The New Theology. Lecture №4 Overcoming the Crisis of Being as Overcoming Ontology

Lecture №4 Overcoming the Crisis of Being as Overcoming Ontology. Geydar Dzhemal.

The fourth lecture is devoted to the topic of overcoming the crisis of Being, or overcoming ontology, a topic that is one of the central tasks of theological thought. Theology is called upon to solve, as we have said in the previous three lectures, those problems, those radical inconsistencies that characterize a great philosophical tradition. And in the context of pure theology of its prehistory, we are attracted primarily as basic and illustrative names by two names, two significant figures of philosophical and theological thought, who initiated a new thinking in the West and who characterized the turn from traditional scholasticism to the formulation of real positions and real problems that before still nourish modern thought with their intellectual initiatives. They are Descartes and Spinoza.

They are significant in many respects, primarily because both, each in their own way, put their finger on the nerve nodes, on the painful points of real problems, which, on the one hand, are global and generally inherent in the human vale and the human spirit, and on the other hand — this globality, this universality of the problems that they touched upon, began to be formulated and realized only from the New Age. Their intellectual initiatives are important because a certain “breakthrough” of monotheistic thought took place in them to the level of initiative intellectual discourse. Before Descartes and Spinoza, religious consciousness, even if it was engaged by monotheistic revelation, existed as if in a kind of cocoon. Intellectual work proceeded, as it were, on its own, relying on the prehistory of great intellectual peaks, great intellectual figures of the pre-monotheistic Hellenic space: Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Neoplatonists, the entire Academy as a whole, the chain of skeptics coming from Pyrrho — they were the creators of the intellectual apparatus and some prerequisites for thinking about the world, about Being. But what was Revelation is monotheism in its Christian form and in the Jewish one, which also puts pressure on the European consciousness and even, I would say, on the collective unconscious, and Islam, which is also actively “pressing” on the European consciousness and even The Middle Ages were a significant part of Southern Europe — it seemed to not pass to the level of discourse. That is, on the one hand, a person could believe that there was a Revelation about the one God, and on the other hand, he thought, no different in the way of his thinking from the ancient Greeks. And so it continued for quite a long time during the Renaissance, which was a conscious restoration of many of the intellectual and aesthetic moves of pagan Hellenism. And in the end, time reached the middle of the 17th century, and a kind of belated breakthrough took place — and, perhaps, not belated, but providential. Before the beginning of the real crisis of the institutions of clerical presented Christianity, before the beginning of the crisis of the concept of faith in the minds of the vast majority of people, the monotheistic message in its methodological aspect suddenly passes to the level of articulated discourse.

This is primarily Descartes. It must be said at once that we take Descartes and Spinoza as two opposing thinkers, as two opposing figures who are — despite the fact that they seem to depart from each other — in rigid antagonism. What is the essence of Cartesianism? The essence of Cartesianism is that Descartes asked a surprising question that no one had thought of before him: what does existence come down to, what is the proof that something exists, and does the questioner or witness exist in exactly the same way as the object about which he testifies. That is, Descartes came to the conclusion that being is a property, a predicate of a spiritual act — it is a predicate that is attached to the subject; and that the existence of an extended substance is in fact proved in a second way only by virtue of the fact that there is a thinking substance. But we would say more precisely here: point. Because in this case, as the opposition of length, this is precisely the point. Substance was then understood specifically as a certain reality, which is universal, independent of anything and based on itself. In this sense, Descartes also applies substance to the subject, although in this case it is better to use the image of a point opposed to extension to describe this geometric visualization. Expansion exists only because it reverberates, resonates, hitting a point, that is, from the sums of a certain subject that opposes everything else. It follows that this thinking substance, or rather this subject, this point, is fundamentally non-identical to the reality it witnesses. That is why witnessing itself exists. These are three amazing facts: the predicate “is” is applied only to the subject; the object is secondary and exists only insofar as it is witnessed; and it is witnessed only because there is a fundamental non-identity of I and not-I. I believe that here, in these parameters, the beginning of real theology is expressed. What Descartes said was not said in such a form and in such integrity before him, and that it is here that there is that specific truth of theology that clearly distinguishes it from all other intellectual strategies, namely, the design of all representation, all consciousness, strategically from the non-identity of the central point, the central justifying link, the thinking subject, which, of course, is closely connected with a certain archetype of subjectivity.

