Contingent Minds of Man and the Necessary Being of God…
Bridging the Metaphysical divide between Nominalism and Realism
“Metaphysics has been criticised as unscientific, speculative, and redundant. But any critic of metaphysics inevitably ends up making metaphysical claims of their own. Metaphysics is in fact inescapable – all of our thinking is underpinned by it, and those who ignore it simply espouse an unexamined and possibly faulty metaphysics” …
- There is no escaping Metaphysics, Robert Stern
[ LINK]
“To know Truth is to know Being , since Truth is nothing but Being understood by the Mind”…
— Antonio Rosmini
“It is necessary to posit something which is necessary of itself, and has no cause of its necessity outside of itself but is the cause of necessity in other things. And all people call this thing God”…
— Thomas Aquinas
As the Theology of Marxism became endemic across Western Civilisation the pursuit of Objective Truth was increasingly being abandoned and replaced by a Modern Sophism — a Post-Truth Education [LINK][LINK], a Post-Truth Society, an end to History, and a Nietzschean Will to Power.
“Marxism lies at the starting point of contemporary history”…
– Augusto del Noce
Man was apparently now God and had increasingly embraced a Hegelian Dialectic and the Marxist, Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist reflexive dance of Dialectical Materialism [ LINK ] [LINK].
[ Refer – Soros: General Theory of Reflexivity ]
“Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends on what we look for. What we look for depends on what we think. What we think depends on what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality”…
— David Bohm
“Marx’s idea is that materialism, in order to be consistent, must forgo presenting itself as a philosophy of comprehension and must interpret thought not as revelation but as activity that transforms reality”…
— Augusto del Noce
The Middle-Ages Scholastic’s (e.g. Saint Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus) project to integrate Theology and Philosophy in an attempt to understand and comprehend the nature of Reality were increasingly being deconstructed post the arrival of Modernity and replaced by a Will to Power, a New Totalitarianism and a Reasoning focused on transforming Physical Nature.
“European civilisation rose on the principle of a world of universal and eternal truths, in which all men participate – on the principle of the Logos, in other words”…
– Augusto del Noce
It reflected a human-centred constructed Reality anchored in a Primacy of Human Consciousness where the ruling elite would impose their beliefs on the World and discover their own inventions ( e.g. Scientific Gnosticism).
“in 1952, F.A. Hayek wrote what became The Counter-Revolution of Science. The idea is that in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a new conception of science was born, which reversed a previous understanding. Science was not a process of discovery by research but a codified end state known and understood only by an elite. This elite would impose its view on everyone else. Hayek called this “the abuse of reason” because genuine reason defers to uncertainty and discovery while scientism as an ideology is arrogant and imagines it knows what is unknown” …
– The Intellectual Roots of Techno- Primitivism, Jeffrey A Tucker
[ LINK ]
A World where Instrumental Rationalism was viewed as a Machiavellian “means to an end”.
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it”…
― Karl Marx, Eleven Theses on Feuerbach
[These words are also inscribed upon his grave]
A Marxist vision of the future anchored in Hegel’s second nature and the ideas of Man literally attempting (albeit ultimately futile) to transform the nature of Reality.
“For Hegel, freedom was not just a psychological phenomenon but the essence of what was distinctively human. In this sense, freedom and nature are diametrically opposed. Freedom does not mean the freedom to live in nature or according to nature; rather, freedom begins only where nature ends. Human freedom emerges only when man is able to transcend his natural, animal existence and to create a new self for himself. The emblematic starting point for this process of self-creation is the struggle to the death for pure prestige”…
― Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
Man had apparently become the Übermensch.
The essence of this seismic societal shift is epitomised in the Fabian Stained Glass Window at the London School of Economics designed by Bernard Shaw in 1919 depicting the founders of the Fabian Society.
At the top of the image are Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw shown hammering out a new world on an anvil beneath an emblem of a wolf in sheep’s clothing reflecting a gradualist approach to change ( i.e. a secular liberal progressivism in pursuit of a Globalist Modern Utopia).
