Actually, I made it to seeing the flat earth and the geocentric cosmos and the Empyrean: that’s what I do see. If someone goes on about magic Skydaddy, I say, “Yes, exactly—He lives over yonder, on the far side of the sky; He can see you if you look up and wave hi.”
The method is simply to privilege phenomenology over abstraction, because it is what everyone does in fact see. We still talk about the sun rising and setting, and we aren’t wrong; it’s simply a different order of knowledge, which we may choose to privilege. Even Tolstoy got there, at the very end of *Anna Karenina*, and Blake knew it all along.
That said, I agree with the rest of what you’ve said: external authority as such is irrelevant now, and nothing can matter any longer unless it is accepted within the subjective, personal heart, via direct noetic intuition and vision.
Levin, at the end there: “Don’t I know that it is infinite space and not a round vault? But no matter how I squint and strain my sight, I cannot help seeing it as round and limited, and despite my knowledge of infinite space, I am undoubtedly right when I see a firm blue vault, more right than when I strain to see beyond it.”
I like the "despite my knowledge of infinite space" because if you see knowing as having something added to your invisible body to make it part of you, then there is no knowledge of any infinite space, neither if you think about what he is talking about nor if you think about infinite vs the finite human that he is
(I always go back to the words, what is he really saying here, or what am I really about to say now? In the end, I have to start watching "soccer" four nights a week again or else people will look at me as some kind of freak)
This phenomonological "primalism" or "decomposition" is something I keep hearing about and am fascinated by! To be clear, what I mean by decomposition and primalism is exactly what you say: we have highly detailed models and representations (including photographic ones) of many phenomena that we are not able to experience at that level of detail or from that sheer breadth of perspectives and angles, so to steal your example (because, in part, it's also the one I see most used when talking about phenomonological primalism): We experience the Earth as flat from our perspective 99% of the time even though we know that, from a more sweeping perspective, we would "experience" it (view it, to be more specific) as round.
It's fun for me to think about different phenomenologies, different points of view (even if it's obviously very speculative). Is there a possible perspective, a POV, that could somehow see the Earth as a perfect globe all at once, in a single glance, a single sweep of the eye (other than God, The Perfect Witness), without abstraction or technology? Is this how a stray angel, slipping through scales of measurement we can't even imagine and processes whose complexity are orders of magnitude beyond what our greatest minds could gesture at, might see? Or a holy saint, the depths of historical time and the sweeps of space all open as a field before him? What about that? Strange stuff...
Beautifully said, and yes, strange stuff -- my mind is on the fringes of this all the time. This perhaps is the "hem of his garment," here at the edge of our capacity, imaginatively reaching for something beyond us. This is where I feel also like the child who watched Sagan's "Cosmos," utterly enthralled, and I feel that wider perspective of scientific cosmology as a positive religious invitation; here again, I am a modern.
I'm thinking that some of these things may be rooted in the structure of the human flesh, which would suggest that there are parameters and limits to what perspectives we could experience directly, without abstraction or models. But the the structure could also be non-arbitrary and say something meaningul about how things *really are*. It's possible that medieval cosmology corresponds to the pneumatic rather than physical realm, or that it is a type of cartographic translation of a higher-dimensional reality. That's the only way the Ascension makes sense, for instance. Obviously, Jesus didn't just keep going up indefinitely, such that He's floating somewhere over yonder by Andromeda or wherever at the moment. "Up" here only makes sense if we mean up through the planetary spheres and into the Empyrean, across the edge of the sky. We could regard that as *more* real than the scientific perspective, reflective of a higher dimension than what science could know. Oddly, then, a correspondence emerges between phenomenology and *spiritual* rather than merely physical reality.
Beautifully written my friend, and I respect your intellectual bravery here. I agree with much of this, especially the idea that we can't simply sweep modernity and liberalism under the rug, pretend it never existed, or that it's going to collapse any day now and we're going to return to medieval times. These ideas are cowardly fantasies of the highest order in my opinion, people afraid to grapple with the reality of our situation.
I want bold new visions of faith and modern technology, faith in a non coercive sense, deep and genuine faith that takes all that we have gained in the modern world and baptizes it. I believe it is possible, because with Christ anything is possible. Now we just have to move the mountains.
I follow both Barfield and Steiner in seeing modernity as a necessary unfolding of human freedom—in the arts, in politics, religion, science, etc. And freedom is a good, a gift so great that, in spite of its abuse, it is still not worth taking away for any form of institutionalized certainty or 'public good' defined authoritatively.
And who really wants to go back on freedom, to return to a world of serfdom, the divine right of kings, the privileges of aristocrats, to enforced ignorance, etc.? That stage of the world has passed. It was beautiful, and some things that were part of that world can be brought forward into the future—but not what impinges on human freedom.
I could not agree more with your position. I’d put my own spin on a couple points this way:
I think it is nearly as modern to be traditionalist and reactionary as it is to be liberal. To have these two wolves, as it were, fighting within you (with the liberal usually dominating the reactionary) is precisely the modern condition in its fullness. There were no reactionaries preaching RETVRN in the Middle Ages—that came, as the name suggests, with the Renaissance.
Tillich is actually great. At least I’ve gotten a lot from his writing. If he’s a bad theologian then so was Meister Eckhart. (Of course, the Church persecuted him…) Now, can you build a religion on his way of doing theology? No. But that’s because of when he lived, I think. Liberal Christianity didn’t fail, it succeeded more thoroughly than its makers could ever have imagined. The liberal Christian project merged Christianity with “secular” society in a way not previously seen. Something like the EU, for instance, is a deeply Christian project. Everything you’re saying about how the liberal worldview and experience is deeply ingrained in you speaks to this point. We are all debtors to the Reformation, choosing which if any church to join, which rights to emphasize, concerned with our inwardness, and so on. Because people like Kierkegaard won, in a way, just as people like Thoreau won in a certain sense—not maybe quite as they would have wanted! But that side, that specific strand in the liberal project ultimately prevailed. At least it did for a while. I worry that there is underway a willful flight from complexity and introspection, motivated in part by digital technology’s evisceration of the general capacity for inwardness and reflection of any sustained kind. But that’s something to fret over another time…
Yes, TIllich is great -- and so actually is Wieman. Phrases of his -- "ultimate commitment," "living richly with dark realities" -- have stuck with me as planks of the deepest ways I think about these things. Maybe I will now re-read "Courage to Be." But I absolutely meant to emphasize that aspects of this thought are now inescapable, though I think I ended only by talking about liberal values and not liberal philosophies or theologies. I didn't even get to the nub, namely, as you might guess, that Whitehead is the only one that (for now) checks all the essential boxes for me. I agree that the EU is deeply Christian; Marx of course also was deeply Christian. Precisely the problem is the *failure* of, say, social democracy or Marxism to *live up to* the real inspirations that animate them, in Marx's case evident to anyone who will cast an eye on the Manuscripts of 1844. And with you, as I hope I expressed, I am most disturbed by the rejection of the liberal project not in the name of the reclamation of its fundamental values, but in the name of a renascent counter-humanism (as you note a deeply modern project in itself!). I can't help but see that as Satanic, as an attempt to work against Wieman's "creative interchange."
