Physis And Being
An Introduction To The Philosophy Of Pathei-Mathos
The philosophy of pathei-mathos is based on four axioms: (i) that it
is empathy and pathei-mathos which can wordlessly reveal the
ontological reality both of our own physis [1] and
of how we, as sentient beings, relate to other living beings and to
Being itself; (ii) that it is denotatum [2] - and
thus the abstractions deriving therefrom [3] -
which, in respect of human beings, can and often do obscure our
physis and our relation to other living beings and to Being; (iii)
that denotatum and abstractions imply a dialectic of contradictory
opposites and thus for we human beings a separation-of-otherness;
and (iv) that this dialectic of opposites is, has been, and can be a
cause of suffering for both ourselves, as sentient beings, and - as
a causal human presenced effect - for the other life with which we
share the planet named in English as Earth.
For, as mentioned in a previous essay,
"empathy and pathei-mathos incline us to suggest that
ipseity is an illusion of perspective: that there is,
fundamentally, no division between 'us' - as some individual
sentient, mortal being - and what has hitherto been understood and
named as the Unity, The One, God, The Eternal. That 'we' are not
'observers' but rather Being existing as Being exists and is
presenced in the Cosmos. That thus all our striving, individually
and collectively when based on some ideal or on some form - some
abstraction and what is derived therefrom, such as ideology and
dogma - always is or becomes sad/tragic, and which recurrence of
sadness/tragedy, generation following generation, is perhaps even
inevitable unless and until we live according to the wordless
knowing that empathy and pathei-mathos reveal." [4]
In essence, empathy and pathei-mathos lead us away from the
abstractions we have constructed and manufactured and which
abstractions we often tend to impose, or project, upon other human
beings, upon ourselves, often in the belief that such abstractions
can aid our understanding of others and of ourselves, with a feature
of all abstractions being inclusion and exclusion; that is, certain
individuals are considered as belonging to or as defined by a
particular category while others are not.
Over millennia we have manufactured certain abstractions and their
assumed opposites and classified many of them according to
particular moral standards so that a particular abstraction is
considered good and/or beneficial and/or as necessary and/or as
healthy, while its assumed dialectical opposite is considered bad
(or evil), or unnecessary, or unhealthy, and/or as unwarranted.
Thus in ancient Greece and Rome slavery was accepted by the
majority, and considered by the ruling elite as natural and
necessary, with human beings assigned to or included in the category
'slave' a commodity who could be traded with slaves regarded as
necessary to the functioning of society. Over centuries, with the
evolution of religions such as Christianity and with the development
in Western societies of humanist weltanschauungen, the moral values
of this particular abstraction, this particular category to which
certain human beings assigned, changed such that for perhaps a
majority slavery came to be regarded as morally repugnant. Similarly
in respect of the abstraction designated in modern times by such
terms as "the rôle of women in society" which rôle for millennia in
the West was defined according to various masculous criteria -
deriving from a ruling and an accepted patriarchy - but which rôle
in the past century in Western societies has gradually been
redefined.
Yet irrespective of such developments, such changes associated with
certain abstractions, the abstractions themselves and the dialectic
of moral opposites associated with them remain because, for perhaps
a majority, abstractions and ipseity, as a criteria of judgment
and/or as a human instinct, remain; as evident in the continuing
violence against, the killing of, and the manipulation, of women by
men, and in what has become described by terms such as "modern
slavery" and "human trafficking".
In addition, we human beings have continued to manufacture
abstractions and continue to assign individuals to them, a useful
example being the abstraction denoted by the terms The State and The
Nation-State [5] and which abstraction, with its
government, its supra-personal authority, its laws, its economy, and
its inclusion/exclusion (citizenship or lack of it) has come to
dominate and influence the life of the majority of people in the
West.
Ontologically, abstractions - ancient and modern - usurp our
connexion to Being and to other living beings so that instead of
using wordless empathy and pathei-mathos as a guide to Reality [6]
we tend to define ourselves or are defined by others according to an
abstraction or according to various abstractions. In the matter of
the abstraction that is The State there is a tendency to define or
to try to understand our relation to Reality by for example whether
we belong, are a citizen of a particular State; by whether or not we
have an acceptable standard of living because of the opportunities
and employment and/or the assistance afforded by the economy and the
policies of the State; by whether or not we agree or disagree with
the policies of the government in power, and often by whether or not
we have transgressed some State-made law or laws. Similarly, in the
matter of belief in a revealed religion such as Christianity or
Islam we tend to define or understand our relation to Reality by
means of such an abstraction: that is, according to the revelation
(or a particular interpretation of it) and its eschatology, and thus
by how the promise of Heaven/Jannah may be personally obtained.
Empathy and
pathei-mathos, however, wordlessly - sans denotatum, sans
abstractions, sans a dialectic of contradictory opposites - uncover
physis: our physis, that of other mortals, that of other living
beings, and that of Being/Reality itself. Which physis, howsoever
presenced - in ourselves, in other living beings, in Being - is
fluxive, a balance between the being that it now is, that it was,
and that it has the inherent (the acausal) quality to be. [7]
This uncovering, such a revealing, is of a knowing beyond ipseity
and thus beyond the separation-of-otherness which denotatum,
abstractions, and a dialectic of opposites manufacture and presence.
