The phrase Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ – attributed to Heraclitus [See Note 1] – is often translated along the following lines: Nature loves to conceal Herself (or, Nature loves to hide).
Such a translation is somewhat inaccurate, for several reasons.
First, as used here, by Heraclitus, the meaning of Φύσις is rather different from his other usage of the term, as such usage is known to us in other fragments of his writings. For the sense here is of Φύσις rather than φύσις – a subtle distinction that is often overlooked; that is, what is implied is that which is the origin behind the other senses, or usages, of the term φύσις.
Thus, Φύσις (Physis) is not simply what we understand as Nature; rather, Nature is one way in which Φύσις is manifest, presenced, to us: to we human beings who possess the faculty of consciousness and of reflexion (Thought). That is, what we term Nature [See Note 2] has the being, the attribute, of Physis.
As generally used – for example, by Homer – φύσις suggests the character, or nature, of a thing, especially a human being; a sense well-kept in English, where Nature and nature can mean two different things (hence one reason to capitalize Nature). Thus, we might write that Nature has the nature of Physis.
Second, κρύπτεσθαι does not suggest a simple concealment, some intent to conceal – as if Nature was some conscious (or anthropomorphic) thing with the ability to conceal Herself. Instead, κρύπτεσθαι implies a natural tendency to, the innate quality of, being – and of becoming – concealed or un-revealed.
Thus – and in reference to fragments 1 and 112 – we can understand that κρύπτεσθαι suggests that φύσις has a natural tendency (the nature, the character) of being and of becoming un-revealed to us, even when it has already been revealed, or dis-covered.
How is or can Φύσις (Physis) be uncovered? Through λόγος (cf. fragments 1, and 112).
Here, however, logos is more than some idealized (or moralistic) truth [ ἀληθέα ] and more than is implied by our term word. Rather, logos is the activity, the seeking, of the essence – the nature, the character – of things [ ἀληθέα akin to Heidegger's revealing] which essence also has a tendency to become covered by words, and an abstract (false) truth [ an abstraction; εἶδος and ἰδέα ] which is projected by us onto things, onto beings and Being.
Thus, and importantly, λόγος – understood and applied correctly – can uncover (reveal) Φύσις and yet also – misunderstood and used incorrectly – serve to, or be the genesis of the, concealment of Φύσις. The correct logos – or a correct logos – is the ontology of Being, and the λόγος that is logical reasoning is an essential part of, a necessary foundation of, this ontology of Being, this seeking by φίλος, a friend, of σοφόν. Hence, and correctly, a philosopher is a friend of σοφόν who seeks, through λόγος, to uncover – to understand – Being and beings, and who thus suggests or proposes an ontology of Being.
Essentially, the nature of Physis is to be concealed, or hidden (something of a mystery) even though Physis becomes revealed, or can become revealed, by means such as λόγος. There is, thus, a natural change, a natural unfolding – of which Nature is one manifestation – so that one might suggest that Physis itself is this process [ the type of being] of a natural unfolding which can be revealed and which can also be, or sometimes remain, concealed.
Third, φιλεῖ [ φίλος ] here does not suggest “loves” – nor even a desire to – but rather suggests friend, companion, as in Homeric usage.
In conclusion, therefore, it is possible to suggest more accurate translations of the phrase Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ. All of which correctly leave Φύσις untranslated (as Physis with a capital P), since Φύσις is the source of certain beings [or, to be precise, Physis is the source of, the being behind, our apprehension of certain beings] of which being Nature is one, and of which our own, individual, character, as a particular human being, is another.
One translation is: Concealment accompanies Physis. Or: Concealment remains with Physis, like a friend. Another is: The natural companion of Physis is concealment.
Or, more poetically perhaps, but much less literally, one might suggest: Physis naturally seeks to remain something of a mystery.
DW Myatt
2455357.951
Notes:
[1] Fragmentum B 123 – Fragmente der Vorsokratiker ed. H. Diels, Berlin 1903. An older reference for the text, still sometimes used, is Fragment 10 [Epigrammaticus] (cf. GTW Patrick, after Bywater; et al). If the first letter of φύσις is not capitalized, then the phrase is φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ
Heraclitus flourished c. 545 – 475 BCE.
[2] Nature can be said to be both a type of being, and that innate, creative, force (that is, ψυχή) which animates physical matter and makes it living.
Part One – Fragment 112
σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαίοντας. [1]
This fragment is interesting because it contains what some regard as the philosophically important words σωφρονεῖν, ἀληθέα, φύσις and λόγος.
The fragment suggests that what is most excellent [ ἀρετὴ ] is thoughtful reasoning [σωφρονεῖν] – and such reasoning is both (1) to express (reveal) meaning and (2) that which is in accord with, or in sympathy with, φύσις – with our nature and the nature of Being itself.
Or, we might, perhaps more aptly, write – such reasoning is both an expressing of inner meaning (essence), and expresses our own, true, nature (as thinking beings) and the balance, the nature, of Being itself.
λέγειν [λόγος] here does not suggest what we now commonly understand by the term “word”. Rather, it suggests both a naming (denoting), and a telling – not a telling as in some abstract explanation or theory, but as in a simple describing, or recounting, of what has been so denoted or so named. Which is why, in fragment 39, Heraclitus writes:
ἐν Πριήνηι Βίας ἐγένετο ὁ Τευτάμεω, οὗ πλείων λόγος ἢ τῶν ἄλλων [2]
and why, in respect of λέγειν, Hesiod [see below under ἀληθέα] wrote:
ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,
ἴδμεν δ᾽, εὖτ᾽ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι [3]
φύσις here suggests the Homeric [4] usage of nature, or character, as in Herodotus (2.5.2):
Αἰγύπτου γὰρ φύσις ἐστὶ τῆς χώρης τοιήδε
but also suggests Φύσις (Physis) – as in fragment 123; the natural nature of all beings, beyond their outer appearance.
ἀληθέα – commonly translated as truth – here suggests (as often elsewhere) an exposure of essence, of the reality, the meaning, which lies behind the outer (false) appearance that covers or may conceal that reality or meaning, as in Hesiod (Theog, 27-28):
ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,
ἴδμεν δ᾽, εὖτ᾽ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι [3]
σωφρονεῖν here suggests balanced (or thoughtful, measured) reasoning – but not according to some abstract theory, but instead a reasoning, a natural way or manner of reasoning, in natural balance with ourselves, with our nature as thinking beings.
Most importantly, perhaps, it is this σωφρονεῖν which can incline us toward not committing ὕβρις (hubris; insolence), which ὕβρις is a going beyond the natural limits, and which thus upsets the natural balance, as, for instance, mentioned by Sophocles:
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 [5]
It therefore not surprising that Heraclitus considers, as expressed in fragment 112, the best person – the person with the most excellent character (that is, ἀρετὴ) – is the person who, understanding and appreciating their own true nature as a thinking being (someone who can give names to – who can denote – beings, and express or recount that denoting to others), also understands the balance of Being, the true nature of beings [cf. fragment 1 - κατὰ φύσιν διαιρέων ἕκαστον], and who thus seeks to avoid committing the error of hubris, but who can not only also forget this understanding, and cease to remember such reasoning:
τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον [6]
but who can also deliberately, or otherwise, conceal what lies behind the names (the outer appearance) we give to beings, to “things”.
DW Myatt
2455369.713
Notes:
[1] Fragmentum B 112 - Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ed. H. Diels, Berlin 1903
[2] ” In Priene was born someone named and recalled as most worthy – Bias, that son of Teuta.”
[3]
We have many ways to conceal – to name – certain things
And the skill when we wish to expose their meaning
[4] Odyssey, Book 10, vv. 302-3
[5] “ Insolence 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…” (Oedipus Tyrannus, vv.872ff)
[6] ” 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)
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Above text in pdf format:
Phainómenon and Causality
What is apparent to us by means of our physical senses – Phainómenon – is that which is grounded in causality. That is, the phenomena which we perceive, is, or rather hitherto has been, perceived almost exclusively in terms of causal Space and causal Time. To understand why this is so, let us consider how we have regarded Phainómenon.
