THE DOCTRINE OF FINALISM
One of the key lectures by Geydar Jamal for understanding what underlies the confrontation between consciousness and being, spirit and matter, priests and warriors, given by him in August 2015. Part one.
The topic of our conversation is “The Doctrine of Finalism”. And finalism is a conceptual attempt to reveal the essential nature of understanding, witnessing in general, the epistemological act, as opposed to the act of being, that is, the act of existence. We proceed from the fact that being and consciousness are absolutely polarized things. Moreover, the very phenomenon of the spirit, the phenomenon of knowledge, the phenomenon of understanding reality is based on this opposition, that is, on non-identity. Not on the fact that consciousness is a function of being, as in the understanding of the traditional worldview emanating from the Hellenic thinkers. Both Plato and Advaita Vedantism teach about the trinity of reality, which is being-consciousness-bliss. Or like Plato: being, idea, goodness. The idea is identical with being and is its invariant, a function of being. And they do not distinguish consciousness as a witness to a given reality “here and now”. That’s actually the idea.
That is, it is a certain inversion of the idea, that coming to a human and acting through a human, realizes its ontological function. This is the basis for the concept of the fusion of subject and object in the act of understanding, in the act of comprehension. That is, the subject and object are conditional polarities, which, nevertheless, form halves of a common whole. Here they merge like Magdeburgian hemispheres, a certain whole appears. In this act, the subject and the object disappear and, with a flash, an epiphany, an ecstatic comprehension of being, which is being itself in truth itself, is manifested.
We start from the opposite point of view. We believe that subject and object do not merge because they do not exist in a common way. They are not poles of the whole. Their polarity is not a polarity of a type that we understand, such as the Arctic and Antarctica, which are connected by the axis of the earth. The polarity of subject and object is negative polarity. It is important to understand that this is a negative polarity. So that being is, and consciousness is the one which is not. As in Parmenides: “there is being, there is no non-being.” So, non-existence, which does not exist, is our consciousness.
Being exists, it is whole, it does not need any additions, it is round like a ball. Being is an absolute object. Or a representation of the object, because the real object may be a little further away.
But consciousness, as a subject, is something that does not exist, because it is not in the system of this ball, and does not float nearby, does not fly from the side. In general, the object took everything that exists for itself. But the subject remained in pure absence. It is amazing that pure absence is at the center of Being. It centers Being around itself. That is, Being is located around this absence. It could be ignored. Nevertheless, Being comes to life as a certain affirmative essence, as a certain affirmative truth, only by being centered around this point of absolute opposition.
In order to understand where this comes from, it is necessary to trace the genesis of both Being and consciousness. Absence as a centering point in the midst of Being, which is self-sufficient in everything, but as if it were in state of ignorance about itself, this is some kind of objective unawareness of itself, the inert obliquity of Being, which, perhaps, in some way, is equal to nothing. If the Being does not know itself, then we can say that it is equal to nothing. Of course, this is not entirely true. It knows about itself in a different way. Nor the way consciousness knows about itself, which stands in the center and centers everything around itself. This Being has, let’s say, a certain involvement in knowledge about itself, but this knowledge, Being knowledge, is absolutely hostile to consciousness, the principle of consciousness.
To give an example of how this is possible, what it looks like, I would use the following metaphor. We use words to describe some type of perception, some concept, to express a thought. In principle, we cannot imagine a pure thought that is not based on a conceptual system. It is obvious to us that the concept is a necessary tool, a necessary part of the organization of the presence of consciousness in the world. But there is music. Music is sounds that do not carry a logical content, they are not conceptual. They have a certain sequencing system. When this sequence system is actualized, the person who listens to the music has the feeling that he understands something. As if he is being brought into a state of understanding. He can fantasize, say that he remembers his childhood there, remembers how he runs around the field, chasing butterflies. Or something heroic while listening to Beethoven. But it’s all ephemeral, volatile, like clouds.
In general, it is useless to express the essence of music in words. When a person describes what he understands when he is listening to Wagner, Beethoven, or some oriental music, then some kind of nonsense comes out. However, there is a feeling that there is some knowledge. But this knowledge is definitely different from what is in the words. So I would compare Being with this example, which exists by itself outside of consciousness. It has such a global wisdom as music, which is deeply antagonistic to that principle of opposition that centers being around itself and associated with consciousness, which can only express itself conceptually in thought, in word, in concept, in name. If we try to describe Being, it will be an invasion from the outside of Being. Nevertheless, I emphasize that it has its own vision, its own kind of content. But this richness is like music — meaningless.