Descartes did not express it in a very clear and not very satisfying way, in our view, that is, that the idea of the perfect, to which this thinking subject, this cohesive and present subject, seeks, The concept of the perfect could be introduced to him by perfection itself (because he, as an imperfect creature, could not «extract» it from himself), that is, God, who is his Maître, Archetypus, and Master. But this is already a very serious start, because here, in this case, a certain architecture of Revelation has already been set, a certain construction of why and how Revelation is possible. Descartes simply says that man strives to know that which is unconditionally and absolutely greater than him, superior to him and more perfect than him. And since a person cannot have an idea of what is superior to him in such an immanent way, in Descartes’ opinion, then, accordingly, this idea is received by him from a radical new source, which, as it were, stands behind his back, as if it inspires him with this idea of itself. So here we see that there is some proto-architecture of Revelation. At first glance, Spinoza seems to be starting from similar premises: from the concept of substance, which is completely analogous to the Cartesian one, that is, substance is not an Aristotelian separate thing, a kind of reality presented in its entirety in contrast to adjectives, in contrast to its description, the sum of descriptions, which represents a complete thing. No, in this case, the substance is a universal that exists by itself without needing anything, as some kind of independent, some fundamental ontological independence, selfhood. Spinoza has the same idea. But Spinoza goes in a completely different direction; he internally polemicizes with Descartes. Spinoza says that there is really only one substance. This substance is necessarily infinite, it has no alternative, it is limitless, it is eternal, it is total, and therefore, Being a substance in the singular, it is both God and nature, and, to be honest, the thinking subject himself, who, as it were, perceives her. Despite the fact that this construction is an obvious violation of intuition and logic, it should be noted that Spinoza is stating a very fundamental thing here. He expounds in a kind of “socialized”, popular, I would even say profane, form the basis of the foundations of the priestly worldview. The worldview, which is based on the concept of the unity of the object by removing the subject, by removing any opposition to this object, the unity of the object in its entirety, can be called pantheism. There is pantheism from above, from below, but in this case, if we get rid of Spinoza’s rationalistic flair (we will take his rationalism out of brackets), we will see that Spinoza did not go far from the fundamental Kabbalistic sages with their Ain-Sof [Kabbalistic term, synonymous with God.], has not gone far from the concept of tao and is somewhere at a fairly close distance from the masters of Sufism. It’s just that this is stated in an extremely scholastic, rational language, in which certain social accents dominate.

That is, Spinoza is such a “Confucius for the West”, an expounder of “unity” from the point of view of society and “human happiness”. By the way, the idea that man truly does not exist and that he is in reality only an accident, a single substance that does not need anything and exists in all manifestations as one and the same — like God, nature, and so on — was manifested in Spinoza’s idea, that the true happiness and true knowledge of man, that is, the true highest state, lies in the ability to consider God, the world and oneself sub specie aeternitatis, that is, “from the point of view of eternity.” But if we look at this through the eyes of modern man, who has gone through the experience of existentialism, with that school of knowledge of the acute and tragic fragility of our existence, with that taste of mortality that characterizes the tragic consciousness of man since the second half of the 19th century, then it will be very strange for us that it is possible to talk with a straight face about positive knowledge concerning the personality, concerning the subject sub specie aeternitatis, which deliberately puts his mortality out of all sorts of brackets and does not consider mortality at all as a certain subject. And I want to remind you that Spinoza in this respect was absolutely not a person who believes in the transmigration of souls, in the immortality of the soul, in the “tunnel” through which the deceased walks and is met at the exit by some figures. No, Spinoza was a man who had passed the Jewish school, and a fundamental one at that. He was regarded as a future outstanding rabbi, a rabbinical master. By the way, he belonged to a very serious rabbinic family, because “Spinoza” is Portuguese for “finch”. This is the name of one of the fundamental Sifat clans. The finch is, by the way, one of the Kabbalistic symbols of the paradoxical persistence of life in the middle of winter, in the middle of snow, in the middle of frost, and so on. According to some sources, Spinoza’s surname is related to the surname of the famous Kabbalist rabbi Martinos, who converted to Catholic baptism and was the founder of Martinism: this occult master, who lived, however, somewhat later than Spinoza, was also of Portuguese origin. Spinoza is a classic designer in a quasi-rational form of a rational priestly worldview, in which there is no point, there is only extension. There is a point at best — an epiphenomenon of extension, an epiphenomenon of the intersection of extension. And since there is only one extension, the intersection is illusory, because God and nature are supposed to be aspects of the same thing. It is not clear where the illusion of a point arises — at the intersection of God with nature or nature with God. Nevertheless, Spinoza leaves this question aside. He is a kind of moderator of the absolute “Confucian” peace, dispassion, which is dominated by the concept of ethical good. In fact, this opposition is very important. First, we must touch on the point that in general, the consideration of Spinoza and Descartes as rationalists, as the fundamental apostles of rationalism, is at least controversial. Of course, this is wrong in relation to Descartes, even if it is much more like the truth in relation to Spinoza, who actively used external rationalization techniques. There are serious reservations here too. Spinoza himself believed that the knowledge we can possess has four sources. The first source — what we are told, what we take by ear, by faith — is an unreliable source. The second one, what we see, is also unreliable, because we may have an illusion, hallucination, or we are mistaken at all, we see the wrong thing. What we have deduced logically is also not very reliable, because we must proceed from the fact that we already have some unconditional prerequisites — but do they really exist? So, it again depends on the trust in these premises. And finally, the fourth knowledge, which he considered the main one, is intuition. But intellectual intuition, as we know, is the most fundamental channel for obtaining knowledge in priestly practices: first of all, intellectual intuition is involved in direct active contemplation, and at least this cannot be called a rational path. The rational way, as we have seen — the third, logical — was called into question by Spinoza, if not rejected at all. Thus, Spinoza here, as if under the cover of some kind of quasi-ideological discourse, hints at his fundamentally clerical essence, clerical nature.