We assign causal motion or movement to the phenomena which we perceive, as we assign other properties and qualities we have posited, such as colour, smell, texture, physical appearance, and, most importantly, being. Hence, we come to distinguish one being from another, and to associate certain beings with certain qualities or attributes which we have assigned to them based on observation of such beings or on deductions and analogies concerning what are assumed to be similar beings.
This process – and its extension by observational science – has led us to distinguish or perceive individual human beings (ourselves, and the others); distinguish a human being from a tree and from, for example, a cloud, a rock, and a cat. It has led us to assign a specific tree to a certain type of tree, so that “that tree, there” is said to be an Oak tree, to belong to a class of similar things which are said to have the same or similar qualities and properties, and which properties or qualities can include such things as texture or colour or shape. It has also led us to make a distinction between a living being (an organism) and inert matter, with a living being said to exhibit five particular properties or qualities: a living being respires; it moves (without any external force acting upon it); it grows (changes its outward form without any outside force being applied); it excretes waste; it is sensitive to, or aware of, its environment; it can reproduce itself, and it can nourish itself.
Thus, we have assigned a type of being (the property of having existence) to what we have named rock; a type of being to what we have named clouds; a type of being to ourselves; and types of being to trees and cats. This assignment derives from our perception of causality – or rather, from our projection of the abstraction of causality upon Phainómenon. For we have perceived being in terms of physical separation, distance between separate objects (that is, in terms of a causal metric); in terms of the movement of such perceived separate objects (and which movement between or separation of objects existing in causal Space, can and has served as one criteria for distinguishing types of being); and in terms of qualities or properties which we have abstracted from our physical perception of these beings, be these qualities or properties direct ones (deriving for example, from sight, smell, texture, taste) or indirect, deduced, theorized, or extrapolated ones, such as, for example, the property of gases, the property of liquids, of solids, and such things as atoms and molecules.
In general, therefore, all such things (all matter and beings) are said to exhibit the property of existing, of having being, in both (causal) Space and at a certain moment or moments of (causal) Time. That is, being and beings have hitherto been understood in terms of, defined in terms of, causality, so that being itself has been assigned a causal nature. Or, expressed another way, it is said that causal Time and a causal, physical, metrical, separation (causal Space) are the ground, or the horizon, of Being.
Knowledge and Acausal Being
While this particular causal understanding of being and of beings has proved very useful and interesting – giving rise, for example, to experimental science and certain philosophical speculations about existence – it is nevertheless quite limited.
It is limited in three ways. First, because both causal Space and causal Time are human manufactured abstractions imposed upon or projected by us upon Phainómenon; second, because such causality cannot explain the true nature of living beings; and third, because the imposition of such causal abstractions upon living beings – and especially upon ourselves – has had unfortunate consequences.
The nature of all life leads us to conceive of non-causal being. That is, that life – that living beings – possess acausality; that their being is not limited to, nor can be described or defined by, a causal Space and a causal Time. Or expressed another way, the being of all living beings exists, has being in, acausal Space and acausal Time, as well as in our phenomenal causal Space and causal Time.
How, then, can we know or come to know, this acausal being, given how causal being has been and is known to us in observable phenomena? And just how and why does the nature of all life leads us to conceive of non-causal being?
We are led to the assumption or the axiom of acausality because we possess the (currently underused and undeveloped) faculty of empathy [ συν-πάθοs ] – that is, the ability of sympathy, συμπάθεια, with other living beings. It is empathy which enables us to perceive beyond (to know beyond) the causal – and particularly and most importantly beyond the causal abstraction of the separation of beings: beyond the causal separateness, the self-contained individual being that causal apprehension presents to us, or rather has hitherto presented to us. That is, empathy reveals the knowing of ourselves as nexions – as a connexion to other life by virtue of the nature, the being, of life itself, and which life we, of course, as living beings, possess.
This empathy is in addition to our other faculties, and thus compliments and extends the Aristotelian essentials relating to Phainómenon [1]. Furthermore, it is by means of empathy – by the development of empathy – that we can begin to acquire a limited understanding and knowledge of acausality. Thus, this knowledge of acausality extends the type of knowing based upon or deriving from a causal understanding of Phainómenon.
Hence, for living beings, causality (and its separateness) is appearance, rather than an expression of the nature of the being that living beings possess.
The Being of Life
Acausal being is what animates inert physical matter, in the realm of causal phenomena, and makes it alive – that is, possessed of life, possessed of an acausal nature. Or, expressed another way, living beings exist – have their being – in both acausal Space and acausal Time, and also in causal Space and in causal Time. That is, they are nexions between the acausal continuum (the realm of acausal Space and acausal Time) and the causal continuum (the realm of causal Space and causal Time; the realm of causal phenomena).
Thus, living beings, in the causal, possess a particular quality that other beings do not possess – and this quality cannot be manufactured, by us (in the causal, and by means of causal science and technology), and then added to inert matter to make that matter alive. That is, we human beings cannot abstract this quality – this acausality – out from anything causal, and then impose it upon, or add it to, or project it upon, some causal thing to make that thing a living being.
Furthermore, the very nature of acausal being means that all life is connected, beyond the causal, and this due to the simultaneity that is implicit in acausal Time and acausal Space. For we may conceive of the acausal as this very matrix of living connexions which exists, which has being, in all life, everywhere (in the Cosmos), simultaneously, and in the causal past, the present, and the future, of our world and of the Cosmos itself. For the acausal has no finite, causal, separation of individual, distinct, beings, and no linear casual-only progression of those beings from a past, to a present, and thence to some future. Rather, there is only an undivided life – acausal being – manifest, or presenced, in certain causal beings (living beings) and which presencing of acausality in the causal lasts for a specific duration of linear causal Time (as observed from the causal) and is then returned to the acausal to become presenced again in the causal in some other causal being in what, in terms of causality, is or could be the past, the present, or the future.
Therefore, for human beings, the true nature of being lies not in what we have come to understand as our finite, separate, self-contained, individual identity (our self) but rather in our relation to other living beings, human and otherwise, and thence to the acausal itself. In addition, one important expression of – a revealing of – the true acausal nature of being is the numinous: that which places us, as individuals, into a correct, respectful, perspective with other life (past, present and future) and which manifests to us aspects of the acausal; that is, what in former terms we might have apprehended, and felt, as the divine: as the timeless Unity, the source, behind and beyond our limited causal phenomenal world, beyond our own fragile microcosmic mortal existence, and which timeless Being we cannot control, manufacture, or imitate, but which is nevertheless manifest, presenced, in us because we have the gift of life.
DW Myatt
2455347.197
Notes:
[1] These Aristotelian essentials are: (i) Reality (existence) exists independently of us and our consciousness, and thus independent of our senses; (ii) our limited understanding of this independent ‘external world’ depends for the most part upon our senses – that is, on what we can see, hear or touch; that is, on what we can observe or come to know via our senses; (iii) logical argument, or reason, is perhaps the most important means to knowledge and understanding of and about this ‘external world’; (iv) the cosmos (existence) is, of itself, a reasoned order subject to rational laws.
Causal and Acausal Being
According to The Numinous Way, what exists – Being, the source of beings – is both causal and acausal. That is, philosophy, understood as an ontology of Being, is or should be the study of both causal and acausal existents: of those beings whose being is causal, of those beings whose being is acausal, and those beings whose being is both causal and acausal.
By causal is meant that aspect of Being which exists, has being in, causal Space (of three spatial dimensions) and in causal, linear, non-recurring, Time. By acausal is meant that aspect of Being which exists, has being in, acausal Space (of a currently unspecified number of non-spatial dimensions), and in the non-linear, simultaneity, of acausal Time.
Hitherto, the study of beings has been somewhat hindered by the error of abstraction. The limitation – the error – of abstraction is that all abstractions, by their nature, are causal; based upon the linearality of causal Time and the limitations of causal Space, whose dimensions are spatial and thus distinct from each other (conventionally, and geometrically, at right angles to each other).
That is, abstraction is the process whereby beings are described in causal terms, as separate, or individual, entities, or existents – in terms of a linear, non-returnable, Time and a separation of linear dimensions – which entities can be referred to, be compared to, or can be defined by means of, some abstract construct which is said to have the ideal being, or form, or be the genesis of, such discrete entities or existents.
