The Empty Side of Power 9798891133839

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta

The Empty Side of Power

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Contents

Introduction

.......................................................................................... vii Cosmic and Social Power ................................................ viii Prometheus ..................................................................... xvii The Logic of Power ...........................................................xx

Chapter 1

Cosmic and Social Power ..................................................1 Life as Power .......................................................................7 Victory .................................................................................9

Chapter 2

Political Theology: For the Love of God........................23 Introduction .......................................................................23 Political Form ....................................................................26 Arbitrariness and Worship .................................................27 Discourses of Power ..........................................................34 Emptiness in the Political ..................................................35 Hierophany ........................................................................36

Chapter 3

The Hidden Power: Kama/Eros ......................................39 Introduction .......................................................................39 Revolution .........................................................................40 Passion ...............................................................................42 Escape: Power to Control ..................................................52 Sexy and Erotic Bodies......................................................57 Body and Passion ..............................................................62

Chapter 4

Eros and Mythos ...............................................................65 Introduction .......................................................................65 Eros and Wisdom ..............................................................71 Mythos ...............................................................................78

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Contents

Chapter 5

Eros, Autopoiesis, and Transformation .........................85 Introduction: Autopoietic Network of Power ....................85 Operationalism as Transformation ....................................92 Scapegoats .........................................................................93 The Scapegoat, Evangelical Revelation, and Ressentiment ...............................................................94 Scapegoat Victims .............................................................95 Autopoietic Magic .............................................................96 The Word in the Beginning as Magic ..............................101 Emotion ...........................................................................103

Chapter 6

Erotic Machinery, Desire, Perversity, and Tyranny ...................................................................105 Introduction .....................................................................105 Desire...............................................................................106 The Role of Cognition in Desire......................................106 Self-Understanding in Desire ..........................................106 The Desire for Desire ......................................................107 Eros .................................................................................108 Love Marks ......................................................................113 It’s So Divine ...................................................................114 Seduction .........................................................................114 Perversity within the World of Seduction .......................116 Mirare—Mirror, Mirror on the Wall ...............................117 “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” Says the Authoritarian.................117 The Secret and the Challenge ..........................................118 Perverse Eros and the Magic of Seduction ......................120 The Perversity of Eros and the Magic of Seduction ........123

Chapter 7

Self-Created Being .........................................................127 Introduction .....................................................................127 The Old Magician ............................................................128 Modern Ultimate Being ...................................................132 Individual.........................................................................137 Global “Ethics” ................................................................143

Chapter 8

Identity and Populism: Telling the Code .....................147 Introduction .....................................................................147 Network Magic ................................................................153

Contents

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Negri on the Power of God’s Nature ...............................154 Charismatic Authoritarianism..........................................155 Bond Struggle over Common Good ................................157 Chapter 9

Skin Culture ...................................................................163 Self-Destruction ...............................................................163 Popular and Pop Cultures ................................................165 Discarding the Subject .....................................................167 Terrorism .........................................................................180

Chapter 10

Ressentiment, Narcissism, and Trump: The Omnipotent Victim ................................................183 Introduction .....................................................................183 White Christian Nationalism ...........................................184 In Brief ............................................................................185 Ressentiment in General ..................................................186 Narcissism .......................................................................188 Trump: Ressentiment Embodied ......................................189 Creating Cain with YHWH .............................................193 “Beginnings” and Attempts to Be Godlike ......................193

Conclusion: Emptiness .............................................................................195 Introduction .....................................................................195 The Emptiness in the Flowing World ..............................196 References

.........................................................................................217

About the Authors ....................................................................................223 Index

.........................................................................................225

Introduction

A theoretical investigation into the nature of power and how it is communicated would seem to be redundant in face of the sciences and their explanations of this phenomenon. Scientists in military organizations are in a position to count the weapons, industrial capacity, psychological readiness, intelligence, allies, etc., of global nations, and on the basis of the relative strengths of each, to offer strategies for action. Today, such calculations extend to the psychological studies of the “will” to fight against overwhelming odds. Of course, such studies depend on questions answered by fighters of diverse countries, groups, and beliefs, resulting in quantifiable “data” to be used for training purposes. Philosophy, then, would seem to lack an object of discussion. At best, it could help clarify some issues; at worst, it should be controlled from outside in the name of some presumed interests. We could recall the great debates concerning justice by classical thinkers such as Plato (1974), only to discover that, when it came to the question of power, Thrasymachus announced that all decisions of justice depend on those who have power—case closed. Thus, if philosophy is relevant, it could be of practical service in the battle for the minds of populations by constructing some ideological justification for the use of power. A specific philosophy could be designed to envelop some political expediency in an aura of truth. The obvious result of such philosophy is a terrorism of thought. Here, philosophy loses its essence—an unconcerned freedom to range and probe, and to constitute itself and its object. This does not mean that philosophy disappears; to the contrary, it enters its most aggressive and virile stage, the stage of inauthenticity and arbitrariness, and serves the “reality” interests of some dogma or worldview. In brief, this form of philosophy would become a clever and sophisticated rhetorical strategy to help control the thinking of populations. In turn, this virile stage appears in its cynical form as an instrument that communicates power. This is specifically obvious in the age of science and technology, which have reduced reason to instrumental reason. Our contemporary reality is a narrowed world brought about by science and

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constituted by technology, with all their possibilities and dangers. The modern globalized world is formed by a growing interdependence between politics, economy, and technology. Without cognizance that the world of science and technology is a result of specific philosophical inauthenticity, philosophies “feel left out” if they cannot keep up with the “latest” in scientific and technical “progress.” While during the time of Friedrich Nietzsche (1999) and even Karl Marx (1964) philosophy was still in a position to open new vistas and projects, although already in an ideological sense, today such vistas are the domain of technocracies, leading philosophy to regard itself as a set of learned logical techniques for the analysis of formal problems.

Cosmic and Social Power The drive for power seems to be preeminent among the numerous needs, interests, instincts, desires, and even explanations of human behavior, ideal constructs, personality cults, mythical and mystical beings, the terrestrial, and heavenly and demonic controversies. This drive may be premised on the assumption that all other interests and needs will be satisfied if one achieves a position of power. Those who possess power can dispense with favors or punishments and thus can find the followers, servants, and subjects who are required to maintain and enhance one’s acquired power. The reason we focus on power is quite simple: most, if not all anti-philosophical and unphilosophical movements—even those that are given credit as being philosophical—regard all thinking, all philosophical, scientific, and even metaphysical positions, as resting on some “interest” that can be satisfied by power. It is currently in vogue to “explain” all that we are psychologically, genetically, physiologically, economically, and chemically. We are reduced to the “unknown” influences that dominate our activities. These unknown forces and powers are, in many instances, posed as “other worldly” entities, spirits, divinities, or mysterious metaphysical presences that rule and dominate all events in this world. Countless volumes have been regarded as part of philosophy, extolling the presence of these extra-worldly beings—spooks— demanding that philosophy itself be subjected to serve the edicts of these beings. One well-known version of this trend is the claim that philosophy is a “handmaiden” of theology. Theology is replete with all sorts of notions of the “will of God” and his power to punish and reward, to intervene in worldly affairs through the power of miracles, demanding human prayer, living on

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one’s knees, and submission to his will. Given this trend, we propose first to follow the “logic” of power and its variations in order to find a limit that can be transgressed only on the grounds of some reason for humans’ constant search for power. After all, power for the sake of more power leads nowhere, even if Nietzsche (1999) claims that will to power is a way life that overcomes obstacles and thus continues to live. The images of power, and specifically the images of those in possession of power, have fascinated humans from the first sign of self-assertion and selfreflection. The initial self-assertion of power can be traced to magic and its field of associated meanings, such as making, ability, desire, and power itself. Magical power, a capacity of every living event to form itself and become any other event, is inherent in all living events and forms. The transformational “becoming another” requires that all events, inclusive of the human, offer themselves as vital, pre-psychic forces, capable of assuming the shapes of various living forms. In sacral terms, magic has been designated to be animistic (Gebser, 1985). Animism signifies that the human can assume the powers of any creature by various means: partaking of the flesh and blood, ritual performance, initiation, acceptance of the animal’s name, or an induced state of trance. A hunter who dons the skin of a tiger in ritual dance becomes the powers of the tiger—indeed becomes the tiger. In magic power, there is no symbolic distance from the power of the creature. The human does not signify, enact, or perform some creature’s power by theatrical imitation; to the contrary, the human becomes the very creature. The principle of magic power is identity. One does not have the powers; one consists of, one is, the powers. The “knowledge” of the appropriate rites, whether of rainmaking or healing, is not something public, and it is not something learned as a practice; it is something that one becomes, submits to, and is inhabited by—if one can endure the trials of initiation, of a complete transformation and loss of what one was. Such knowledge is immanent and secret, indeed “holy,” since becoming is identical with what one is and the powers one inhabits. The sense of magical power still pervades much of what the West calls “Oriental philosophies,” including the entire history of Mid-Eastern and Western personality cults, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the East, magic is not something one learns as a textual material for logical analyses and debate; rather, the practical sayings, rituals, and performances are transmitted solely as a gift of living power to a select few people who are capable of guarding the secrets of this practice. Such power is not innocent: It

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is what the human becomes through arduous practice, and what he lives in daily existence. One must absorb yoga exercises, an appropriate diet, meditation, the performance of one’s duties, and above all, guard the secret knowledge of magic as the greatest power. The truth here is not known and not even debated, but directly seen in every deed, and the deeds that are true have the power to become any event. But magical rituals are not something relegated to the past; they are practiced every day, for example, in the cults of Judaism and Christianity, where at birth, an infant must be transformed by a ritual called baptism. Members of these cults deem that the infant is born guilty, and the ritual will absolve the infant of guilt. This, of course, is not the end of the story since the rituals extend through a person’s life. He must become one with the body of the founder of the cult. Hence, one must drink the blood and eat the flesh of the founder and continuously become a Christian—one with Jesus. The guardians of the secret ritual, the priestly members, have the power to grant or deny this identity to a person by declaring that one is either forgiven or not. We know from the doctrines of Vedanta, one of the world’s most ancient spiritual philosophies, that the study of truth is a practice, an attainment of a higher state of being, and not a thought or verbal acuity. Such a state of being is pervaded by the magic power of truth. The wise person is called adhikarin, meaning one “having a right to authority, power, fit for a master.” The ultimate seer—vidya—is the master of his own mind and body, his passions, reactions, meditations, and visions. Such a person has a power to transcend the daily illusions, preoccupations, wishful thinking, and attachments of everyday life. He feels no challenge or defeat in fortune or misfortune and is beyond the touch of destiny. Such a vidya has his own special power that has to be guarded, if for no other reason than for the sake of those who would neither appreciate, understand, nor be able to master it. For them, the power of vidya would be wasted and lead to disasters (Zimmer, 1951). If, in such practice, one accesses the highest power, then the means to attaining such a state of being must be guarded most strictly and transmitted only appropriately. Magical power can even compel the powers of gods to respond. The Vedic tradition was thus guarded, and no outsiders were permitted to embody Vedanta secrets and rituals. But even the subsequent speculations of India took on the same aura of power and authority, and they, too, were kept under the tight control of the Vedic masters. The transmission of Jainism or Buddhism required such a submission to the power of the authority of the teacher that a return to a former mode of life or state of being

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became impossible. And the higher the realization of the secret formula, the higher one’s power. In India, the magic power of Mahatma Gandhi is to be understood in this sense. Gandhi expressed an identity between the ascetic and transcendent wisdom and politics of daily existence—he is mahatma, whose essence is being great, i.e., he in whom a supra-personal power that pervades the universe resides and has grown to such a grand magnitude as to have become completely pervasive and dominant. All limitations of personal individualism and weakness have been swallowed up by the greatness of the cosmic power that changes one’s daily outlook and attracts the populations without using a single weapon. Gandhi is known to be a man who was transformed by his knowledge, which he radiated as “holy power.” We should consider the elevation of personalities to the greatest position and power. Darius the Great, Emperor of Persia, made a claim to have a mandate from all the gods, including the highest Persian divinity, called Ohura-Mazda. And, of course, the divinity, in accordance with the meaning of its name, was quite “active.” Legitimation through divinization is nothing new. The Emperor is the Son of Heaven—Tien-tse—incorporating not only the royal, but also the priestly, principle of power. If he were to be overthrown, then it would be a sign that Heaven itself withdrew its power from the ruler. Peculiarly, the Hindu conception of royal power was not open to such a supreme legitimation; the power was sanctioned only by Sri Laksmi, which was a minor divinity similar to what the Latins called Fortuna. The magic of the power of the Hindu royalty was radically pessimistic, both fickle and undependable. We must recall that the obtaining of secret power in Vedanta was not seen as the legitimation of some ruler’s position, but simply as an acquisition of power and a becoming one with such power. Legitimation by divinities is mainly of Mid-Eastern design, stemming from the Persian Empire. The Persian Empire was completely autocratic, despotic, lending itself solely to an “imperative ordering” by the ruler. While it is possible for an autocrat to be benevolent toward the population, his benevolence depends purely on his momentary dispositions, and the latter can coincide with the power of the laws the autocrat prescribes; he is the sole owner of everything and everyone—body and soul—in his empire. Those who fail to obey the autocrat’s will are destined to various degrees of punishment: we hear the chains from Siberia, the cries of those killed in the holy wars of the Middle East, and the torturous cries from the dungeons of the theocratic papacy during the Middle Ages. Even the West has imported, or accepted, an exportation and

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imposition of a Judeo–Christian–Islamic tradition stemming from, and completely correlated to, the Persian autocratic mode of exercising power. The higher officers, who were closest to the ruler, could be trusted the least since they knew the ruler’s weaknesses and resources. Such officers were therefore always on the lookout for mobility and were constantly exposed to royal disfavor. The ministers who served the ruler had to demonstrate their efficiency and, at the same time, secure their own position against the ruler they served. Thus, if the defense minister was to maintain his position, he had to have spies everywhere, as well as some support for the ruler’s opposition. In other words, there must be enemies if there is to be the power of police, and even if the enemies win, one should not expect the result to be anything other than another despotic ruler favoring his own clan—for the moment. After all, they, too, will create their “enemies.” In the modern West, we know the extension of these practices in fascism and communism (practices mirrored in current trends toward autocracy). Both political approaches had leaders anointed either by heaven or by history, who practiced the many ancient strategies of maintaining power: spies spying on spies, ministers plotting against other ministers, people changing their allegiances, and a complete disregard for the population. The birth of the Soviet Union was nothing more than an opportunist deposing a despot and ruling the same empire from a position of an absolute autocrat—of course “anointed” by the divine rhetoric of scientific materialism and historical inevitability. The ambiguities associated with legitimating the possession of everything and everyone as property can be dispelled mainly with respect to story imagery. The story is peopled by figures that are structurally isomorphic with the power that inhabits the solar–imperial palaces. There is the celestial Lord– King, his Queen, their retinue, their subservient supplicants and worshipers— each with a sign of appointed and anointed rank, and a hierarchical position given by the Lord—that is precisely the imperial regality. In principle, the story composition coincides with the ruling composition. This is to say, there is no legitimation of possession here since the story does not justify the imperial claims and deeds but is identical with them. The emperor can claim, without a fear of contradiction, that “we are divine.” Here, we find that the Persian imperial morphology and the Judeo–Christian–Islamic composition coincide. The ruling emperor is the lawgiver and the law, and there should be neither deviations nor questions concerning the power of such law. The language here is one of edicts and imperatives, couched at times in the pronouncements of prophets. The latter are there to ensure that the highest