I think that just that willful flight from complexity and introspection is molok/ariman making it's war on Christ. In the end "Thou" is the center of the universe, and the simplified way to deal with it is "God is love" or (as they say is incorrect) "love is God". If one doesn't want the realities to be complicated (which is what complex becomes for someone who doesn't want or can't let themselves deal with all of it) they can just, as God desires us to, fall back to that inner place of love your enemy, love your neighbour and love yourself.
This resonates with me deeply, and I feel the same push and pull. Have you read Ken Wilber’s work? What you’re describing sounds like what he describes as the urge to transcend and yet include certain development structures and thus reach an integral perspective on life, the universe, and everything. Centering this work of integration in Christ is where I have been living the past few years…
I have not engaged with him; in total honesty I've been hesitant because of the high regard he had for Da Free John (or whatever his last moniker was before his mahasamadhi). That's probably foolish on my part -- I definitely resonate with what you describe here!
I did hear about some sketchy stuff around that John guy, but this happened after I was really into Wilber’s work, if I recall correctly. It was about 11 years ago or so when I devoured the majority of his opus 😅
I think for the most part he is onto something. The way he integrates various wisdom traditions is highly nuanced, and doesn’t collapse into some sort of “it’s all the same” perennialism that you often hear about.
This was a very thoughtful and beautifully written essay.
You’ve put your finger on the real bind: modern secularism leaves us empty, but trying to resurrect pre-modern frameworks is self-deception. You’re right to reject both. Where I think you’re still stuck, though, is in assuming the only alternatives are either tradition or its collapse into liberalism.
What’s missing here is philosophy in the strict sense: grounding thought in reality as it is given in direct perception and experience. The fact of existence and our consciousness of it its identity is the inescapable, irreducible starting point to rational inquiry. From these primaries, all knowledge builds sequentially and non contradictorily. Without this foundation, one ends up oscillating between inherited mythologies on the one hand and existential despair on the other.
Dismissals of this project—like the Derridean claim that all is interpretation—are no longer tenable. The technological age has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that man’s mind can know reality objectively. Our ability to know and harness physical existence and create technology demonstrates that knowledge is not merely “constructed” but rooted in reality itself.
One does not need to force oneself into Ptolemaic fantasies, nor dissolve into Tillich’s abstractions. What is necessary is a framework that describes reality as it is—empirical metaphysics—and then builds epistemology and ethics upon it systematically. That frees you from both the illusions of tradition and the barrenness of secularism. It allows you to live neither as a post-liberal nor a post-traditionalist, but as someone grounded in reality itself—a reality that remains itself independent of place and time.
If reality is what truth describes, then any contradiction between our ideas and the reality given in direct perception will necessarily cause cognitive dissonance and thus existential malaise. In this sense, the truth really does set one free. But many who are emotionally tied to the idea of post-mortem banquets with deceased loved ones wrongly conclude that a reality-based worldview leads to despair—precisely because they have never given up the dream of immortality implanted in them by these traditions. And I suspect this is what keeps people torn between faith and truth.
Thanks for this thoughtful and insightful comment. My guess is that you have what you believe is "a framework that describes reality as it is," an "empirical" metaphysics. I would almost guess you're a positivist of some stripe but obviously I can't know; your (in my view) overly enthusiastic valorization of technological achievement as an index of metaphysical truthfulness suggests this to me. Obviously there is more here than we can easily talk about in this kind of exchange. As I often say to Chris Cook (a mutual of ours I think), we need a fire and a bottle of whiskey.
The problem is that every metaphysics considers itself "empirical," and none is empirical; they are speculative and tentative. I am not a deconstructionist; if anything I would borrow a phrase of process philosophers and call myself a constructive post-modernist. I do believe that truth exists and that it is knowable, but I think "knowledge" is properly a processual asymptotic approach to it, not a possession of it.
Perhaps a good deal hinges on the kind of evidence we admit. I do not believe that reality consists only of what is sensually and mathematically tractable. But I am also suspicious of a thoroughgoing Platonism, indeed, of all essentialisms. You can probably guess where I land: to me the most adequate metaphysics is found in Whitehead. I can't absolutize it; Whitehead wouldn't have absolutized it. But I have found that this metaphysics alone allows me to make sense simultaneously of premodern and modern worldviews and concerns, adopt what in each of them is worthy of adoption, and transform what in each of them is needful of transformation, allowing a robust and adventurous "faith" (in the sense of a joyful engagement with a reality that will remain forever incompletely known), allowing me to affirm core values of traditional religiosity while allowing me also to affirm core values of modernity, deepening empirical sciences to allow for the presence and efficacy of consciousness, providing avenues to approach the most difficult religious and philosophical/scientific problems (e.g., the problem of evil, the so-called "hard" problem of consciousness, which standard-issue physicalism is completely incapable of addressing -- I say that after a great deal of expended effort).
Anyway I don't really get into it in this essay; sadly, given my life, these essays are things I throw down in the wee hours before the stock market opens! But Whitehead is more or less my basic metaphysical operating system for now, and really what I am doing is exploring the existential ramifications in terms of faith, and for want of a better word, "re-enchantment" within this context. As the process theologian David Ray Griffin would say, "re-enchantment without supernaturalism."
Again, thanks so much for a substantive engagement!
Thank you for such a thoughtful and generous reply. I appreciate the clarity with which you’ve laid out your orientation, and your openness to serious engagement across metaphysical lines.