That is, abstraction posits Being as a collocation of, or groups of, separate and specific beings which can be categorized according to, or included in, or which belong to, some generalization, some pure or idealized form [ εἶδος and ἰδέα ] of all such specific and separate, separated, beings; with these separate and specific beings all possessing the quality of – being subject to – the linearality of causal Time, that is, having the nature of existing, of having being, in a linear way, so that there is assumed to be some progression, or some linear change, or the possibility/potentiality of such linear change, in such beings.
One aspect of this assumption of linear progression – of a causal-only change of being – is that of πόλεμος [as a revealing of Being, for instance], one manifestation of which is said to be, or can be described as, a dialectic. That, from such a dialectic, from such πόλεμος, there is or there can be understanding and knowledge, and what has been termed “progress”. or, expressed another way, such dialectic is a means to understanding and knowledge and thus an important mechanism by which “progress” can be obtained.
The error of abstraction leads us to perceive our being as in separation to or from other beings (human and otherwise) and to posit that we, as existents, are discrete, and independent of other beings. That is, that we have a self; or that it is in our very nature, as human beings, to be a self, and which self is contained in, limited to, the causal space and causal Time – the causality – of our individual physical body, and which body is in separation to other such bodies, ontologically, physically, and otherwise.
In a similar way, knowledge has been considered to a knowing of – or a process of linearly becoming aware of or progressively accumulating such knowledge of – such causal abstractions and what they denote, represent, or contain.
Such perception, and such a type of knowing, are but a limited, causal, view (dependant on causal Space and causal Time) – and do not include any awareness of, or any understanding of, the acausality of our being, as humans. As such it is lifeless, an un-numinous, abstraction, and what derives from it is a covering-up of the numinosity [1] of our being.
For our being, as human beings, is both causal and acausal. That is, it is numinous, possessed of Life, and Empathy – the use of the faculty of empathy – is a means whereby we human beings can perceive and know the acausality of our being.
Empathy is, by its nature, an apprehension of acausality, and an apprehension that moves us away from the limitation, the error, the restriction, of abstraction – from the illusion of a discrete self-containment (the self) – and restores us to our numinous being. This numinous, this empathic, apprehension or knowing, is one of connexion, and which connexions manifest the acausal Time and the nature of acausal Space inherent in acausal being.
Thus, with the knowing deriving from empathy, there is knowledge of ourselves, of we individual human beings, as but one nexion, one connexion, to other human beings, and to all beings which possess acausality, that is, which presence or manifest Life, and thus are alive. For it is the possession of acausality – of acausal being – that distinguishes what lives, from what is non-living. Empathy, therefore, places us in relation to – as connected to – other human life, and all existents which are alive, and implicit in such empathy is the cessation of causal presumption.
Our relation to other living beings – which empathy uncovers – is thus one of interconnected being, where we affect, and are or can be affected by, other life. That is, there is a symbiosis; a living connexion of acausal simultaneity. Hitherto – often because of abstractions, the illusion of self-hood, and our failure to use and develope our faculty of empathy – we have been mostly unaware of, or have ignored, this symbiosis, how we affect or can affect other living beings because of our inherent acausal nature, and how other living beings affect or can affect us, directly and otherwise.
Thus, this knowing of ourselves as but one, finite – one microcosmic – nexion has certain consequences, ethically – in relation to how we relate or, can relate to, or perhaps should relate to, other human beings and other life – and philosophically. Here, we will only consider the ethical consequence of such acausal knowing.
The Immediacy and Acausal Nature of Empathy
One important consequence of empathy is that since the knowing that empathy provides is of acausality, of what has acausal being and thus lives (that is, what is essentially numinous) and is presenced by acausal and not linear Time, such numinous knowing cannot be abstracted out from the immediacy of the personal, causal, moment that is the genesis of that knowing. That is, it is dependant on what lives, on the living being apprehending such knowing. To attempt to abstract it would be to obscure, to cover-up, to denude of numinosity, such knowing, given the causal nature of all abstractions. That is, it would be to distort it, re-interpret – or attempt to re-interpret it – according to causal linearity (causal Time) and causal separation.
Hence, such numinous knowing cannot form the basis of any abstract theory, of any dogma, of any ideology, of some religion – to be applied to or used by others – for all such things are abstractions, devoid of numinosity.
One practical consequence of this is that there cannot be any numinous theory of ethics, or of such things as what has been termed politics. What is ethical is simply what empathy reveals and consequently inclines us toward – which is ourselves as a nexion to other life, our connexion to other living beings, and thence a sympathy, συμπάθεια, with those other living beings: συν-πάθος.
The Ethics of Empathy
The knowing of ourselves – as one affective and affected microcosmic nexion – makes us aware of the propensity of living beings to suffer [ πάθος ] as it can makes us feel, present us an awareness of the potentiality of, that suffering of theirs as if it were our own, as indeed, acausally, it is, given the simultaneity of acausal Time.
There is thus, or there can be, with empathy and its development, a translocation of ourselves, from what we regard as our self, toward and into other living beings, with this translocation being independent of causal, linear, Time. That is, the distinction we make – and which abstraction inclines us to make – between “them” and “us” no longer exists, for this distinction is fundamentally an illusion, a forgetting or a covering-up of, or a suppression and ignorance of, our own acausal nature.
Importantly, this συν-πάθος is independent of causal, linear, Time – that is, it is not limited to what we may be aware of or observe in the immediacy of the moment, but includes the potentiality of other living beings to suffer, and an awareness of past suffering.
Thus, given this acausal translocation of ourselves, given this συν-πάθος, empathy moves us or inclines us toward a knowing of compassion and thus to the understanding that the cessation of suffering is the most practical manifestation, or presencing, of what is ethical. This is the desire, the intention, based on acausal knowing, not to inflict suffering upon or contribute toward the suffering of other living beings, human and otherwise.
David Myatt
2455340.359
Pre-Socratic Philosophy, The Numinous Way, Aesthetics,
and Other Questions
In From Aeschylus To The Numinous Way you described philosophy as “founded upon abstractions”. Yet, in the same work, you called your Numinous Way the new philosophy of pathei-mathos. Isn’t there a contradiction here, for aren’t you saying or implying, by calling the Numinous Way a philosophy, that it too is based on abstractions, and aren’t abstractions, according to the Numinous Way, wrong?
Personally, I do not believe there is a contradiction, although perhaps I did not express myself as well as I should have. In respect of abstractions, I was referring to conventional philosophy – a term I used several times in the essay you mentioned. By which conventional philosophy I mean the reliance on ideation – on the process of trying to find, and giving names and terms to, certain causes and then analysing being, beings, and “things”, including ourselves, in relation to what has been posited and given some abstract form.
This is, primarily, the tradition of Western philosophy from Plato until quite recently – arising from the errors of εἶδος and ἰδέα. Prior to this, is what has been perhaps incorrectly termed Pre-Socratic philosophy, and after this tradition are philosophers such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, although of course this itself is something of an inaccurate generalization, based as it is on a limited causal apprehension where some sort of linear progression, or some causal dialectical process, is assumed. But, while inaccurate, it may nevertheless be helpful in some way, for example in placing Heidegger, and others, into some kind of perspective.
For me, philosophy is what the word itself imputes - φίλος, a friend, of σοφόν; one for whom knowledge, understanding, and thence wisdom, are important. [1]
In the essay you refer to, I contrasted experimental science with conventional philosophy, although I could have used the older, and possibly more apt, term Natural Philosophy instead of experimental science. Thus, for me, The Numinous Way is indeed philosophy – although not of the conventional kind; a particular view, or explanation of, the Cosmos (Being, Reality) and how beings, “things”, what we apprehend through experimental science and otherwise, relate thereto.
If we return to the limited causal apprehension, the conventional and assumed and rather erroneous concept of the linear progression of knowledge, then one might categorize this new philosophy as having some similarity with the Pre-Socratics, which is one reason why in both From Aeschylus To The Numinous Way and Numinous Culture, The Acausal, and Living Traditions I quoted Heraclitus, and saught, for the benefit of others, to reference some of the fundamentals of The Numinous Way with certain Greek terms, such as ὕβρις, Φύσις and λόγος.