We should not be misled by his excommunication from the community and giving it to the chapel, because in this case the community was less clerical and more theological in some respects than he. That is, he was more of a priest than those who excommunicated him. He just packed it into a form that suddenly acquired a universally significant character for Western thinking. And Western clericalism — secular, addressing society, to building both elites and the middle class — found in Spinoza the “Confucian” lever of an ethics that is logically flawless in their opinion, which starts from the totality and unconditionality of an ontologically approved substance. And Spinoza became a powerful tool for building social order in the future Europe. At the same time, Descartes — by the way, a kshatriya or a lonely hero, if you like, an officer, a nobleman, a warrior who spent the first half of his life with a sword in his hands, and at the same time a thinker — is a man who raised more questions than he solved, despite the fact that he called for evidence, called for reflection about reflection. But nevertheless, to call Descartes a rationalist — if we say that Spinoza is a fake rationalist — a language does not turn After all, the main point, the main drive of Cartesianism, is skepticism. And skepticism has never been rationalistic. If someone thinks otherwise, then this is some kind of deep aberration. Already in the 4th century BC, skepticism was a weapon of philosophical scandal, which then ended with what Kant simply called the “scandal of philosophy”, when he said that Berkeley, with his solipsism, undermined all generally understood universal foundations of philosophy. But the prerequisites for this were already contained in the extremely harsh contestation of naive realism, which also distinguished Heraclitus, who said that “eyes and ears are false witnesses.”

Democritus was exactly the same negative towards naive realism, who directly said that the results of sensation are obscure; his other remarkable expression is also known: “Everything that you believe is only an opinion, but not the truth.” In fact, skepticism is deeply irrational, because it assumes that there is no intelligence outside our body, that is, there is intelligence at the border of our skin, the idea of intelligence ends. Then comes chaos, incomprehensibility, which we somehow build, pretend something about it, but these are things that are radically illogical in themselves. Rationalism cannot exist without the idea that the object itself is reasonable and harmonious. Ultimate rationalism is actually dialectical materialism. If it is deciphered in its obvious form, this is the idea that matter is reasonable, mind is inherent in it, as it were, in a direct way, it is innate, it is immanent to it, and human is simply a mirror in which the mind of matter is reflected as the mind of human. But the extreme rationalism of diamatism here in some paradoxical way turns into idealism — just as the extreme right and the extreme left merge. Because if we assume that matter is intelligent, then we raise so many questions and so many problems that we blur the very idea of materiality. But we will not discuss diamat further, because there is a lot of confusion in it. There is, as it were, a mixture of matter as a substance, that is, the Greek primary element, which is not manifested and contains the possibilities of all forms, with the idea of matter, that is, already a certain manifested reality. There are other overlays, but I wanted to give you an example of what rationalism really is. Rationalism is the belief that nature outside of us is autonomous and independently reasonable and expedient. In the limit — this is the idea of the Logos, which contains direct knowledge, universal understanding, interpretation of all things and all realities. That’s what Descartes didn’t have — he didn’t have rationalism, and it must be said that theology, with all its logically built and impeccable discourse, is a consistent and systematic struggle against such rationalism. With rationalism of the Platonic, Hegelian or even Marxist type, it doesn’t matter. In this sense, we can say that a certain aspect of rationalism was present in Spinoza, since he speaks precisely of that substance, which is one, which is total. He is more of a rationalist. Nevertheless, he, as it were, on the subjective plane, undermines the position of rationalism by the fact that he considers the main canon of knowledge to be intellectual intuition, or direct grasp of the content of objects, direct grasp of the essence of objects. Now that we have given this preamble about two milestone, iconic figures who, on the one hand, marked for us the ovary of anti-rationalist discourse, the discourse of theology — in the person of Descartes, and on the other hand — in the person of Spinoza, the socially interpreted, profane concept global priestly unity of reality, in which there is no place for the subject and real monotheistic theology, we must move on to the main thing. We must say about what the struggle between these two vectors unfolds in the middle of the 17th century. Quite unexpectedly, after a night of Platonic and Neoplatonic “sleep”, the opponents suddenly drew their swords and stood in position against each other. One — with a lens, which he polished in a damp basement and died of tuberculosis at 45, the other — with a sword and a tunic, a professional officer and a brilliant thinker, who died of a cold at 54.