A knowing of ourselves as an affective connexion [8]
to other living beings and to Being itself, with Being revealed as
fluxive (as a meson - μέσον [9] - with the
potentiality to change, to develope) and thus which (i) is not - as
in the theology of revealed religions such as Christianity and Islam
- a God who is Eternal, Unchanging, Omnipotent [10],
and (ii) is affected or can be affected (in terms of physis) by what
we do or do not do.
This awareness, this knowing, of such an affective connexion - our
past, our current, our potentiality, to adversely affect, to have
adversely affected, to cause, to having caused, suffering or harm to
other living beings - also inclines us or can incline us toward
benignity and humility, and thus incline us to live in a
non-suffering causing way, appreciate of our thousands of years old
culture of pathei-mathos. [11]
In terms of understanding Being and the divine, it inclines us or
can incline us, as sentient beings, to apprehend Being as not only
presenced in us but as capable of changing - unfolding, evolving -
in a manner dependant on our physis and on how our physis is
presenced by us, and by others, in the future. Which seems to imply
a new ontology and one distinct from past and current theologies
with their anthropomorphic θεὸς (god) and θεοὶ (gods).
An ontology of physis: of mortals, of livings beings, and of Being,
as fluxive mesons. Of we mortals as a mortal microcosm of Being -
the cosmic order, the κόσμος - itself [12] with the
balance, the meson, that empathy and pathei-mathos incline us toward
living presenced in the ancient Greek phrase καλὸς κἀγαθός,
"which means those who conduct themselves in a
gentlemanly or lady-like manner and who thus manifest - because of
their innate physis or through pathei-mathos or through a certain
type of education or learning - nobility of character." [13]
Which personal conduct, in the modern world, might suggest a
Ciceronian-inspired but new type of civitas, and one
"not based on some abstractive law but on a spiritual
and interior (and thus not political) understanding and
appreciation of our own Ancestral Culture and that of others; on
our 'civic' duty to personally presence καλὸς κἀγαθός and thus to
act and to live in a noble way. For the virtues of personal honour
and manners, with their responsibilities, presence the fairness,
the avoidance of hubris, the natural harmonious balance, the
gender equality, the awareness and appreciation of the divine,
that is the numinous." [14]
With καλὸς κἀγαθός, such personal conduct, and such a new civitas,
summarising how the philosophy of pathei-mathos might, in one way,
be presenced in a practical manner in the world.
David Myatt
2019
This essay is a revised and
edited version of a reply sent to an
academic
who enquired about the philosophy of pathei-mathos
°°°
Further Reading:
The Numinous Way Of Pathei-Mathos. ISBN 978-1484096642
°°°°°
Notes
[1] I use the term physis - φύσις - ontologically,
in the Aristotelian sense, to refer to the 'natural' and the fluxive
being (nature) of a being, which nature is often manifest, in we
mortals, in our character (persona) and in our deeds. Qv. my essay Towards
Understanding Physis (2015) and my translation of and
commentary on the Poemandres tractate in Corpus Hermeticum:
Eight Tractates (2017).
[2] As noted elsewhere, I use the term denotatum -
from the Latin denotare - not only as meaning "to denote or to
describe by an expression or a word; to name some-thing; to refer
that which is so named or so denoted," but also as an Anglicized
term implying, depending on context, singular or plural instances.
As an Anglicized term there is generally no need to use the
inflected plural denotata.
[3] In the context of the philosophy of pathei-mathos
the term abstraction signifies a particular named and defined
category or form (ἰδέᾳ, εἶδος) and which category or form is a
manufactured generalization, a hypothesis, a posited thing, an
assumption or assumptions about, an extrapolation of or from
some-thing, or some assumed or extrapolated ideal 'form' of
some-thing.
In respect of denotatum, in Kratylus 389d Plato has Socrates talk
about 'true, ideal' naming (denotatum) - βλέποντα πρὸς αὐτὸ ἐκεῖνο ὃ
ἔστιν ὄνομα, qv. my essay Personal Reflexions On Some
Metaphysical Questions, 2015.
[4] Personal Reflexions On Some Metaphysical
Questions.
[5] Contrary to modern convention I tend to write The
State instead of "the state" because I consider The State/The
Nation-State a particular abstraction; as an existent, an entity,
which has been manufactured, by human beings, and which entity, like
many such manufactured 'things', has been, in its design and
function, changed and which can still be changed, and which has
associated with it a presumption of a supra-personal (and often
moral) authority.
In addition, written The State (or the State) it suggests some-thing
which endures or which may endure beyond the limited lifespan of a
mortal human being.