Thus, one might write and say that the foundation of The Numinous Way – of the philosophy of pathei-mathos – lies in the insights of people – Greeks – such as Heraclitus, Aeschylus, and Sophocles. Or, if one is being pedantic, one would correctly write and say that certain insights, intuitions, and reasoning, of such individuals are, or were, similar to, but not necessarily identical with, some of my own insights, intuitions, and reasoning.
But those two essays were just an attempt to provide, for The Numinous Way, some general philosophical reference points – a rather academic philosophical framework – for those who might be interested and who might find such a conventional framework useful in understanding The Numinous Way.
In From Aeschylus To The Numinous Way, you defined abstraction as the implementation, the practical application, of ὕβρις. Can you expand upon this?
The genesis of abstractionism is ὕβρις – that is, the concentration on the causal, on cause-and effect, on one’s desires/feelings in isolation. This obscures, undermines, the natural balance.
A classic example is Oedipus, as described by Sophocles in Oedipus Tyrannus. In his singular desire to find the killer of Laius, Oedipus oversteps the due limits, and upsets the natural balance both within, and external to, himself. He is blinded by mere causality (a linear thinking) and personal feelings – by his overwhelming desire for a simple cause-and-effect solution to the plague and his prideful belief that he, a mortal and master of the riddle of the Sphinx, can find or derive a solution.
The same thing also occurs to Creon, as described by Sophocles in his Antigone. Creon’s pride and stubbornness, and his rigid adherence to his own, causal, mortal, edict – which overturns the natural edict of the gods designed to give and maintain balance, harmony – leads to tragedy, to suffering.
The same thing occurred to Odysseus, who for all his mortal cunning could not contrive to return to his homeland as he wished, and
kπολλὰ δ᾽ ὅ γ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ᾽ οὐδ᾽ ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ:
αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,
νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο
ἤσθιον: αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ.
“…whose vigour, at sea, was weakened by many afflictions
As he strove to win life for himself and return his comrades to their homes.
But not even he, for all this yearning, could save those comrades
For they were destroyed by their own immature foolishness
Having devoured the cattle of Helios, that son of Hyperion,
Who plucked from them the day of their returning. “
In conventional philosophy, concentration on mere causality – linear thinking – led to and leads to abstractions, to the covering-up of Φύσις and λόγος, and τὸ καλόν. This emphasis on causality, on ideation, on assigning being and “things” to some abstraction, is the error of mortal pride, of hubris, arising from a lack of or an ignorance of empathy; from ignoring the gods, or, expressed un-theistically, from ignoring that supra-causal perspective (that dimension) which The Numinous Way reveals as the acausal and as the acausal manifesting, being presenced, in the causal by the numinous.
Since you have stated many times that empathy is the fundamental basis of The Numinous Way, how does this fit-in with you linking – as you did in Numinous Culture, The Acausal, and Living Traditions – empathy with λόγος? For isn’t this λόγος just part of something else?
Empathy is indeed the essence of The Numinous Way, and is a type of knowing, a means of apprehending Being and beings, and as I mentioned in An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life and elsewhere, empathy makes us aware of the numinous, and that:
” What is of particular importance about empathy is that it is only and ever personal. That is, empathy – like the numinous – only lives and thrives within an individual living being; it cannot be abstracted out of a living, individual, being.”
That is, empathy does not rely on nor need abstractions, or any ideation – and is never impersonal, and importantly provides us with a knowing of what is beyond both the linearity of causal Time and abstractions. Part of this knowing is how we, as individual, living, beings are a connexion to all Life; not separate from such Life.
Φύσις is, in a most important and quite fundamental way, manifest to us in that natural unfolding, that living being that is Nature, imbued as Nature is, as all living beings are, with ψυχή.
λόγος is manifest to us in both empathy and reason, with reason being both what has been termed logical reasoning (logic) and also empathy as ἁρμονίη, as that letting-be (wu-wei), that natural balance presenced within us, which uncovers what has been hidden by ideation, by abstractions. Thus, λόγος is how we can understand, come to know, Φύσις – and which understanding and knowing leads us to Αἰὼν, to an appreciation and understanding of the acausal, of acausal Time, beyond all causal abstractions.
When you write about the numinous, are you referring to Aesthetics – and if so, do you have a theory of aesthetics, and what part, if any, does empathy play in this?
What is Art? Technically, and correctly, Art, for The Numinous Way, is a nexion – a connexion between the causal and the acausal; a causal embodiment of some-thing acausal. What is embodied, and becomes a work of Art, is the numinous and some aspect of acausality, and empathy is one means for a human being to embody, to know, the numinous and acausality. By embody is meant to presence (acausality) in the causal.
Since empathy is only and ever personal, it logically follows that what might be called aesthetic judgement is personal as well, and that there cannot be any abstract, or formal, criteria or theory to judge or to reference what is often termed aesthetic value, beyond the obvious ones of numinosity and acausality. It is this combination of numinosity and acausality presenced in a particular causal manner that may be said to distinguish Art.
More prosaically, and less technically, Art is that works or those works, and/or that activity, that not only represents or expresses (or tries to express) in some way (gives some manufactured/created physical practical form or a collocation of forms to) the numinous, but which also has or presents to us (that is, presences in our causal, phenomenal world) some aspect of acausality.
Art can thereby be some conventional static formful and human-manufactured thing – such as a painting, a poem, a piece of music; or it can be a collocation of human-manufactured forms, such as a film, where images, moving and static, are combined with music and words and express a narrative or a story. By static is meant given a containing or limiting causal form or structure – for example, a conventional musical composition has a beginning and an end, and is scored to be played by some particular instrument or instruments and/or by the human voice (and so on), and is therefore possessed of a particular causal structure, and represents a particular causal presencing, and one which can thus be “faithfully interpreted/performed” according to what are considered to be the wishes of the composer, or given some new “interpretation” in the manner that, for example, the plays of Shakespeare often are, by some human being.
But Art can also, importantly, be some-thing living, changing, and not manufactured or directly presenced by us; that is, Art, a work of Art, can be the life, or some aspect of the life of, a human being, or some aspect of Nature that lives, that is presenced or becomes presenced to us, in a specific moment or moments of causal Time in a particular causal location (causal Space).
Thus, we might justifiably ask: what, and technically, is numinous? And what, technically, is acausality?
Technically, the numinous is what predisposes us not to commit ὕβρις – that is, what continues or maintains or manifests ἁρμονίη and thus καλλός; the natural balance – sans abstractions – that enables us to know and appreciate, and which uncovers, Φύσις and λόγος, and τὸ καλόν, the virtuous beauty known to us mortals as personal honour [2].
What is numinous is a presencing of acausal energy, in the causal – or ψυχή unfolding in the causal – and this is evident to us in what is beautiful (καλός), and what is imbued with the sublime, that is, with an appreciation of beyond-the-causal and thus beyond our own mortal lives: part of which, and anciently, would have been called the gods, or God, and/or to which we might assign the term Nature, as a living, changing, being, the matrix of Life, working on our planet, Earth, in a specific way and manifest in a diversity of living species.
Beauty – καλλός – is thus what or that which presences, embodies, or manifests, ἁρμονίη.
Technically, acausality [3] is that aspect of the Cosmos, of Reality, evident in acausal being – which we can apprehend in terms of an acausal Space and an acausal Time (an acausal continuum), as opposed to causal being, apprehended by us in terms of a causal Space and a causal Time (a causal continuum), with this causal continuum being the phenomenal world we know and experience by means of our physical senses.
in conclusion, it is worth repeating what I mentioned earlier, which is that all these references to Greek terms are just general, common, philosophical reference points – a somewhat academic philosophical framework for aspects of The Numinous Way – provided for those who might be interested and who might find such a conventional framework useful in understanding The Numinous Way, and possibly relating it to other philosophies.
David Myatt
2455335.917
Notes:
[1] In general, σοφός is to have, to possess, a certain skill, a certain craft: the craft of being able to distinguish between τὸ καλόν and φρόνημα; between what manifests the numen and what manifests barbarity, pride; between what predisposes us to act nobly, with honour, and what can cause us to commit ὕβρις. [ For φρόνημα cf. Euripides, Heraclid. 926: μήποτ᾽ ἐμοὶ φρόνημα ψυχά τ᾽ ἀκόρεστος εἴη ]
Thus, we can conceive of wisdom being a knowing of, a discovery of, what is necessary for ἁρμονίη – a knowing and appreciation, of, and what uncovers, Φύσις and λόγος, and τὸ καλόν.