You suggest that “every metaphysics considers itself empirical, and none is.” I would nuance that. My approach does not speculate beyond what is given in direct experience. It begins with axiomatic concepts—existence, consciousness, and identity—irreducible facts directly present in perception. These cannot be denied without self-contradiction and form the basis of all further concepts if metaphysics is to remain objective rather than lapse into reification.
My reference to the achievements of science and technology was not to valorize them, but to show that man’s mind demonstrably can know reality. Existence is the object of knowledge, and knowledge takes the form of conceptually identifying entities, attributes, actions, states, and relationships, and describing them propositionally. Metaphysics is discovered by the same method we use everywhere else: observation, concept-formation, and integration. Humanity has often advanced more in the sciences than in philosophy, but both succeed by the same means.
Where I think Whitehead errs—as many in his tradition do—is in reifying abstractions, treating “process” or “becoming” as if they were ontological substances. Abstractions are epistemological: indispensable intellectual tools, but they have no existence apart from the particulars they subsume. To elevate them into metaphysical primaries is to commit the fallacy of hypostatization, continuing the Platonic tendency to mistake mental content for independent reality.
I should also add that I am anything but a positivist. If our concepts are not as objective as the objects they describe, then language becomes a tool of confusion rather than cognition. Philosophy’s task is to safeguard the objectivity of concepts so that thought and language faithfully track reality. Anything that exists mind-independently will meet the criteria of identity and its corollaries—attributes, difference, and relationship. Everything real, whether ontological, epistemological, or psychological, meets these criteria. Platonic forms certainly exist—but only as ideas in Plato’s mind.
That said, I respect the spirit of your project. Seeking “re-enchantment without supernaturalism” is an honorable aim. My concern is that re-enchantment purchased at the cost of metaphysical reification risks estranging us from reality rather than grounding us in it. For me, wonder comes directly from reality itself—every entity, attribute, action, and relationship discoverable through conceptual identification and propositional description.
"My approach does not speculate beyond what is given in direct experience." Curious what you believe is "given in direct experience" and is not a "reification." I am prompted to reflect that the very notion of "direct experience" is problematic. What does it mean to you?
"Where I think Whitehead errs—as many in his tradition do—is in reifying abstractions, treating “process” or “becoming” as if they were ontological substances." For Whitehead, only actual occasions are "concrete." His whole philosophy is in a sense a warning against reification, "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness."
I wonder, to help orient me, who are your greatest philosophical inspirations?
I resonate with your desire to keep the person at the center and your refusal to paper over abuse or accommodation. Where I differ is in thinking that the alternative to liberalism’s hollowness isn’t nostalgic denial but a thicker realism ~ conscience formed by truth, freedom ordered to the good, and a tradition that lives precisely by judging the age. I think Jesus gives us not only Himself but also a people, a grammar, and an authority, so we can distinguish His voice from our projections.
I was reminded of a book I was recently reading – An Introduction to Christian Mysticism by Jason Baxter. He talks about the idea that this modern secular environment is a positive thing. That what you describe as “a land barren and untrodden and unwatered” is the desert that pre-modern mystics actively sought out.
In this spiritually barren modern world, our only option is to turn inward, that’s the only place we can ground our faith. While pre-moderns had to seek the desert to avoid adopting a second hand religion constructed by the Church, our only option is to construct a personal, and therefore authentic faith. By authentic I mean one in accord with out own inner self at it’s honest level of spiritual realisation. That’s not necessarily one that is untethered to a particular theology.
I’m with you brother. This summer, I took a break from visiting a Catholic parish (which I attended weekly for two years). In that whole time, I never had a conversation with a priest. At first I was ok to “hide in the crowd” but over time the lack of outreach felt off-putting.
As a woman of color, I’ve been very unsettled by the “post-liberal” rhetoric I’ve encountered on Substack and social media over the past few years. I recently came across a Catholic YouTuber who questioned the value of women’s suffrage; the fact that it’s become trendy in some quarters to blame our social and political problems on women voting and feminism just confirmed my suspicion that what is going on in America is largely reactionary and not based on any true spiritual vision.
I’ve been reading critiques of modernity most of my adult life. Even atheists and secular humanists recognize its problems. But no one agrees completely on its causes or solutions. People love to blame Descartes but of course primitivists would place the blame on the invention of agriculture. <shrug>
I’m in my 40s now and I think I’m finally at a place where I can reconcile these tensions. Key to that process has been radical honesty with myself and an openness to where I perceive God’s activity to be unfolding.
I love "radical honesty with myself and an openness to where I perceive God’s activity to be unfolding." I've forgotten to look at your Stack recently but have you been writing about this journey? Your experience of the "lack of outreach" and your encounter with that new illiberalism, these are exactly what I'm talking about... I worry that so much of the "vitality" of the traditional churches is exactly as you say "reactionary and not based on any true spiritual vision." Maybe there is never any place for really spiritual people but on the margins... but this is a sad thought for me.
If you could say in a word "where God's activity is unfolding" what would you say?
And I forget so forgive me, but have you gotten into Whitehead/process theology?
I am familiar with Whitehead and process theology, having explored it some in my late 20s or early 30s. I remember it resonating with me at the time.
In thinking more about this, I am reminded of The Fool card in the tarot. Valentin Tomberg wrote in his study of the card, “The Fool is the footloose Bohemian, the Exile, the Expatriate, the Cosmopolitan, the one who has abandoned the struggle for existence, who wants neither to conquer nor defend anything, who cares not to persuade anyone of anything — this is the free human being. And in the eyes of the world the only garb fit for a free human being is that of the Fool.”
More and more I feel like this, free to go the direction I’m going, but also often feeling alone and not really fitting anywhere. With no need to persuade, there’s not much motivation to maintain an aggressive publishing schedule! But also, I’m not sure what I can or should say about where I am. My focus at the moment is integrating Christian Hermeticism and modern Druidry. I feel like I’m on an adventure!
That's such a good place to be! (I wonder what Aquarius you have in your chart -- I am an Aquarius sun, and the piece about "not fitting in anywhere" resonantes so much for me.) I tentatively titled my next piece "The Adventure of Knowledge." I love thinking of spiritual life as an adventure. I love thinking of faith as consolation in the midst of life's difficulties to allow us to continue the adventure with a full heart!