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authority is once again installed and recognized without interrogation. All that lives and exists must obey and be subordinate to the edicts, indeed must act in ways that would constitute a support and enhancement of the Lord–King’s edicts. No one can question the imperial force of the law, specifically when the law coincides with the mythical power of the divine “maker of the world.” At this level of analysis, we are faced with an understanding of verbal power that becomes coextensive with making, and indeed with an indistinction between word and event. The power holder’s every uttered wish becomes coextensive with deed and reality. A variant of this principle is the “divine right of kings,” such that the king is also the head of the church. This was, and continues to be, the practice in the Russian Empire, where Vladimir Putin is the head of the Russian State and Church and, despite rhetoric to the contrary, the owner of everything and everyone. The ruler’s power can be spread by the sword and become a specific form of colonization. Of course, apart from militaristic colonization, Judeo– Christianity and Islam correlated militarism to verbal and textual colonization. Peoples had to be converted into believers of imported texts. If they refused, they would be regarded as false and evil, and hence abolished. To refuse meant to reject being the property of a specific religion; in principle, the latter assumes that a human being belongs to the Lord of Lords and King of Kings. There is a close correlation of the universalization of a particular “eminent text” (such as Judeo–Christian bibles, or versions of the Islamic Koran) proclaiming an absolute truth, with militaristic colonialism. This is wellreflected in one, among numerous others, structural design: Imperial Persia and the divinities signify such a structure. To understand this correlation, we must attend briefly to the question of legitimation that allows the treatment of the population as property, at the pleasure of the Lord, or owner. We must point out that the coincidence between the ruling powers and the divine allows the ruling powers to claim universality and, by extension, colonialism. The Lord’s divinity rules over all and hence demands us to rule over all. This trend toward universality is still prevalent in stronger or weaker forms in current Islamic and Judeo–Christian practices. Each religion claims the universality of their texts and the right to proselytize via verbal colonization, to move into specific lands because they are “promised,” or to have a holy war against all who are incapable of recognizing the sole and universal master. The unbelievers are evil by definition and hence destined for total destruction. It is of note that Europe was colonized by the Judeo–

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Christian proclamations of universal truth—both by word and at the cost of millions of lives. Having submitted to this Judeo–Christian truth, and having become, in turn, the propagators of this truth, the Europeans became neocolonials. At the same time, being called to spread this truth, the Europeans became colonizers of their civilization. Anywhere they went, they claimed the lands and the populations to be the property of their divine king. This colonization extended all the way into fascism, communism, and current claims in some quarters of the United States that this continent is the land promised to the White Christian believers. We can only mention that this sort of colonization is nomadic. The bearers of the truth, of the “good tidings,” go everywhere and establish their rule (fortresses, temples, castles, and enterprises) and compel the indigenous populations to submit to White Christians (restricting tribal members to reservations and implementing the economics of slavery as modes of such submission). Such nomads rule either as divinities or as direct representatives of divinities. Moreover, since they have a higher task to perform— preoccupied with spreading and then maintaining, enforcing, and enhancing the master’s will—they must leave the mundane labors, such as tilling the land, planting and reaping—in general, producing—to the lesser beings. Such civilization, and its three religious cultures with the supreme Lord and his will, inserted itself into the West. This invading structure could also be understood from magical stories of the Lord as maker of the world, which was later called imago Dei. The story unfolds wherein, at the beginning, the Lord father created a first son, Lucifer, to serve the father, to maintain the father’s order by discovering the transgressors of paternal edicts and thus identifying those who are deserving of punishment. Even in this sense, Lucifer could not have a personal identity of his own. His entire being coincides with his service to his father, with his maintenance of his father’s laws. To speak metaphorically, Lucifer was the chairman of the board of unheavenly activities, charged with suppressing all who defy his father. Indeed, those who defy the father will be regarded as evil, while Lucifer’s activities were good. In other words, Lucifer is a cultural symbol of this composition of awareness. Yet, Lucifer rebels, and his rebellion constitutes another moment of this civilization: actions that disrupt permanence. Lucifer’s rebellion has no possibility of changing the paternal rules, which are absolute and omnipotent. There is nothing in the world that is not subject to this symbol of permanence. In this sense, the activity of rebellion against, or disruption of, this permanence, is a caricature of action. Human action cannot make any impact

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on such a permanence. All disruptive activity is destined to extinction, damnation, and evil as a sign of Non-being (Mickunas, 2019). Lucifer’s rebellion is presented in various guises. First, being the first born, he cannot accept the thought that his father–creator has turned his love toward a younger sibling. Second, he cannot accept that he was created by another being, and hence does not possess his own personality. He was made by the magic word of his father, and there is nothing more to his identity. He wants to be the author of his own being and invent his own identity. Third, Lucifer’s revolution is absolute: He wants to negate the order of his father and replace it with his own empire, i.e., he wants to be the Lord, pronouncing his edicts, and thus be the sole ruler of all civilizations. Since everything in the world has identity due to the father’s pronouncement “Let there be …,” Lucifer will have to invent, as if out of nothing, laws that would be absolutely opposed to his father’s laws. Of course, in this composition, Lucifer cannot take over the throne of his father: Such a replacement is in principle impossible. Lucifer can only have a temporary empire that can mock and, at times, disrupt the empire of his father. In this tradition, the personality of the rebel is formed by envy, hate, and destruction. Since the rule of the father is absolute and changeless, it is regarded as good, while the disruptive rebellion of Lucifer is deemed to be evil. Symbolically speaking, Lucifer is a negative being and is not interested in helping anyone, or in alleviating the suffering of others. Even if he fulfills some wishes of others, he does so to corrupt, and thus to disrupt, the order of his father. The Lord–creator and Lucifer symbolism reveals an awareness of a civilizational composition that does not permit an establishment of institutions that would promote the changing of laws and even the changing of such institutions for the sake of human well-being—all that is positive will be, to a certain extent, disrupted by the negative. Moreover, the awareness that civilization is composed on a fundamental narrative of good and evil would preclude any kind of interrogation, analysis, or change in the symbolically expressed permanence of this awareness, and thus prohibit change to the very notion of truth and ethics, of consciousness and conscience. This composition cannot tolerate independent personalities who would be capable of autonomous and rational decision, whether a given permanence is adequate or inadequate for human needs, and whether such a structure should be modified. Any interrogation would be regarded as questioning human pride, and any proposal to change such permanence would be judged as bad conscience that introduces chaos and evil, based on inadequate human thinking. After all,

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Lucifer cannot know more than his father–creator, and he cannot decide what he wishes to be—apart from a pure imitation of his father sitting on a tyrannical throne. This civilizational composition does not imply democratic and open institutions where rational and responsible persons can decide common issues without appeals to the “highest authority.” Lucifer acquires a personhood and value from his obedience to the Lord, and if called, would join a holy war for the sake of the ultimate order and truth, to maintain the permanence of a civilizational narrative. Thus, any person in that tradition must act to enhance the absolute permanence of that tradition and destroy everything that poses any threat to such permanence. Obviously, this also provides the logic for “holy wars” where everything is mobilized, subjected, and sacrificed for the victory against evil. In that composition, there is no permission for open dialogue or choice. One either fights for, or is an enemy of, the one true truth. We have already mentioned this symbolic design while discussing the “Persian” autocratic lifeworld. Now, we raise an analysis of this lifeworld to the level of its civilizational awareness. The autocratic mode is combined with the theocratic, each confirming the permanence of the other; all activities, spies, confessions, and tortures are designed to maintain the permanence of the autocrat. This composition combines religion and state, and if there are any debates, they focus on the way such permanence can continue by violence. The “Lord and Lucifer” awareness defines everything as a creation of a changeless being that cannot be moved by any questioning or dissatisfaction. If there are wrongs in the world, they are wrong only due to the shortness and inadequacy of human insight. From the symbolic design of a father–creator, all is absolutely right, and this truth is changeless. Everyone must be obedient to this truth and rightness of the world. Those who fail to serve or have other truths, are, by definition, wrong and evil. Moreover, since this civilizational composition is nomadic, followers have a duty to spread and impose this monistic view on all humanity; it is also militaristic, requiring mobilization for war against all falsehoods and evils; the followers of this awareness cannot tolerate those who think otherwise. If one’s consciousness belongs to absolute truth and good, as defined by a theocratic autocracy, then such a consciousness will regard those who think and act otherwise as absolutely deviant and evil. This civilizational composition appears in the contemporary world in the guise of various fundamentalisms and their activities, specifically those that have and continue to originate in the Middle East. These movements also include various fascistic and Marxist trends, which have an affinity with

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theological symbols, although expressed in a secular guise. Just like the Hebraic, Christian, and Islamic fundamentalisms, they, too, are called to a holy war—until total destruction—against all the deviant and evil others. All these trends have a dictatorial hierarchy of rulership. Regardless of the symbolisms that reveal this hierarchy, one thing is clear: in its militaristic phase, each fundamentalist activity has a task of establishing its absolute truth and changeless good, and at the same time, of destroying all that does not comply with such truth and good. All who doubt, interrogate, or reject this mode of awareness for structuring a civilization must be regarded as enemies of God, good, and created reality, against historical inevitability, and in the final analysis, a hindrance and a threat to the stability of the cosmic order. This mode of awareness cannot tolerate, above all, the Promethean mode of awareness and its civilizational composition. After all, a Promethean mode tolerates various truths and numerous goods, and thus, in accord with the Father–Lucifer mode, tolerates falsehoods and evils. In this sense, the first task of father–creator and Lucifer–son is the destruction of the Zeus–Prometheus mode of awareness and all that flows from it, including democratic institutions and rationally, autonomously, and responsibly thinking persons. The most urgent task is to destroy such persons since they maintain the permanence of open and changing institutions that allow flux and require tolerance. History testifies to such destruction: hunting and persecuting “heretics,” “infidels,” “witches,” and above all, intellectuals who question the ultimate truth of a divine, historical, papal, or party ideology. If modern science purports to claim that it also has, or soon will have, its ultimate “explanation” for civilizational structures, then it also might end up on the side of intolerance. Of course, it might clash with the ultimate “explanation” by “creationists.”

Prometheus Then, there is the other West: One that includes fallible, mortal, and quarrelsome humans who are prone to selfishness, who must devise rules by which to live and be responsible for their maintenance and, in case of failures and mistakes, to change them. The established public domain, called the polis, demands everyone’s participation in a dialogical engagement to solve all important questions. If there are authorities proposing “infallible “solutions, they, too, can be interrogated and challenged, and if the challenges are valid, the authority should be grateful for the arguments showing the inadequacy and

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even the fallacy of a thesis. This appears in a direct human way in the myth of Prometheus, who rebelled against Zeus’ edict, which forbade humans from having access to fire. Zeus’ divine intervention initiates human suffering, if not tragedy. Prometheus, moved by the unnecessary anguish of humans, steals fire from the gods and gives it to humans. Here, we have practical assistance for which Prometheus does not ask anything in return. He does not wish to rule or to have others follow his way of life. He does not form a party or demand to be a judge on the court. There is no revenge present against anyone or a requirement to obey some divine command. He simply regards Zeus’ law as unjust and, indeed, premised on one aspect of tragedy: revenge by Zeus against humans (Aeschylus, 2012). What is interesting is that the Greeks accepted the action of such a rebel as a noble violation of bad or even unjust laws. Although, formally speaking, the act of Prometheus is “bad” or illegal, his personal nobility and his positive attitude and qualities outweigh his formally bad act. Prometheus could be regarded as a practical, rational, and worldly “materialist.” His aim was to help others, but with this help, he changed the notion of justice. Even Zeus accepted this change by admitting that his edict prohibiting fire to humans was a bad law. The worldliness or secularism of Prometheus appears in his personality, which is independent from any authority. He has his own views and is capable of planning his own future based on his own knowledge and choices. If he makes mistakes, he admits them and corrects them. After all, Prometheus decided to support Zeus in the battle against the Titans, but after the battle, he recognized that Zeus had become a tyrant. Thus, Prometheus decided to correct his mistake by rebelling against Zeus’ laws, simply because he decided that such laws were practically unjust. Here, the highest authority is negated as unacceptable in principle without any question concerning one’s own benefits. Humanity here is in charge of its own affairs and demands that gods no longer intervene. This is an example of a tragedy where even gods could not find a way out and thus left the solution to fallible humans. In this classical Greek discursive magic, one develops the notion of personal responsibility for one’s own actions. Although one can make mistakes, one takes full responsibility for such mistakes and deems it one’s duty to correct them. While not having ultimate wisdom, humans are depicted as capable of managing their own affairs as long as they can exclude the cosmic, clashing, and conflicting forces from their polis. In Promethean discourse, Zeus is the highest cultural symbol of permanence as authority. Prometheus, in turn, is a cultural symbol of action.