[2] Personal honour – manifest in a Code of Honour – is a practical means of maintaining balance within the individual; a means whereby ὕβρις may be avoided. Thus the importance, in The Numinous Way, of both empathy and personal honour – refer, for instance, to An Overview of The Numinous Way of Life.
[3] See, for instance, Life and The Nature of the Acausal.
One of the problems of conventional Ways [1] is their reliance upon certain texts (original or derivative), which texts come to be regarded as either sacred, or as possessing wisdom, or both. For, almost invariably, all such texts require interpretation [2] and/or come to used a source, if not the primarily and authoritative source, of information about, and a guide to, a particular Way. This reliance upon texts applies both to revealed Ways – such as Christianity and Islam, with Scripture (Christianity) and Quran and Ahadith (Islam) – and to non-revealed Ways, such as Buddhism and Hinduism [3].
What is common in respect of all Ways based upon or centred around certain texts, is that there invariably arises, over a certain period of causal Time, a particular attitude, both personal, and collective (among the community of adherents or believers), with this attitude being one of, if not veneration of the texts themselves, then of reliance upon them so that they are preferred over and above the πάθει μάθος of individuals: that is, preferred over and above the slow and the natural and the numinous (the living) accumulation of personal insight, understanding, and wisdom.
In addition, the interpretation of such texts – and/or the emergence or the writing of new texts concerning a particular Way – has, almost invariably, led to schism or schisms within a particular Way, with such schisms often being, at least in respect of revealed Ways – violent in nature, and leading to accusations of heresy.
These two features – the particular attitude of reliance upon and/or veneration of texts, and the emergence of schisms due to texts – may be said to represent the religious attitude itself. And it is this religious attitude, among individuals, and collectively – among a community or communities of adherents or believers – which is the fundamental problem of all conventional organized Ways.
However, in its genesis, a particular Way often does not possess nor require the cultivation of this religious attitude, this religious approach. Indeed, some Ways, in their genesis, may be quite opposed to such an attitude, such an approach, which attitude, which approach, often leads to the veneration, if not the deification, of the founder (known or perceived) of the Way.
One, particularly modern, manifestation of this religious attitude is in the desire, by adherents of a particular conventional Way, to find the results of modern science in such texts. Thus, there arises the desire to find, or to prove, that such texts prefigured, or indeed contain, certain scientific notions or certain recent rational explanations of natural phenomena, and this desire is often based upon a need to show or to somehow “prove” that the founder of a Way, or the supra-personal supreme Being of a Way, possessed a knowledge of such newly discovered matters.
Thus, and for instance, ancient texts are scoured to show that there was some ancient knowledge, and understanding, of such things as life existing elsewhere in the Cosmos; and/or there was some ancient knowledge and understanding of planets orbiting stars; and/or some ancient knowledge and understanding of what we now refer to as evolution, and the origin of diverse species; and so on.
This is, in effect, a re-interpretation of particular texts, where certain modern terms are mistakenly projected onto ancient or old words to give them a modern meaning, with this re-interpretation often being required by individuals, subsumed by the religious attitude, in order for those individuals to continue to believe in, or to continue to adhere to, what has become a particular Way reliant upon such texts.
The Problem of Reliance
Reliance on texts – revealed, venerated, or otherwise – is a fundamental problem because it not only removes wisdom from the personal experience of the individual, but it also tries to prescribe, to define, to restrict, the numinous.
Fundamentally, the religious attitude is itself a problem because it is a reliance on those abstractions that often derive or have been derived from an initial numinous experience, and which abstractions denude, undermine, or disrupt or conceal, the numinous itself.
For the truth is that wisdom is only – and only ever can be – personal, individual, and unique, and cannot be abstracted out from πάθει μάθος into some abstraction, religious or otherwise, or be found in some text, revealed or otherwise. That is, wisdom is a function of acausality – of acausal Time, of what is living – and not the result of some cause-and-effect; not the result of adhering to or striving to adhere to what someone else, somewhere at some moment in causal Time, has transcribed, tried to describe, or might even have revealed or dis-covered in some manner.
Thus, wisdom is natural, within each of us, nascent - a potentiality to be discovered by and through the immediacy of personal experience. All some texts may do – and should do – is point us or guide us toward this of necessity interior discovery, which occurs in its own way, in its very own species of a living Time.
Furthermore, such an individual discovering of wisdom, by means of πάθει μάθος, leads to a knowing, an understanding, of humility – that is, to a placing of ourselves into that natural Cosmic perspective which forms the basis of Reality itself [4]. And it is such a natural and indeed spontaneous humility – beyond words, terms, abstractions – which is the practical antithesis of the religious attitude itself, and indeed which is a necessary precursor for our own individual change and evolution.
Similarly, the numinous itself is presenced, and can be found, within each of us, and within those natural things, those living things, such as Nature and the Cosmos, a personal love, and empathy, which arise, and which have arisen or unfolded, in their own way according to their basal acausal nature, sans any and all causal abstractions.
David Myatt
2455304.093
Notes:
[1] By Way is meant a particular numinous Way of Life, distinguished from a particular philosophy (academic or otherwise) by virtue of the adherent of or believer in such a numinous Way finding therein a presencing of the numinous sufficient to make them aware of, or feel, or come to know, a distinction between the sacred and the profane.
I have used Way in preference to the more common and in my view, inaccurate and now often pejorative term, religion.
[2] By interpretation here is meant (1) commentaries (academic, theological, and otherwise); (2) explanations (critical, and otherwise); (3) translations; and – most importantly – (4) a seeking of the meaning of (a) both the text (in whole and in parts; and both esoteric and exoteric) and (b) of the words and terms used.
[3] In Buddhism, the primary texts are regarded as: (1) for Theravada Buddhism, the collections referred to as Tipitaka/Tripitaka; (2) for Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Tipitaka (in some cases, depending on interpretation) and the various Sutras, including the collection often referred to as The Perfection of Wisdom; (3) for Tibetan Buddhism, the various Tantric texts, plus some of the Tipitaka (in some cases, depending on interpretation) and some the Mahāyāna sutras (in some cases, depending on interpretation).
In Hinduism, there is the Bhagavad Gītā and the literature of the Vedas.
[4] See, for example, the essay Humility, Abstractions, and Belief.
The clouded sky of most of the daylight hours has given way at last to breaks of blue, and – another day’s work over – I sit by the window that overlooks the hills beyond where trees begin that turning of colour which so marks the downward part of an English Autumn – and my very being is moved as there plays within this room Bach’s so numinous Aria Ich habe genug.
Thus does beauty live, again, and somewhere, here: as if I reaching out can almost touch its very being as one might reach to touch one’s nearby gentle loving lover. But: there is instead only that ache, that sighing, that knowing of a loneliness, clinging – kept small, undepressing, by only memories of so many times, pastly shared, which in their dwelling bring some solace, as out beyond such a presencing of beauty here we still in our, in this, moment feel so many people of this world subsumed in folly, lostness: hubris hiding compassion, a personal love hiding somewhere between dishonour and desire.
Yet, and yet – we have to hope; to cling to such a wistful dream of ours as the early mist of yesterday’s sun-full morning clung to the meadow fields of the Farm as I alone walked among the trees, by hedges, while the light of Dawn broke to reveal a clear sky which sucked away that mist from dewy ground, mist-fully rising only feet, only a few feet, above where the tops of the still growing grass, now only sparsely flowered, gave way to the still cold air seeping up toward the horizon of my dreaming brightening so slowly warming sky.
Thus are there tears as one man’s so small being seeks a Cosmos where belief knows, learns, cares and yet still so honourably desires. But this is not, yet, that death where one might so easily so peacefully pass to that which awaits, beyond – for there seems, feels, so much more living still to do; so many more spaces of causal Time to so drearily fill with ordinary life until we again can be taken away by such sublime perfection of another numinous moment such as this…
DW Myatt
Can you explain in more detail the relation between honour and empathy and how this relates to the question of suffering?