Modernity, Temples of Reason, the Cult of Reason and Nominalism
“To be a nominalist consists in the undeveloped state of one’s mind of the apprehension of Thirdness as Thirdness. The remedy for it consists in allowing ideas of human life to play a greater part in one’s philosophy. Metaphysics is the science of Reality”…
— Charles Sanders Peirce
The utility value of new forms of inductive reasoning emerging from Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum transformed Society from a world of Aristotelian Metaphysical Abstraction ( Logic – Study of Thought) to one increasingly anchored in a Cartesian Dualism (res cogitans and res extensa).
A Metaphysics that combined Abstraction (Idealism) & Embodiment (Materialism)
[Note – Metaphysics — Study of Being and the Science of Reality].
“Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested” …
– Francis Bacon
The breakthrough by Bacon was in combining empiricism ( part of the world ) with abstraction ( apart from the world).
In essence, it was a combination of idealism and materialism that allowed for the generalisation of observations ( i.e. semiotic relationships of meaning) in the world into abstract heuristics, laws and habits.
The abstract concepts and particulars of the conscious self had to have some nexus to an external reality.
It combined understanding with prediction and led to the emergence of the Scientific Method and the Industrial and Digital Revolutions that would follow.
Technology and the emergence of a Technology Society and Technology System were the instruments through which Man could manifest this new approach to Reason into literally transforming the nature of Reality.
A World of Creation, Control and the Manipulation of Nature fuelled by the application of Technology.
The Marxist Revolution’s Temples of Reason and the Cult of Reason increasingly replaced Temples of Prayer.
Marxism was now becoming endemic across the Judeo-Christian West and a new secular liberal orthodoxy, scientific clerisy and technocracy was at the core of a new ruling and increasingly Globalist Elite.
Transcendental Metaphysics was being replaced by scientific positivism and dialectical materialism as Man was beginning to shape his destiny ( i.e. historical materialism).
Given these shifts and the initial effectiveness of the Scientific Method, it was inevitable that Nominalism would become the metaphysical foundations for this new intellectual orthodoxy.
“In short, there was a tidal wave of nominalism. Descartes was a nominalist. Locke and all his following, Berkley, Hartley, Hume, and even Reid, were nominalists. Leibniz was an extreme nominalist, and Remusat who has lately made an attempt to repair the edifice of Liebnizian monadology, does so by cutting away every part which leans at all towards realism. Kant was a nominalist; although his philosophy would have rendered compacter, more consistent, and stronger if its author had taken up realism, as he certainly would have done if he read Scotus. Hegel was a nominalist of realistic yearnings; I might continue the list much further, Thus, in one word, all modern philosophy of every sect has been nominalistic”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
Although cracks were beginning to appear in the temples of reason challenging the metaphysical foundations of modernity as Man’s version of sophistic subjective truths were becoming uncoupled from an independent Reality.
“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history” …
- George Orwell
A small group of intellectual dissidents were emerging highlighting the growing cognitive dissonance.
“If modernist naturalism were true, there would be no objective truth outside of science. In that case right and wrong would be a matter of cultural preference, or political power, and the power already available to modernists ideologies would be overwhelming”…
— Phillip E Johnson
These included Charles Sanders Peirce’s critiques of Nominalism, Ayn Rand’s critique of Relativism, Augusto del Noce’s critique of Marxism, Jacques Ellul’s critique of a Technology Society, Friedrich Hayek’s critique of Socialism, George Orwell and Hannah Arendt’s critiques of Totalitarianism and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s critique of Atheism.
“A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud” …
- George Orwell
Was Western Civilisation really progressing towards a Modern Utopia by embracing Marxism, Nominalism, Materialism and Nihilism or was the hubris of Man and the Globalist Elite leading to its own Self-Destruction?