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As an initial supporter of Zeus, he reveals an awareness of the maintenance and enhancement of permanence. He wants to ensure Zeus’ victory over the Titans and his permanent position as the ultimate authority over all gods and humans. Yet, by becoming a rebel against Zeus’ bad law, he reveals an awareness that is a disruption of permanence. Such a disruption in the discourse of Prometheus reveals, in the final outcome, a very specific relationship between permanence and change: The highest symbol of permanence—Zeus—is compelled to agree with Prometheus and thus to change his absolutist and arbitrary position. In this sense, permanence can be open to the requirements of change. This means that, at the cultural level, there arises a possibility of challenging any authority or law, to interrogate it sensibly, and thus to change it. In other words, there emerges a dialogical relationship between permanence and change. Given this composition of awareness, the classical Greek understanding of magical figures could not escape democracy and philosophy. Every position, tradition, or even the thinking of the highest authority figures can be interrogated openly and reasonably; and they can be investigated, analyzed, and requested to justify themselves in the full light of public and poli-logical debate or in a public court. If a given position or even an accepted tradition cannot be justified by reason and by the well-being of humans, then it can be openly rejected. This is the reason that classical Greece comprised an arena of intellectual tension among multiple positions and views, all calling for an open public space in the context of which such a tension could be maintained. The open public space comprises a cultural symbol of permanence that tolerated and enhanced all creative flux and unfolded permanence as the maintenance and enhancement of flux. Here, such composition of awareness comprises the ground of every person’s rationality and responsibility. It must be noted that this composition also founds the modern Western democratic understanding, although articulated by different culturally symbolic designs. It should be clear that the Promethean rebellion is radically different from that of Lucifer. The latter wants to establish an empire against his father’s, while the former regards his actions as a responsible correction of his authority’s mistakes—he does not want to build an empire or be a leader in the battle against Zeus. In short, Prometheus is already in a world where fallible persons can act responsibly without an appeal to some absolute authority. This depiction of magical figures suggests something unique about the Greek overcoming of irrational passions, destructive motives, personal squabbles, and group antagonisms. First, while not modern Western egoistic

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individualism, Greek compositional awareness is an individualism that actively demands the freedom to challenge authority and be responsible for such a challenge. Second, such freedom is also related to a duty to participate in demanding that the highest authority not act arbitrarily. Third, this freedom and duty are not based on some private interest or reward, but on a universal quest for justice and truth, despite the cost to the individual who must accept his responsibility. As we well know, Socrates is a prime example of this quest and was required to pay a price for it. While this awareness seems to be accessible to everyone, there are voices which see such demands as something strange, coming from a strange place. Given the explanation of human events in terms of power—reaching all the way to divine powers—it is curious that questions are not raised seriously concerning the reasons for the maintenance and expansion of power. Is it not odd that the incrementation of power by the use of available and accumulated power is identical with instrumentality? Power is a means to achieve more power as means, and the latter becomes means for even more power. This is similar to modern instrumental reason, where an invented technical means becomes means for more technical means for the sake of even more means to attain a given end. One makes a hammer in order to make another hammer, only for the sake of making another hammer. This curious and endless selfproliferation of power must have a “hidden” agenda, and it is precisely this agenda which this text is designed to disclose. In doing so, it will become clearer why there is such a fierce tension between ideological camps and, above all, an armed battle by the soldiers of the Lord. Is this battle an indication of a desperate attempt to reclaim a lost and dead tradition that has outlived even its supporters? After all, religious supporters are very much in tune with the latest secular inventions and styles of life, which have nothing in common with this dead tradition. It will become obvious at what level this power tension is most intense, even among those who maintain that this tradition of religion is not dead and can adapt itself to the Promethean world.

The Logic of Power With this background it is now possible to turn toward the communication of power. An essential analysis of power shows that the nature of power is such that it continuously reveals its external side. And indeed, where power manifests its full force, it holds back its own compulsions and rules. Of course,

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it is possible that under very precise conditions, and for a brief duration, power manifests its essence. Power is not a problem simply because it can be made an object of investigation, but because this object is not usually visible. Power becomes visible only through a protracted explication where it gradually appears in its own logic. An explication of the logic of power is revealed by Thucydides (2008) in his depiction of the debate between the Athenians and the Melians in his History of the Peloponnesian war. The siege of Melos took place during the Peloponnesian War, fought between Athens and Sparta. In 416 BC, the Athenians sent their fleet and troops to a completely insignificant island state, Melos, which remained neutral in the Spartan–Athenian conflict, although Melos was of Dorian extraction, with later ties to Sparta. Instead of immediately attacking, forcing the Melians to surrender and pay tribute to the Athenians, the Athenians offered to debate the Melians to convince them that their situation was hopeless and that they should surrender to the Athenian forces. The debate was accepted and took place in the “city hall.” The debate presented the Melians with a contradiction: If the Melians could demonstrate that they were within their rights to not give in to Athenian demands, then the Athenians would attack, but, if they allowed the Athenians to convince them, then the result would be the loss of the city-state’s independence and neutrality in the region. The Athenians pointed out that the Melians should not jump to conclusions concerning the outcome of the debate before it took place. Moreover, the Athenians demanded that the Melians accept the given factual state of affairs: the siege of Melos, which had been accomplished by Athenian troops. In this way, the Athenians precluded any debate about the past and demanded the acceptance of the current situation as irrevocable: Melos was besieged by the Athenian fleet and troops. This situation also precluded debate over “rights” since rights could only be debated among “equals” in strength. In case of unequal powers, the stronger power follows its interests, and the weaker force is compelled to yield. The stronger is called proechon, which also has a sense of preeminence. With this, the Athenians suggested a wellaccepted notion in political power relationships. The Melians knew this well; after all, the present Athenian leaders, as the stronger, were not interested in equality. They determined the destiny of their state on the basis of the interests of their own power and preeminence. Not equality, but power relationships, would determine the political rule of Melos. Hence, the appeal to rights by the Melians would constitute unnecessary words. Moreover, the Melean leaders regarded their strength and rulership to be identical with their honor. In this

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sense, the Athenians forced the Melians to face the situation at another level: their interests, advantages, and what was practical or useful. The task, then, was to convince the Athenians that what was of interest to the Melians was also advantageous to the Athenians. The Melians offered this argument; to respect something of interest to both parties would also be advantageous to the Athenians. Given the situation of power inequality, the Athenians should treat the Melians fairly because the Athenians might find themselves in a similar situation of power inequality, and thus, by treating the Melians fairly, they would set a precedent whereby they, too, could expect fair treatment. After all, powers arise and diminish, and the future of power in relationships is not certain. Obviously, the Melians’ appeal to an uncertain Athenian future was an effort to “relativize” the factual situation. If the Athenians were counting purely on power relationships, then they should have realized that such relationships shift, and they, too, could find themselves in the same situation as the Melians, in which case their will to rule should be mildened. The Athenians answered that a defeat, for example, at the hands of the Spartans, would not be as awful as a victorious revolt of those who are ruled by Athens; their revenge would be most terrible. Given this, the Athenians would be compelled to demonstrate their power. This forced the debate back toward the present situation. The task of the Athenians was to incorporate Melos into the power sphere without war since this would be advantageous to both: The Athenians would gain power without an unnecessary application of force— mere demonstration—while the Melians’ advantage would consist in having “saved the city.” But the Melians asked: What would be their advantage in surrendering and thus losing their independence? While Athenians would gain an advantage, what would be the gain of the Melians in becoming subsumed under the Athenian power? The advantage would be this: That the city would be preserved and not destroyed. The Athenians would expand their power, while the Melians would save their city. When this “alternative” was placed before the Melians, they raised another issue: Why are the Athenians not satisfied with Melos’ neutrality? Their neutrality would not injure the Athenians, and at the same time, it would save the city. This proposal respected the current situation. The Melians would remain independent and neutral, and the city would be preserved. Yet, here the Melians failed to note the conditions of rulership based on power alone. The problem of rulership based on power is the condition of being ruled. How does the question of neutrality appear in light of this problem? The neutrality of Melos, declared

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the Athenians, not only did not bring any advantages, but it constituted a great danger to Athens. Power, in order to be such, must be demonstrated and proven. Otherwise, the ruled might begin to think that the ruler has been weakened or has completely disappeared. If the Athenians were to withdraw from Melos, those who were conquered would regard their departure as a sign of weakness, as a sign of Athens’ distrust in its own power. Obviously, the whole world knew that Melos could not withstand the force of Athenian power, but the Melians’ weakness was precisely what made Melos so dangerous. If the Athenians were to withdraw, then the tribute-paying island states would think that, if such a weak and little state as Melos retained its neutrality, then they, too, could demand the same status. Faced with this argument, the Melians pointed out that there was a difference between the Athenian allies, which were either the island states founded by Athens or members of a sea alliance, and the Melians, who were from Dorian origins. Could Athens be seen as weak in face of the neutrality of a small state that was not ruled by Athens, and hence could not be regarded as having demanded neutrality? To allow Melos to remain neutral would be in accord with the custom of magnitude. Yet, that argument misses the thinking of those who base their rulership on power. It presumes that the Melians can claim a right to neutrality in a manner similar to any other state that is not committed to any alliances. But for the Athenians, this is no longer the question. Having sent an expedition, they cannot pull back. Given the background that the Melians stem from the Dorian ethno-linguistic group, from Sparta, withdrawing would expose the Athenians to a charge by those whom Athens ruled that it was afraid of a possible threat from Sparta. Such a move would be dangerous for the Athenians and indicate that the leaders of Athens had lost their courage. A withdrawal would be seen as weakness in the face of a possible danger. The incorporation of Melos into the Athenian power sphere was important since it would demonstrate that Athens was the sea power that ruled over those who are part of this region. If, in its own sphere of dominance, Athens were to permit neutrality to a weak state such as Melos, those under Athenian domination would surely think that the Athenians had pulled back because of fear. In brief, the Athenian maintenance of power compelled the incorporation of Melos. The Melians accepted the principle of power, but they pointed out that it might be more advantageous to the Athenians to leave the Melians neutral; after all, if Athens were perceived as no longer capable of respecting neutrality, then all neutral states would have to presume that their

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independence was being threatened, and thus they would have to form an alliance against Athens. In this way, Athens would increase its enemies among those who had never considered going to war against Athens. If Athenian politics were formed on the basis of power, then it would be foolish to want to increase one’s enemies. The threat to the neutrality of these states would endanger the security of the Athenians. Conversely, leaving Melos neutral would placate the other neutral states. While these reflections are correct, they miss the factual state of affairs. The neutral states, which were land-bound, were already outside of the Athenian power sphere; thus, they were not at all threatened in their independence by Athens’ sea power and had no reason to form an alliance against Athens. The situation was otherwise with the island states; they constituted a latent danger to Athens, and indeed, not only those already ruled by Athens, but also those that were still independent. The neutral island states were a constant reminder to those who were ruled by Athens that it could be possible to extricate themselves from Athenian rule. Athens had nothing against Melos, but the power problematic necessitated that the Athenians incorporate Melos for the sake of showing the ruled that, within the Athenian power sphere, no one could have neutrality. If the allies and the ruled would begin to seek neutrality, then Athenian power would collapse, and Athens would be destroyed by the revenge of those it had once ruled. Rule based on power is constantly exposed to an either/or situation. This either/or dichotomy is built into the very nature of power. The Athenians delimited the operation of power, but this open discourse reminded the Melians of themselves. The Athenians assumed a great danger to themselves by living in accord with their power aims and relationships. Those who were paying tribute were constantly thinking of gaining their freedom. If Athens, for the sake of expanding its power, dared to operate in extremes, dared to suppress its own allies in order to maintain the freedom of Athens, would it not be cowardice on the part of Melos, which still possessed its freedom, if the Melians did not lay everything on the line to preserve it instead of submitting themselves to slavery? The question that must be now asked is this: How must one regard courage and honor when freedom and independence are at stake? No doubt, honor can constitute a specific viewpoint when difficult political decisions are to be made. To this question, the Athenians offered an answer. Just as this situation had little to do with right and wrong, so it also had nothing in common with honor, shame, courage, nor cowardice. To oppose the Athenians in this confrontation would not be a sign of courage, but of a lack of reason. The

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Melians missed one distinction by thinking that they could imitate the behavior of those who were dominated by Athens. Those who rebelled against Athens did not act sensibly. By their efforts to free themselves, they endangered Athens and at the same time themselves, and the Athenians were compelled to use all means to suppress such uprisings. Their irrationality would require that they plunge themselves into actions that were known ahead of time to be doomed to failure. The Athenians, on the contrary, acted with reason; knowing the given conditions of power, they would use all possible means of power in order to maintain their rule. The Melians would act irrationally if they were to submit to the demands of courage in a situation in which courage would be of no avail. Honor and courage become relevant when the powers at play are more or less equal. But a superiority of power on one side abolishes the basis for courage and honor and demands that one act with reason. But is it the case that the numerical superiority of warriors is decisive in war? Could it be possible that the courage and spirit of the warrior is an important factor? With this question, the Melians were reminding the Athenians of the Greek and Persian War, in which a numerical minority withstood a numerical majority. Numbers are an insufficient criterion by which to decide the outcome ahead of time. In this sense, an indeterminate future allows not only calculable expectations, but also uncalculated hope. The latter would call for activities whose outcome is not decided ahead of time. An immediate surrender to a numerically superior enemy means a rejection of hope. A refusal to surrender allows hope in face of an unpredictable future. How is hope related to political decisions? The nature of hope is unique. The view toward the future of those who hope is itself based on hope. The ground of hope is different from any other ground that would justify future expectations. This is to say, the stance of the hopeful is primarily in the hoping, and in such a way that for them, the future itself appears in this very light of hope. The one who hopes sees the future precisely as he hopes it to be. And this is the danger of deception in hope: a deception that remains hidden to the one who hopes and allows the outcome of a future undertaking to remain hidden. Only in the dashed hope is one thrown into the nothing that the hope had veiled, and the one who had hoped finds himself confronted by this “nothing.” The sole possibility for hope can arise when there remain some means for salvation after the hopes have been dashed. Such means would help one fight against total ruin. But he who lays everything on the line, simply propped up by hope, will experience in the dashed hopes an abyss, which was

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hidden by hope. This hiddenness becomes more intense the more one’s situation is perceived as hopeless; all sorts of images, wondrous and heroic miracles, begin to proliferate across the future. Thus, if the Melians were betting everything on just hope, then they must be shocked into “reality” and shown the nothing, the abyss, that faces them and the ruin into which they will fall. Their situation had no grounds for any justification of hope, apart from the hope itself. The Melians did not deny their weaker position; yet, they still trusted in a favorable outcome with the aid of the gods and the Spartans. After all, the Athenians were transgressing the laws of rights supported by the gods, and they forgot that the Spartans would be honor-bound to come to the aid of the Melians. But the Athenians did not believe their actions transgressed the laws of the gods. Everyone knew that even the gods agreed that rulership is always commensurate with power; everything rules in accordance with its power, including the gods. This is the law of all that IS (Physis anackaia). This law was not established by the Athenians, and they were not even the first to appeal to it. Rather, as all Greek states, they, too, followed this law; all who had achieved power behaved in the same way as the Athenians. As to the Spartan aid, motivated by honor, the Athenians pointed out that such an expectation verged on innocence. Everyone knew that the Spartans maintained a strict ethos in their relationships among themselves. Yet, their regard toward others was very different. They held that what served them, and their interests, was the good. By this “law,” they protected themselves against any charge of dishonor. If the interests of the Melians did not coincide with the interests of the Spartans, then the Spartans would regard their denial of help as justified. The Melians could not deny the actual attitudes of the Spartans and indeed, from the very outset, they were not certain about the point of honor of the Spartans. Yet, what the Melians counted upon was what the Athenians affirmed: the interests of Sparta. If Sparta decided to leave Melos unsupported, then the states that were allied with Sparta might regard the Spartans as untrustworthy, and this would serve Sparta’s enemies. Spartan interests demanded that Sparta give support to Melos. These interests could force Sparta to be honorable in its commitments. There is no doubt that this was well argued, but the argument must be placed in a context. Interests always go hand in hand with one’s own security, and indeed, security is the prime determinant as to what will be counted as one’s interest. If a state takes on a dangerous action for the sake of honored commitments, then it does not act in its own self-interest. To expose oneself