Empathy may be said to be the essence of what I have called The Numinous Way – empathy with life, with Nature; with other human beings; with the very Cosmos itself. From empathy arises compassion – the desire to cease to cause suffering, the desire to alleviate suffering – and honour is how we can do this, how we can restrain ourselves and so do the right, the moral, the empathic, thing.
That is, in an important sense, personal honour is a means of living in an empathic way – how we can be compassionate, and empathic, in our lives, in our interactions with other human beings, and indeed with all other life. For the basis of personal honour is the desire to treat other people – other living beings – as we would wish to treated. Having manners, modesty, being polite and gentle, are part of honour, because these things enable us to relate to people in a moral, empathic, way.
What about animals? You have written about respecting all life and not causing suffering to animals – does this mean you accept that animals have rights?
In respects of animals, it is a question of respect and empathy, of knowing and feeling the connexion that we, as individual human beings, are with all manifestations of life, human, animal and otherwise. We should treat animals as we ourselves, as individual beings, would like to be treated. Would we wish to be subject to pain? To suffer? Would we wish to be captured, and held in captivity, and experimented on, and breed for food and for slaughter? No, of course not. In an earlier essay of mine, I gave an analogy concerning a race of aliens – sentient extra-terrestrial life-forms who possess technology far superior to ours – who come to Earth and who treat us as we treat and have treated animals: as property; as some commodity. Such an analogy should place us, and other life in the Cosmos, in context – providing us with the new Cosmic perspective, the new Cosmic ethics, we need, in place of the ego-centric, human-centric, arrogant perspective and ethics of the past.
Thus, we need to feel and know – to accept – how we are but one small manifestation of Life, connected to all life in the Cosmos. What we do, or do not do, has consequences for ourselves and for other Life. To have empathy – to be empathic – is to be an evolved and evolving human being: it is to be and behave as an adult, a rational human being rather than as the children we have been for so many thousands of years with our tantrums, our squabbles, our pride, our need to fulfil our own desires regardless of the suffering we might or do cause to others, to animals, to Life.
As for “rights”, that is an abstract concept, imposed upon Life, and like all concepts, it distorts what-is, and encourages conflict and suffering because it posits some ideal which it is believed can and should be striven for. Correctly understood, it is empathy which is important – not such an abstract concept as “rights”. From empathy there is compassion, and personal honour, for such honour, as I explained earlier, sets the practical limits of our personal behaviour, and thus prevents us from going beyond the boundaries which empathy sets.
In essence, therefore, empathy takes us far beyond the classification of concepts and the sterile, rather uncompassionate debates that revolve around such concepts as “rights”. Thus, there is no need to debate, for example, whether some or all animals are sentient, or whether they are “intelligent” according to some abstract criteria, for such questions are irrelevant, from the perspective of empathy, from the perspective of the matrix of the Cosmos. We have – or can develope – an empathy with life; an appreciation of Life itself; an understanding of the possibilities that life presents.
But we are encumbered by the dead-weight of our own arrogance, our hubris, our belief we are “superior” to some other life on this planet.
You have written recently that you regard The Numinous way as fundamentally a-political, more of a spiritual way of life. Has this fundamental change in your beliefs been the result of your own experience these past six or more years, since surely you previously agitated for political, revolutionary change?
There certainly has been a fundamental change, as a result of my thinking, and my experiences, some of which have been deeply personal, and occasionally tragic. In essence, I have come to feel, know and understand the value and importance of empathy, compassion and human love, and to realize how abstractions – be they political, religious or even social, and be they forms, constructs, ideas or ideals – undermine and are contrary to the empathy, compassion, love and personal honour that are the essence of our humanity. All such abstractions cause suffering. This is the inescapable reality. For adherence to such abstractions, the pursuit of such abstractions, always results in conflict and suffering, and as I have learnt, and remarked in recent essays, good intentions are no excuse, for it the cessation of suffering that is the most important thing, not some abstraction, not some ideal, not some cause, not some vision or dream of the future.
For decades, I myself in my error, in pursuit of some so-called glorious vision or some ideal, pursued such abstractions, and in the process contributed to, and caused, suffering. For year after year I made excuses, controlling my natural empathic nature, my instinct for compassion, by believing that “sacrifices” have to be made – that it was acceptable, in order to have a better future, to use violence, to encourage struggle, and war, and conflict: that if people had to suffer and die to preserve “this”, or create “that”, then it was necessary; harsh, but necessary. That view, however, is morally wrong; reprehensible. We should no longer make excuses for ourselves, for no cause, no abstraction, no ideal, no construct, is worth even one person’s suffering, pain and death. Morally, we are only ever justified in defending ourselves on an individual basis in a personal situation – that is, it is only honourable for us to defend ourselves, and those of our relatives or family, who may be near us, if we or they are attacked. This personal defence can and may involve force sufficient to cause injury to the attacker or attackers, or, as a last resort, it may involve their death if there is no other option available. However, this use of force cannot morally, honourably, be abstracted out from such a personal, direct, situation or confrontation.
For centuries we have mistakenly, arrogantly, pursued such abstractions as “nationalism” and we have gone to war to defend an abstraction called our nation, as we have killed others, and caused suffering. Millions upon millions of people have been killed. Millions upon millions of people have been injured, and millions upon millions have endured hardship and suffering. This is and was morally wrong; it was and is dishonourable.
Previously, we pursued such abstractions as Empire, or we followed some leader or ruler or some King who desired to conquer, or rule, and who in the pursuit of such things again went to war and again indulged in killing and again caused suffering. We have also pursued religious abstractions, and fought, and suffered and died, in the name of such an abstraction, such a faith. Now, the rallying cry is or seems to be for “democracy” and “peace” – and in the pursuit of these abstractions, people regard war, invasion, the occupation of lands, the killing of so-called “enemies”, as acceptable and indeed necessary, as the price which has to be paid. As I said, this is morally wrong; it is reprehensible; it is inhuman.
Not so long ago, some politician said that “if we want peace, it has to be fought for”, by which he meant people had to suffer, be injured and be killed in the striving for this mythical peace, which he incidentally never bothered to define.
Such an attitude, such a belief, is uncivilized: a sign of immaturity; a sign in truth of barbarism, of inhumanity. It is de-humanizing. True peace can only ever be attained by means which do not cause any suffering and by means which do not contribute to any suffering, for true peace is within each and every one of us – it is not some mythical or abstract “thing” which can be attained at some future time through violence, hatred, struggle, suffering, killing or war, just as true peace cannot be attained through some law, or be given by some political party or government or leader or ruler. Neither can it be legislated into existence by some piece of paper (a constitution) or by a particular type of government, such as democracy.
The simple compassionate, empathic, honourable truth is that to attain peace we must change ourselves; we must become empathic, compassionate human beings. We must reform, evolve, ourselves through accepting a Cosmic morality that does not depend on amoral, inhuman, abstractions and which does not claim to have been revealed by some deity. For it is the struggle for abstractions, for abstract ideals – the struggle to implement such things – which is inhuman, which always leads to suffering, however noble and fine such ideals or abstractions might seem, and our foremost, fundamental, principle must be to alleviate suffering, to cease to cause suffering to any human being, or to any living thing.
The politician who made the aforementioned statement has been responsible, as head of the British government, for many tens of thousands of people being killed in various parts of the world; for the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, for the maiming of tens upon tens of thousands of people, and directly or indirectly, for the torture and humiliation of thousands upon thousands of peoples. Yet such a person – and those who support such a person – finds and find such things acceptable; acceptable, but, they say, regrettable, and they will write and say this because they have placed some abstraction, some ideal, some mythos, before human suffering, and are prepared to inflict suffering in the name of this ideal, this abstraction, this mythos, this belief. This is fundamentally wrong. It is immoral.
For decades I myself made the same mistake, in my pursuit of some political idea, or some religious belief. As I keep writing and saying, we must at last grow-up, and become truely human: that is, empathic, compassionate. We must cease to cause suffering. All we have to do is change ourselves – and let-go of the abstractions we have brutally imposed upon Life, upon human beings.
Are you optimistic about the future?