When we talk about Being and consciousness, we are already talking about some output end products of two series that converge at our level, where we are a carriers of consciousness, at the same time representing pieces of Being, sit inside Being, surrounded by Being, and in each of us a glare flickers, a sunbeam of this very consciousness. Ephemeral, but nevertheless, constituting the main grain, the main raisin of Being, as an opposition to this Being. Where does both come from? When we talk about consciousness, we talk about point of non-being. That is, at this point, Being ends and Being is limited, because it is non-being. It is present as an opposition to Being, and it is non-being. Therefore, this point represents a certain end of Being. In order to present the overall picture, we must inevitably appeal to the concept of divine thought, which set the global program, at the output of which mutually exclusive things converge in a providential way.
Being that is and non-being that is not. Consciousness is a mode, a modality of the reality of that non-existence that does not exist. And the fact that Being exists is understandable. The (ancient) Greeks didn’t have non-being, here they used to say something like “no means no, and we will not talk about it.” And we say that non-being, which does not exist, has a mode, a presentation in the form of consciousness. These two moments appear as a conclusion from the internal dynamics of the divine thought, which is the thought of the project, the thought of providence, the thought of the supreme task. At the heart of this thought is a colossal, terrible, incomprehensible aporia. An aporia suggesting a combination of incompatibility that forms the prerequisites for a gnostic explosion.
Perhaps many of you have heard such an aporia, which modern researchers consider to be a mischievous joke of schoolchildren about whether God can create such a stone that He Himself cannot lift. A classic example of such an aporia, which, in fact, is more serious than it might seem at first glance. There is nothing funny or ironic about it. Actually, it’s a logical question. That is, if there is an Almighty God, how can He do something that will limit His ability: create such a stone that He cannot lift. Either He cannot create such a stone, or He can create it, but He cannot lift it. However, aporia requires the resolution.
Divine thought is pure absolute primordial aporia. In the sense that it implies in itself the potentiality of “total everything”. At the same time, not being identical to the total everything. In other words, this thought presupposes not self-identity in which the total is transcended in such a way that the total is surrounded by a constant gap, a constant abyss. In relation to which the total everything is a speck of dust, nothing. Think about it, the total everything, which is identical with itself, which is absolutely affirmative, including everything. And at the same time, the idea is based on the fact that this total is not equal to itself. So that it constantly falls behind itself. It is surrounded by an abyss. This abyss absorbs the total everything as something insignificant. It’s impossible. Divine thought stands on the content of impossibility. Pure impossibility is Divine thought. Providential thought thinks the absolutely impossible. Namely, superiority over what absolutely everything is.
This is very important to understand. Because here begins that operation with logic, which is the fundamental approach to the metaphysics of Revelation. Absolute everything is transcended by the will to that which cannot be included in the category of this affirmation, this self-identity. It’s impossible. And this impossible is the content of Providential thought. The impossible is a metaphysical scandal. Which cannot exist in the open form. That is, “the impossible, as impossible. It cannot be, because it is impossible. And it can only exist in the form of its concealment in a mediated form, which points to it through its concealments in such a way that the impossible is negated. It exists not as in itself, but it exists in the form of its negation. Something negates the impossible, because it is impossible.
And what denies the impossible? Pure negative infinity, negative absolute. That is, the negative absolute, which denies everything except itself, is an instrument of Divine thought, which hides the impossible by constantly denying it. Pure negation is a veil covering the idea of impossibility. Pure negation is used by Divine thought only to make it deny. What does it deny? It denies God, and God is an Impossibility. God coincides with pure Impossibility as the content of His own thought. But He presents Himself through this negation. As a kind of infinity, an absolute, which is completely empty inside. Because infinity has no quality, it’s apophatic. It does not allow any specification, any indication. It just denies everything that isn’t it. It implies the denial of the impossible.
This infinity, in which we found ourselves alone, as we discover infinity as a principle, is not self-sufficient and self-sustaining. It turns out that infinity generally exists as a tool for concealing what it excludes, while being infinity. There is infinity. Its function is to exclude. The object of its exclusion is impossibility. And impossibility is the content of Providential thought. Now, this infinity, which denies everything except itself, does not have itself.
What does itself mean? It is a pure negation directed outwards. And in this sense it is very weak. Because it doesn’t represent a statement. But represents the negative of the statement, the imprint of the statement. It only states in the sense that if it has nothing to add, or it is impossible to point to something besides it. An expression of the weakness or fundamental lack of self-sufficiency of the infinite is, figuratively, an inverted image of infinity in the form of a point.
August 03, 2015
Translated from Russian Language