The Way Of Pathei-Mathos - A Précis
Exordium
What I have previously described as the 'philosophy of
pathei-mathos' and the 'way of pathei-mathos' is simply my own
weltanschauung, a weltanschauung developed over some years as a
result of my own pathei-mathos. Thus, and despite whatever veracity
it may or may not possess, it is only the personal insight of one
very fallible individual, a fallibility proven by my decades of
selfishness and by my decades of reprehensible extremism both
political and religious.
Furthermore, and according to my admittedly limited understanding
and limited knowledge, this philosophy does not - in essence -
express anything new. For I feel (and I use the word 'feel'
intentionally) that I have only re-expressed what so many others,
over millennia, have expressed as result of (i) their own
pathei-mathos and/or (ii) their experiences/insights and/or (iii)
their particular philosophical musings.
Indeed, the more I reflect upon my (perhaps pretentiously entitled)
'philosophy of pathei-mathos' the more I reminded of so many things,
such as (i) what I intuitively (and possibly incorrectly) understood
nearly half a century ago about Taoism when I lived in the Far East
and was taught that ancient philosophy by someone who was also
trying to instruct me in a particular Martial Art, and (ii) what I
as a Catholic monk felt "singing Gregorian chant in choir and which
singing often connected me to what JS Bach so often so well
expressed by his music; that is, connected me to what – in essence –
Christianity (the allegory of the life and crucifixion of Christ)
and especially monasticism manifested: an intimation of some-thing
sacred causing us to know beyond words what 'the good' really means,
and which knowing touches us if only for an instant with a very
personal humility and compassion", and (iii) what I learnt from "my
first few years as a Muslim, before I adhered to a harsh
interpretation of Islam; a learning from being invited into the
homes of Muslim families; sharing meals with them; praying with
them; learning Muslim Adab; attending Namaz at my local Mosque, and
feeling - understanding - what their faith meant to them and what
Islam really meant, and manifested, as a practical way of living",
and (iv) of what I discovered from several years, as a teenager, at
first in the Far East and then in England, of practising Hatha Yoga
according to the Pradipika and Patanjali, and (v) of what I intuited
regarding Buddhism from over a year of zazen (some in a zendo) and
from months of discussions with Dom Aelred Graham who had lived in a
Zen monastery in Japan, and (vi) what I so painfully, so personally,
discovered via my own pathei-mathos.
As a
weltanschauung derived from a personal pathei-mathos, my
'philosophy/way of pathei-mathos' is therefore subject to revision.
Thus this essay summarising my weltanschauung includes a few (2013-2014)
slight revisions - mentioned, or briefly described, in some of my
more recent effusions - of what was expressed in previous works of
mine such as The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos (ISBN
9781484096642) and Religion, Empathy, and
Pathei-Mathos: Essays and Letters Regarding Spirituality,
Humility, and A Learning From Grief (ISBN 9781484097984).
°°°
The Way Of Pathei-Mathos
1. Ontology
The ontology is of causal and acausal being, with (i) causal being
as revealed by phainómenon, by the five Aristotelian essentials and
thus by science with its observations and theories and principle of
'verifiability', and (ii) acausal being as revealed by συμπάθεια -
by the acausal knowing (of living beings) derived from faculty of
empathy [1] - and thus of the distinction between
the 'time' (the change) of living-beings and the 'time' described
via the measurement of the observed or the assumed/posited/predicted
movement of 'things' [2].
2. Epistemology
a. The primacy of pathei-mathos: of a personal pathei-mathos being
one of the primary means whereby we can come to know the true φύσις
(physis) of Being, of beings, and of our own being; a knowing beyond
'abstractions', beyond the concealment implicit in manufactured
opposites, by ipseity (the separation-of-otherness), and by
denotatum.
b. Adding the 'acausal knowing' revealed by the (muliebral) faculty
of empathy to the conventional, and causal (and somewhat masculous),
knowing of science and logical philosophical speculation, with the
proviso that what such 'acausal knowing' reveals is (i) of φύσις,
the relation between beings, and between beings and Being, and thus
of 'the separation-of-otherness', and (ii) the personal and numinous
nature of such knowing in the immediacy-of-the-moment, and which
empathic knowing thus cannot be abstracted out from that 'living
moment' via denotatum: by (words written or spoken), or be named or
described or expressed (become fixed or 'known') by any dogma or any
-ism or any -ology, be such -isms or -ologies conventionally
understood as political, religious, ideological, or social.
c. Describing a human, and world-wide and ancestral, 'culture of
pathei-mathos' [3], and which culture of
pathei-mathos could form part of Studia Humanitatis and thus of that
education that enables we human beings to better understand our own
φύσις [4].