Vaguely. I used to be very optimistic, but not any more. I hope I am wrong. But it does appear that we human beings are incapable of learning from our errors, from our experience. The names we give to our abstractions change, as do some of the excuses we make for killing and causing suffering, but our basic nature does not seem to change very much. My own life is an illustration of our human stupidity, of our forgetting – for I myself failed to learn, for decades; failed to change myself; continued to make excuses for continuing to cause suffering, and continued to forget the sometimes painful lessons I learned along the way.
We have thousands of years of history to learn from; thousands of years of literature, of Art, of music; thousands of years of personal examples – of people who strove to do what was moral, honourable, who understood the truth regarding the cessation of suffering; who understood the wisdom of compassion. Sometimes, we have honoured such people – more through rhetoric, through platitudes, than following their example. And yet still the suffering goes on – still we follow and strive for and adhere to some abstraction, or we follow our own dishonourable passions.
That is, we have failed to develope the empathy we need, the empathy which we must have if we, and the life on this planet, are to survive, and if we human beings are ever going to evolve, ever going to grow up. It is empathy which is the key, which is required, which is the beginning of our change into genuine, civilized, compassionate, beings, and this requires us to have the perspective of the Cosmos, of all Life: an appreciation and understanding and feeling for how all such life is connected, and how we are but one finite, temporal, nexion, and of how we can, through such empathy, reach out toward a more evolved existence beyond the spatial temporality of this Earth.
As some people have remarked, all this does seem rather like Buddhism. Would you agree?
There are certain similarities, but a great many differences. A difference such as that of personal honour. A difference such as that of empathy – as manifest in the perspective of the Cosmos; in the knowing of The Numen, and the presencing of The Numen through such things as music, Art, literature, and the immediacy-of-the-moment when we feel the beauty, the joy, the potential, of Life within us.
Thus, while there is suffering, there is also – and can be and should be – great joy; great beauty. A knowing of beauty so great that we are momentarily removed from our own often mundane lives and transported to another more numinous realm of existence. Hence there is the prehension of the moment – a living-in such a moment, rather than the somewhat turning-away from the world, from life, that exists in Buddhism when so many moments are used to end the presencing of the moment, through such a technique as meditation.
The Numinous Way is essentially both a new and an old way of living. New, in that we are consciously aware of the need not to cause suffering and so can, because of honour, restrain ourselves and reach out with empathy, love and compassion. Old, because there is or can be wu-wei. New, because there is a going-beyond each and every abstraction to the essence which is of ourselves as one finite, temporal nexion; old, because there is a feeling for the moral allegories, the lessons, of the past. New, because there is a knowing of the possibilities which await if we can but use empathy and honour to change ourselves.
David Myatt
Last Modified: 5/April/2012
What Is The Numinous Way?
The Numinous Way is a spiritual (a numinous) philosophy – an individual ethical way of living – based on the virtues of compassion, empathy, humility, and personal honour.
The foundation of this Way is that of empathy. As used and defined by The Numinous Way, empathy 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 sympathy and a means to knowing and understanding another human being and/or other living beings
Philosophically, empathy presents to us, or can present to us, a type of knowing – a perception, an awareness – quite distinct from that posited by both conventional philosophy and experimental science. The Numinous Way thus adds the faculty of empathy to our physical senses; adds the perception of empathy to the perception of Phainómenon, and thus to the Aristotelian essentials of conventional philosophy and experimental science.
The use and the development of empathy makes us aware of how what we as individuals do, or do not do, affects or can affect other human beings and the other life with which we share this planet we call Earth. In effect, empathy reveals the natural living, the affective, connexion we are to Life, and how our normal perception of ourselves as a singular, a separate, individual is incorrect.
An awareness of this connexion therefore inclines us toward compassion, toward the human virtue of having sympatheia (benignity) with and toward other living beings. To be compassionate is to try to not cause or contribute to the suffering, or to aid in the alleviation of the suffering, of other living beings, where suffering is understood as what is distressing, painful/injurious (physical and emotional), unfair, redolent of grief and sadness.
One way in which we can avoid causing or contributing to suffering – and aid the alleviation of suffering – is by living, by acting, in an honourable way. In essence, honour is an expression of the natural balance of Life – the harmony of human living – and in practical terms honour is manifest in fairness, reasoned/balanced judgement, manners, wu-wei, and an awareness and appreciation of the numinous.
Honour and compassion are thus practical consequences, practical manifestations, of empathy.
What is The Numinous?
The numinous is what manifests or can manifest or remind us of the natural balance of Life; of what is harmonious, or what reminds us of what is harmonious and beautiful. In a practical way, it is what we regard or come to appreciate as ‘sacred’ and dignified; what expresses our humanity.
We are reminded of this natural balance, of what is numinous – we can come to know, to experience, the numinous – by pathei-mathos. That is, by the process of learning from personal adversity/personal suffering/personal grief.
An aspect of this learning is an appreciation, an awareness, of The Cosmic Perspective: of ourselves as one fallible, mortal, fragile biological, microcosmic, nexion on one planet in one Galaxy in a Cosmos of billions of galaxies; one connexion to, one emanation of, all other Life. In essence, pathei-mathos teaches us humility and the value of personal love.
What is Wu-Wei?
Wu-wei is a Taoist term used in The Numinous Way to refer to a personal ‘letting-be’ deriving from a feeling, a knowing, that an essential part of wisdom is cultivation of an interior personal balance and which cultivation requires acceptance that one must work with, or employ, things according to their nature, for to do otherwise is incorrect, and inclines us toward, or is, being excessive – that is, toward the error, the unbalance, that is hubris, an error often manifest in personal arrogance, excessive personal pride, and insolence – that is, a disrespect for the numinous.
In practice, wu-wei is the cultivation of a certain (empathic, numinous) perspective – that life, things/beings, change, flow, exist, in certain natural ways which we human beings cannot change however hard we might try; that such a hardness of human trying, a belief in such hardness, is unwise, un-natural, upsets the natural balance and can cause misfortune/suffering for us and/or for others, now or in the future. Thus success lies in discovering the inner nature (the physis) of things/beings/ourselves and gently, naturally, slowly, working with this inner nature, not striving against it.
What does Living According to The Numinous Way mean?
Living according to The Numinous Way is simple and means:
- being compassionate or inclining toward compassion by trying to avoid causing, or contributing, to suffering;
- being honourable – fair, reasonable, well-mannered, just, dignified, balanced;
- appreciating the value and importance of personal love;
- inclining toward a personal humility;
- cultivating wu-wei.
The Numinous Way is an ethical way of living which individuals are free to choose. There are no spiritual techniques or esoteric exercises; no supplication to some-thing or to some posited Being. No expectation of reward, in this life or in some posited next life. No goal. There is just a living of life in a certain natural way.
Is The Numinous Way a religion?
The Numinous Way is not a religion; that is, it is not an organized way of worship, devotion, and faith; and there is no belief in some deity/deities, or in some supreme Being or in some supra-personal power or in some after-life or in karma as karma is understood by the Way known as Buddhism.
Essentially, The Numinous Way is a way of a gentle interior personal and individual change; an inclination to live in a certain ethical manner so as not to intentionally cause suffering, so as not to upset the natural balance of Life.
The answer as to why someone would want to live in this numinous, this particular spiritual, way, is the answer of empathy; of the knowledge of ourselves, of others, of Life, of Nature, that empathy provides.
This is the knowledge that the separation-of-otherness is an illusive, a deceptive, appearance. The knowledge of our affective and effecting connexion to all Life, which is a knowledge of The Cosmic Perspective, of ourselves as just one microcosmic emanation of Life on one planet in one Galaxy in a Cosmos of billions of galaxies.
In respect of other religions, there is tolerance and respect, since any Way or religion which manifests, which expresses, which guides individuals toward, the numinous humility we human beings need is good. For according to The Numinous Way 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 since it is a personal humility – whatever the source – that expresses our true developed (that is, our rational and empathic) human nature and which nature many other Ways or religions make us aware of or can remind us of.
Is there a difference between The Numinous Way and The Philosophy of The Numen?
No; they both refer to the ethical way of compassion, empathy, humility, and personal honour.
What is the separation-of-otherness?
It is term used in an attempt to describe how our normal perception of ourselves as a singular, a separate, individual is incorrect, an error which empathy can correct.