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to dangers for the sake of a commitment is a behavior that is “beautiful” (kalon). But for the Spartans, this was precisely of no interest. What the Melians did not show was to what extent the Spartan interests in Melos related to Spartan security. No doubt, Melos was near Peloponnesus, and it would not have been difficult for a Spartan expedition to come to Melos’ aid. But such an action did not lie with those who, like the Melians, were calling for help, but with those who calculated the existing power relationships and alliances. Here a question must be raised: What could Melos offer for the strengthening of Spartan power? Athens ruled the sea, while Sparta was a land power. On land, the Spartan expeditions were always supported by Sparta’s allies, but on the sea, Sparta could not call on such support, and besides, they could hardly wage a sea war that would be in the interests of both Sparta and its allies. The Athenians revealed the conclusion: During the protracted discussion, the Melians could not offer a single argument to show why humans, based on human measure, could base their deliverance on hope. Their power to resist is drawn solely from the future. The Melians’ actual power was so meager that their efforts at resistance against the Athenians would have been completely futile. The only thing that the Melians could proclaim was that they would offer resistance for the sake of their honor. But in politics, honor is more deceitful than the most passionate Eros. Passion clouds thinking and takes away clear sight concerning the real situation. From the perspective of power, the one who surrenders to honor goes with open eyes into self-destruction. In the clear sight of one’s own destruction, one is misled by honor, and this is what happened to the Melians. Yet, actually, there is no dishonor in surrendering to an overwhelming power that presents reasonable demands: to become a tribute-bound ally of Athens and to preserve one’s security and property. According to the Athenians, such demands are quite reasonable in face of the power inequality and the arguments discussed above. The choice was simple: the Melians had a choice between war, which would destroy the city, or capitulating to Athens and saving the city. The Athenians formulated once again the conditions under which states must exist in the context of power politics. Equal powers do not yield to the demands of each other; unequal powers relate differently: the weaker powers cannot play the power game and exhaust what power they possess. They must adapt to the demands of the stronger power as a guarantee of their own survival and as a benefit of the strong. The latter, too, must maintain the security of the weaker, at least to the extent to which such security promotes the interests of the stronger. This was the situation faced by the Melians; here, they were given a clear choice:

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survive and maintain all of their possessions, apart from their duty to Athens, or, blinded by the passion of honor, perish. The Melians decided not to follow the Athenian advice but to trust in their honor, gods, and hope for Spartan aid. Theirs was an effort to relativize the given relationships of power by an introduction of the future; indeed, they even projected the past as a guarantee of the future: they pointed out that they had been an island state for 700 years, that their gods had protected them so far, and that they were certain that they would continue to protect them. This placed the current state of affairs in a flux of time, making the Athenian threat less significant, and indeed less pressing. The situation was deflected by a temporal aura of past and future and thus made the outcome of the unequal power confrontation appear uncertain. But the Athenians turned out to be correct. In a power confrontation, the Melians were left to their own devices. The past offers no security for the future, and no intervention of the gods can offer salvation; the blood relatives of Sparta did not lift a finger to aid Melos, and the honored heroism of the nobles could not be other than a futile show. What does this reveal? All the things that one seems to cherish, such as divine and human rights, honorable traditions, blood relationships, loyalty, honor and courage, are indeed nothing in the age of power politics, and when left solely to themselves, they are helpless. They can become effective only when they adapt themselves to the context and conditions of power. Power reckons only with its own “facts” and all else counts only to the extent that it can become of use for the maintenance of power. Regardless of one’s convictions, all political plays are continuous calculations of relative power conditions and the ways of maintaining or increasing one’s power. In this sense, nothing can enter these power plays “unconditionally,” whether rights, honors, freedoms, divine wishes, or even the sanctity of life. Timewise, politics changes the meaning of all factors: Tradition becomes merely a past, lacking any affectivity and not to be counted in the current calculation of powers. In turn, future comes into consideration only to the extent that it can be derived from the present power relations. In this context, humans no longer maintain the present as if it were sanctioned by a tradition and thus lending the future its legitimation; rather, tradition is regarded as a mere past, and future becomes the projected power calculation of the present. This is the “logic of power,” and the Athenians left no doubt that they were compelled to operate the way they did in order to secure their power. And all this occurred not because of someone’s power greed, but because of the context into which humans enmesh themselves and can find no

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way out. The Athenians showed very clearly that it was impossible for them to act in any other way and still maintain their power. Their history demonstrates the predicaments that resulted in their struggle for power.

Chapter 1

Cosmic and Social Power In a postmodern era, hermeneutical and analytic trends of the philosophy of power have shown up in all discourses. Given that existence depends on language, then to exist is to be a function in a proposition. Of course, having allotted the search for truth to the sciences, philosophies have abandoned ontological content and are left to play with the “magic” power of words. This follows one major trend across civilizations and their cultures, where an assumption is made that all interests and needs will be satisfied if one achieves a position of power. Those who possess power can dispense with favors or punishments and thus can attract followers, servants, and subjects required to maintain and enhance one’s acquired power. The reason we focus on power is quite simple: most, if not all anti-philosophical and un-philosophical movements—even those that are given credit as being philosophical—regard all thinking, all philosophical, scientific, and even metaphysical positions as a result of some “interest,” which can be satisfied by power. It is currently in vogue to “explain” all that we are and do by forces that dominate our existence but are not under our control. As with all events in the universe, humans, too, are a result of causes. The unknown forces and powers are in many instances posed as “other worldly” entities, spirits, divinities, and mysterious metaphysical presences that rule and shape all events in this world. Countless volumes have been written that are regarded as philosophy, which extol the presence of these extra-worldly beings, spooks, and demand that philosophy itself be subjected to serve the edicts of these beings. One well-known version of this trend is the claim that philosophy is a “handmaiden” of theology. The latter is replete with all sorts of notions of the “will of god” and his power to punish and reward, to intervene in worldly affairs through the power of miracles, to demand that humans pray, living on their knees and submitting to his will. A variant of this sort of domination could be “the market,” “historical dialectics,” or even “evolution.” Given this trend, we propose first to follow the “logic” of power and its variations to find a limit to power that can be transgressed only on the grounds of some reason for the constant search for power. After all, power for the sake of more power leads nowhere, even if

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Friedrich Nietzsche (1999) claimed that will to power is the way life overcomes obstacles and thus continues to live. The explanatory design by power can take on a great variety as long as the power actor is “at the service” of some “transcending” and inevitable destination. One is at the service of some historical events which, even if unknown by the actor, are what account for his power position and even the striving for it. Napoleon was swept up by the rising power of capitalism, striving to expand such a rise across Europe and beyond. Hegel (2004) chimed in with the notion that the absolute spirit works itself to self-consciousness through history, and every historical period is led by the very embodiment of such a spirit. The reason for such a spirit is the ever-increasing rational syntheses which unify broader reaches of humanity. The figures who do such unifying are actually such embodiments. Thus, upon seeing Napoleon entering the German city of Jena, Hegel declared that there rides the world spirit. In fact, the notion of “spirit” has become the way the West designates its historical periods, as is very much evident in such statements as “the spirit of capitalism,” or “scientific spirit,” and the “spirit” is what legitimates the power holders’ claims. It is quite interesting to note that even such a banal practice as economic production, commodity exchange, has been elevated to the “market,” sometimes called “the invisible hand” which, unbeknown to us, rules over our decisions. A professor of religions at Harvard, Harvey Cox (2016) was told by his colleagues in business school that it is fine to talk about the great variety of faiths, but he should also understand the realities of life, and the latter are completely determined by economy. Result: the daunting task is to understand economy or its ground, the market. Prof. Cox decided to get acquainted with reality and started reading texts on economy and market. To his surprise, he understood everything: all the major terms defining market were exact copies of the theological categories defining God. The market knows everything, including human needs and their fulfillment; the market is the power which can guarantee such fulfillment; the market provides jobs and economic security; those who do not submit to, or who defy, the market are punished and suffer, and those who obey the market will be rewarded (Cox, 2016). Having recognized this divinity, it is much easier to understand the numerous statements in mass media proclaiming the power of the market: Early morning news announces that “anxious investors are waiting for the opening of Wall Street to find out what the market decided,” or “Indonesia would have fared much better if it had listened to the market.” Those who obey and serve the market are rewarded and have the ultimate social and political

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power. The ultimate enemy of the market is democracy, where fallible humans construct institutions promoting such “subjective” myths as universal rights, freedom, equality, responsibility, and even laws to regulate the market. We see how major economic enterprises are “forced” to move from democratic nations to autocratic systems where the autocrat can be paid to control the population so it can obey the needs of the global market. The market is being globalized as the source of wellbeing for all who submit to its “invisible hand.” Such a hand is simply another variant of MidEastern theology. There is much rhetoric about the rules of fair trade, of market regulations, of contracts, agreements, the enforcement of laws, leading to the appearance that such rhetoric is part of the way that the market works. What the rhetoric names has nothing to do with the market, or with the broader designation of “capitalism,” currently propagated as “neoliberalism.” The latter functions by one rule: Profit is everything, and any rule, and any breaking of any rule, is “the rule” as long as it leads to profit. Hence, there is no such thing as theft, as the right to ownership of one’s own products, as destroying the competition, or even murder. All these are the ways that a pure capitalist society must operate. If one can take over a competitor’s production, or raw materials, by killing the competitor, then one is a winner in the marketplace. No need to speak about such romantic notions as “murder” since the latter has no bearing in simply winning a competition in a struggle for profit and making sure that the competitor is no longer a hindrance. Plato (1974) has carefully articulated what a pure plutocracy would be in its essence, being careful not to mix in elements from another form of society. In a pure form, none of the terms used in democracy would have any meaning: freedom, equality, responsibility, justice, law, or covenant. In the modern West, Hobbes (1982) was not far behind in promoting the brutal reality in the state of nature, extolled by pure market ideology, where everyone is the enemy of everyone in the game for survival. If we speak of rights, responsibilities, fair trade, agreements, we are no longer in genuine capitalism but in a political society that sets up barriers to the invisible hand—a society that can require the capitalist to become rational. Even the myth of “rational self-interest” is a facade since one can easily calculate how to eliminate the competition and win “rationally.” Capitalism belongs to the same autocracy as the rest since its basic position is a society ruled by “presently” greater power. Of course, the latter can be destroyed, and another power will take its place. The globalized world, if it has a semblance of capitalism, is autocratic and hence offers no avoidance of rule by power. This is where European civilization must

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intervene in terms of its “universal” requirements, even if such requirements are contested as to their universality. The separation of freedom and equality comes to this: “freedom” to acquire material power, leading to dramatic inequalities, and neither “freedom” nor equality for the rest. “Freedom” to concentrate greater material power by any means, above all by excluding others from access to such power—resulting in increasing inequalities. Add to this mythology another one and the picture is complete. Those who adhere to the market have a superior intelligence, cunning, endurance, and thus, they are revealed as the result of “natural selection” performed by evolution itself. In brief, they are “natural leaders,” and their autocratic position needs no other legitimation. Their winning in the market legitimates their evolutionary superiority. Thus, the struggle of the capitalist in the democratic West is against the intrusions of public rules into what he regards as private business. Democracy—stay out (Mickunas, 2015). Meanwhile, the seeming “enemy” of the market appears in the guise of “communism.” Armed with scientific ontology, communism claims that political institutions comprising the public arena for the participation of all citizens in all affairs are results, products of material interests and conditions, and have no universal necessity. Indeed, such institutions are a hindrance to scientific technocracy in establishing a scientific society. Using this planned society as a base, Marx (1964) proclaimed that, although Political Enlightenment liberated humans for the freedom of religion, opinion, expression, and the rights guaranteed by institutions, such liberation is inadequate since humans were not liberated from religion, from autonomy, and from institutionalized laws under which all are treated equally. True liberation is possible only through the scientific–technological planning of material conditions, which will liberate humanity from Political Enlightenment. What this means is that such institutions must be oppressed, disallowed as obstructions to the planning of a future by elite members, legitimated by another ultimate being: dialectical materialism and its cosmic laws, as expressed by human life in terms of “historical materialism.” Armed with this cosmic and historical legitimation, “planning” elites tell us what we need to know: Autocratic will, possessed by the elite, must build the conditions without public interference. The self-appointed autocratic elite knows the destiny of history on the basis of “dialectical materialism” and can decide what is “good” for society (Mickunas, 2013). Since the public domain is abolished, the political society is equally abolished. The Soviet Union was established by Marxism–Leninism in such a

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way that the Russian “revolution” simply replaced an autocratic emperor with another absolute autocrat—Lenin, who could decide who lived and who died based on his presumed understanding of the will of dialectical materialism. Those who were opposed to this will were evil and had to be eliminated, and those who supported this dogma were the good. Of course, anyone who would dare contest the “truth” of this dogma was lagging in historical progress and became an “irrational enemy of the people.” The degrading of democracy in classical debates of power by Kleon, claiming that the “unlearned” are better and the thinking ones are merely showing off their wits in order to prevent the “men of action” to run society, we can see that Marxism–Leninism, with Lenin as the autocrat of the Soviet Union, is a priori saying that all thinking persons are to be eliminated. After joyfully proclaiming that we eliminated ten million peasants, we should hang more professors. Following this logic, the elite, armed with “scientific” knowledge, couched in a mythological inevitability of dialectical materialism, elevates itself above laws and institutions in order to carry out the planned “liberation” of humanity. Historically speaking, such institutions are no longer valid; they are conservative and reactionary hindrances to progress. It should be emphasized that, in this context, freedom must be suppressed, while equality is promised on the basis that the entire population is equivalent to labor power that can be treated as equal means for the production of the future society and the new man. The elite technocrats are above the law for yet another reason: Since the working majority lack scientific sophistication, they are in no position to know what is good for them, and their opinions cannot have any weight. Hence, the freedom to express an opinion would mean spreading falsehoods and detracting from the serious duties of the technocrats. The scientific technocrats, whose aim is to acquire power, become rulers (humans over other humans) and lead history and, of course, humanity to the future society, the shape of which is known only to them. Thus, all liberation movements must be supported and, if need be, helped by eliminating the populations that still cling to the illusions of outdated institutions. This means that no deviating opinions and no different consciousness are to be tolerated. Thus, there is a conjunction between the knowledge and power of the elite— absolute. Here, even “free press” is irrelevant since what the public must know is what the omniscient elite decide to pronounce—the great achievements and progress made in the material domain by the elite for the benefit of humanity. In brief, such “luxuries” as a free press are redundant and, for the most part, reactionary, based on outdated individualism and thus illusory beliefs. What

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coincides between dialectical materialism and theocracy is their missionary zeal. It sends the purveyors of its dogma around the globe to convert the ignorant to the need for revolution against all education, all human rights and the institutions which support them, and finally the elimination of all who resist or disagree. After all, their resistance and disagreements are premised on outdated conceptions which the cosmic dialectical transformations have long since abolished. This autocratic system incorporated all the means of domination from the Byzantine Empire. Spies everywhere, treachery among the servants of the autocrat, each striving to eliminate the others by reporting and accusing the others of betrayal of the “revolution” demanded by cosmic dialectical materialism and its historical expression in the primacy of material economy. The actions of elimination could not be called “murders” since such a term applies only in political society and not in a society where an autocrat decides who lives and who dies. What are the ultimate signs of this form of autocracy? Anywhere it appeared, it revealed a total disregard for the lives of the members of any population. As mentioned, in Russia, ten million peasants, and later ten million more enemies of the people were “rubbed out.” Once Mao became the autocrat of China—replacing the Emperor—millions were “tried” in public and killed. In Cambodia, a million people perished and, to no surprise, anyone who might have seemed to be a “thinking person,” such as a person with glasses who might be literate, were the greatest enemies. Simply stated, being educated, literate, i.e., being “European,” was the worst possible type of person—an enemy of the people. Such people were the first to be eliminated as the most dangerous “counterrevolutionaries” (Mickunas, 2015). Finally, there is the claim that evolution selects the strongest to be in charge of a tribe, a nation, an empire, and thus it is “natural” that some are superior, and others must submit to the strongest. This does not mean that the weak give up the struggle to gain positions of power. They invent all sorts of stories where some all-powerful, cosmic entity is on their side, and the strong should bow to the power of the weak if they wish to avoid the most terrible wrath and punishment from this cosmic power. In principle, regardless of who assumes a position of power, it is not his individual or personal doing, but an evolutionary force (in the guise of genetics, DNA, chemistry) which has the final say. Racists are quite at home in using this explanation to claim superiority over other races. It is most plausible that the very notion of “race” is an invention to legitimate the use of power against numerous others, and such a use is not restricted to the “White” race. Japan claimed the right to rule

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over Asia due to its racial superiority, and it used the latter to legitimate the invasion of China and the expansion of the Japanese Empire across the Pacific. No need to venture into the Nazi movement in Germany; all of the inferior races were destined to serve the superior Aryan race. Hitler enjoyed American cowboy or Western films where the White men were shooting masses of the members of inferior Native American races. Even German and Japanese leading philosophers fell under the spell of superiority—as in the cases of Heidegger and Nishida.