My chart is so boring! (It so happens that I don't have any planets in Aquarius). I think part of what's going on is that I, like other people, are feeling drawn toward what our society will hopefully evolve into but currently struggles to embody because of prior (distorted? corrupted?) theological and philosophical commitments that trap us in certain ways of thinking. The dominant culture of the West is at an impasse, but fortunately there are visionaries within and outside of Christianity who are helping us see what's possible.
I have enjoyed your posts here and on twitter for some time. Reading this I realize, maybe incorrectly, that you are not enchanted after all (and with that I mean what you say here.) I was thinking the other day or if it was today (Cuba libre is more than just a rooster's tail after all) that maybe someone needs real exile to arrive at magic, or whatever a christian wants to call it instead, as I very recently got out of exile into a limbo between exile and a normal life. So when you get away from exile you first stop in the lands of the liminal, where there seems to be no magic at all, or at least not as clearly as it is when you are in exile. Maybe that place is also where you end up when you are reaching from a normal life with family and functioning economic situation towards enchantment. Find a way to go into exile without sacrificing the well being of your family. But your whole knighthood of Sophia and your posts about Eros makes it seem you are there already. Have you read Pageaus book of language of creation yet? Symbolism on that fundamental level sets up a new foothold. Also the Corbin books takes you there. But maybe being in exile is required to take that step, or if it is a jump, away from the normie world view. Because when you are there, you can doubt the church however much you want, not from the point of view of doubt and values, but because you are standing firmly on something else entirely and if what an institution says doesn't conform to that, you know they are wrong because you actually Know.
Or check out the heretics: electric universe theory, "cutting the einsteinian knot" (a video on youtube)
I appreciate this comment, especially your meditation on liminality. I do feel in that liminal space; perhaps I came into it when I became a householder after having been an ecstatic vagabond in my youth. I think what I am trying to do, in order to move into re-enchantment, is find a conceptual framework that does justice to both sides, that has *room* for both sides, a metaphysic I can hold both existentially and with intellectual honesty, in which this world and the Otherworld are both embraced. I didn't get to it in this article, but on balance, the one that comes closest is Whitehead. Cf in particular D.R. Griffin's "Re-Enchantment Without Supernaturalism." It is not so much that this is merely convincing intellectually; it fulfills both sides, where "perennial" doctrines actually don't sit easy with either side. My heart rebels at perennialism's monism. That is, perennialism itself, esoterism itself, can become a kind of "para-Church" with its own dogmas, and I also do not agree with those dogmas, not merely on an intellectual, but an existential level. This is where perennial *Christianity* feels like open air and freedom -- if only it can be liberated from philosophical ways of speaking about it that I both see and feel are deeply inadequate. I think process thought can do that. Process thought can make sense of modern cosmology, and it can also open the space for magic and miracle in a naturalist way -- it can open the space for gods and angels who coexist in the same universe with galaxies and quarks.
My direct "councel" on this, as I am my own self ordained priest and prophet (just half kidding of course) would be that you forget about galaxies and quarks.
Process thought and Whitehead is one correct path imo, but it's still going down the path of the intellect. One of my personal projects is to try to grasp what the ancients were talking about when they were describing the invisible side of man, and the intellect or nous (in my grasping understanding of it) to me is the point where the I is. Just two months ago when I smoked my own rolled cigarettes (with only tobacco) I had experiences in my heart of being with a certain person, but now when I smoke and I am out of that exile I am trying to make it happen with the I, moving "myself" into my heart, and it doesn't work, and today (I am not exaggerating but I realized it today, but I know I have thought about it before in my life) I realized that moving myself or the I into the heart just doesn't work, because for some reason I am still "in my intellect" when I am doing that. I.e. I think "intellectual honesty" is not the way. It builds, somehow by it's own function, it's own worlds or realities (and I don't mean imagination now) that are not correct.
This will probably sound silly and morally wrong, but if you know how to turn a woman you meet or know into a lover, I think that is an alternative way for you into enchantment. The more skills and practical knowledge a man (and we are men, I would never pretend to know a woman's experience) has, the more he will really Know, as in making parts of reality parts of himself. You don't actually need to follow through, because we got imagination to help us follow through while leaving the body on hold. But I don't know man, (I will not end this sentence, I am sure you know how the ending would be)
Opening your reply in the liminal place that is the bar on the corner, the radio starts playing, all that she wants, is another baby, she is gone tomorrow boy
Just two and a half months ago I would take it as a sign, now I have to remind myself that is is. You convince yourself about what it means.
Haha and before pushing the “post”-button Hotel California starts playing
Thank you. A hugely important topic that is crucial to be discussed in Orthodoxy (and beyond), especially in America. We have no national version of Orthodox culture to even LARP back to: our Old Believers have to pretend they're living in another country as well as time. And as you say, this never really works (or tends to be cult-like).
There is wisdom in how our forebears in Europe lived for hundreds of years. But it will take discernment and decision-making to figure out what parts of that were "Orthodox" which parts we "Good and wise" and which were "incidental" and specific to a place. We all want to be Orthodox, and most of us want to distance ourselves from mainstream American culture. But we're still post-modern Americans. We can only be good people, and good Christians, by going forward, with what we have.
Maybe it could be said that medieval society was a stool with three legs: Christianity, Classical inheritance, and local pagan particulars. Well, we have a fourth leg, modern liberalism. We need to figure out how to make that stool balance and still keep all four legs. Perhaps we could cut off one of the other legs, but we can't cut off liberalism, as much as some would like to. We have to integrate who we are now with traditions we were cut off from.
A lot of this resonates with me, although ultimately I'd part ways on some fundamental points.
In any event, a minor comment. I'm not so sure that evaluating the competency of a purported authority is a uniquely modern phenomenon. Doubtless, this intellectual exercise has received special treatment of late. But surely the pre-moderns recognized that assent to the word of another necessarily follows upon a determination of credibility. Perhaps I'm missing some nuance.
Actually, I made it to seeing the flat earth and the geocentric cosmos and the Empyrean: that’s what I do see. If someone goes on about magic Skydaddy, I say, “Yes, exactly—He lives over yonder, on the far side of the sky; He can see you if you look up and wave hi.”