Empathy involves a translocation of ourselves and thus a knowing-of another living-being as that living-being is, without presumptions and sans all ideations, all projections. In a simple way, empathy involves a numinous sympathy with another living-being; a becoming – for a causal moment or moments – of that other-being, so that we know, can feel, can understand, the suffering or the joy of that living-being. In such moments, there is no distinction made between them and us – there is only the flow of life; only the presencing and the ultimate unity of Life itself.
What about politics and social reform?
The Numinous Way, being a personal spiritual way, is not concerned with the theory or the practice of governance, and is therefore apolitical. Its concern is with individuals, with their interior change; with ethical living.
The Numinous Way approach to the problems of society – to reform and social change, and to The State – is also an individual one, deriving from the faculty of empathy, and from the uniquely personal judgement that empathy and a personal knowing reveal in the immediacy-of-the-moment.
Reform and change are understood as personal, direct; of and involving individuals who are personally known; and of necessity begins with the necessary inner change in the individual. That is, that inner, personal, change – in individuals, of their nature, their character – is understood as the ethical means to solving such personal and social problems as exist and arise. That the only effective, long-lasting, change and reform is the one that evolves human beings and thus changes what, in them, predisposes them, or inclines them toward, doing or what urges them to do, what is dishonourable, undignified, unfair, and uncompassionate.
The basis for numinous social change and reform is aiding, helping, assisting individuals in a direct and personal manner and in practical ways, with such help, assistance, and aid arising because we personally know or are personally concerned about or involved with those individuals. In brief, being compassionate, empathic, understanding, sensitive, kind.
What about Love?
The Numinous Way regards a shared, mutual, love between two human beings is regarded as the most beautiful, the most numinous, the most human virtue of all.
What is meant by The Cosmic Perspective?
The Cosmic Perspective refers to our place in the Cosmos, to the fact that we human beings are simply one fragile fallible mortal biological life-form on one planet orbiting one star in one galaxy in a Cosmos of billions of galaxies. Thus in terms of this perspective all our theories, our ideas, our beliefs, our abstractions are merely the opinionated product of our limited fallible Earth-bound so-called ‘intelligence’, an ‘intelligence’, an understanding, we foolishly, arrogantly, pridefully have a tendency to believe in and exalt as if we are somehow ‘the centre of the Universe’ and cosmically important.
The Cosmic Perspective inclines us – or can incline us – toward wu-wei, toward avoiding the error of hubris, toward humility, and thus toward an appreciation of the numinous.
What does authority mean 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 – which expresses our human nature.
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. 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 self-responsibility, self-control, and being fair.
How does The Numinous Way view race and racism?
Race is a manifestation of the causal separation-of-otherness, and thus contradicts empathy and the intuitive knowing of and sympathy with the living other that individual empathy provides or can make us aware of.
The notion of race separates, divides, human beings into manufactured lifeless categories which nullify the empathic knowing of individual human beings. Such assignment of individuals to a posited abstract category – some assumed ‘race’ or sub-race – is irrelevant, since individual human beings are or have the potential to be unique individual human beings, so that such an assignment, whatever the alleged reason, is a dehumanizing of those individuals. For our humanity is expressed by an individual and personal knowing of individuals, by a personal interaction with others on the basis of respect, tolerance, reason, and honour, and which personal knowledge of them renders their alleged or assumed ethnicity or ancestry irrelevant.
Racism is immoral, reprehensible. What matters is the person, the individual as an individual human being who is unique or who has the potential to be unique. What matters, what is human and moral, is a personal knowing of individuals and treating others with fairness, and tolerance, on the basis of equality.
Is honour important in The Numinous Way?
Honour, being a practical, a human, manifestation of the natural balance of Life, of individual authority, is a means to living in a numinous way and thus both a means to avoid the error, the unbalance, that is hubris and also a means to restore the numinous balance that the dishonourable, undignified, unfair, and uncompassionate, personal deeds of others have upset and which deeds one is personally aware of in the immediacy-of-the-moment. Thus to defend one’s self if attacked is the natural, the honourable, thing to do, as is valorously defending someone in the immediacy-of-the-moment who is faced with someone or some many acting dishonourably, unfairly.
What are the ethics of The Numinous Way?
The ethics of The Numinous Way derive from the revealing – the insight, the knowing, the understanding, the feeling – that the faculty of empathy provides when we, as an individual, personally interact with another living being over a certain period of time. What is thus discovered by means of empathy is sympatheia – a numinous sympathy with the-living-other – and how, as an individual, we are an affecting connexion to all life, and thus how our assumed separation, as an individual, is an illusion, a manifestation of hubris. We therefore become aware of how we affect or can affect others; how they affect or can affect us; and of how their suffering, their pain, their joy, their grief, is ours beyond the barrier of our inner and our outer egoist.
This discovery, this revealing, thus inclines us toward compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, love, tolerance, peace, fairness, wu-wei, and toward being non-judgemental in respect of those we do not personally know and thus have no experience of, have had no empathic contact with. For it is empathy – the close and the extended personal interaction with individuals, on an individual basis, that empathy requires – that is the natural and the moral way of assessing, of really knowing, another human being.
This means two important things. First, that we treat human beings in a human way – that is, as individuals, recognizing that they are unique or have the potential to become unique; that they, like us, can and do suffer pain, grief, sadness, joy; that they, like us, have hopes, dreams. Second, that all individuals we do not personally know are or should be presumed to be ‘innocent’, unjudged, and so are to be given the benefit of the doubt; for this presumption of innocence – until personal experience and empathic individual knowing of them prove otherwise – is the fair, the honourable, the moral thing to do.
The revealing that empathy provides is of The Cosmic Perspective; of the numinous; of why hubris is an error of judgement, an upsetting of the natural balance of Life; of how most human beings have the ability to change for the better.
What is meant by pathei-mathos?
Pathei-mathos (πάθει μάθος – qv. Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 174-183) is the process of learning from personal adversity/personal suffering/hard personal experience. It is thus a means of developing a good, a fair, a balanced personal judgement.
The Numinous Way considers that pathei-mathos is also a means whereby we can discover the numinous and thus appreciate the need to avoid the error of hubris.
Thus, an alternative term for The Numinous Way might be The Way of Pathei-Mathos.
What is meant by the term abstraction?
The Numinous Way understands an abstraction as the manufacture, and use of, some idea, ideal, ‘image’, form, or category, and thus some generalization about, 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 a being/beings/things/individuals.
The assignment of human beings to some abstraction (some abstract category) – such as some assumed race (e.g. Negro), or some occupation (e.g ‘prostitute’) or according to some deed (real or alleged, such as ‘traitor’ or ‘heretic’ or ‘hero’) – always involves either (i) some derogatory perception of, or some pejorative judgement being made about, an individual on the basis of the qualities or the attributes that are believed or assumed to belong to that abstraction, and/or (ii) some idealization/glorification of those so assigned to some abstract category. One consequence is that those so assigned to some pejorative category become dehumanized and are often treated in an unfair, a discriminatory, manner.
The positing of some ‘perfect’ or ‘ideal’ form, category, or thing, is part of abstraction. Thus understood, abstraction encompasses terms such as ideology, idea, dogmatic/harsh beliefs, and ideals.
In philosophical terms, an abstraction is a manifestation, possibly the primary manifestation, of the-separation-of-otherness: of a lack of empathy, and which lack results in some illusive distinction being made between ‘them’ and ‘us’.
If I wanted to follow The Numinous Way what would I have to do?
The Numinous Way itself is simply the living, by individuals, of an ethical life: individuals cultivating empathy, compassion, humility, wu-wei, dignity, and honour, who thus are inclined to avoid causing suffering and inclined to doing what is fair.
There is no dogma, no organization, no officials, no supra-personal authority, no theology, no theories, no authorized or recommended praxis. There are no codes of conduct, no scriptures, no ‘sacred’ – or official/authorized – writings. There are only honourable individuals individually aware of, and respectful of, the numinous.
How does The Numinous Way compare to other spiritual ways?
The Numinous Way is just one spiritual, one numinous, one fallible, way among many; one spiritual option which individuals are free to choose. In regard to other spiritual ways and religions, there is respect and tolerance.
David Myatt
2012 ce
Image credit: NASA Blue Marble Earth Mosaic