Life as Power The chase after excessive power has been explained by the theory that, in order to live, all things must overcome resistances and thus must exercise power over any and all things that would limit their own power. Not only human life, but all life is flux—an active event—and life that ceases to exercise power ceases to be. Moreover, there is no permanent point of arrival at which life can have a reprieve, a cessation of activities. Life either exercises power, overcomes resistances and thus gains power, or declines. It must be emphasized that life is not a substance, entity, or being that, in addition, performs acts of power. Life consists of activities, and the exercise of any activity is the exercise of life’s power; indeed, activity is power. But the exercise of power occurs in relationship to some other event, some other force, and in turn, toward life itself, such that the resisting force reveals, and indeed either enhances or creates, life’s own capacities. This is the basis of the notion that life’s flux is self-relationship. In facing resistance, life recognizes its own capacities. The logic here is unique. Only resistance reveals and increases strength and incrementally intensifies power. Hence, living events that accept and challenge ever-increasing resistances also expand, grow, and continue to live. All living events, including humans, constantly strive to overcome evergreater obstacles and thus elevate their own power. The battle among various members of a particular species is a way to demonstrate and select those of superior strength who will be the propagators of the species. This intraspecies struggle suggests that living events strive to reproduce the strongest members in order to secure the continuation and strengthening of life. The weaker members who fail to meet challenges will have to continuously exert efforts against resistances in order to increase their strength, or they will vanish. The meanings of “obstacles” and “resistances”

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are to be understood as follow: To confront a resistance that is beneath one’s power leads to weakening; only resistances that require exertion, effort, indeed force greater than one’s current powers, will lead to an incrementation of strength. To play chess with amateurs will not lead to a greater ability in playing chess; to play chess against a master will lead to the development of chess-playing powers. No doubt, one will be defeated many times, but the exerted effort will lead to the development or even the creation of abilities that will constantly grow. In this sense, all living events are “will to power.” This phrase ought not to be psychologized as if there were a function called “will.” The seed that sends shoots toward the surface of the Earth and roots toward moisture in the dark recesses overcomes obstacles and hence is “will to power.” This power cracks stones and hard clay and thus lives. In this sense, life does not aim at survival through adaptation but toward strength that will result in survival. Here, one pillar of evolutionary theory is decapitated: adaptation to an environment. Adaptation leads to stasis and stagnation, repetition of activities that lead to weakness and decay. Only facing increasing challenges can transform a given life and yield something more alive, whether awe-inspiring or terrible. But if becoming is the very way of all beings, then what does not become does not flow and transform, has no claim to such a way, and hence does not have existence. Thus, what once appeared as being absolutely permanent turns out to be Non-being, although a necessary appearance of a specific life. This is to say, what appears to be the greatest and absolutely permanent, an absolute collapsed into itself, turns out to be the least; an absolute being is not temporal becoming, and life is no longer the will to power; absolute permanence turns out to be nothing. Whatever is untouched by becoming is nothing. But this was regarded as the being of permanence in the symbolic form of the divine. In this sense, the most permanent and static is dead and equivalent to nothing. This is another announcement that the divine is dead, is nothing. Here, we encounter power aimed toward establishing a permanent and universal ruler—his worship—to be empty. The desire for power as a way of maintaining the permanence of oneself as divine, or being a servant of the divine, discloses never-fulfillable emptiness. The expansion of power by confrontation can be seen in the clash of tribes, kingdoms, and empires. Given the thesis that power is either growing and expanding through confrontation with other powers or it dies, then no stable state or equilibrium can be attained. The acquisition of power becomes a war without end and without a final victor since, not having any power against the

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continuance of this war, the result would be a dissipation of power. As the saying goes, there cannot be an infinite power since infinity, having nothing against it, is no power. As an infinite being, the Christian God had to show his power by confronting the demonic forces almost as powerful as he. This revealed his glory in battle against a worthy enemy, proving himself worthy of worship by his servants. The images of his victorious power cover the walls of temples. But here ends his career as an infinite power since his victory had to acknowledge another power, causing God to lose his infinity. The pronouncement by Nietzsche (1999) that “God is dead” is not based on a theological argument but on the impossibility of infinite power without counterpower. Once the latter appears, infinite power becomes one among many, and thus finite. In social life, this multitude appears even among the various claims of monotheism: “My God is the real one, and yours is a fake.” Outcome: “Thou shall have no other gods before you”—i.e., there are other gods.

Victory There is another side to this “will to power”: It is innocent. A seed in the ground must break the crust to reach the solar energy, and a lion must kill to eat and battle other lions for the “right” to procreate with the strongest members of its species during specific periods. The members of a species do battle to select the strongest in order to guarantee the transmission of strength to coming generations. Yet, there is a creature who kills without a purpose, without reason, in an act that makes no sense. It kills not only other creatures “for sport,” but also its own kind, even when the stronger does not lack anything. The headhunter does not do battle for booty which he could appropriate from the defeated—as claimed by Western social scientists; the hunter has no interest in women and does not battle for sex, a claim propagated by Western psychiatry and genetics; he battles only to kill the other in order to make a mark on his spear to demonstrate how many he has killed as a symbol of power. Some thinkers would like to maintain that humans are distinguished by their rationality, even if it is reduced to serve interests—so called “rational interest”; yet, the headhunter has no practical interest although he demonstrates primal human essence and a difference from other species. He wants to show his preeminence and height above all others while stepping on the corpses of the defeated. The preeminence is celebrated in various ways,

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including war dances, wreaths, and worship. Transgressing the headhunting practice, he will become a leader and grant his followers higher status as enforcers of his will. He will evolve into the Lord and make certain that he is celebrated on “holy days.” All such steps are without a hint to the common claim of a struggle for survival. Most powerful empires, lacking nothing, expand their territories by defeating others. What is their purpose? None. They engage in a ritual of mass “headhunting,” capturing and enslaving others for labor and sport. The inscription on the chariot of Rome’s Emperor is quite revealing: I came, I saw, I conquered. The leader’s victory is celebrated by the tribe, by the citizens, and by the Empire in places such as the Roman Colosseum. Locked in chains and demeaned, the defeated are marched to the Capitol behind the worshiped victor, given as prized gifts to the “nobles,” and sent to battles in the arena for the joy of the citizens; they are tortured, killed, mocked, and cheerfully condemned by the crowd, either to live or die. The crowd is celebrating not only the victory of the leader, but also “our victory” inscribed in the mangled bodies of the defeated. And all of this is not because of the need for food or procreation, but to celebrate something completely irrelevant to survival. The degradation and destruction disclose something strange, not yet civilized: the sadistic desire for destruction in the most horrible rituals, without a purpose. The empires celebrate victories and extol the victors to divine status. The Emperor of Persia, Xerxes, was a self-declared god of gods, king of kings, and upon meeting with the leader of the Spartan 300 in the Battle of Thermopylae, Leonidas, Xerxes promised not to destroy Greece if Leonidas would kneel before him and recognize him as god of gods. Xerxes demanded to be worshiped and would force the Greeks to live on their knees if Leonidas did not comply. Xerxes’ was a curious request; after all, he had an empire where everyone had to worship him, so why enslave more people? This example illustrates the ultimate expression of the universal trend: The desire to be worshiped has no limit—everyone in the universe must be subjected to and become property of the one Lord of Lords. The leader elevates himself to the position of creator and owner of everything—even the universe. In this sense, his power and glory are celebrated and worshiped everywhere and for all time. Regardless of where he appears, everyone falls on their knees with a bowed head; no one can look at his blinding radiance and all-seeing power; he punishes and tortures all who deviate from his word. Even his name is to be worshiped, and he instills fear across the empire and beyond. He is not only worshiped, but all that is belongs to him, and thus everyone must be grateful

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and thank him for the “gifts” of life and sustenance. He can have all the women as his—a harem—a purely sexual arrangement without passion or erotic fire. The latter qualities do not belong to the Lord of Lord’s world and the slavery he imposes. The appearance of humans anywhere calls for the invasion, worship, and enslavement of others, despite these being completely irrelevant for their own survival. The founding of civilizations offers excellent examples: Ñawpa Pacha (“Once upon a time”)—so start all the stories of the powerful Incan Empire Tahuantinsuyu in the Andes Mountains of South America—in the place of “vision,” Pakaritambo, appeared eight blinding figures with a destiny sent by Inti to conquer an entire region and establish Inca as an empire in the name of the Sun. These figures were promised a land, the Huatanay Valley, which they were to conquer, and then they were to establish a center in the valley called Kuzko. All Inca rituals and sacrifices reflect the images of these figures, as described in ancient Quechua languages. The figures are holy, and all rituals are founded on them. In an entirely different region of the world, ancient Mesopotamia, Abraham was called upon by voices and images to wander about and create a tribe which was to conquer a promised land. From these images, holy stories were spread, repeated by prophets called to obey the sayings of Abraham, who demanded that people worship and celebrate the author of the voices and images. The author becomes the Lord of Lords, to be worshiped and celebrated, to be thanked and appealed to in prayer by his obedient servants. There are holidays and places of worship and prayer, designed to “service” the Lord in the form of thanking him, appealing to him, and leaving everything to his will. This worship and subjection are extended to daily rituals where, at every meal, the servants thank this Lord “for the gifts we are about to receive.” These celebrations point to the subservient and low status of humanity and to the total power of the Lord and his will. He can determine who will be favored and who will be damned to eternal suffering. Thus, the holidays will be celebrated by the servants of the Lord for his victories against the evil servants of the Lord’s demonic enemies. Of course, the servants of the Lord not only worship him, but the worshipers assume various ranks: Some become priests, elevated to higher positions, and thus they, too, become worthy of worship as more important servants of the Lord. They assume titles, such as pastor, bishop, pope, rabbi, imam, and thus speak directly in the name of the Lord. Some become “saints” and are worshiped on saint’s feast days, to the extent that their corpses are enshrined and radiate holy power. In royal families, with

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the divine right of kings, lower ranking members address the higher-ranking relatives as “Your worship,” or “Your honor,” or even “Your highness.” The more pronounced and most popular images of a universal god appear in the variants of Jesus and Muhammad. The former, following his tradition of bloody sacrifices, demanded torturous sacrifice all the way to his own suicide. Thus, his suicidal self-sacrifice must be celebrated; he must be thanked and worshiped and even adorned with divine characteristics. Only through him can humanity be saved from eternal tortures. Jesus’ birthday is celebrated on a specific date when the newly born infant was adorned with the signs of Emperor. He was visited by worshipful kings and thus elevated to the height of King of Kings. All nature, in the form of animals, kneel before him. The Easter holy day celebrates his torturous suicide as a redemption of all who will worship him. Through all the holy days and celebrations in the houses of worship, there are always signs of suffering and torture—the cross, under which all servants of the Lord must kneel, worship, pray, and be grateful for “salvation.” From these stories, it is obvious that all of humanity is faulty, and Jesus shed his blood to atone for all our faults—thank you, Lord. Meanwhile the servants are duty-bound to spread the word and the good tidings throughout the world. Usually dressed in battle attire, with the sign of the cross, they spread across the world and demand that all kneel before the king of kings: Kiss his feet or die. Mass murder is regarded as a mode of worship— sacrificing the heathen for the greater glory of the Lord or, in some cases, for the glory of the “innocent” maiden. It is interesting that Charlamagne, regarded as the first king of Europe, was glorified for the daily mass murder of pagans—simple villagers who were not accustomed to kneeling before some alien and torturous image. Muhammad also heard a voice instructing him to repeat what the voice said, what it demanded, and in whose name it spoke. His situation was similar to Abraham’s, except the latter heard directly from the Lord, while Muhammad had to listen to a messenger, who appointed him as a prophet, with the power to impose the will of Allah, including the daily rituals required to worship him. This god requires his celebration not only once a year in a gathering around a stone, but also necessitates that all his servants fall on their knees and bow several times every day. Meanwhile, all of humanity must be subjected to his will, under one ruler, serving Allah in his name as the one universal calif. All the worshipful followers are also warriors, duty-bound to wage a holy war against the infidels. Meanwhile, the prophet Muhammad must be revered; any “insult” directed at him deserves a death penalty. The

