Giant Davids

We shall steer safely through every storm,
so long as our heart is right,
our intention fervent,
our courage steadfast,
and our trust fixed firmly on God.

St. Francis de Sales

We are humbled that we may be exalted. When faced with a Goliath, our weeness is highlighted, the sling and stone we possess melt before the iron shield and sword, our humble protection fade before the grand armory of the giants we face. Yet, we are not discouraged. We continue the battle we have started. We do so because we intiated the challenge. We fight on knowing that in our awareness of our lack, the Lord will fill us with the grace we need to win the battle. Just think about the many battles in life you have won and you will be convinced that in our humility we are exalted.

The Spiral Ascent to the Truth

Once we have come to terms with the truth, we come full circle and are restored to wholeness. We must expect though that the cycle takes place once again. The journey from lies to truth is a never-ending journey for there is much our minds need to know about being. And each ontological truth discovered prods us to continue to uncover more lies so that we can discover more truths. This process is like an ascent to the top of a mountain along a spiral path. Every step we take brings us further round and up the mountain. Thus, the roundabout road reveals new horizons for we get to see the valley not from one side of the mountain alone but from all sides. Each step too takes us a degree higher thus stretching the reach of our vision.

One wonders then what waits for us at the top of the mountain. Why go through the grueling experience of being called into question by the Other? On hindsight, after having taken each step, we realize that the act reveals a truth about that which actually exists and relates to us. And each step further along the path brings us closer to the Truth of Being – the gathering of all the truths of beings to be known.

In this exposition of the journey from lies to truth, we have encountered many Others who, in their own way, put into question our attitudes and beliefs about lies and truth. We have met David and his grandfather Tevyalike, the catcher in the rye named Holden, the prisoner in the Platonic cave, and the family of the dead salesman Willy. Our openness to the truth of their being as revealed in their own attitudes and beliefs about man and his world has afforded us the opportunity to learn a few lessons invaluable to our ascent towards the Truth of Being. What then are these lessons?

First, it is important for us to maintain an attitude of openness to being. In his rounds with his grandfather Tevyalike in search of junk – tattered rags, used clothes, and empty bottles – David stumbles on nuggets of wisdom, invaluable lessons in life. So too with us, despite the despair we go through when faced with questions put forth by the Other, we must maintain an attitude of openness to the truth we may uncover about them. Clarke reminds us that

… all created beings conceal deep within them a certain inexhaustible depth of intelligibility that exceeds the grasp of our concepts. Hence, they always remain for us in this life somehow touched with mystery, as known-unknown.[1]

We must therefore never get tired of uncovering the truth of being that wants to be known. We should always aim at uncovering whatever there is to know in the mystery of being with the end of allowing what is known to get the bigger share of the pie.

One wonders what would have happened to Willy had he been more open to the truth of Biff’s being. Biff had attempted many times to reveal this to Willy. Sadly, Willy was too adamant that he knew Biff more than Biff knew himself. Thus, Biff’s inability to meet his expectations leads to his further frustration with his elusive dream. Rather than abandon his construct and be open to Biff’s self-revelation, Willy chose to search for reasons that will fit Biff into his mold of a successful person. We must remember that we cannot make being conform with our minds.

Second, whatever truth we uncover is meant to be shared with our fellow prisoners in darkness. At the end of the Allegory of the Cave, the prisoner realizes that it may not be worth it to go back to the cave and tell his story to his fellow prisoners. He thinks that the prisoners, in making out the shadows on the wall, will always outdo him thus losing their respect. Even if he has the truth on his side, his fellow prisoners will simply mock him for he no longer has the capacity to recognize the shadows for to them, this is the only thing that is real. When enlightened by the truth, one can no longer live in a lie. Does this mean that he should be content with staying outside the cave, basking in the glory of the Truth?

We must remember that it is the Other who vests us with our freedom. It is in the Hegelian dialectic between the self and the non-self that one discovers his freedom. And with this freedom comes a responsibility. We become responsible to the one who gives us our freedom. In his essay entitled Existentialism and Human Emotion, Sartre says that man is condemned to be free. He is condemned because he is not his creator and yet, he is free to determine who he will be for, to Sartre, existence precedes essence. Sartrean anguish reminds us that in our exercise of our freedom, the person we fashion ourselves to be will be the definition of man we present to the rest of humanity. Hence, whenever, we exercise our freedom, we must remember that the man we define should be true to his being. And we ought to share these truths with the rest of humanity.