[6] 'Reality' in the philosophical sense of what (in
terms of physis) is distinguished or distinguishable from what is
apparent or external. In terms of ancient Hellenic and Western
Renaissance mysticism the distinction is between the esoteric and
the exoteric; between the physis of a being and some outer form (or
appearance) including the outer form that is a useful tool or
implement which can be used to craft or to manufacture some-thing
such as other categories/abstractions. With the important
ontological proviso that what is esoteric is not the 'essence' of
something - as for example Plato's ἰδέᾳ/εἶδος - but instead the
physis of the being itself as explicated for instance by Aristotle
in Metaphysics, Book 5, 1015α,
ἐκ δὴ τῶν εἰρημένων ἡ πρώτη φύσις
καὶ κυρίως λεγομένη ἐστὶν ἡ οὐσία ἡ τῶν ἐχόντων ἀρχὴν κινήσεως
ἐν αὑτοῖς ᾗ αὐτά: ἡ γὰρ ὕλη τῷ ταύτης δεκτικὴ εἶναι λέγεται
φύσις, καὶ αἱ γενέσεις καὶ τὸ φύεσθαι τῷ ἀπὸ ταύτης εἶναι
κινήσεις. καὶ ἡ ἀρχὴ τῆς κινήσεως τῶν φύσει ὄντων αὕτη ἐστίν,
ἐνυπάρχουσά πως ἢ δυνάμει ἢ ἐντελεχείᾳ
Given the foregoing, then principally - and to be exact - physis
denotes the quidditas of beings having changement inherent within
them; for substantia has been denoted by physis because it
embodies this, as have the becoming that is a coming-into-being,
and a burgeoning, because they are changements predicated on it.
For physis is inherent changement either manifesting the
potentiality of a being or as what a being, complete of itself,
is.
That is, as I noted in my essay Towards Understanding Physis,
it is a meson (μέσον) balanced between the being that-it-was and the
being it has the potentiality to unfold to become.
In respect of "what is real" - τῶν ὄντων - cf. the Poemandres
tractate of the Corpus Hermeticum and especially section 3,
φημὶ ἐγώ, Μαθεῖν θέλω τὰ ὄντα καὶ νοῆσαι τὴν τούτων
φύσιν καὶ γνῶναι τὸν θεόν
I answered that I seek to learn what is real, to apprehend the
physis of beings, and to have knowledge of theos [qv. Corpus
Hermeticum: Eight Tractates, 2017]
[7] Qv. Towards Understanding Physis, 2015.
[8] I use term affective here, and in other
writings, to mean "having the quality of affecting; tending to
affect or influence."
[9] Qv. footnote [6]. In terms of
ontology a meson is the balance, the median, existing between the
being which-was and the being which-can-be.
[10] This understanding of Being as fluxive - as a
changement - was prefigured in the mythos of Ancient Greece with the
supreme deity - the chief of the gods - capable of being overthrown
and replaced, as Zeus overthrew Kronos and as Kronos himself
overthrew his own father.
[11] As explained in my 2014 essay Education And
The Culture of Pathei-Mathos, the term describes"the
accumulated pathei-mathos of individuals, world-wide, over thousands
of years, as (i) described in memoirs, aural stories, and historical
accounts; as (ii) have inspired particular works of literature or
poetry or drama; as (iii) expressed via non-verbal mediums such as
music and Art, and as (iv) manifest in more recent times by
'art-forms' such as films and documentaries."
This culture remembers the suffering and the beauty and the killing
and the hubris and the love and the compassion that we mortals have
presenced and caused over millennia, and which culture
"thus includes not only traditional accounts of, or
accounts inspired by, personal pathei-mathos, old and modern –
such as the With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by
Eugene Sledge, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and the poetry of people as diverse as
Sappho and Sylvia Plath - but also works or art-forms inspired by
such pathei-mathos, whether personal or otherwise, and whether
factually presented or fictionalized. Hence films such as Monsieur
Lazhar and Etz Limon may poignantly express
something about our φύσις as human beings and thus form part of
the culture of pathei-mathos."
[12] κόσμον δὲ θείου σώματος κατέπεμψε τὸν ἄνθρωπον,
"a cosmos of the divine body sent down as human beings." Tractate
IV:2, Corpus Hermeticum.
Cf. Marsilii Ficini, De Vita Coelitus Comparanda, XXVI,
published in 1489 CE,
Quomodo per inferiora superioribus exposita deducantur
superiora, et per mundanas materias mundana potissimum dona.
How, when what is lower is touched by what is higher, the higher
is cosmically presenced therein and thus gifted because cosmically
aligned.
Which is a philosophical restatement of the phrase "quod est
inferius est sicut quod est superius" (what is above is as what is
below) from the Latin version, published in 1541 CE, of the medieval Hermetic text known
as Tabula Smaragdina.
[13] The quotation is from my Classical Paganism
And The Christian Ethos, 2017.
[14] The quotation is from my Tu Es Diaboli Ianua:
Christianity, The Johannine Weltanschauung, And Presencing The
Numinous, 2017.
°°°°°°°
cc David Wulstan Myatt 2019
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All translations by DW Myatt