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prophet spreads the demands of the Lord by military means, murdering and destroying other cultures and their practices as evil; the members of such cultures—the Arabic traditions—had to accept the new Lord or die. Acceptance meant slavery, self-degradation, and living on one’s knees, indicating that a person is worthless, and that the world belongs to the Lord and his will. Currently, there are efforts to create an Islamic republic by various groups, each having its own universal calif. The mass murder of each group by members of other groups is a never-ending war. The worship of the Lord appears in the form of “holy wars.” As a medieval “brother” shouted to the knights on the way to their crusades: “To kill an infidel is not murder—it is a road to paradise.” Here, we shall focus on the “celebrations” of power and its victories, including the parading of the defeated and their treatment as sacrifices for the glorification of the never-satiated “victor”—who acts like a child who wants everything although he does not know what he wants. He is constantly interested in the production of war, implements of torture, and strategies for victory. It is no wonder that all man-made ideologies—including capitalism and communism—adhere to one thesis: Humans differ from other creatures because they are tool users and thus transform nature to fulfill their needs. Yet, this transformation does not explain the desire for an excess of power beyond the needs of life—food, shelter, and procreation. How is it that the excess, produced with so much effort, is squandered without any vital purpose, resulting, in many cases, as a detriment to vital needs? It seems that there is an empty desire, never reaching fulfilment, and thus constantly creating more terrible demands and implements for the “glorification” of the victor in rituals and holidays. The rituals are bloody—from the sacrifice of animals to matadors in bullfights, and to gladiators fighting to the death—not to speak of the tortures demanded by divinities as spectacles for public entertainment and as a show of power. Such spectacles transgress the theory of life as a will to power, which claims that, in order to live, life must exercise power and overcome obstacles, but how much power must one accumulate in order to live? An empire, a subjugation of all under one ruler, one Lord of Lords? How much does the Lord need in order to live? All the power beyond satisfying one’s needs to continue to live is a useless excess, serving no purpose. All the spectacles, providing an outlet for the excess of power, are purposeless and irrational. What is celebrated in the rituals and holidays has nothing to do with the power needed to maintain life and its continuity. The celebrations are, in most

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cases, detrimental, a destruction of all achievements, a simple mass torture and murder—all for nothing. The discussion so far reveals that the appearance of the primal figures—the lords, rulers, and their prophets—are also empty, having neither form nor image. Such figures are primal, verbal and nonverbal masks of magic, comprising ritualistic tribal identities. To ask an ontological question, whether such figures exist, is completely irrelevant since, without them, humans would not possess an identity. Images, their performance in rituals, their demands and exhortations, are the primal mask. These images not only point to the position of humans, but they equally cover over more primal beings that do not have any substantiality, unless as a mask behind masks. After all, the blinding figures of the Inca are not visible; what is visible is an empire established by human action as a worship of such figures. Abraham is present in stories; yet, no one has ever seen him or his Lord although the enactment of his edicts and demands constitute the identity masks of his tribe: We are the sons of Abraham and celebrate and worship him and the Lord who spoke to him. Our activities and rituals are masks behind which there is emptiness. We celebrate, obey, and promote invisible images that do not appear at the level of life’s self-preservation. At the level of power and its worship, there are masks covering emptiness. The requirement to worship a Lord of Lords as universal suggests that humans, struggling to acquire unlimited power over all others, created a transcendent image of a universal Lord as a sole being who must be worshiped. In this sense, the empty desire is explicated in its essential form: never fully realized, requiring a constant extension of power to subjugate one and all to a Lord who is to be worshiped everywhere and eternally. Those who refuse to do so will be eliminated, and only the worshipers will remain: This is the cosmic struggle between the Lord of Lords, and the Lord of Darkness. This is the human image of power—to become the universal ruler and the ultimate being to be worshiped. All ideologies and theologies are surface masks to cover and justify this extension of power by autocrats and saviors of the world or, in some cases, master of the world by a chosen people. In the context of German nationalism and Martin Heidegger’s quest for a “national” religion, Hitler was declared by him to be the ultimate being whose will was to be obeyed by all Germans (see Bourdieu, 1996). A 1935 film titled Triumph of the Will was commissioned by Hitler to persuade Germans to revere the Nazi Party. And the nation was awed; he was worshiped at mass gatherings and parades of victory; he appeared as a conquering hero in every office, school

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room, and restaurant, where, upon entering, every non-Jewish person had to greet others with a salute of “Heil Hitler!” (“Holy Hitler”). Under a different mask, Russian Lord, Joseph Stalin, had the same designs for power. After World War II and Mao Zedong’s victory in China, Stalin had a plan in place to take over the world, starting with the “unification” of Korea, which would concentrate American forces, allowing China to invade the entire region of South and Southeast Asia, while Russia would take over the entire area of Europe, forming a Eurasian empire. After that, flying across the North Pole, Russia would attack the United States. Stalin, as the “older brother” to Mao, would rule the world. But after Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev rejected the plan as too risky, while China still maintained that “We must conquer the world: our aim is to rule the entire planet.” Of course, Mao continues to be worshiped, and his current follower, Jinping Xi (2020), authored The governance of China, which is considered to be “required reading” for all Chinese residents. The worship of Stalin and Mao was joined directly to military power, made visible in annual parades to celebrate the “victories” of the great leaders, who were elevated way above the adoring crowds. In all cases, the aim of Persian Emperors, califs, popes, monopolists, and theocrats is to become the universal ruler over all. As Stalin and Mao claimed, under the mask of ideology, it is impossible to reconcile the pacifism of liberalism with the need to expand and defend Marxism–Leninism around the globe. Such liberalism, for both men, was the worst predator of power and thus had to be abolished, sacrificed for the sake of “humanity.” It is no wonder that autocrats, theocrats, and monopolists have no qualms about sacrificing millions of people as the price to pay to ensure their ultimate position of being worshiped. In short, they painted another mask on their empty desire for being an object of universal worship. As we shall see in the discussion of “libido and eros” in Chapter 3, the human desire for autocratic or theocratic power to obtain worship from others is ruled by libido—sexuality—although the ultimate Lord wants to be adored with full erotic passion. The Lord need not, and does not, reciprocate such passion; he has a right to a harem or to any woman for the night. His harem is equivalent to a stable for a bull. To have 300 wives and 5,000 concubines is an excellent example of such “libidinal promiscuity.” Established autocrats and groups that want to depose such autocracy and take over a country or an empire—the opportunists—put power to different uses. No doubt, an established autocracy is initially opportunistic; as Nietzsche (1969) noted, the ancestors of kings and other autocrats were robbers and

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efficient killers. What this suggests is a difference in what psychologists would refer to as an attitude toward power and its use. The aristocrat’s “self-esteem” is taken for granted by one’s “birthright” and hardly depends on accumulated riches—even if the latter are required to maintain a luxurious style of life— while the opportunist, not secure in his position by a tradition, must accumulate some signs of his prestige and standing. Such an accumulation requires not only a plundering of the population, but a war-like stance against all others. Since the opportunist acquires power not through the legitimation of a tradition but through cunning and by any possible means, he is fully aware that others like him regard his position as “fair game,” which can be attained by using the same cunning and devious means. Hence, there emerge ruthless power struggles and a constant change of such rulers. The only relationship that the latter have to their populations is an extreme exploitation; a ruler must acquire all that one can get in order to maintain power against other opportunists and, with a more or less sure probability of the loss of power, to be able to escape to some remote corner with a sufficient fortune to provide for some comfortable years. The opportunist has a drive to obtain power and possessions that cannot be satiated. Coming to power from the “lower” rungs of society through struggles and cunning, having appropriated all the wealth, autocrats tend to concentrate on acquiring as much as they can. Unsure of their future, having access to material acquisition through power, they take full advantage “before it is too late.” According to these arguments, established aristocrats, while granted the position of absolute rulers, are more benevolent than the opportunists. The former has “their” land and people, their tradition and duties, their honor, and their self-esteem, while the opportunist must disregard their people, their land, their honor, and strike when the opportunity to gain power beckons, anywhere and anytime. An opportunist is an “independent” and “self-reliant” power player. He has nothing to start with and nothing to lose. His only way is “up,” at any cost. No doubt, the royal institution of India was part of dharma, i.e., the universal plan, but the occupant of the throne could be anyone who had the cunning and audacity to occupy it, whether a soldier of fortune, a foreign invader, or a crafty minister who was tired of managing the affairs of the king. Like the military emperors of the Western Roman Empire during the period of Roman decline, or the rulers of the Eastern Roman Empire (or Byzantine Empire), the heads of states were completely exposed to internal and external strife. The populations cared little about the “affairs of the state.” They had their own struggles, obtaining money for daily bread and for paying taxes. The

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ruler could either be ruthless or magnanimous, but in either case, he could not count on support from the population. The momentary supporters of the power held by a head of state were mercenaries who had to be lavishly paid, and who would desert the ruler for any other ruler with a better offer. But every opportunist was sufficiently cunning to know the “right time” to strike. Regardless of the differences between communism and fascism, the opportunists—Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Khruschev, and others—inserted themselves at the right time of troubles in the autocratic empires and swept away their previous rulers who, while possessing all the might on their side, perished. Sociologists and historians mistakenly call these events “revolutions.” Let us explore such “revolutions.” In more recent history, two trends of opportunistic action by persons and groups in Russia and Germany are well known. We have the Russian Empire, in which Vladimir Putin adopted symbols of the Byzantine Empire; the state is purely autocratic, and the head of the empire is also the head of the church. In brief, when he speaks—God speaks. In the history of Russia, a tsar is also the head of a family and the ruler of the aristocracy; the aristocrats swore allegiance to the tsar, and he appointed them to serve in various posts of the state. As in all autocracies, those closest to the emperor were the most dangerous—they knew the weaknesses of their Lord. Also, as in all autocratic empires, there were family murders and the ascent to the throne by another family member—it was simply a tradition. For the population, such affairs of the “palace” were of no concern, apart from the moods and dispositions of the “new” Lord. Whether the tsar is Ivan the Terrible or Catherine the Great, in all instances, the “head” owns everything, including the population under the Lord’s domain as his/her property, to be dispensed with at the Lord’s will and whim. The emperor spread his power and territory as much as his finances and cunning would bear. After all, the Russian Empire expanded both east and west (incorporating the Baltic States). All was well, but the tsar should have studied Kautilya’s (2000) writings, warning about opportunists who show up in turbulent times. And they came in various forms: the Westernizers, anarchists, socialists, writers, self-appointed intellectuals, and then came the squabble among the autocratic family members, the Tsar, his cousin the Kaiser, etc., ending up in a war. The time was ripe, and Lenin saw the opportunity to concentrate some of those factions under his domination and total discipline, allowing him to overthrow the Tsar, his family and aristocracy, and to become an autocrat of the same empire. The first task was to eliminate all the vestiges of claims to the throne by the old aristocracy—

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they had to die; he had to eliminate the educated, the talented, and the productive, and hand the reins of power to the dull and illiterate as “the people,” in whose name the new autocracy was empowered, to be masters and Lords over everything. Lenin and his helpers were masters at weaving the veil of Maya. The Lord persuaded the “people” that they were leading history, armed with and justified by “dialectical materialism,” which was designed to sweep away all the enemies of the peoples’ revolution. In all autocracies, backed by theocracy, there are infallible—even if arbitrary—“authorities” or eminent texts, revealing the ways that the world ought to be. The edicts in the texts are known only to the select elite, empowered to bring such edicts to the world and thus change and save it from its fallen condition. All other texts are to be burned and their authors eliminated. This is a repetition of the imposition of eminent texts on the Roman Empire and also the burning of the philosophical texts considered to be heretical—as was the case with the Library of Alexandria and the expulsion of all philosophers from Christendom. In both cases, only one text was allowed to form the basis of civilization, and the only legitimate interpretation of that text was the privilege of the elite. Thus, as mentioned, all educated persons of the previous empire posed a basic threat. As opportunists, Lenin and his cohorts appropriated all the wealth of the entire empire “in the name of the people” and subjected the population to total control by his opportunists, thereby creating a system of suspicion where everyone might be a spy for the new autocracy. The so-called “collectivization” for economic equality and benefit was another woven Maya; in reality, collectivization was the best means to herd “the people” (those who survived mass murder) so they could be watched, controlled, punished, and become completely subservient and docile. There was no Russian Revolution: In principle, a traditional autocratic theocracy was overthrown by an opportunistic autocracy– theocracy without any essential changes for the population. In fact, the opportunistic autocracy was more ruthless and arbitrary. Meanwhile, the new priests—the elite—were preaching the true gospel and sending missionaries around the world to find and create converts to change the world. I offer a brief reminder of the ways an opportunist functions in relationship to his gang of supporters and conspirators. For example, in Russia, any of Lenin’s supporters who showed any deviation from his momentary edicts, as a challenge to his authority, were eliminated—as evidenced by Lenin destroying the sailors who won military battles for him and exterminating those who requested participation in public decisions—as were millions of

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peasants who had simply acquired some land. After Lenin’s death, Stalin and Trotsky vied for power, with Stalin overcoming Trotsky. Stalin held court trials to condemn nearly all of Trotsky’s party members for “betraying the revolution” and, of course, presenting a possible threat to his total rule. Leon Trotsky, who escaped to Mexico, could not avoid Stalin’s axe. After all, Trotsky was one of the leading members of the party forcing a “revolution” and was thus a threat to Stalin’s power. We know that Stalin trusted his revolutionary comrades, at least to the extent that they all were tried for “treason” and shot. The secret police, as a continuation of the Tsar’s countless spies, knew and saw everything. In Germany, Hitler and his “party” were no exception; they were extremely adept at finding opportunities to take over the country and then destroy all “enemies,” both internal and external. While on the brink of defeat, new opportunities for power arose, and all methods of destruction—murder, propaganda rhetoric, promises of salvation—were seen as opportune means to take power. As Hitler proclaimed, he and his party would be the only power in Germany. The rhetorical images of Hitler identified him with “the savior,” and hence he was to be saluted with “Heil,” meaning “Holy, healthy, and luminescent.” As a side note, Hitler’s imperial ally, Emperor Hirohito of Japan, also strived to be seen as divine. In the Russian Empire (the Soviet Union) and in Germany (the Third Reich), there were purges and the elimination of any sign that would threaten the “leader” and his absolute power. Hitler’s followers not only killed communist leaders, but they sent thousands of communists to the first concentration camps. Having realized that his supporter and follower, Franz Boehm, had accumulated military power which exceeded that of the regular army, Hitler ordered the execution of Boehm and many of his followers in an event called “The Night of the Long Knives.” Hitler exploited every opportunity to find “enemies” to blame for the “suffering” of the German people, and the Jews were his chosen target. All Jews were guilty, both as exploiters and communists. Of course, as communists, the Jews were deemed to be adherents of Stalin’s edicts. The simple question was who would eliminate whom, the Nazis eliminating the communists, or the reverse. And despite Nazi rhetoric about their historical or national mission, such attempts are the classical obfuscation of the logic of power. Within this logic, there is no limit; power must constantly be extended until one attains global domination. Both communism and fascism had one aim: any means—using missionary zeal, forming momentary alliances, pacifying and lulling opponents into submission—will do. There is the