Linda also teaches us this lesson. She knew that Willy was good with his hands. However, she was too afraid to let Willy know what she knew Willy to be for this may devastate him. Had she verbalized this truth of self that Willy was blind to, she could have shattered his dream of being number one and at the same time save him from this lie. We are always invited to go back to the cave and share the truth of being that we have uncovered with those who remain in the dark. We must remember though that we can only offer the truth but never impose them on others. After all, our fathers might have had good intentions in sharing with us their lies. The plot thickens when these lies are imposed and nurtured against the will of the Other. In our exercise of our responsibility for the Other, we must learn to respect the Other’s alterity and freedom.

Finally, we should always remember that the more we get to know Being, the more confident we should be of the fact that she takes care of her own. Being reveals her secrets when we are ready to face them. In Plato’s allegory, the prisoner, although forced to face the blinding light of the fire and the sun, always has a choice to look away from it. He may first choose to look at the shadows once more, and then move to the reflections on the pond, or at the heavenly bodies at night. Once he has grown accustomed to the light, the time will come that he will be able to face the sun and realize it to be the thing that illumines all being. And so it is with the truth. Our fathers will necessarily have to lie to us about the truth of being because the movement from darkness to light must be gradual in order to avoid permanent blindness. This however does not mean that we will never be blinded by the truth. In fact, we have to suffer temporary blindness when we face the light before we can know what is real. One of the movements towards the truth is suffering temporary blindness by its glare that we would always want to cover our eyes. However, Being will not force her truth on us. She patently waits on us while we look at shadows and reflections until the time comes when we are ready to face her truth. We may lose our bearings when faced with the truth; however, once we come to terms with it, our vision is restored.

Holden also teaches us this lesson when he shares with us his experience of watching his younger sister Phoebe in a carousel.

All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she’d fall off the goddam horse, but I didn’t say anything or do anything. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the old ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them.[2]

Here we see Holden surrendering to the fact that, as much as he would want to save the innocent from corruption, there is nothing that he could do to go against the nature of Being. Being will take care of the young and ensure their smooth entry into the world of adults just like it does take care of the fish and the ducks in the pond in winter. We just have to learn to trust in the wisdom and intelligibility of Being.

The journey towards the Truth of Being is asymptotic, that is, we can only approach it but never arrive at it. The confluence of the truths we have uncovered leads us closer to the Truth. However, our finitude and facticity tells us that we are bound by space and time. Hence, we can only dream to uncover all the truths of beings that exist because our very existence is limited; thus, our encounter with Being will be limited in scope by the parameters set by space and time.

However, we still continue the journey for two reasons. First, we have that insatiable drive to know whatever there is to be known. We have great faith in the ability of our minds to know and in the ability of being to allow itself to be known. Each step we take along the winding path up the mountain confirms this.

Second, we continue our trek because we hope that at the end of the road lays not only the Truth of Being but the Absolute Truth of Being – the mind that has conceived all Being. Our finitude tells us that we will never get to meet this Absolute Truth of Being at least in our lifetime. For how can this be when we cannot even reach the Truth of Being. But the aching desire to know the Absolute Truth of Being will not give us rest. Perhaps this was what Augustine meant when he wrote, “our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”

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[1] Clarke, 296.

[2] J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991), 211.

Discovering the Lie

As he continues his allegory, Plato poses a hypothesis: what if one of the prisoners is freed? What would he do? Plato says that if he is forced to look at the objects that cast off the shadows, the prisoner will consider them less pleasing to his eyes than the shadows he is accustomed to see. He will have to strain his eyes to be able to see the brightness of the objects illumined by the fire. How much more would his eyes hurt if he were required to directly look at the fire that creates the shadows? Plato says that surely, the prisoner would rather go back to his seat and be chained to it once again because he prefers to see the shadows that appear clearer to him. By doing so, he passes up on his chance to know the truth.
As one attempts to get the most out of life, one eventually experiences alterity – otherness. In these experiences, one becomes conscious of the difference between the self and the non-self. Such an experience is important for in the Hegelian dialectic between the self and non-self, one gets to know himself better. One must remember though that what is other than himself cannot be totally reconciled to the self. There are experiences with an other where the self is able to exercise control over it. There are encounters however where what is other puts into question the supremacy and freedom of the self. Levinas particularizes such an experience through the encounter with the Other. The Other is not simply the other in the sense that the self (which Levinas also calls the Same) cannot subsume the Other for it resists such violence. The Other resists being absorbed into the egotistical world of the self by putting into question the very foundation of his jouissance – his supremacy and freedom.

Levinas further theorizes that there is an ethical bond between the Same and the Other because the latter reminds him that what is other than himself is not wholly his and can never be totally his. The Other reminds the Same that he shares the world, which he has claimed as his home, with many Others. Thus, he is not supremely and totally free to partake of the world according to his whims. The individual therefore realizes that he is not on top of the world after all, as he originally thought.