Why are they suddenly on the same temporary and practically the same territorial site? Let us not forget that Descartes also lived in Holland for twenty years — from 1628 to 1649 — and died of a cold, unable to bear the damp Dutch winter. Why did they indicate an irreconcilable position? They indicated this irreconcilable position because European humanity suddenly found itself in the conditions of geographical discoveries and an escalating conflict with the Ottoman Porte. Let’s not forget that in 1650 the Ottoman Porte was at the peak of its greatness and was simply a superpower in relation to Europe. That is, it attacked methodically, powerfully “collapsing” space after space. A mighty superpower rises in the East: as for Europe in 1947, the Stalinist USSR is so incomprehensible, terrible, about the same for Europe in 1650, the Ottoman Empire. The one that is commonly called Turkish, but it is actually Ottoman, quite anational. It looked like a powerful, infused “beast from the abyss.” On the other hand, the discovery of Southeast Asia, powerful flows of money, gold and silver from the New World — all this creates certain social and civilizational conditions under which European humanity suddenly found that it was tired of ontological trust, which is the holy of holies of the human factor, the human spirit and, as it were, the banner of the human vale. The person is in ontological trust. We are not talking about Pyrrho now, we are not talking about Anaximander now, about the skeptics of the Platonic Academy, we are not talking about Berkeley, we are not talking about Descartes, professional debunkers of this trust. We are talking about the human vale. We are talking about how a person works, how society works. What is the basis of the incomprehensible power of the priests, which again and again, through countless productions of the dismantling of some prejudices, some mythologies, some folklore, through the countless renewal of the assurances of the middle class itself that it is completely rational, empirical, self-sufficient, that it uses only superrational sources and others, — and through all this, the mystery of the power of special people who possess the fourth Spinozian path of intellectual intuition and the way out to confirm the inviolability of this one and only substance, which “is”, and you, the questioner, are not, is renewed again and again. This is a “toolkit” that makes it possible again and again to resume the situation of the spiritual hierarchy, where part of humanity is ambassadors and representatives of the absolute object in this society, consisting, as it were, of subjects or quasi-subjects. But the part is the ambassadors of the Object with a capital letter and, as it were, the objects themselves, even, perhaps, “artifacts” — “eternal” in some way. They sub specie aeternitatis (“from the point of view of eternity”) look at themselves, at you, at society, at everything. The basis of all this is ontological trust. What is ontological trust? This is not yet naive realism, even more than that — it is much deeper and more extensive than naive realism. Ontological trust is the conviction that affirmation and Being are one and the same. This is, first of all, the conviction that Being is reality, and everything that is possible is real, that is, everything possible — it is also “beinging” at the same time. This is the idea that Being is limitless, that it is eternal, that it has no alternative. This idea, further, that Being is rational, or rather, superintelligent, “wise” in the sense that it does not have a goal that would be private, which would be a vector, which would be an orientation into which this infinite Being would aspired. How, unlike a river, an infinite ocean cannot flow into nowhere. The boundless ocean cannot flow: it is not a river, it can only sway. But Being has an end in itself. Being is self-sufficient, and it is not meaningless or absurd, because it has a goal in itself, it is a goal for itself. And why? And because it is good. Being is good. Everything that is possible is realized at the same moment, and it is real, it “beinging” — and this is good, this is infinite. This is the assertion. There is no other statement. The sum of these positions is the ontological trust, which is the fundamental engagement of a person in his own architecture of perceptions.

Where does ontological trust come from? It arises from the cradle, from open eyes. Because there is an infinity of perception, which is experienced as a super-givenness. A person has such a feeling, and we have repeatedly said that perception is infinite, it is wide open: everything that can be reflected in it will be reflected, there is nothing that is not reflected. Moreover, there is a feeling that this perception is broader than anything that is reflected in it: “Let’s have more!”. The abyss of perception: the world is small — the mirror is giant. But I want to emphasize that the fact is that at the first stage of the development of this perception, a person does not understand that there is his perception as a mirror, but there is something that is reflected there. He thinks that his boundless perception is the Object. He has not yet dismembered the basket from the vegetables that are in the basket. He thinks that this basket of vegetables is a single whole, that his eyes, which are open to the whole world, and the world that is in these eyes, are one and the same. The object declares and postulates itself in this way from the very first moment as grandiose. But even a small creature looking at the world does not understand that there is a difference in situations between him and this object. But when he falls and breaks his knee and realizes that he is fragile and mortal, he begins to cry: suddenly he shares the perception of the object, which is limitless. And the funny thing is that after the knee is torn, blood came out and tears rolled down, perception does not disappear anywhere: perception remains just as beautiful and invulnerable, but the body hurts, and then comes the understanding that the subject is small, insignificant, and in general it may not even exist. Actually, it would be great if it wasn’t there. If only to restore that most wonderful state, when the absolute object was limitless and comfortably carried the feeling of self-presence, and the carrier and what it perceives were not separated at all. Now, if it could be restored, it would be optimal. And it will be restored. The evil of a broken knee is a temporary scratch on a mirror, on a beautiful mirror that reflects the total everything. This separation actually only strengthens the ontological trust in the Object. And when a person becomes an adult, he begins to systematically protect this ontological trust. Too many challenges, too many questions. People are dying all around, regimes are disappearing, some kind of tsunami is washing away half of Southeast Asia at once, there are a lot of problems — wars, poverty, hunger — in short, everything that Buddha met when he left his palace. What to do in this situation? Human builds strategies for protecting ontological trust. He wants to be a clerical idiot. And I say “idiot” not in the sense of a diagnosis or, God forbid, a negative predicate, condemnation, I say an idiot in the sense of some classifying statement. That is, he wants to be a human being, a creature who is completely engaged in something that cannot be justified in any other way, and at best — as an opinion. But this opinion is absolute, and its trust is unconditional. What does he do to justify the ontological trust? How does he protect it? Obviously, the first defense when a human in his vale looks at the rapidly flowing world around, where everything disappears and vanishes: he seeks to dismember the disappearing from the remaining, he seeks to find some kind of solid ground in the cycle of transient things.