The method is simply to privilege phenomenology over abstraction, because it is what everyone does in fact see. We still talk about the sun rising and setting, and we aren’t wrong; it’s simply a different order of knowledge, which we may choose to privilege. Even Tolstoy got there, at the very end of *Anna Karenina*, and Blake knew it all along.
That said, I agree with the rest of what you’ve said: external authority as such is irrelevant now, and nothing can matter any longer unless it is accepted within the subjective, personal heart, via direct noetic intuition and vision.
I love this and I will try again.
Levin, at the end there: “Don’t I know that it is infinite space and not a round vault? But no matter how I squint and strain my sight, I cannot help seeing it as round and limited, and despite my knowledge of infinite space, I am undoubtedly right when I see a firm blue vault, more right than when I strain to see beyond it.”
(quoted on p. 53 of my book)
I like the "despite my knowledge of infinite space" because if you see knowing as having something added to your invisible body to make it part of you, then there is no knowledge of any infinite space, neither if you think about what he is talking about nor if you think about infinite vs the finite human that he is
(I always go back to the words, what is he really saying here, or what am I really about to say now? In the end, I have to start watching "soccer" four nights a week again or else people will look at me as some kind of freak)
This phenomonological "primalism" or "decomposition" is something I keep hearing about and am fascinated by! To be clear, what I mean by decomposition and primalism is exactly what you say: we have highly detailed models and representations (including photographic ones) of many phenomena that we are not able to experience at that level of detail or from that sheer breadth of perspectives and angles, so to steal your example (because, in part, it's also the one I see most used when talking about phenomonological primalism): We experience the Earth as flat from our perspective 99% of the time even though we know that, from a more sweeping perspective, we would "experience" it (view it, to be more specific) as round.
It's fun for me to think about different phenomenologies, different points of view (even if it's obviously very speculative). Is there a possible perspective, a POV, that could somehow see the Earth as a perfect globe all at once, in a single glance, a single sweep of the eye (other than God, The Perfect Witness), without abstraction or technology? Is this how a stray angel, slipping through scales of measurement we can't even imagine and processes whose complexity are orders of magnitude beyond what our greatest minds could gesture at, might see? Or a holy saint, the depths of historical time and the sweeps of space all open as a field before him? What about that? Strange stuff...
Beautifully said, and yes, strange stuff -- my mind is on the fringes of this all the time. This perhaps is the "hem of his garment," here at the edge of our capacity, imaginatively reaching for something beyond us. This is where I feel also like the child who watched Sagan's "Cosmos," utterly enthralled, and I feel that wider perspective of scientific cosmology as a positive religious invitation; here again, I am a modern.
I'm thinking that some of these things may be rooted in the structure of the human flesh, which would suggest that there are parameters and limits to what perspectives we could experience directly, without abstraction or models. But the the structure could also be non-arbitrary and say something meaningul about how things *really are*. It's possible that medieval cosmology corresponds to the pneumatic rather than physical realm, or that it is a type of cartographic translation of a higher-dimensional reality. That's the only way the Ascension makes sense, for instance. Obviously, Jesus didn't just keep going up indefinitely, such that He's floating somewhere over yonder by Andromeda or wherever at the moment. "Up" here only makes sense if we mean up through the planetary spheres and into the Empyrean, across the edge of the sky. We could regard that as *more* real than the scientific perspective, reflective of a higher dimension than what science could know. Oddly, then, a correspondence emerges between phenomenology and *spiritual* rather than merely physical reality.
I really do need to read your book, don't I.
Beautifully written my friend, and I respect your intellectual bravery here. I agree with much of this, especially the idea that we can't simply sweep modernity and liberalism under the rug, pretend it never existed, or that it's going to collapse any day now and we're going to return to medieval times. These ideas are cowardly fantasies of the highest order in my opinion, people afraid to grapple with the reality of our situation.
I want bold new visions of faith and modern technology, faith in a non coercive sense, deep and genuine faith that takes all that we have gained in the modern world and baptizes it. I believe it is possible, because with Christ anything is possible. Now we just have to move the mountains.
Ah, so well said, thank you! I am with you in this task!
I follow both Barfield and Steiner in seeing modernity as a necessary unfolding of human freedom—in the arts, in politics, religion, science, etc. And freedom is a good, a gift so great that, in spite of its abuse, it is still not worth taking away for any form of institutionalized certainty or 'public good' defined authoritatively.
And who really wants to go back on freedom, to return to a world of serfdom, the divine right of kings, the privileges of aristocrats, to enforced ignorance, etc.? That stage of the world has passed. It was beautiful, and some things that were part of that world can be brought forward into the future—but not what impinges on human freedom.
I could not agree more with your position. I’d put my own spin on a couple points this way:
I think it is nearly as modern to be traditionalist and reactionary as it is to be liberal. To have these two wolves, as it were, fighting within you (with the liberal usually dominating the reactionary) is precisely the modern condition in its fullness. There were no reactionaries preaching RETVRN in the Middle Ages—that came, as the name suggests, with the Renaissance.
Tillich is actually great. At least I’ve gotten a lot from his writing. If he’s a bad theologian then so was Meister Eckhart. (Of course, the Church persecuted him…) Now, can you build a religion on his way of doing theology? No. But that’s because of when he lived, I think. Liberal Christianity didn’t fail, it succeeded more thoroughly than its makers could ever have imagined. The liberal Christian project merged Christianity with “secular” society in a way not previously seen. Something like the EU, for instance, is a deeply Christian project. Everything you’re saying about how the liberal worldview and experience is deeply ingrained in you speaks to this point. We are all debtors to the Reformation, choosing which if any church to join, which rights to emphasize, concerned with our inwardness, and so on. Because people like Kierkegaard won, in a way, just as people like Thoreau won in a certain sense—not maybe quite as they would have wanted! But that side, that specific strand in the liberal project ultimately prevailed. At least it did for a while. I worry that there is underway a willful flight from complexity and introspection, motivated in part by digital technology’s evisceration of the general capacity for inwardness and reflection of any sustained kind. But that’s something to fret over another time…
Yes, TIllich is great -- and so actually is Wieman. Phrases of his -- "ultimate commitment," "living richly with dark realities" -- have stuck with me as planks of the deepest ways I think about these things. Maybe I will now re-read "Courage to Be." But I absolutely meant to emphasize that aspects of this thought are now inescapable, though I think I ended only by talking about liberal values and not liberal philosophies or theologies. I didn't even get to the nub, namely, as you might guess, that Whitehead is the only one that (for now) checks all the essential boxes for me. I agree that the EU is deeply Christian; Marx of course also was deeply Christian. Precisely the problem is the *failure* of, say, social democracy or Marxism to *live up to* the real inspirations that animate them, in Marx's case evident to anyone who will cast an eye on the Manuscripts of 1844. And with you, as I hope I expressed, I am most disturbed by the rejection of the liberal project not in the name of the reclamation of its fundamental values, but in the name of a renascent counter-humanism (as you note a deeply modern project in itself!). I can't help but see that as Satanic, as an attempt to work against Wieman's "creative interchange."
