L’espoir d’arriver tard dans un sauvage lieu. ~ Alfred de Vigny, La maison du berger
Until now men have torn each other apart for the sake of certain dubious invisible beings that are careful not to call themselves spirits, but ‘ideals’. I think the hour has finally come for the war against these invisible enemies, and I would like to play a part in it. For years I have been aware that I was being trained in spiritual warfare, but until now I have never had this clear feeling that a great battle against these damned ghosts is at hand. I tell you, once you start clearing out all those false ideals, there’s no end to it. You’ve no idea what piles of humbug brazenly posing as truth you have inherited. ~ Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face
Charles Peguy’s Notes on Bergson and Descartes has recently been translated into English. He discusses Bergson’s notion of the readymade in contrast to the being-made.
Readymade ideas
The term readymade was used by French artist Marcel Duchamp to describe the works of art made from manufactured objects. We few are not satisfied with the rearrangement of readymade ideas, like clothes “off the rack”. The opposite are not wholly novel ideas, which are really newly created readymade ideas, but rather a deepening understanding of ideas. As Valentin Tomberg put it, there is the “remembering” of old ideas which than get repeated at appropriate time, just like little Jack Horner pulling out the perfect bon mot for every occasion.
The alternative is the resurrection of the idea, to make it part of your living thinking. These ideas are in process of being made since they are “made to measure”. Readymade ideas are from the past and are used to compel being into a pre-existing form, much like Procrustes.
Living thinking is in process.
Philosophical Debate
Several years ago, I encountered a man named J on social media, who was a rabid Catholic convert, very super-correct. He was willing to debate anyone on his chosen topics in religion and politics. He “unfriended” me as being unworthy of his intellect. After an extended absence, J has resurfaced, only now as a nihilist, an apostate. A debate between J and J’ would be a spectacle. J is fickle, “La Donna é mobile”, yet I persist.
The Internet is replete with such men, who regard debate as a blood sport instead of conversation as a shared experience. They will boast about their IQ scores and the vast number of books they have read, or how much they suffered to reach their conclusions. Thinking is not just a matter of working hard. After all, who works harder than Sisyphus and how far has that gotten him?
Nevertheless, they garner followers who are all too pleased to collect and repeat readymade thoughts. That is much easier than thinking along with someone. Even when I am wrong, it does not suffice to refute me; rather you must dig a little deeper, not join the mob. Peguy makes this point:
To attend a philosophical debate or to participate in one with this idea that one is going to conquer or bring down one’s adversary, or that one is going to see one adversary confound the other, is to demonstrate that one does not know what one is talking about. It witnesses to a great incapacity, baseness and barbarism. It witnesses to a great absence of culture. It demonstrates that one is not from that country.
Determination of Thinking
My second maxim was to be the most firm and the most resolute in my actions as I could be and to follow no less the most doubtful opinions once I had determined on them. ~ Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method
This is his morality of thinking; once an idea has been determined to be true, the philosopher is morally obliged to follow such ideas where they lead. The determined trumps the doubtful. Determination, assurance, and resolution conquer. The vulgar work in the opposite way. They start with opinions and then seek reasons to believe them.
To Walk in a Straight Line
Dante found himself in the middle of a forest.
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
Descartes uses similar imagery in explicating his second maxim:
I would be imitating travelers who find themselves lost in a forest: rather than wandering about in all directions or (even worse) staying in one place, they should keep walking as straight as they can in one direction, not turning aside for slight reasons, even if their choice of direction was a matter of mere chance in the first place; for even if this doesn’t bring them to where they want to go it will at least bring them to somewhere that is probably better for them than the middle of a forest.
That is where we find ourselves, already in the midst of things, deep in the dark forest with no printed instructions. You may prefer readymade answers but
A great philosophy is not one that resolves the questions once and for all, but one that poses them; that a great philosophy is not one that pronounces, but one that demands.
Sorry if that is not pleasing. Yet it is necessary to move, to walk in a straight line. That is a matter of will. The line you follow might be a matter of luck, or fortune, or perhaps even of grace.