The encounter with this Other may take different forms. It may take the form of a loved one that refuses to be treated as a mere trophy or an object of his interest. The Other may be a quadriplegic that lay motionless in bed, yet unwilling to be looked upon as a mere body for he too is an embodied soul. The poor can also be an Other that refuses to be considered as an unproductive and therefore useless member of a highly materialistic society. And yes, the laborers in a factory can be an Other too when they reject being valued as a mere cog in a wheel that can be disposed of anytime when they do not meet the demands of efficiency and effectivity. Indeed, many Others can put the Same’s desire to lord it over the world on hold. It may not be a palatable experience for one who has been conditioned to control the world and use it according to his desires. At this point, his worldview is put into question and is shaken by the threat of collapse. He therefore starts to wonder if the maxims his father told him are mere lies.

This is where philosophy steps in. We discover a lie when we uncover a truth. The truth however does not lie in the mind alone or in being alone. Truth lies in the conformity between the mind and being, when epistemological truth matches ontological truth. W. Norris Clarke says that “[t]he first great conclusion of our metaphysical inquiry [is that] mind and being are correlative to each other, made for each other, open by nature to each other … .”[i] Being (small “b”) cannot be straightjacketed into the constructs of our minds because it was not conceived in our minds. Thus, if we are to aim at the acquiescence between mind and being, our minds will have to know being in itself as it reveals itself through its action on us.

Clarke also claims that man possesses the drive to know and the drive to will. The mind, though not consciously, aims to know being through and through. Thus, in the quest for the intelligibility of being, metaphysics plays a key role in that it helps bring the process of searching for the truth of being (which is assumed to be intelligible) into our consciousness. Epistemology is indispensable as well since it calls our attention to the process of knowing needed to arrive at a true justified belief. It helps us know what is true and how we are to arrive at it.

The conscious being who allows metaphysics and epistemology to guide his thoughts and reflection will arrive at what is true about being. The heart of the matter though is how he chooses to address the truth he uncovers.

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[i] W. Norris Clarke, SJ, The One and the Many, A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics, (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 17.

Living in the Lie

Plato’s story continues with the prisoners mistaking the shadows for the objects themselves. They do not get to see the people and the dummies and are familiar only with the shadows. If they hear a voice or a noise in the cave, they think that these emanated from the shadows because these are the only things that are real to them. This is how we live in the lie.
Fathers wish their sons to sail into the world with their backpacks filled with all they need to survive the tests of the sea. The individual is sent away from the port of home with a confidence that he has been prepared enough to face the world, no matter what it may bring. Such an attitude is very much like the attitude of the Nietzschean Übermensch. Nietzsche says that the will to power is an intrinsic and driving force of man to overcome his environment. Hence, he saw this will to power as also the will to life. Indeed, there is much more than simply wanting to survive life. One has to conquer it if he were to be the best person he could be. The underlying attitudes of this Superhuman are his love for life and his desire to assert his lordship over it. Such attitudes allow him to assert his powers and therefore affirm himself.

The Übermensch however is not a totalitarian bully claims Stumpf and Fieser.[i] He does not assert himself by imposing himself on his environment. Rather, the Superhuman affirms himself by not allowing his environment to control him. We must remember that the Übermensch loves what is of the earth and sees it as the means for him to realize his best self, thus desiring to draw the most out of what his world has to offer. After all, Nietzsche says, “everything rare is meant for the rare.”[ii] For the Superhuman to do this, reason must guide him. The Superhuman is a man of passion guided by reason. As Nietzsche himself posits, reason must serve life and not the other way around as the Greeks believed.[iii]

The kind of life such a novice to the world lives may also be characterized by Levinasian jouissance – enjoyment. Such is possible because he is confident of his sovereignty over beings other than himself and of his freedom to dispose of them as he wishes. He brings with him a metaphysics of servitude where being – that which actually exists with its own act of existence outside of the self – does not question his supremacy; instead, it simply waits on him to allow it to meet his needs and fulfill his desires. Hence, as Davis says, “[j]ouissance names the process by which the subject makes itself at home in an environment where otherness is not a threat to be overcome, but a pleasure to be experienced.”[iv]

And so, the individual immerses himself in the world outside himself with only one aim: to enjoy it. Unknowingly however, his enjoyment is bound to end when he experiences alterity.
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[i] Samuel Enoch Stumpf and James Fieser, Socrates to Sartre and Beyond, A History of Philosophy, International Edition 2005 (Manila: McGraw-Hill Education (Asia), 2005), 388.
[ii] as quoted by Stumpf and Fieser, 387.
[iii] Ibid, 388.
[iv] Collin Davis, Levinas, An Introduction (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 43.