Thus, he finds the principle of substance — that which is basic, universal, imperishable, not disappearing anywhere. Tables, chairs, harmonicas, people, dogs, trees — everything goes head over heels into the whirlpool, into this whirlwind that sucks everything in. But there is something that never goes away: a fundamental life-forming lining that is permanent. What it is? You never know — yes life, for example, from the point of view of a certain level of perception, a kind of total life — global, flourishing, indistinguishable, the eternity of changing generations, any substance. Finally, among professional thinkers, we come either to two substances — “extended and thinking” according to Descartes, or in general to one, which is God and nature — “everything is absolutely limitless”, according to Spinoza. We talked about the fact that before Descartes philosophy broke its spears and was defeated because it did not go any further. And Descartes said it in a unique and special way — as a theologian. No one claimed the cogito ergo sum and made it the basis of his philosophy, except for certain attempts by Berkeley, which, strictly speaking, cannot be considered successful, because he simply did not understand what Descartes was talking about. In general, apart from this attempt, philosophy has not resolved the question of the difference between is, applied to an object, and is, applied to the same, which is sum — to the Ego. It is clear that these are different. But in ontological trust, there grows quite directly out of the intuition of substance. The permanent “is” — this is the universal “is”, and the transient, disappearing, arising “is” — it is, as it were, by complicity, as a certain degree from this big “is”. Substance is understood as Being. The very Being that exists, it is also a possibility, it is also a reality, it is also a being, it is also a statement, it is also a substance, it is also a predicate that is applicable naturally to everything. The fact is that the crisis of being, as we have said before, is rooted in a fundamental lie and aberration, which is contained in the very human gaze. No wonder the skeptics Heraclitus and Democritus said: “Do not believe your eyes: what you see is nonsense, it is false.” They knew what they were talking about, because in the human eye — I don’t mean the eye the table sees, I mean the spiritual eye — it has a built-in “optic” of aberration, an optical illusion. Remember, in the second lecture, when we talked about thinking, we talked about the hierarchy of possibilities. That is, the possibility of each specific thing to be what it is, and only it, further — the possibility of any other thing in its place, further — the possibility of this particular thing not to be, further — the possibility of any thing not to be instead of this, and, finally, the impossibility of any thing to be. Here is this hierarchy of five degrees of possibility, ascending from the concrete to the universal. Moreover, the concrete is positive, it is presented in the form of objects, and the universal is negative, it is presented in the form of the erasure of these objects, in the form of their absence. The more universal, the more negative. It’s like heaven, like layers of firmament [From Lat. firmamentum — poet. vault of heaven.] above us.

I’ll try to draw it now… Here are these five layers of firmament, these five echelons, I would characterize them this way. The first heaven in which there is the possibility of a particular thing, of each particular thing to be as it is given, is the near heaven, which can be called the sky of fixed stars (without any connection with astrology and medieval cosmography — I’m just using terms, but don’t think about this cosmography). Because each specific thing that is presented to you at the moment when you look at it, when your consciousness accompanies this phenomenon, stands before you in its everlasting visual evidence. It just is and that’s it. It doesn’t go anywhere. You do not think without special motives that it was not, will not be, that it is annihilated. But you just lost the key to the door, you can’t get out, and this door breaks your whole fate: you are late for the wedding. This door is an unconditional phenomenon that does not disappear anywhere. Are you really going to argue that instead of this there could be not a door, but a mesh or a curtain: “But if it didn’t exist at all …” Of course not. For you, this is a powerful barrier that does not go away, a fixed star that crosses out your destiny. This is the sky of fixed stars. It is followed by the opportunity to be in its place to anyone else: a curtain, a mesh, a flimsy door, and maybe even an armored one, or maybe there is some kind of fence instead of it. And this I call the sky of moving stars. Because they are, as it were, in the process of becoming, each thing is constantly floating in the environment of alternatives to itself. Alternative is more universal than presentation. When you are faced with a locked door, you have the feeling that this is it. But really think: the possibility of this door not to be, that is, not to be in that form — another door, any one — is a more universal thing, that is, there is much more of this. It’s like a stream of becoming. This is the sky of moving stars. Behind this comes the possibility of this particular thing not to be. That’s exactly this particular thing. Indeed, if any other thing is possible in its place, then it is even more possible that this thing should not be. And in fact, it was not, and it will not be. What it is is an exclusive moment in the infinity and extent of time and space. It’s such a small dot. And around, in fact, just the denial of this stupid door is blazing. This is a sky of twinkling stars: it seems that they are there, but at the same time it seems that they are not. Next comes the possibility of any thing not to be instead of this. An even more universal negative. Let’s call it the sky of fading stars. And then comes the sky, in which the impossibility to be for anything is generally given. This is a sky without stars. It is the ultimate, most universal sky. Now, just for clarity, I will try to depict it here [Editor’s note: we are sure that an attentive reader will cope with visualization here as well.]. Here comes the near heaven №1 — this is the possibility of a concrete thing for us. Here comes heaven #2 — it is the possibility of any thing instead of this particular one. Here comes heaven #3 — the possibility of a particular thing not to be. Here comes our sky number 4. This is the possibility of any thing instead of this one just not to be, like this particular one.