The First Maxim
We should not neglect Descartes’ first maxim, if the second seems too arbitrary:
The first was to obey the laws and customs of my country, holding constantly to the religion in which by God’s grace I had been instructed from my childhood, and governing myself in all other matters — i.e. all the ones not settled by the law of the land or my religion — on the basis of the most moderate and least extreme opinions, the opinions commonly accepted in practice by the most sensible of the people with whom I would have to live.
Again, this is not a matter of proof but of one’s will. The alternative is impiety or perhaps pride.
The Great Philosophies
Peguy is undoubtedly unique in regarding Plato, Descartes, and Bergson as the world’s three greatest philosophies. He explains that all great philosophy has a first moment, which is the moment of method, and a second moment, which is the moment of the metaphysical.
Method
- Plato: philosophy of dialectic
- Descartes: philosophy of order
- Bergson: philosophy of the real
Metaphysical
- Plato: philosophy of the idea
- Descartes: philosophy of substance
- Bergson: philosophy of duration
You can cobble together a worldview from readymade ideas, “found objects”, or you can learn to think.
The quote above reminds me of the book Dion Fortune wrote on Glamour. I can’t find it, but it basically put forth the idea that we’re inheriting spells or disillusionments. She goes into how it is national, personal, etc. There are so many layers to it. It was a unique book because it seemed ‘practical’ in that it was very obvious. I
Reminds me of the “forest of passions” in the Buddhist imagery, through which one must walk or which must be “cut down”.
In the Kalevala the hero Ilmarinen causes the forest burn with drastic consequences, after he has found the Hidden fire with Väinämöinen. This sounds like a warning for the would be initiate.
“Whenever supreme danger reopens the naked issue of ‘to be or not to be’, freedom is elevated from the merely legal sphere to a more sacred plane where fathers, sons and brothers are reunited.” -Ernst Jünger, The Forest Passage
Your post inspired me to open a notebook from several years ago and revisit thoughts filed away under the heading “Teaching of the Forest”. Beginning with the issue of mind-body dualism, this is what it read:
People think that their thoughts directly “controls” the body. Most enigmas are solved by reframing the question. We fail to know since we do not know which question to ask, and get stuck in habitual modes of being. People believe that it is normal for thoughts to move the body, but that it would be insane if thought had an effect outside the body. That tells me the worldview in question is a mismatch of incongruent ideas, assembled from various sources. Impressions, whether intellectual, sensible or from some other power of soul, are similarly confused. A second-hand world of physical effects, but no adequate idea of causation, is invented. As I continued to walk through the forest, a second danger of perception appeared; to cursorily reduce all to a categorical abstraction, and miss the immediate reality of the thing. Various entities can then be manipulated in the mind, but forgetting how they relate to the world.
The weapon of tyranny is fear, by which it manipulates the masses. In this area, we could use some form of contemporary “demonology” of idea-formation, if people would only believe in such things. It is not possible to combat anything effectively without understanding how the front lines are drawn, which is thus a first priority. Simply taking a step back will show how the mechanism give rise to ever quicker swings of opinion, constantly pending between extreme points of view.
“Anyone who has escaped the clutches of catastrophe knows that he basically had the help of simple people to thank, people who were not overcome by the hate, the terror, the mechanicalness of platitudes. These people withstood the propaganda and its plainly demonic insinuations. When such virtues also manifest in a leader of people, endless blessings can result, as with Augustus for example. This is the stuff of empires. The ruler reigns not by taking but by giving life. -Ernst Jünger, The Forest Passage
In the novel “On the Marble Cliffs”, the resistance also includes church, ancient nobility, and wise hermits. However, we must also ask ourselves, as Jünger does, what the forest means in a deeper sense. He explains that it is older than human history, the great theme of all traditions, and always present as a possibility even in our own times.
“Here is the authentic substance of history: in man’s encounter with himself, that is, with his own divine power. Anyone aspiring to teach history should know this. Socrates called this the most profound place, from which a voice advised and directed him – no longer even with words – his Daimonion. We could also call it the forest.
What would it now mean for a contemporary man to take his lead from the example of death’s champion, of these gods, heroes and sages? It would mean that he join the resistance against the times, and not merely against these times, but against all times, whose basic power is fear.” -Ernst Jünger, The Forest Passage