HOW THE WEST BECAME A PHILOSOPHICAL WASTELAND

Up front my apologies for having to go on a bit about Aristotelian philosophy. I realize this subject is not everyone's cup of tea. It is nevertheless crucial for understanding today's problems. So I am yet obliged to add another chapter to my argument against Father Ezra's notion that it was Aristotle's fault that scientism and rationalism came to corrupt Western thinking (link). On the other hand His Eminence  sees Plato as the savior of religion since he thought up the invisible realm of universals. But what happened really, was that Plato's dualism divided the universe forever against itself. We see it happening in practice every day in the adversarial stance against political opponents and in Marxist revolutionary theory. Bringing up the assertion that the sky is blue, you can bet your last cent that someone from the opposing camp will come up against you, saying you are an evil blueist and that actually the sky is red. It is also not uncommon to use dualism as a teaching devise. To make you understand what a thing is, a teacher may try to explain what it is by contrasting it to its opposite. 


This method is the bane of Western culture, because it does not lead to truth, wisdom or even common sense conclusions. If anything, it divides and leads to ever greater division. But perhaps that is exactly what it was calculated to do. 

In our previous post explaining our argument with Father Ezra titled "Introduction to 'The Mystagogic Liturgy' (link) we said that,

"Aristotle's theory of hylomorphic substance (link) rejects Plato's separate, invisible dimension in a divided world view, but does entail a distinction of matter (material), form (material), essence (immaterial) and substance (material + immaterial = soul)". 

It was not my initial  intention, but let us try and get deeper into this using the analogy of the marble statue to see how aspects of a single object can be ascertained as Aristotle taught us.

Matter
Matter is the universal material. In other words, the block of raw marble from which the statue will be made. Matter persists through change. It is all potential. It is basically a blob without form.

Form 
Now form is the finished statue. It is something in particular. The universal and the potential is gone, and a particular finished statue has become all actuality. 

Essence
The essence is again a universal and constitutes that which Plato found in a separate dimension, which Aristotle rejected. In other words, Aristotle did not deny essence, he just thought of it as an aspect of the same object, without placing it in some invisible, universal realm. Essence answers the basic question, "what is it?" In the case of Elon Musk, the answer is, "a man". Man is the essence of Elon Musk. 

Substance
Lastly Aristotle discerned substance, which is the most complicated. It is comprised of Form + Matter = Soul. Substance is the primary sense of being, and all other categories are secondary and dependent on it. It can change over time.

It corresponds with the Orthodox idea that body and soul are inseparable. Death is just a temporary change. Check in this respect the quotes of St. Maximus the Confessor in the post "How to Beat the Meaning Crisis" (link).

Having said all of that, we happened this morning on an X message, quoting a passage from the work of Aleander Dugin, translated from Russian by Arktos Journal, appropriately titled "Aristotle Abandoned". 

In the piece Dugin specifies precisely our problem with the rejection of Aristotle, except that our argument is about his theory of hylomorphic substance (link), whereas Dugin mentions the related theory on causes.  Dugin argues that:

"the pseudoscience of the modern age began with the elimination of three out of Aristotle’s four causes. Only one, causa efficiens, the cause of motion, was retained. As a result, the object lost its three dimensions — the eidetic, the hylistic, and, above all, the entelechial". 

So, here we go again with another block of marble. 

The Material Cause (material and mechanical)
We can be short enough about that: it's the block of raw marble. 

The Efficient Cause  (material and mechanical)
The one cause that has survived the onslaught of rationalism: it is the action of sculpting required to make a statue out of a block of raw marble. 

Note: this is just adjacent to the ideology of Barack Obama and philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535-475 BC) who signed for a failed concept of reality through change and flux, not having had the benefit yet of Aristotle's wisdom.

Heraclitus believed that everything in the universe is in a constant state of transformation, and that this change is the fundamental nature of reality. Well, what to say? You can't make stuff made of black holes, can you? But let's focus. 

The Formal Cause (immaterial and conceptual)
The formal cause is the idea or the concept itself. The plan, the blueprint in the mind of the sculptor who designs the properties of the statue: man or woman, fat or thin, reclining or standing up, etc.

The Final Cause (immaterial and conceptual)
The mover, the person who ordered the sculpture to be made in the first place. 

It is fairly obvious why the prime mover (God) was memory-holed. You can't have Final Causes in scientism! The Material Cause had to go for the same reason. As for the Formal Cause, type in Intelligent Design and see what you get! 

I'm sure we shall have to come back to the issue before long. But I am glad we are finally closing in on the essence of the nihilism that is plaguing Western thought and not just that! It is single greatest contributor to the meaning crisis. 

The problem with philosophy is that it acts like a trojan horse. It settles in the microvascular systems of entire societies without anyone paying much attention.

And those in the know are the same intellectuals that perpetrate these conceptual crimes in the first place, obviously for ideological reasons. 

All this explains why in the East, that was the source of the Renaissance but never a part of it, the universe retained its integrity in Orthodoxy, while in the West the universe got deconstructed and stripped of all soul and meaning.

You wouldn't think it, but nihilism is no rocket science! Have you noticed that one of the defining fallacies of modernism, is the reversal of cause and effect? Or even worse, trying to realize an affect in order to change the cause, which happens frequently in politics. 

If in doubt about the relationship between philosophy and science, get the book "Science Before Science" (link) written by the distinguished physicist and director of the Institute for Advanced Physics, Anthony Rizzi. 

In the book Rizzi stresses the importance of first understanding the fundamental questions and principles that underlie scientific inquiry before entering into it. 

Alexander Dugin wraps up his argument on the four Causes: "We need to start by reevaluating the concept of causality and return to a true, authentic interpretation of Aristotle’s ideas." So glad he said that. 


- More on Aristotle, Alexander Dugin - 

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