Think about it: now I am talking about a very serious architecture, an architecture that describes all the modalities, vicissitudes and all the problems of the possible, which is taken in its extremely special, extremely specific form, which we will talk about a little later. It is this hierarchy of possibilities that is where theology is above metaphysics. Because for metaphysics everything is different, and you will see now why. And finally, the fifth heaven. The impossibility to be for anything. This is the fifth, and this is the most absolute. That is, the impossibility for anything to be — it is the most universal. Compared to the presence of an eraser or a fly as a concrete thing that is possible at a given moment, this point of a fly, an eraser or a speck of dust in the light of the beam is vanishingly concrete, vanishingly small. And the impossibility of all this to be, following the possibility of this not to be, and so on — it is global, it embraces everything. And here is the subject who is looking at it. He stands on his land and looks at this sky — I want to emphasize that in this case “to the sky”, although we are already talking about the possibility of specific things, which are they: a tape recorder, a table, windows, people around. But this is heaven. Why? Because the earth in this perspective is the body of the witness itself. The body of the witness, the boundaries of his body are his earth. And his gaze, which comes from this body, is already directed to the sky. And the first thing he sees is a sky of fixed stars, then a sky of moving stars, then twinkling, then fading, and then a sky without stars. But does he see them? No, gentlemen, he does not see these skies, because the thick crystal of the first sky of fixed stars covers everything. He sees these specific things — as an example with a door. And everything consists of such locked doors or, on the contrary, open sewer manholes, which are immutable at every given moment when they meet. But the maximum philosophical discourse that a poor fellow leaning his forehead against the door or falling into the sewer manhole can rise to, distracting from specifics, is the second heaven of moving stars when he intuits that something else could have been instead. This is maximum. But the fact is that, as you know, multi-layer glass packages create depth: a human still has a sense of depth, that is, his eyes somehow feel that “all sorts of things are going on” there. And he perceives them by analogy with the first, that is, he perceives the universal not as negative, he perceives the ultimate universality not as the impossibility of anything to be, but he perceives it as yes to everything. That is, he perceives through this aberration of his gaze through the five heavens all the fullness, and this last ultimate heaven as a universal yes, said to everything. This is where the fundamental basis of ontological trust is rooted, when a person believes that the possible, it is also real, “exists”, infinitely and universally existing, it is reasonable, because it is good, has a goal in itself, because it says yes to everything, yes to itself. and, as Spinoza said: “God loves himself in human.” God loves himself at the expense of human’s love for himself — man’s intellectual love for God, who, let me remind you, Spinoza understood not as a subject, but as a substance. An impersonal, universal substance that loves itself through human. He believes that yes is everywhere. Then the question arises: if a human is dealing with such an aberration, if in fact the universal is necessarily negative, and the concrete and unique is such a fleeting positive that is erased simply by moving a sponge on a board, then how is anything possible at all? If it is the universal impossibility to be for anything, why is there something, as Heidegger said: why is there Something and not Nothing? He, in general, asked about this: if it is, then why is it there? Yes, because the possibility, which is reality, is not Being — Being is only the lower sky, well, in the extreme case, also the one that is above it. And Being and all this possibility and reality are not affirmations. Why? Because a statement is something that does not allow an alternative to itself. That is, everything, but such everything in which there is no distinction. It is clear that this sky is different from the even more universal, but separate. Each of the heavens limits the universality of the one above.

So how does this universal allow the inferior, how does it allow it to go out of itself and, as it were, “mount” downwards, to crowd into this chaos of objects around a certain witness? Because there is a statement, a pure statement, which absolutely, certainly, has no limits, and any possibility is characterized by having limits. Now, if we go along the path of inquiry, “what is a statement,” then we will come across two options. Or we will follow the path that absolute affirmation is the synthesis of Being and nothingness — this will be Tao. What is Tao? The Chinese concept of Tao in the limit is the embrace and synthesis of joint pure non-manifestation and the fullness of manifestation. Synthesis is called Tao. If we go this way — there is a nothing, a big nothing, because we get a compound statement. One can, of course, say that this is Tao, and that is Tao, and the silence of Tao is all Tao, but there is something so quasi-scholastic about it. And you can go the other way — paradoxical, striking the human heart, beating the brain, straining, challenging. To follow the path that affirmation, as a kind of infinity that has no alternatives, is a total denial of everything, a pure denial of everything. But we have examples of negation in the apophatic idea of the Primordial Abyss, of Brahman, of the Ain-Sof, which do not have distinctions, distinctions: “neither this nor that” or “this and not this” — already closer to Tao. But that’s not it. I would say this: Ain-Sof, for example, as a kind of primary abyss (well, at best — the impossibility of anything to be), there is this fifth heaven — a sky without stars. And I’m talking about negation, which is totally opposed to all five heavens: it is that same scythe. Think about it: whatever exists and whatever is realized not at the expense of a universal yes, but at the expense of a universal no. That is, only because negation extends to this higher sky without stars, there are degrees of concretization, which, in turn, being negated, give the realization of the universal.

A thing exists specifically because all alternatives are denied: the impossibility for it to be is denied, the impossibility for any thing to be instead of it is denied, the possibility for it not to be is denied, all any things are denied. And finally, as a result of all these denials, a speck of dust plays in the rays of light before us. But it is negligible and is also denied, and therefore an alternative to it is immediately realized and the possibility for it not to be: it disappears, was not and will not be. Further, everything in its place is denied. And then everything is denied — in fact, everything is denied! But what is this end-to-end denial? It’s like the wind of negativity that goes through all the heavens. You can imagine that these skies are sails. The course of sight is the course of a frigate or a sloop, and these are the sails that are inflated by the wind. This wind is negative. It is not identical to anything, it is not limited, it denies because it is already a limitation: the impossibility for anything to be in its universality is a limitation. Negation is infinite, not limited by anything, so it also denies it. This is a universal no, which gives rise to a concrete element, which in turn also denies. And that which passes through all this and exists totally is immanence. Many people use the word “immanence”: immanent to this, that, “immanent to the manifested plan…”. But has anyone thought about what “immanence” is? I’ll tell you this: immanence is negation, directly inherent in everything and everywhere. That this table was not and will disappear; that it will burn; that his own destruction is present within him in the form of a bubbling but invisible fire that bursts, like in Hollywood horror films, breaks through his molecules so that he blackens and disappears; this bubbling energy of his negation is the immanence that is inherent in him. But it is also inherent in the invisible plane: the same immanence binds with a single wind blowing through the unmanifested, and silence, and darkness — all forms of non-manifestation, all forms of manifestation — the immanence that binds everything blows through everything, pure negation. And a person discovers this when he looks right, theologically. When he does not just stare at these crystal spheres that hide one another and form the effect of depth, such a blissful pink depth, and some heavenly yes, said to everything, but when he “unmounts” everything and sees that the universal is negative, and the concrete exists only only because there is a negation of the universal, which knows no limits at all, but permeates everything as immanence. And then he has such a question: “But how does he know all this? How does he know about this? Why does he, striving to gain a yes (Spinoza and Descartes correctly said that a person wants to reach the level of assertions), wants to get in touch with something beyond which there is nothing, that is, with some kind of ultimate authority that has no limits. And so he came to this last instance, which has no limits, and it turns out that this last instance, which has no limits, is a scythe that mows everything. And due to this, as if something is not moving. And how does he know that there is such an infinity? After all, if it is unlimited, then he should not differ from it, it should be immanent to him, he should not know about it, just as the table does not know about it, just as a speck of dust does not know about it, just as nothing knows about it. Of the immanence that pervades everything, nothing but human knows.