Reconciling Nominalism & the Contingent Being of Man with Realism & the Necessary Being of God
“There is an objective reality out there, but we view it through the spectacles of our beliefs, attitudes, and values”…
— David Myers
“Subjective reason … is inclined to abandon the fight with religion by setting up two different brackets, one for science and philosophy, and one for institutionalised mythology, thus recognizing both of them. For the philosophy of objective reason there is no such way out. Since it hold to the concept of objective truth, it must take a positive or a negative stand with regard to the content of established religion”…
— Max Horkheimer
“Now subjectivism reduces all science to the knowledge of one individual, the Ego — which, as just shown, is no science at all. If its fundamental definition of knowledge means anything, or is faithfully adhered to, subjectivism teaches that the intelligent subject has no intelligence save for itself — has no warrant for believing in the existence of anything save itself — knows nothing but the inexplicable order of its own sensations and thoughts. It reduces all existence to an unrelated One, while of an unrelated One no science is possible. In a word, subjectivism if logical, annihilates science at a blow”…
— Francis Ellingwood Abbot
Nominalism emphasises the Primacy of Human Consciousness and language in forming concepts and shaping beliefs based on particulars, rejecting the existence of independent universals.
“Science is the disinterested search for the objective truth about the material world”…
— Richard Dawkins
Realists critique this rejection as the ‘Nominalist Error,’ arguing that universals are necessary to fully align human thought with an independent, objective reality.
“Intelligence is the shadow of objective truth. How can the shadow vie with sunshine?”…
— Rumi
Whilst Nominalism focuses on the beliefs of Conscious Man and Ego (contingent and temporal — particulars and immanent reality), Realism emphasises the necessary and eternal (universals and transcendent reality).
“To exist is to feel; our feeling is undoubtedly earlier than our intelligence, and we had feelings before we had ideas”…
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Nominalism, however, appears in psychology as sensationalism; for nominalism arises from taking the view of reality which regards whatever is in thought as caused by something in sense, and whatever is in sense as caused by something without the mind”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
This metaphysical distinction highlights:
- Nominalism’s orientation towards Reality is anchored in human beliefs (e.g. Sophism) and feelings emerging from our senses. Universals are therefore contingent constructs tied to particular subjective sensory experiences and are merely convenient labels for patterns and relationships of meaning we experience in the sensory world. These particulars are abstractions created by the mind and reflect beliefs we impart on the World; and
- Realism’s orientation towards a higher-order understanding of an objective Reality that transcends individual experiences and is independent of human beliefs. One that is accessible through abstraction and combines faith and reason ( the Logos). For example, the “a priori” highest order mental category and concept of Being and its distinction between the Creator ( Necessary Being of God) and Created ( Contingent Being of Man). The discernment and pursuit of ground truths emanate from the double consciousness altersense (refer Charles Sanders Peirce) and unconscious mind (non-ego) that reflects the existence of God as the source of objective truth. It illustrates the mind’s capacity to discern general laws or principles that moves us closer towards an objective reality of those universals not reducible to sensory input. These universals are not mere abstractions created by the mind but reflect aspects of an independent reality that can be discovered and comprehended guided by the principles of the Peircian Semiotic Triadic and Pragmatic Maxim.
“For what is it for a thing to be Real? [ — ] To say that a thing is Real is merely to say that such predicates as are true of it, or some of them, are true of it regardless of whatever any actual person or persons might think concerning that truth. Unconditionality in that single respect constitutes what we call Reality”…
– Charles Sanders Peirce
Contrasting Nominalism with Realism illuminates the distinction in Being between the Contingent Being of Man and the Necessary Being of God.
“The genuine coherence of our ideas does not come from the reasoning that ties them together, but from the spiritual impulse that gives rise to them” …
– Nicolas Gomez Davila
Hence, as Charles Sanders Peirce identified the central role of epistemological humility, fallibilism and open inquiry in Human’s pursuit of new contingent Knowledge.
“Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake”…
— Karl Popper
A Contingent Nature of Human Knowledge that reflects the Contingent Being of Man anchored in the Univocity of Being.
A clear distinction between Saint Augustine’s City of Man (Civitas Hominis) and City of God (Civitate Dei).
Ideas that are the essence of the Human Condition and ultimately reflect the nature of Being.
The Contingent Being of Man’s relationship with the Necessary Being of God.
“All attempts to find a way out of the plight of today’s world are fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Creator of all; without this, no exit will be illumined, and we shall seek it in vain”…
– Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