3. Ethics
a. Of personal honour - which presences the virtues of fairness,
tolerance, compassion, humility, and εὐταξία - as (i) a natural
intuitive (wordless) expression of the numinous ('the good', δίκη,
συμπάθεια) and (ii) of both what the culture of pathei-mathos and
the acausal-knowing of empathy reveal we should do (or incline us
toward doing) in the immediacy of the personal moment when
personally confronted by what is unfair, unjust, and extreme [5].
b. Of how such honour - by its and our φύσις - is and can only ever
be personal, and thus cannot be extracted out from the 'living
moment' and our participation in the moment; for it only through
such things as a personal study of the culture of pathei-mathos and
the development of the faculty of empathy that a person who does not
naturally possess the instinct for δίκη can develope what is
essentially 'the human faculty of honour', and which faculty is
often appreciated and/or discovered via our own personal
pathei-mathos.
4. One fallible, personal, answer regarding the question of
human existence
Of understanding ourselves in that supra-personal, and cosmic,
perspective that empathy, honour, and pathei-mathos - and thus an
awareness of the numinous and of the acausal - incline us toward,
and which understanding is: (i) of ourselves as a finite, fragile,
causal, viatorial, microcosmic, affective effluvium [6]
of Life (ψυχή) and thus connected to all other living beings, human,
terran, and non-terran, and (ii) of there being no supra-personal
goal to strive toward because all supra-personal goals are and have
been just posited - assumed, abstracted - goals derived from the
illusion of ipseity, and/or from some illusive abstraction, and/or
from that misapprehension of our φύσις that arises from a lack of
empathy, honour, and pathei-mathos.
For a living in the moment, in a balanced - an empathic, honourable
- way, presences our φύσις as conscious beings capable of
discovering and understanding and living in accord with our
connexion to other life; which understanding inclines us to avoid
the hubris that causes or contributes to the suffering of other
life, with such avoidance a personal choice not because it is
conceived as a path toward some posited thing or goal - such as
nirvana or Jannah or Heaven or after-life - and not because we might
be rewarded by God, by the gods, or by some supra-personal divinity,
but rather because it manifests the reality, the truth - the meaning
- of our being. The truth that (i) we are (or we are capable of
being) one affective consciously-aware connexion to other life
possessed of the capacity to cause suffering/harm or not to cause
suffering/harm, and (ii) we as an individual are but one viator
manifesting the change - the being, the φύσις - of the Cosmos/mundus
toward (a) a conscious awareness (an aiding of ψυχή), or (b) stasis,
or (c) as a contributor toward a decline, toward a loss of ψυχή.
Thus, there is a perceiveration of our φύσις; of us as - and not
separate from - the Cosmos: a knowledge of ourselves as the Cosmos
presenced (embodied, incarnated) in a particular time and place and
in a particular way. Of how we affect or can affect other effluvia,
other livings beings, in either a harmful or a non-harming manner.
An apprehension, that is, of the genesis of suffering and of how we,
as human beings possessed of the faculties of reason, of honour, and
of empathy, have the ability to cease to harm other living beings.
Furthermore, and in respect of the genesis of suffering, this
particular perceiveration provides an important insight about
ourselves, as conscious beings; which insight is of the division we
mistakenly but understandably make, and have made, consciously or
unconsciously, between our own being - our ipseity - and that of
other living beings, whereas such a distinction is only an illusion
- appearance, hubris, a manufactured abstraction - and the genesis
of such suffering as we have inflicted for millennia, and continue
to inflict, on other life, human and otherwise.
David Myatt
September 2014
Notes
[1] Refer to: (i) The Way of Pathei-Mathos - A Philosophical
Compendiary (Third Edition, 2012), and
(ii) Towards Understanding The Acausal, 2011.
[2]Refer to Time And The Separation Of Otherness - Part One,
2012.
[3] The culture of pathei-mathos is 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.
[4] Refer to Education and The Culture of Pathei-Mathos,
2014.
[5] By 'extreme' is meant 'to be harsh', unbalanced, intolerant,
prejudiced, hubriatic.
[6] As mentioned elsewhere, I now prefer the term effluvium, in
preference to emanation, in order to try and avoid any potential
misunderstanding. For although I have previously used the term
'emanation' in my philosophy of pathei-mathos as a synonym of
effluvium, 'emanation' is often understood in the sense of
some-thing proceeding from, or having, a source; as for example in
theological use where the source is considered to be God or some
aspect of a divinity. Effluvium, however, has (so far as I am
aware) no theological connotations and accurately describes the
perceiveration: a flowing of what-is, sans the assumption of a
primal cause, and sans a division or a distinction between 'us' - we
mortals - and some-thing else, be this some-thing else God, a
divinity, or some assumed, ideated, cause, essence, origin, or form.