There is only one conclusion: this statement, for all its total infinity, despite the fact that nothing can resist it, is destructible, and the human himself is also “in the face” of his body (the body is also mortal, it is also destructible). But he does not look with his body: his gaze must be distinctively different, be opposed to this infinite statement in order to react to it and testify about it, because the angle of a triangle cannot testify about the whole triangle, a square or a point can testify about a triangle, but not the angle of a triangle. Therefore, when a human suddenly discovers that he has reached the understanding of unlimited negative immanence, he understands: yes, this is the statement that affirms everything, it exists. And he, who sees it, is not. But it is not loaded with transcendent meaning. He is transcendent to this negation, but not as an object that is not subject to this negation — there are no such objects, everything is denied. He is transcendent to this negation as the reverse side of this negation and as its vector, as its meaning. So this negation assumes something — by its denial it assumes something. It assumes not the capacity for itself to resist, but the pure absence of something other than itself. It turns out that this absence, it is inside us, and this is the same cogito ergo sum. There is a pure absence or “black hole” which, with the right theological orientation, reveals itself to be a witness to this assertion, a witness to this negativity, not identical with it. As the same Descartes pointed out, we testify because we are not identical with what we testify. But if a human who carries a “black hole” in himself testifies about infinite negativity, total negation, which is immanence, but at the same time testifies that he is not identical, then what does this mean? This means that he is not there, which is inside, that “black hole”, is the only possible positive, no matter how paradoxical it may be. This is transcendence, which is “plus” because it is opposed to absolute “minus”. And what it opposes, we logically received from Cartesianism, because cogito ergo sum means “I am different.” And since I am different and testify, it means I am, but since I am, it means that despite the fact that the affirmation is outside of me, and it’s as if I don’t exist, this “black hole” is a covenant and a promise that denial is not omnipotent. Here is the beginning of positive theology, a new theology that arises through overcoming the crisis of Being. We have already said that the crisis of Being is a lie. A lie in the view of reality. This is the view that takes the universal black sky without stars for the radiant sun, which said everything and warmed everything with its rays. This is the lie that forms the crisis of Being. A human thinks that this is it, all Being, a universal yes, whole and indistinguishable. But it is actually here: dust particles dancing in a beam of light, which are worth nothing at all and which are there only because the negative passes through them. Theology comes to this negativity and raises the question. But it overcame the crisis of Being, which consists in a lie of sight, in a lie of perception, and raised the question: how to defeat the absolute affirmation or the self-affirmation of total negativity. How can I do that? Theology raises the question, but Revelation answers it, which is actually just an answer to a question that already exists in the architecture of a human being, a paradoxical place: this very “black hole”, which, on the one hand, is absent, but on the other hand, the other is the only positive among everything.

This paradox is the basis of the foundations, the ovary and the cross of the theology, which is already traceable in Descartes, but which has yet to be formulated in the 21st century in its most perfect and complete form. On this I thank you for your attention, if you have questions, ask. Question: And how to see at least the fourth heaven? The possibility of any thing not to be? Well, we will see this at the time of death. Question: And the fifth? Fifth? I do not advise anyone. It will be after we have spent nine days in the grave. Question: And what do we do with it, with this picture? I just explained. You have to be a theologian. Descartes was a theologian, was an officer with weapons, with sword and pistol, was a kshatriya, was a lone hero and was the only person who had the courage to say cogito ergo sum. And if you think about the history of Western thought, then this is generally a revolution and a slap in the face of the public image. In fact, this is a revolutionary idea! “I think, therefore I am” is just a spit in everything. Question: But it was interesting to him that Blok answered: “I walk, therefore I exist”? The fact is that walking is a kind of bodily activity, which is just as doubtful as the presence of any bodily object. The fact is that, perhaps, he does not actually walk, but eats at this time. There are a lot of crazy people who think they are walking, and at the same time they are crawling under the bed. We, as “orderlies”, often see them, right? A person thinks that he is walking, but he is drooling. Question: If Descartes and Spinoza are not rationalists, does it mean that Bacon is not an empiricist?