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cunning strategy of forming “alliances” or even treaties as valid; valid, yes, for the momentary convenience of lulling the new “friends” until the opportune time to strike against them. Thus, the way of power requires a total annihilation of one’s opponent by various tricks: flattery, sharing in the spoils of victory, giving aid, and even feigning fear. Hitler and Stalin are two of the more pronounced modern examples of these tactics. The former signed a pact with Poland, and hence isolated Poland from its French allies; then, the Poles were “invited” to share in the spoils when Hitler invaded neighboring Czechoslovakia. All these “friendly” gestures were a shield that hid the knife. The annihilation of the enemy is well noted in the communist eradication of the “bourgeoisie” and “revisionists,” and the fascist eradication of all the “enemies” of the “true” human race. As the saying goes, a surviving remnant of the enemy is like a remnant of a smoldering fire or an unpaid debt; all enemies are bound to increase with time. Hence, the best policy for gaining power is total annihilation of one’s opponent. This includes “inconvenient” party operatives, generals, and the trusted officials of one’s own group. This is not a novelty. If one reads the biographies of the Roman Emperors, or accounts of ancient Persia, or Muslim records of the Caliphates at Baghdad and Cairo, or histories of the Ottoman power, one concludes that power for its own sake has this logic. Everyone is always endangered, exposed to expected—although unsuspected—attacks, even when one is armed to the teeth. No one is fully a master of the situation, and with time, no one is a master at all. One is doomed from the outset, yet one pretends to be “on top.” Fratricide, poison, and the dagger comprise the order of social power. And the daggers can come in numerous forms, from steel to money, from mere words of accusation to an enticement to riot. As in all “divine” cases of lords and rulers and their demands to be worshipped, the party of Lenin and later Stalin made sure that they, too, became worshipped. Statues and pictures of them were erected throughout the entire empire, and their infallible pronouncements were quoted in every discussion of any issue. The quotations were required as a final word on any topic, on any issue, and replaced all other texts; thus, their desires became known as “classic.” While having nothing to do with philosophy, the texts of Marx/Engels/Lenin were paraded for “the people” as classical philosophy. In brief, real thinking begins with acknowledging what comprises a divine, infallible text of power. No doubt, all such texts change and must be read within new contexts, but in principle, even their interpretation in new contexts

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is seen as absolute. The Shia and Sunni Muslims are accusing each other of being false, just as fundamentalists are at odds with liberal Protestants concerning the “correct” reading of eminent texts. The final decision belongs to the current, usually self-appointed, “head” who proclaims the latest “truth.” Having to postpone the appearance of the communist society, Soviet leaders constantly modified Marxism–Leninism to accommodate the power maintenance of the “revolutionary elite.”

Chapter 2

Political Theology: For the Love of God Introduction Although there prevails an ideology among the American populace that politics and religion must remain separate, philosophers long ago realized that such an assumption is false: From Claude Lefort to Giorgio Agamben, modern political philosophers and cultural critics alike have found it necessary to grapple with the problem of political theology. Defined in general terms as the political use of religion, political theology also conjures up the notion that politics is grounded on religious claims, above all the claim of revelation. In this sense, political theology is the problem that early modern constitutionalist theories of the state were originally designed to address and that modern liberal societies continue to confront today. (Kahn, 2009, p. 77)

Schmitt has in mind “a specifically Catholic notion of form, according to which the sovereign is, ideally, like the pope” (Kahn, 2009, p. 82). As Schmitt explained in Roman Catholicism and political form (1923/1996), The pope is not the Prophet but the Vicar of Christ. ... The fact that the office is made independent of charisma signifies that the priest upholds a position that appears to be completely apart from his concrete personality. Nevertheless, he is not the functionary and commissar of republican thinking. In contradistinction to the modern official, his position is not impersonal, because his office is part of an unbroken chain linked with the personal mandate and concrete person of Christ. (qtd. in Kahn, 2009, p. 82) The Church also is a “juridical person,” though not in the same sense as a joint-stock company ... The typical product of the age of production is a method of accounting, whereas the Church is a concrete personal representation of a concrete personality. (qtd. in Kahn, 2009, p. 82)

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta We see that political theology doesn’t simply name the process of secularization for Schmitt; it also refers to a specifically Catholic paradigm, which Schmitt proposes as the solution to the modern political crisis of liberal states. It seems likely that it was precisely this at once ‘personalist’ and ‘institutionalist’ notion of sovereignty that inclined Schmitt to support Hitler and the Nazi party in the 1930s, after the failure of the Weimar state” (Kahn, 2009, p. 83).

Kahn goes further, noting that, In “The permanence of the theological-political?” Claude Lefort [1988] argues that religion is an essential (or permanent) part of the Symbolic dimension of the political, even though modern rational thought tends to define politics over against theology. “What philosophy discovers in religion is a mode of portraying or dramatizing the relations that human beings establish with something that goes beyond empirical time and space within which they establish relations with one another. This work of the imagination stages a different time, a different space.” A little further on Lefort states: “Modern philosophy cannot ignore its debt to modern religion; it can no longer distance itself from the work of the imagination or appropriate it as a pure object of knowledge” (223); “any society which forgets its religious basis is laboring under the illusion of pure self-immanence and thus obliterates the locus of philosophy” (224). But Lefort is not arguing for a theocracy. To the contrary: he is interested in democracy as that political form that preserves a sense of the contingency of political institutions and political power: “Of all the regimes of which we know, [democracy] is the only one to have represented power in such a way as to show that power is an empty place and to have thereby maintained a gap between the symbolic and the real. It does so by virtue of a discourse which reveals that power belongs to no one; that those who exercise power do not possess it; that they do not, indeed, embody it; that the exercise of power requires a periodic and repeated contest; that the authority of those vested with power is created and re-created as a result of the manifestation of the will of the people” (225). (qtd. in Kahn, 2009, p. 95)

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Lefort’s conclusion raises questions about the permanent success of this distinction: Rather than seeing democracy as a new episode in the transfer of the religious into the political, should we not conclude that the old transfers from one register to another were intended to ensure the preservation of a form which has since been abolished, that the theological and the political became divorced, that a new experience of the institution of the social began to take shape, that the religious is reactivated at the weak points of the social, that its efficacy is no longer symbolic but imaginary and that, ultimately, it is an expression of the unavoidable and no doubt ontological difficulty democracy has in reading its own story, as well as of the difficulty political or philosophical thought has in assuming, without making it a travesty, the tragedy of the modern condition. (“Permanence,” 255)” (qtd. in Kahn, 2009, p. 101, note 45)

Another reason for focusing on its religious roots is that populism raises the fundamental question of the relationship between citizens and their representatives—the people and the ruler. This is a theological question about the nature of power, the source of authority and “the gift of ruling.” Power, authority and rule are not reducible to realpolitik in the violent “state of nature” nor to the social contract that somehow regulates this original anarchy. Rather, they are themselves subject to reciprocity and gift. Beyond the formalism of election, which can only think of the people as a compounded mass of individuals, sovereignty and truth usually lie with the people in a more dispersed and variegated way—hence the popular saying, “Vox populi, vox Dei.” The genesis of modern political thought and its reflection on the locus of authority, however, does not exhaust itself in the transition from theism to deism, that is sovereignty personal and transcendent vs. sovereignty impersonal and immanent. It is useful to recall that the vast majority of religious miracles are procreative ones. In fact, foundational narratives everywhere tend to be stories of deviant reproduction, be it the violently severed coitus of Uranus and Gaia or the miracles of the Bible: the God of [Carl] Schmitt’s [orchestra of Nazi] theologies is the one who creates a world out of nothing, man out of mud, woman out of male bone. He is the God of the virgin birth and the reanimation of the dead, and even the sacrament of the Holy Communion stages the emergence of a human

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta body, flesh and blood out of flour, water, wine. Modernity plays the Greek model of paternal power, whose central topoi are patricide and contested paternity, against Jerusalem, whose central topoi are obedience and filicide. In text after text, it is the position of the father, that is sovereignty personal and immanent, that is at stake, be it as a model of political sovereignty or, on the contrary, its antithesis. Spinoza’s radical rejection of revelation and especially of the creatio ex nihilo (and with it, on Schmitt’s terms, the decision ex nihilo) is indeed an all-important moment in the struggle. The thesis of a self-generating world in which God and nature are one, however, is a de-anthropomorphization but always also a de-paternalization of a divine that seeks to put an end to the theo-political infantilization of the subject. It is no accident that Enlightenment’s most famous formula—“Enlightenment is mankind’s emergence from its self-incurred immaturity”—calls for Mündigkeit, the state of legal autonomy that ends childhood, a term that etymologically stems from the old high German “munt,” which roughly coincides with the power of the pater familias over wife, children, and servants. (Weineck, S.-M., 2009, p. 205)

The visualization of the symbolism was made apparent by Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will.

Political Form The political gives form to society by shaping social relations and staging them. In other words, in its refraction through symbolic locations, society is formed as well as is meaning. This becomes clear against the backdrop of European pre-modernity in which the kings’ immanent and transcendent bodies, modeled after the double nature of Christ as human and divine, served as this symbolic location by functioning as a link between the sensible and the supersensible worlds. The King’s body incorporated society. It provided the form of social relations and focused the symbols and practices between the human and the divine. Modern democratic regimes keep the place of power empty in both the banal sense and in a more laden sense. Despite the principle of popular sovereignty, the people do not occupy this symbolic place of power due to the ontology of their division, nor to the procedural constraints of democratic institutions.

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Lefort locates the origin in the political and not in the individual as liberal thinkers do; he must confront the question about the origin of rights as transcendental society without the usual tool of the social contract as the universal principle of right, the veil of ignorance, and so on. On the other hand, rights like democracy cannot and indeed should not be fully realized. Lefort nevertheless insists that, in a democratic society, everything must be open to debate and contested.

Arbitrariness and Worship Giorgio Agamben, who wrote the book The kingdom and the glory (2011), rediscovers that the theological notion of economy is the frame for thinking about government administration. Yet, we seem to have to dropped the idea of an empty throne as interpreted by Agamben. We do not need metaphysics to set up the important distinction between rule and government (protest) as its canonical formulation. We regard the metaphysics together with its theological backing by the distinction between God’s absolute power (potential) and very power bound by his previous decisions. It is both the anticipatory and ideological formulations of power, which, in fact, do not need kings nor gods but just the other, the social, to come into operation. Agamben’s world is created by God as a perfectly ordered one, providing for anarchy and worldly matters to let people choose, in freedom of behavior, in compliance with creation. Any government has to provide for the means to attain and execute a power—the arbitrariness to celebrate compliance. The uncertainty of the future is translated into the observation of the arbitrariness (the risk or danger of any decision actually being taken) because any decision may turn out to have been the wrong one, but only decisions are able to deal with this arbitrariness because, without it, there are no decisions to be watched, but only all ideologies of rule. As to inherent necessities, Weber (1968) talked about charismatic authority, which is a bundling of arbitrariness and maybe one person summing up all the fear indicating a situation, or a single person who can deal adequately, or rewarding the person with some sort of worship. Arbitrariness, tremor, and glory are always measured against sacrifice or foreseeable reward in the actual consumption. If we were to turn back to Agamben, who would know that the surprise is that there is no throne that is emptied. The throne is a network in its own uncertainty. There seems to be no

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better way to actually lose sight of both the inside and the outside of the form of these networks. The throne is, in fact, a kind of a network which is relaxed. This all happens before any God or king is put back on his throne. We need not metaphysics to set up important distinctions between rule and the ruled. The distinction between God’s absolute power and the very power bound by his previous decisions are both anticipatory and ideological formulations of a calculus of power that, in fact, does not need kings or gods, but only other social factors to come into operation to substitute for the metaphysics of the theology of power, whose social function we do not disbelieve. We have to opt for a thinking, a power, that looks for conflicts to be fostered and sown by political sovereigns, and he adds that the economy is balanced to bring to the political, perhaps. This is what the commandments were trying to look at or discover: The throne is the doubling of the body of the king into one which is mortal and another which belongs to some immortal Kingdom, which later will witness his transformations from Augustine to the parliament and then bureaucracies, over and again distinguishing the person of the king from his function. Any system of power which consists in non-positively determining the actions of subordinates, but in giving that specific backing to deal with decisions they will have to make for themselves, and an empty signifier marks the undesirability of issues, and we have human beings who must then decide similarly. Niklas Luhmann (1982) conceives of the power of any other symbolically general, generalized medium as a zero method. “Emptiness” thus means negation, and negation means reflecting the boundaries of a concept, opening the possibility of either accepting or rejecting it, depending on the overall assessment of a situation. A system of power is always in place and demands that kind of attention—not to be disturbed by having to look at the mortal body, the gestures, and the facial expressions, its truth, its forcing, its weakness. Furthermore, as we have pointed out previously, “The real—the social reality—[is] more than individual relations but the establishment of the difference and the discovery of sameness. The ‘real’ is not seen from without by an observer; it is instituted in and by the social relation. One does not give in order to receive; one gives in order that the other gives” (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, p. 134). To take it one step further, “The essence of social reality is more than a struggle for mutual recognition, rather it is the movement of a collective subject. But far from abolishing the plurality of subjects, this ‘we’ only exists

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in so far as each affirms his subjectivity. The behavior of the empirical subjection cannot be deduced from a transcendental concern. Such a concern constitutes itself in experience” (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, p. 134). Between history and action lies individual praxis. According to Gramsci (1971), Marx and Machiavelli share a common political realism which opens up a common originality of their work—the real is what it is—and there is nothing to be changed. Yet, both indicate a practical dimension. Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach is not at all the rhetoric of engagement, moral choice, or activism. It is the assertion that the real is, through and through, praxis and is precisely the praxical contradiction of the present and points beyond it. (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, p. 134)

In Machiavelli (1532/1985), there is an anticipation of a philosophy of praxis: “Knowledge of the past teaches what men are; the reading of empirical history is a reading of human nature” (pp. 117–118). Realism consists in acting such that, the present situation being brought back into the terms of a past one, we can either apply to adequate remedies previously conceived or imagine other ones as we are aware of the errors that have been committed. In all events, our power of intervention is based on the consistency of human passions and of the struggles, which oppose everywhere, a privileged class and the people, which is the origin of all the difficulties and all solutions (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, p. 134). Although Marx and Machiavelli were apparently writing for different classes—Marx for a revolutionary proletariat and Machiavelli for the prince, a moment of reflection shows in both cases the relation of the work to its public was similar, which instructs us today (Gramsci, 1971). True, The prince was, in appearance, for the ruler, but the ruler has to justify domination; which means, in fact, to hide it. Machiavelli’s recipes may be correct, but the prince could not publish them. The implication is that Machiavelli was writing for someone else; the rising, yet still timid, bourgeoisie (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, pp. 134–135). “Machiavelli is a political realist in so far as he recognizes the historical task that the new bourgeoisie, blinded by tradition, has not yet understood” (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, p. 135). It is important to note, as we have in the past, that, “If he draws our attention to the nature of power, reveals that it is a human creation arising from the permanent conditions of social struggle, it is

