Language as Technology (re-edited)

God cannot “exist” in subjective experience alone. He cannot exist in subjectivity at all, in fact, the same as objectivity, universality or any absolute.

April 13, 2018 - - Aesthetic, Body

Christ in Limbo, (Follower of) Hieronymus Bosch

Christ in Limbo, (Follower of) Hieronymus Bosch

I.

Chaos – (1) the sensual perception of aesthetic subjectivity; (2) the realization of the moral dissonance that perpetually exists between individuals but lies partially concealed under the casual veils of social superficiality; (3) the intuition that no current mode of moral ordering can effectually harmonize subjectivity without either loss, submission or handicap experienced by one or both parties; submission that, over a long enough span, produces a diseased accumulation of spite, bitterness and want of redress, the kind that not only desires to “even the score” but outright punish and torture. 

The more prominently the “I” manifests, the greater this moral chaos will be felt among men as well as the yearning for its opposite, order: that which is the ventilation of the will’s unwillingness to submit to any rule besides its own; maliciousness that is the primary tool by which the “I” tests and proves, eliminates, disregards, prunes, cleans, and otherwise purifies all that is false and unhealthy.

It is against uncleanliness then, and falsity that the philosopher strives, if for no other reason than to ensure the health of his own nerves through the exercise of honesty; his nerves most sensitive to chaos’s deleterious effects precisely because of his inordinate amount of time spent therein.

II.

God cannot “exist” in subjective experience alone. He cannot exist in subjectivity at all, in fact, just as objectivity, universality or any absolute.

God can only “exist” in an objective, universal or else “real” context if He remains infinitely divorced from the contaminating perceptions of man’s corporeal body. Such context, insofar as God’s own essence not only “transcends” subjectivity but is transcendence itself, renders any sensual communion with Him as a universal effectually impossible. 

On the other hand, the notion that God “may” exist in the “universal” sense is not only plausible but metaphysically essential: He will inevitably arise wherever true universality is expressed. It is unfortunate, therefore, that “expression” implies the use of the senses, which implies a corporeal body, which implies the fragmenting subjectivity of personal aesthetic, that which differs unending from man to man; aestheticism(s) and the presence thereof which diminuate the absolute One of All to the One of One, slaying Him as “God-Absolute” in the process.

School of Athens (partial), Raphael

III.

Language, as man’s first (and greatest) technological innovation, established through its very inception the essential principle by which all subsequent technology is bound: it separates – both man from man and man from earth (which is more or less the same thing). In this did language initiate humanity’s self-dissolution and eventual atomization, the consequences that everyone, to a greater or lesser degree, feels in his own time its most evolved accentuation.

Language separates precisely because it clarifies and reinforces, because it expresses “what we mean” which implies “not what you were thinking”, again implying a distance, a strangeness, a “distancing” if you will; one that communicates through veiled insinuations: “well, you don’t know me as you ought”, which is to say “at all”; a misunderstanding that often precipitates the need for correction, clarification, explanation, justification, those which form the basis of any moral hierarchy: mine which of course, ought be yours. 

The essence of language prevents the existence of an Absolute Moral Order governing all men everywhere, or at least one that can be readily conveyed with words, much less felt or understood by a single individual. For the sensual perception of and by a corporeal body implies aesthetic experience, one that necessarily differs from body to body in terms of its appreciation and understanding; “reality” itself susceptible to change based also on one’s ability to appreciate, understand, etcetera.  

Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso, as one of the artists who best helped to define the revolutionary developments in the visual arts throughout the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Along with Picasso, Matisse helped to define and influence radical contemporary art in the 20th century. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.

Mountains at Collioure, Henri Matisse

IV.

Images, whether perceived by the optic nerve or one’s imagination, insofar as they supply the bulk of sensual material needed for the formulation of language, are themselves tainted with and by “the subjective”, rendering them untrustworthy with regards to absolute Truth.

This revelation comes only by way of aesthetic maturity: the artist’s waging of much war against himself and his own work. You will therefore typically find in a Philosopher’s earliest writings – before the development of a healthy wariness toward imagistic support – a disproportionate reliance on metaphorical juxtaposition and various kinds of “illustrations”. As he gains more confidence in his older, more primordial senses (such as smell), those which are perceived in less concrete and more abstract terms, you will see him gradually dispense with superfluous “for examples” and other extraneous parentheticals in favor of language more subtle and perhaps vague, more (for lack of better word) “profound”.