The point is that Spinoza’s rationalism… Where is the link here? I don’t see the connection. Question: There is such an established scheme that at one time there were two opposing camps, there were rationalists — Descartes, Spinoza, and there were empiricists who proceeded from experience, from the “hand”. No, of course there were empiricists, but the fact is that empiricists are a completely separate branch. And rationalism, relatively speaking, is a “school”, “professorial” division. Do you know how serious thinkers — Schopenhauer, Nietzsche — hated “school professorial” philosophy? They hated it terribly, because professors are such people in a case who made cells for themselves, nets for their own convenience, poorly understood what they were talking about — “subjective idealism, objective idealism, the main question of philosophy …” This is all the cloth language of impenetrable idiots. In fact, rationalism, as I have already explained, comes fundamentally from the Platonic idea, the priestly idea, that Being is rational — the Logos. How to apply here in this view the possibility, Being, affirmation, all in one? What is this identity based on? On the fact that there is an absolute coincidence of everything that is transparent to itself, knows itself and understands its own meaning — this is the Logos. This is the great triad of Sanskrit, the Sanskrit sat-chit-ananda: Being, consciousness, bliss. By the way, do not think that this is the specificity of an exclusively Hindu metaphysics — to introduce bliss here as an independent category. Because the same Spinoza did not go far from Brahminism and Taoism. Because his treatise is called “On God, man and happiness, that is, bliss.” God is like substance, human is like consciousness, happiness is like bliss. Please: sat-chit-ananda. What is bliss, what is happiness? This is timelessness. In all languages it means “stopping time” or “positive time”. Bonne heure — “good hour” … Either positive time, or some kind of timelessness. That is, a certain stop of duration. Why? Because duration is entropy. Entropy exists in the lower objective world, but there is a universal yes, where there is no entropy. Now, if from the point of view of eternity, sub specie aeternitatis, you look at everything, including yourself, then you are in a state of bliss. This is an absolutely priestly doctrine, but there is nothing rational in it. That is, if the rational is built on a logical discourse, then here we are dealing with axiomatic confidence. After all, can what I was talking about — ontological trust — be called rational? It is not rational. That is, rationalism is a shivering thing.

This belief that the world is reasonable, but the roots of this belief are, as it were, unprovable. Therefore, any rationalism with such a “tension” upon closer examination begins to blur very quickly. And the empiricist has at least the advantage that he is a proto-Husserl. He deals with phenomena, with phenomenology. “I knock — firmly … I know that for sure — I don’t want to know anything else … Spent — ended: so, limited, ends… It didn’t splinter — smoothly, evenly … “ That is, his consciousness is accompanied by objects. This is a dead end way of thinking, because nothing interesting follows from it. But he stands apart, and Descartes is not a rationalist. Another thing is that Descartes himself, perhaps, could not quite clearly identify his place in the great atlas of human thought: he hardly clearly imagined that he was not a philosopher, but a theologian. Although, on the other hand, we cannot guarantee. Question: But he studied to be a theologian?! Well, I studied, but then there was no such feeling that theology and philosophy ironically oppose each other, that theology begins where philosophy ends. Then there was a feeling that they interact, that philosophy is either a servant of science, or, on the contrary, as Spinoza believed, philosophy is a science, and theology is not a science. Theology deals with the development of specific recommendations. Spinoza’s idea that specific recommendations are needed on how to live well and morally found its full expression in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. That is, “imperatives” and so on: Spinoza’s theology has gone there. At that time there was no idea of a scientific or super-scientific discipline. In general, the entire consciousness of the West and, more broadly, the entire consciousness of ordinary, everyday humanity is based on the idea of extension, on the idea of substance. On the idea that Being is extended, homogeneous, uniform, sticky, like water or something that you can’t cut, you can’t feel: water, air, and the like. Theology begins with the primacy of the point. Not from the instinct of extension, but from the affirmation of the point as a priority, primary given. Think of the psychological experience of “absolute night” or blindness. The sense of extension remains, but since the dimension disappears, since there is no sequence of receding perspective, it can be said here that in the night the extension and the point meet, and one can understand how the point really exists. Because one of the main secrets is the relationship of point and extent. Thus, “geometrically” what comes first — an egg or a chicken? Two points, as Guénon says, give rise to extension, because the quantum of space is the minimum distance between two points at which they still become one point. Two points generate a quantum of space. Another question: where did the two come from? How did one point in itself differ? Where do they exist, if they gave rise to space between them. Where did they originate?

Such questions lead us to some mysterious underpinnings of geometry. It would seem that there is nothing more rational and transparent than geometry. It turns out that geometry is a very mystical science. And the first mystery is an incomprehensible correlation of fundamental spatial elements, extent and point, among themselves. And if we say, following Descartes (he did not say so, but we isolate it), that the geometric, physical and mental points are aspects of one and the same point, then the situation becomes a little clearer for us. It turns out that the point is not only what we put on a piece of paper as a geometric point. We set this physical point, but imagined a geometric one, but at the same time, our own I, thinking, it must also be understood as a point in terms of the position of extension. It turns out that these are three aspects of a certain single reality. And how would we designate this reality, besides the fact that it is a point? How would we come to deep understanding? The deepest understanding is the limitation of extension. What is a point? The point puts a limit on homogeneous space. That is, we put an end to it and, as it were, pierced this space. We have limited it. Thus the finalist aspect of extension is intimately connected with our inner psychic Being. All these moments of Cartesianism, I think, are extremely promising in terms of research in the new theology. This concludes our lecture.