I think that just that willful flight from complexity and introspection is molok/ariman making it's war on Christ. In the end "Thou" is the center of the universe, and the simplified way to deal with it is "God is love" or (as they say is incorrect) "love is God". If one doesn't want the realities to be complicated (which is what complex becomes for someone who doesn't want or can't let themselves deal with all of it) they can just, as God desires us to, fall back to that inner place of love your enemy, love your neighbour and love yourself.
This resonates with me deeply, and I feel the same push and pull. Have you read Ken Wilber’s work? What you’re describing sounds like what he describes as the urge to transcend and yet include certain development structures and thus reach an integral perspective on life, the universe, and everything. Centering this work of integration in Christ is where I have been living the past few years…
I have not engaged with him; in total honesty I've been hesitant because of the high regard he had for Da Free John (or whatever his last moniker was before his mahasamadhi). That's probably foolish on my part -- I definitely resonate with what you describe here!
I did hear about some sketchy stuff around that John guy, but this happened after I was really into Wilber’s work, if I recall correctly. It was about 11 years ago or so when I devoured the majority of his opus 😅
I think for the most part he is onto something. The way he integrates various wisdom traditions is highly nuanced, and doesn’t collapse into some sort of “it’s all the same” perennialism that you often hear about.
This was a very thoughtful and beautifully written essay.
You’ve put your finger on the real bind: modern secularism leaves us empty, but trying to resurrect pre-modern frameworks is self-deception. You’re right to reject both. Where I think you’re still stuck, though, is in assuming the only alternatives are either tradition or its collapse into liberalism.
What’s missing here is philosophy in the strict sense: grounding thought in reality as it is given in direct perception and experience. The fact of existence and our consciousness of it its identity is the inescapable, irreducible starting point to rational inquiry. From these primaries, all knowledge builds sequentially and non contradictorily. Without this foundation, one ends up oscillating between inherited mythologies on the one hand and existential despair on the other.
Dismissals of this project—like the Derridean claim that all is interpretation—are no longer tenable. The technological age has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that man’s mind can know reality objectively. Our ability to know and harness physical existence and create technology demonstrates that knowledge is not merely “constructed” but rooted in reality itself.
One does not need to force oneself into Ptolemaic fantasies, nor dissolve into Tillich’s abstractions. What is necessary is a framework that describes reality as it is—empirical metaphysics—and then builds epistemology and ethics upon it systematically. That frees you from both the illusions of tradition and the barrenness of secularism. It allows you to live neither as a post-liberal nor a post-traditionalist, but as someone grounded in reality itself—a reality that remains itself independent of place and time.
If reality is what truth describes, then any contradiction between our ideas and the reality given in direct perception will necessarily cause cognitive dissonance and thus existential malaise. In this sense, the truth really does set one free. But many who are emotionally tied to the idea of post-mortem banquets with deceased loved ones wrongly conclude that a reality-based worldview leads to despair—precisely because they have never given up the dream of immortality implanted in them by these traditions. And I suspect this is what keeps people torn between faith and truth.
Thanks for this thoughtful and insightful comment. My guess is that you have what you believe is "a framework that describes reality as it is," an "empirical" metaphysics. I would almost guess you're a positivist of some stripe but obviously I can't know; your (in my view) overly enthusiastic valorization of technological achievement as an index of metaphysical truthfulness suggests this to me. Obviously there is more here than we can easily talk about in this kind of exchange. As I often say to Chris Cook (a mutual of ours I think), we need a fire and a bottle of whiskey.
The problem is that every metaphysics considers itself "empirical," and none is empirical; they are speculative and tentative. I am not a deconstructionist; if anything I would borrow a phrase of process philosophers and call myself a constructive post-modernist. I do believe that truth exists and that it is knowable, but I think "knowledge" is properly a processual asymptotic approach to it, not a possession of it.
Perhaps a good deal hinges on the kind of evidence we admit. I do not believe that reality consists only of what is sensually and mathematically tractable. But I am also suspicious of a thoroughgoing Platonism, indeed, of all essentialisms. You can probably guess where I land: to me the most adequate metaphysics is found in Whitehead. I can't absolutize it; Whitehead wouldn't have absolutized it. But I have found that this metaphysics alone allows me to make sense simultaneously of premodern and modern worldviews and concerns, adopt what in each of them is worthy of adoption, and transform what in each of them is needful of transformation, allowing a robust and adventurous "faith" (in the sense of a joyful engagement with a reality that will remain forever incompletely known), allowing me to affirm core values of traditional religiosity while allowing me also to affirm core values of modernity, deepening empirical sciences to allow for the presence and efficacy of consciousness, providing avenues to approach the most difficult religious and philosophical/scientific problems (e.g., the problem of evil, the so-called "hard" problem of consciousness, which standard-issue physicalism is completely incapable of addressing -- I say that after a great deal of expended effort).
Anyway I don't really get into it in this essay; sadly, given my life, these essays are things I throw down in the wee hours before the stock market opens! But Whitehead is more or less my basic metaphysical operating system for now, and really what I am doing is exploring the existential ramifications in terms of faith, and for want of a better word, "re-enchantment" within this context. As the process theologian David Ray Griffin would say, "re-enchantment without supernaturalism."
Again, thanks so much for a substantive engagement!
Thank you for such a thoughtful and generous reply. I appreciate the clarity with which you’ve laid out your orientation, and your openness to serious engagement across metaphysical lines.
