reason, nor simply a habitual belief handed down without critical inquiry—but a belief that is forged by experience, by doubt, by failure, and yes, also by love.”

While what you say makes so much sense and sounds true. I need to highlight one point again. The rejection of Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad of the tradition is “essentially continuous” with the past, they reject for completion not trashing or discarding the past. As well, they don’t think that maturity in connecting, lovingly and wholeheartedly, with the divine through ethical practices is a fiction to believe in. This was the problem with Foucault’s historical ontology that couldn’t hold a sense of faith in the continuity of history and so disconnecting with the divine experience, because to him it was all a fiction, including his own philosophy.[4] Now in the maturity of enowning our values for ourselves, i.e., to feel the love, truth, and the moral light of God within, we hold fast to the faith (not belief) that it is true and this truth is discovered by us through the Grace of God. In my own experience, without the divine Grace, I couldn’t find my way out of nihilism and ethical decay. Here I go back to the point I mentioned at the beginning: without a constant longing for the divine and the source, without constant prayers so that God sheds light on our lost souls and fictitious identities, without this immense longing and prayers which are absent in Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger, and I assume Wallace Stevens, any endeavor of our own, as wonderful as the works of these valued thinkers, will not take us from “fiction” to “truth” and “faith”. Maybe, it can take us to a “belief… that is forged by experience, by doubt, by failure, and yes, also by love,” but we need more than this, we need Axial Ages wisdom of the significance of ethical practices and their connection to the cosmic divine pathos, and a deep longing for the Source or God. And what will come as the consequence, the divine Grace, will show us this historical experience has never been a fiction, but truth through and through. Hence, faith is born both as the beginning, the seed and the fruit, as one can meaningfully say: “Become Who You Are”. Nietzsche taught us interesting lessons as an Antichrist, he rejected the whole divine values and traditions, declared we are a subclass of dead and got lost in the drought of nihilism and became what he was, his “Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is”[5]. On the contrary, Jesus and Muhammad didn’t reject the faith and tradition totally but completed and enowned them by rejecting the excesses and misleading interpretations, and became what they were: Jesus’s Divino Ecce Homo[6], reconnected to their divine source . This is the maturity to come.

04/8/16

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[1] NIETZSCHE'S THE MADMAN 
“Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? -- Thus they yelled and laughed.

The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

"How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whoever is born after us -- for the sake of this deed he will belong to a higher history than all history hitherto. "Here the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they, too, were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke into pieces and went out. "I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars -- and yet they have done it themselves. It has been related further that on the same day the madman forced his way into several churches and there struck up his requiem aeternam deo. Led out and called to account, he is said always to have replied nothing but: "What after all are these churches now if they are not the tombs and sepulchers of God?" [Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882, 1887) para. 125; Walter Kaufmann ed. (New York: Vintage, 1974), pp.181-82.]

[2] MEANING OF HEIDEGGER’S EREIGNIS: Ereignis is rendered in English as ‘appropriation’ or ‘the event of appropriation’. We could briefly clarify the notion of `Ereignis’ by analyzing the term etymologically. Speaking of the term `Ereignis’, Heidegger speaks of it as a ‘key word’ (Leitwort) and that cannot be pluralized, but is a singulare tantum. Strictly speaking it is untranslatable. To quote him: " As such a key term, it can no more be translated than Greek ‘logos’ or Chinese ‘Tao’." In the common usage ‘Ereignis’ means an event or a happening. Heidegger speaks of its etymological affinity with two root words: ‘ er-eigen’ and ‘er-augnen’. The former is related to German ‘eigen’ (own) and in this sense ‘Ereignis’ means to come to one’s own or to come to where one belongs. The latter word is related to the German ‘Auge’ (eye) meaning to catch sight of, to see with the mind’s eye or to see face to face. If we put these two meanings together, Ereignis has the sense of being far removed from everyday events or something which we see with our mind’s eye; yet it is something so close to us that we cannot see it, i.e., it is something to which we belong. This is clear when Heidegger speaks of Ereignis as . . . the most inconspicuous of the inconspicuous phenomenon, the simplest of the simplicities, the nearest of the near, and the farthest of the far, in which we mortals spend our life." Here we notice a sense of mystery in Heidegger’s consideration of the Ereignis. Being is different from Ereignis and only in the realm of Ereignis can Being be thought of. "Being . . . in respect of its essential origin can be thought of in terms of appropriation."

Ereignis is the realm in which the truth of Being is manifest. Therefore, Being must be understood in and through the realm of Ereignis. In other words, thinking of Being reaches its purity and perfection when it is thought from the realm of Ereignis. It is not available to the representative-calculative thinking and to individual experiences of men. It is, rather, given to the essential thinker, the poetic dweller, the seer and the shepherd, in his realization of his belonging-together with Being. "Event of appropriation is that realm, vibrating within itself through which man and Being reach each other in their nature." Ereignis is ". . . Dasein’s complete Self-realization in Being and Being’s appropriation (Zueignen)" of Dasein. (http://www.crvp.org/book/series03/i...)

[3] WALTER BENJAMIN THESIS IV ON PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY: 
"Articulating the past historically does not mean recognizing it ‘the way it really was’. It means appropriating a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to hold fast that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to the historical subject in a moment of danger. The danger threatens both the content of the tradition and those who inherit it. For both, it is one and the same thing: the danger of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. Every age must strive anew to wrest tradition away from the conformism that is working to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer; he comes as the victor over the Antichrist. The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious. And this enemy has never ceased to be victorious." - Walter Benjamin, Thesis VI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/These...)

[4] FOUCAULT: “In spite of that, the people who read me... often tell me with a laugh, “You know very well that what you say is really just fiction.” I always reply, “Of course, there’s no question of it being anything else but fiction.” …[M]y problem is not to satisfy professional historians; my problem is to construct myself, and to invite others to share an experience of what we are, not only our past but also our present, an experience of our modernity in such a way that we might come out of it transformed.” [Michel Foucault, Power, translated by Robert Hurley and others, in Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, vol. 3, edited by James Faubion (New York: The New Press, 1997), 242.]

[5] ECCE HOMO: HOW ONE BECOMES WHAT ONE IS (German: Ecce homo: Wie man wird, was man ist) is the last original book written by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche before his final years of insanity that lasted until his death in 1900. It was written in 1888 and was not published until 1908. The book offers Nietzsche’s own interpretation of his development, his works, and his significance. The book contains several chapters with ironic self-laudatory titles, such as “Why I Am So Wise”, “Why I Am So Clever”, “Why I Write Such Good Books” and “Why I Am a Destiny”. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecce_...]

[6] ECCE HOMO (“behold the man”, Ecclesiastical Latin, is the Latin words used by Pontius Pilot in the translation of John 19:5, when he presents a scourged Jesus Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, to a hostile crowd shortly before his Crucifixion. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecco_...]