You suggest that “every metaphysics considers itself empirical, and none is.” I would nuance that. My approach does not speculate beyond what is given in direct experience. It begins with axiomatic concepts—existence, consciousness, and identity—irreducible facts directly present in perception. These cannot be denied without self-contradiction and form the basis of all further concepts if metaphysics is to remain objective rather than lapse into reification.
My reference to the achievements of science and technology was not to valorize them, but to show that man’s mind demonstrably can know reality. Existence is the object of knowledge, and knowledge takes the form of conceptually identifying entities, attributes, actions, states, and relationships, and describing them propositionally. Metaphysics is discovered by the same method we use everywhere else: observation, concept-formation, and integration. Humanity has often advanced more in the sciences than in philosophy, but both succeed by the same means.
Where I think Whitehead errs—as many in his tradition do—is in reifying abstractions, treating “process” or “becoming” as if they were ontological substances. Abstractions are epistemological: indispensable intellectual tools, but they have no existence apart from the particulars they subsume. To elevate them into metaphysical primaries is to commit the fallacy of hypostatization, continuing the Platonic tendency to mistake mental content for independent reality.
I should also add that I am anything but a positivist. If our concepts are not as objective as the objects they describe, then language becomes a tool of confusion rather than cognition. Philosophy’s task is to safeguard the objectivity of concepts so that thought and language faithfully track reality. Anything that exists mind-independently will meet the criteria of identity and its corollaries—attributes, difference, and relationship. Everything real, whether ontological, epistemological, or psychological, meets these criteria. Platonic forms certainly exist—but only as ideas in Plato’s mind.
That said, I respect the spirit of your project. Seeking “re-enchantment without supernaturalism” is an honorable aim. My concern is that re-enchantment purchased at the cost of metaphysical reification risks estranging us from reality rather than grounding us in it. For me, wonder comes directly from reality itself—every entity, attribute, action, and relationship discoverable through conceptual identification and propositional description.
"My approach does not speculate beyond what is given in direct experience." Curious what you believe is "given in direct experience" and is not a "reification." I am prompted to reflect that the very notion of "direct experience" is problematic. What does it mean to you?
"Where I think Whitehead errs—as many in his tradition do—is in reifying abstractions, treating “process” or “becoming” as if they were ontological substances." For Whitehead, only actual occasions are "concrete." His whole philosophy is in a sense a warning against reification, "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness."
I wonder, to help orient me, who are your greatest philosophical inspirations?
I resonate with your desire to keep the person at the center and your refusal to paper over abuse or accommodation. Where I differ is in thinking that the alternative to liberalism’s hollowness isn’t nostalgic denial but a thicker realism ~ conscience formed by truth, freedom ordered to the good, and a tradition that lives precisely by judging the age. I think Jesus gives us not only Himself but also a people, a grammar, and an authority, so we can distinguish His voice from our projections.
Thanks for this and for your longer note, brother -- I will get to it but just have not had time to give the attention it deserves!
Very nice article and thoughts.
I was reminded of a book I was recently reading – An Introduction to Christian Mysticism by Jason Baxter. He talks about the idea that this modern secular environment is a positive thing. That what you describe as “a land barren and untrodden and unwatered” is the desert that pre-modern mystics actively sought out.
In this spiritually barren modern world, our only option is to turn inward, that’s the only place we can ground our faith. While pre-moderns had to seek the desert to avoid adopting a second hand religion constructed by the Church, our only option is to construct a personal, and therefore authentic faith. By authentic I mean one in accord with out own inner self at it’s honest level of spiritual realisation. That’s not necessarily one that is untethered to a particular theology.
Yes to all of this, thank you so much!
Hot dang. So much this.
I’m with you brother. This summer, I took a break from visiting a Catholic parish (which I attended weekly for two years). In that whole time, I never had a conversation with a priest. At first I was ok to “hide in the crowd” but over time the lack of outreach felt off-putting.
As a woman of color, I’ve been very unsettled by the “post-liberal” rhetoric I’ve encountered on Substack and social media over the past few years. I recently came across a Catholic YouTuber who questioned the value of women’s suffrage; the fact that it’s become trendy in some quarters to blame our social and political problems on women voting and feminism just confirmed my suspicion that what is going on in America is largely reactionary and not based on any true spiritual vision.
I’ve been reading critiques of modernity most of my adult life. Even atheists and secular humanists recognize its problems. But no one agrees completely on its causes or solutions. People love to blame Descartes but of course primitivists would place the blame on the invention of agriculture. <shrug>
I’m in my 40s now and I think I’m finally at a place where I can reconcile these tensions. Key to that process has been radical honesty with myself and an openness to where I perceive God’s activity to be unfolding.
I love "radical honesty with myself and an openness to where I perceive God’s activity to be unfolding." I've forgotten to look at your Stack recently but have you been writing about this journey? Your experience of the "lack of outreach" and your encounter with that new illiberalism, these are exactly what I'm talking about... I worry that so much of the "vitality" of the traditional churches is exactly as you say "reactionary and not based on any true spiritual vision." Maybe there is never any place for really spiritual people but on the margins... but this is a sad thought for me.
If you could say in a word "where God's activity is unfolding" what would you say?
And I forget so forgive me, but have you gotten into Whitehead/process theology?
I am familiar with Whitehead and process theology, having explored it some in my late 20s or early 30s. I remember it resonating with me at the time.
In thinking more about this, I am reminded of The Fool card in the tarot. Valentin Tomberg wrote in his study of the card, “The Fool is the footloose Bohemian, the Exile, the Expatriate, the Cosmopolitan, the one who has abandoned the struggle for existence, who wants neither to conquer nor defend anything, who cares not to persuade anyone of anything — this is the free human being. And in the eyes of the world the only garb fit for a free human being is that of the Fool.”
More and more I feel like this, free to go the direction I’m going, but also often feeling alone and not really fitting anywhere. With no need to persuade, there’s not much motivation to maintain an aggressive publishing schedule! But also, I’m not sure what I can or should say about where I am. My focus at the moment is integrating Christian Hermeticism and modern Druidry. I feel like I’m on an adventure!
That's such a good place to be! (I wonder what Aquarius you have in your chart -- I am an Aquarius sun, and the piece about "not fitting in anywhere" resonantes so much for me.) I tentatively titled my next piece "The Adventure of Knowledge." I love thinking of spiritual life as an adventure. I love thinking of faith as consolation in the midst of life's difficulties to allow us to continue the adventure with a full heart!
My chart is so boring! (It so happens that I don't have any planets in Aquarius). I think part of what's going on is that I, like other people, are feeling drawn toward what our society will hopefully evolve into but currently struggles to embody because of prior (distorted? corrupted?) theological and philosophical commitments that trap us in certain ways of thinking. The dominant culture of the West is at an impasse, but fortunately there are visionaries within and outside of Christianity who are helping us see what's possible.
I have enjoyed your posts here and on twitter for some time. Reading this I realize, maybe incorrectly, that you are not enchanted after all (and with that I mean what you say here.) I was thinking the other day or if it was today (Cuba libre is more than just a rooster's tail after all) that maybe someone needs real exile to arrive at magic, or whatever a christian wants to call it instead, as I very recently got out of exile into a limbo between exile and a normal life. So when you get away from exile you first stop in the lands of the liminal, where there seems to be no magic at all, or at least not as clearly as it is when you are in exile. Maybe that place is also where you end up when you are reaching from a normal life with family and functioning economic situation towards enchantment. Find a way to go into exile without sacrificing the well being of your family. But your whole knighthood of Sophia and your posts about Eros makes it seem you are there already. Have you read Pageaus book of language of creation yet? Symbolism on that fundamental level sets up a new foothold. Also the Corbin books takes you there. But maybe being in exile is required to take that step, or if it is a jump, away from the normie world view. Because when you are there, you can doubt the church however much you want, not from the point of view of doubt and values, but because you are standing firmly on something else entirely and if what an institution says doesn't conform to that, you know they are wrong because you actually Know.
Or check out the heretics: electric universe theory, "cutting the einsteinian knot" (a video on youtube)
I appreciate this comment, especially your meditation on liminality. I do feel in that liminal space; perhaps I came into it when I became a householder after having been an ecstatic vagabond in my youth. I think what I am trying to do, in order to move into re-enchantment, is find a conceptual framework that does justice to both sides, that has *room* for both sides, a metaphysic I can hold both existentially and with intellectual honesty, in which this world and the Otherworld are both embraced. I didn't get to it in this article, but on balance, the one that comes closest is Whitehead. Cf in particular D.R. Griffin's "Re-Enchantment Without Supernaturalism." It is not so much that this is merely convincing intellectually; it fulfills both sides, where "perennial" doctrines actually don't sit easy with either side. My heart rebels at perennialism's monism. That is, perennialism itself, esoterism itself, can become a kind of "para-Church" with its own dogmas, and I also do not agree with those dogmas, not merely on an intellectual, but an existential level. This is where perennial *Christianity* feels like open air and freedom -- if only it can be liberated from philosophical ways of speaking about it that I both see and feel are deeply inadequate. I think process thought can do that. Process thought can make sense of modern cosmology, and it can also open the space for magic and miracle in a naturalist way -- it can open the space for gods and angels who coexist in the same universe with galaxies and quarks.
My direct "councel" on this, as I am my own self ordained priest and prophet (just half kidding of course) would be that you forget about galaxies and quarks.
Process thought and Whitehead is one correct path imo, but it's still going down the path of the intellect. One of my personal projects is to try to grasp what the ancients were talking about when they were describing the invisible side of man, and the intellect or nous (in my grasping understanding of it) to me is the point where the I is. Just two months ago when I smoked my own rolled cigarettes (with only tobacco) I had experiences in my heart of being with a certain person, but now when I smoke and I am out of that exile I am trying to make it happen with the I, moving "myself" into my heart, and it doesn't work, and today (I am not exaggerating but I realized it today, but I know I have thought about it before in my life) I realized that moving myself or the I into the heart just doesn't work, because for some reason I am still "in my intellect" when I am doing that. I.e. I think "intellectual honesty" is not the way. It builds, somehow by it's own function, it's own worlds or realities (and I don't mean imagination now) that are not correct.
This will probably sound silly and morally wrong, but if you know how to turn a woman you meet or know into a lover, I think that is an alternative way for you into enchantment. The more skills and practical knowledge a man (and we are men, I would never pretend to know a woman's experience) has, the more he will really Know, as in making parts of reality parts of himself. You don't actually need to follow through, because we got imagination to help us follow through while leaving the body on hold. But I don't know man, (I will not end this sentence, I am sure you know how the ending would be)
Opening your reply in the liminal place that is the bar on the corner, the radio starts playing, all that she wants, is another baby, she is gone tomorrow boy
Just two and a half months ago I would take it as a sign, now I have to remind myself that is is. You convince yourself about what it means.
Haha and before pushing the “post”-button Hotel California starts playing
I wouldn't think your post was written using AI, but it shows you are a humble man in the end
Thank you. A hugely important topic that is crucial to be discussed in Orthodoxy (and beyond), especially in America. We have no national version of Orthodox culture to even LARP back to: our Old Believers have to pretend they're living in another country as well as time. And as you say, this never really works (or tends to be cult-like).
There is wisdom in how our forebears in Europe lived for hundreds of years. But it will take discernment and decision-making to figure out what parts of that were "Orthodox" which parts we "Good and wise" and which were "incidental" and specific to a place. We all want to be Orthodox, and most of us want to distance ourselves from mainstream American culture. But we're still post-modern Americans. We can only be good people, and good Christians, by going forward, with what we have.
Maybe it could be said that medieval society was a stool with three legs: Christianity, Classical inheritance, and local pagan particulars. Well, we have a fourth leg, modern liberalism. We need to figure out how to make that stool balance and still keep all four legs. Perhaps we could cut off one of the other legs, but we can't cut off liberalism, as much as some would like to. We have to integrate who we are now with traditions we were cut off from.
It's the question of our time, I think.
A lot of this resonates with me, although ultimately I'd part ways on some fundamental points.
In any event, a minor comment. I'm not so sure that evaluating the competency of a purported authority is a uniquely modern phenomenon. Doubtless, this intellectual exercise has received special treatment of late. But surely the pre-moderns recognized that assent to the word of another necessarily follows upon a determination of credibility. Perhaps I'm missing some nuance.
Right there with you, bud! Beautifully articulated!
Your words are water in the wasteland. Thank you.