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta because he is speaking to those who are blinded by the Power, who haven’t yet understood that it is within their grasp if they are the stronger. And he shows the price of its conquest” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 133). The prince thus appears to have the same demystifying function as the “philosophy of praxis.” There arises the idea of an historical task, which the Prince recognizes and must render accessible to the consciousness of the people; that is, communication operates with the twin boundaries of accessibility and understanding. (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, p. 135) The overthrowing of the traditional authorities and mystification permits the establishment of a new authority, the task to which all else is subordinated. Here, the Machiavellian defines in its place the Marxian intention—that is, a Prince–Party as mediator. (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, p. 135) It is this realism which must also be put into question. In the infinity of the life of people, history is the repetition of the project which constitutes society: the assembling of men/women who situate themselves as depending on the same public thing, acquiring a collective identity, inscribing their respective positions in a common space, their institutions in a common cultural space and, determining themselves as a private community vis-à-vis foreign people, find a certain equilibrium in the relation of force (even if put into question) and are led by the will of the Master, that of the most powerful, or by that of the majority urging them to find the means for their security and development. (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, p. 135) There is no contradiction, no dissolution of charge. Historical reality is a repetition, but the repetition itself is historical, taking place in specific structures and institutions which offer a finite number of choices. Machiavelli, in his writings of Rome, of social divisions out of which equilibrium emerges, shows this as threatened by ignorance, rapacity, and fear, and insists that the equilibrium is only maintained by the suggested combination of the Republic and Imperial ventures (Lefort, 1974). Yet, this is one variant—he leads us through different positions that people are good, but can be misled, or the Republic hopes for the best masters, but as theater of civil strife, it can be dominated by one stratum. There is no one, fixed regime, no positive politics; there is the real-historical, indeterminate and constantly changing (Lefort, 1974). (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013, p. 135)

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We make Machiavelli’s realism our own when we observe that the conquest of the real, i.e., making it understandable and accessible, is accomplished in the critique of each image at which we would be tempted to stop. What emerges is a project of defying the logic of the political. Does not realism consist in defining the terms of a situation, or ordering them in the form of a question? The question is more fundamental than the explicit problem of classical, political philosophy—that of the good life in the city. It is the political question which grounds the social. The emergence of the social to itself is fundamental to a definition of the political. The political is co-institutional with the social. It is societal self-reflection; the image that it gives itself of itself in an attempt to conjure away and defuse the problem of social division. The political is representational, symbolic, but as such, it cannot exist separately from, or independent of, the social that it represents or brings to awareness. It is with their general division, where power takes from, that it is necessary to begin in deciphering the political and knowing how power is effectively circumscribed, how it is represented, how it represents itself to the other, how the collective representation invests it in the social body, and what simultaneously happens to the determination of nature and the gods, how it separates itself, and is perceived as other, at a distance, and above society, how the separation of power is modified and examines all the consequences which come into being in the form of representation and the effect of socialization. There is a general task which the political in any society—even when it is not articulated, self-consuming as the political, different from other spheres— must fulfill. A logic of the political can be established. It will be the logic of a unity in difference whose differentiations are not aufgehoben but remain open to the contingencies of historical creation. The system is unstable, ridden with conflict; change is always possible, never necessary. In our modern society, the system may not be overthrown, but rather we may be able to change the course of its process of self-determination (Foucault, 1972/2010; Luhmann, 1982). Across his works, the question to which Lefort returns is about the nature of the difference between various forms of society, such as the democratic, the totalitarian, and the theocentric. He holds that there must be an element that determines the differences between these societies, one that is not reducible to the empirical facts of politics (i.e., actors, sites, and institutions). He names this pre-social, primordial element “the political” and articulates it in different ways: as the mode of the institution of the social, the principles that generate

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society, and the overall schema governing its configuration. Failing to identify the political, Lefort warns, we are confined to our experience of the world and deprived of the knowledge of its production. To put it in practical terms, we are left unable to grasp the principle which articulates social division, and which produces markers that order the human experience, such as the economic, the religious, and the juridical. (Here, he has in mind political scientists who neglect to ask how politics was differentiated from other spheres of activity in the first place, or social scientists who study one or the other marker without apprehending them as parts of a whole.) Lefort observes that the political gives form to society (mise en forme) by shaping social relations (mise en sens) and staging them (mise en scène). Drawing on the theoretical framework of Merleau-Ponty, he argues that each society locates its origin outside of itself, that it can only “open on to itself by being held in an opening it did not create” (Lefort, 1988, p. 222). In other words, it is its refraction through this symbolic location that grants society form as well as meaning. This becomes clearer against the backdrop of European premodernity, in which the kings’ immanent and transcendent bodies, modeled after the double nature of Christ as human and divine, served as this symbolic location. By functioning as a link between the sensible and supersensible worlds, the king’s body incorporated society: It provided the form of social relations and focalized the symbols and practices through which the link between the human and the divine was staged. It was the faltering of the symbolic efficacy of this regime, Lefort writes, that led to the democratic revolution, the “profound mutation” that disincorporated society, dislodged it from its foundation in divine will, and inaugurated political modernity (Lefort, 1988, p. 13). This is the context of his famous declaration that modern regimes are characterized by the dissolution of traditional markers of certainty and the evacuation of traditional sources of power. These regimes are differentiated from one another by their relation to the symbolic place from whence power stems. A (modern) democratic regime keeps the place of power empty in both the banal sense that it cannot be claimed by a particular entity, and in the more laden sense that the symbolic origin of society is maintained but not filled. Unmoored from the body of the king, society can no longer be incarnated in a single body or connected to a transcendental other; it remains plural and indeterminate. Lefort insists that despite the principle of popular sovereignty, the people do not occupy this symbolic place of power due to the ontologization of their division, as well as to the procedural constraints of democratic institutions.

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Although Lefort sees in Machiavelli’s glorification of social division and autonomization of the sphere of politics a premonition of the modern democratic project, he locates its inauguration in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which confirms the self-institution of society by refusing to anchor these rights in an ultimate authority. As he sees it, the Declaration does not establish rights whose content is positive, fixed, or universal; it establishes, rather, the political institution of rights, or the right to have rights, to borrow a phrase from Hannah Arendt. In order to gain these rights, social groups must struggle against one another in what he calls the theater of political contestation. The rights they gain are not incontrovertible; because they lack a final guarantor, they can become fossilized or even be revoked. Lefort’s purpose here is twofold. On the one hand, because he locates the origin of the social in the political and not in the individual, as liberal thinkers do, he must confront the timeworn question about the origin of rights in a detranscendentalized society without their usual tools—the social contract, the universal principle of right, the veil of ignorance, and so on. Thus, he anchors rights in the domain of the political, conceiving of them as potentialities that can be activated or deactivated. On the other hand, Lefort holds that rights, like democracy, cannot and indeed should not be fully realized. Lefort nevertheless insists that, in a democratic society, everything must be open to debate and contestation. After all, he avers, this is the ultimate advantage of democracy, the primary consolation prize for the loss of traditional sources of authority and knowledge. Contra Marx, Lefort believes that rights play an important role in this process; rather than point to a dialectic of alienation, they establish and protect the capacity to think, to question, and to debate, albeit revocably. A society that is lulled into the sedimentation of power or tempted by its substantiation is en route to what Lefort calls the totalitarian adventure, which subsumes fascism, Nazism, and certain forms of communism. In these instances, social conflicts become so momentous that they can no longer be resolved in the political sphere. This may be due to insecurities relating to war or economic hardship, to disputes over shared values and norms, or even to the breakdown of the authority of those who make public decisions. In such cases, Lefort writes, an entity can appear that offers to fill the empty place of power, to retrieve social identity and coherence, and to unify society in a single body. It is important, however, not to mistake Lefort’s totalitarian entity for the Schmittian sovereign; underlying it is a desire for the People-as-One, and not for The One. Neither is the totalitarian entity identical with the premodern

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king; while the former refuses the notion of a transcendental place, the latter served as a personified reference to it. Lefort insists that the threat of totalitarianism cannot be abolished; it endures as a latent and ineradicable response to the indeterminacy of modernity. In his essay, “The permanence of the theologico-political?” Lefort (1988) puts forth an analysis of the relationship between modernity and religion, a term which he circumscribes within the premodern experience of Christianity while acknowledging that it can also refer to a transhistorical sensibility apart from the Church. For centuries, Lefort writes, the religious and the political performed concomitant symbolic functions and formed a theologico-political matrix capable of withstanding any conflict that arose between their institutionalized bodies. This matrix was destroyed in the 19th century, a “historical fact” to which the rise of a new form of power testifies (p. 224).

Discourses of Power Manuel Castells’ (2009) systematic description of power within technological networks is predicated in an observational method, and is geared towards examining the relationships both within, between, and outside of differing sets of networks of various sorts. Antonio Negri, on the other hand, poses a framework for understanding power that is metaphysical and ever-present in reality. Drawn from the philosophical works of Machiavelli and Spinoza, Negri’s formulation of power specifically stages a tension between authority and autonomy that opens the space for technological and institutional revolution beyond the constraints of extant society. Both thinkers provide accounts of the transmission of control within networks, and both cite their reliance on Foucault in their respective formulations of power (Castells, 2009, p. 10–11; Negri, 1999, p. 27–28; Hardt & Negri, 2009, p. 22–28). With Foucault already pointing to power as reliant on network structures, the contest for a concept of power becomes not a case of if power is networked, but rather how it is networked. The context of the disciplinary structures of power is spatially simple: Foucault (1977) notes that disciplinary monotony requires enclosure and isolation for both Castells and Negri; the concern over networks of power is due to a shared belief that these networks no longer face inwards as in the institutions of the disciplinary society, but rather that they face outwards onto the global stage, constituting a global economy of power,

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if you will, the distribution of effects within a global network of networks (p. 126). Negri, on the other hand, operates from the other direction. Foucault’s work on identifying the institutionalized nature of discipline is important, as it locates the departure point from the previous logic of disciplinary power into the new logics of networks Empire is thus a model of capture, and not a model of cohesion, such that all existing networks already operate in a shared and centralized logic.

Emptiness in the Political Capitalist society was able to survive the decline of paternal figures, becoming a society without fathers organized upon a narcissistic logic whose pathologies would no longer be neurotic conflicts with the law, but narcissistic ideals of performance and borderline demands of eros. Everything turns around the key notion of identification, and the starting point for explaining a plurality of sociopolitical alternatives is to be found in the degree of distance between Freudian ego and ego ideal. If that distance increases, we will find the central situation described by Freud: identification between the peers as members of the group and transference of the role of ego ideal to the leader. If, on the contrary, the distance between ego and ego ideal is narrower, the leader will be the object-choice of the members of the group, but he will also be part of the group, participating in the general process of mutual identification. As we recall, Claude Lefort defends a related idea that, in a democracy, the symbolic place of power should be empty. For Lefort, the only way to sustain the antagonist ground of society is by showing how nobody can speak in the name of the people. The difference between Lefort’s and Laclau’s positions is stressed by Zizek: The emptiness of the “people” is the emptiness of the hegemonic signifier whose particular content is “transubstantiated” in an embodiment of the social whole, while the emptiness of the place of power is a distance which renders every empirical bearer of power “deficient, contingent and temporary.” How could this emptiness establish the people as a collective identity? Social life is a space of multiple and contradictory demands, coming from multiple and antagonistic political actors. Any collective identity must deal with this ontological fact by creating a chain of equivalences between those contradictory demands. The emptiness of the signifier expresses the fact that

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the unification of the people must incorporate heterogeneous social demands. What constitutes the political body isn’t the sharing of a common identity, but the drawing of antagonistic lines of exclusion within that body. Ernesto Laclau (1994), for example, understands “empty signifiers” as signifying the necessary ambivalence of any system of power, which consists in not positively determining the actions of subordinates but in giving them specific backing to deal with decisions they will have to take for themselves. An empty signifier marks the undecidability of issues only we human beings may thus decide.... The so-called empty throne splits the attribution of power into an acknowledgment of the figure of the king on one hand, and of the grounding of the system, on the other. The glorification (doxology, doxa logia, “glory saying”) of the king and his kingdom is both the celebration of any convergence of the figure and its grounds and a constant threat to withdraw the respect for the figure when seen to be no longer in congruence with the grounds’ empty signifiers. (Baecker, 2012, p. 13)

Hierophany Perhaps a closer examination of the nature and role of hierophany is in order. Mircea Eliade’s Das Heilige und das Profane opens with an homage to Rudolf Otto whose Das Heilige, published in 1917, serves as the backdrop for Eliade’s own work. The particular virtue of Otto’s study is its focus on the modalities of religious experience rather than simply on religious doctrine. These experiences, which he characterized as numinous, are shown to be manifested as “wholly other” (ganz andere), as something fundamentally different, in the presence of which humanity “senses profound nothingness.” For Eliade as well, sacredness names a type of separation and to designate that which carries the sacred beyond the familiar world, he employs the term hierophany. Regardless of the religious tradition, “in each case we are confronted by the same mysterious act—the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural “profane” world. The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree; they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies, because they show something that is no

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longer stone or tree but the sacred, the ganz andere. (DeCaroli, 2012, p. 113)

In Eliade’s (1961) formulation, sacredness names a technique for stabilizing reality, for constituting reality insulated from the contingency and transience of normal life. Sacredness, he writes, is “saturated with being,” and for this reason, “the sacred is equivalent to power, and, in the last analysis, to reality.” The correlation between sacredness and ontology is a hallmark of Eliade’s writing, and thus it is somewhat surprising that Agamben does not reference him. The manner in which Eliade articulates the relation between sacredness and ontology parallels Agamben’s own investigation of the bond that joins sovereign power to the paradigm of Western ontology, and, as is well known, Agamben’s analysis of this bond, disclosed principally in the pages of Homo sacer, is intimately connected to the peculiar logic of sacredness. “[R]eligious need,” Eliade writes, “expresses an unquenchable ontological thirst. Religious man thirsts for being. His terror of the chaos that surrounds his inhabited world corresponds to his terror of nothingness” (DeCaroli, 2012, p. 126). For Eliade as well, sacredness founds community, but it does so within the more expansive context of founding the world, which it accomplishes by way of what we might call ontological orientation. “The sacred reveals absolute reality … and at the same time makes orientation possible; hence it founds the world in the sense that it fixes the limits and establishes the order of the world.” The desire of “religious man” to live in the sacred, Eliade tells us, is equivalent to his desire to “take up his abode in objective reality, to avoid the disorienting relativity that accompanies purely subjective experience, and to live in an orderly world with well-defined limits. If the world is to be lived in, it must be founded—and no world can come to birth in the chaos of the homogeneity and relativity of profane space. Thus, the act of profaning this world, which Agamben enjoins us to do, entails not only the un-founding of a particular form of community, but the emergence of a profound ontological disorientation, the vertigo we know as nihilism” (DeCaroli, 2012, p. 115). There is a paradox, Eliade tells us, that is present in every hierophany, even the most rudimentary, in which the objects of the sacred world, even though they are marked as wholly other, ganz andere, are in truth the very same objects of the profane world. Between the sacred and profane orders, there is no essential difference, only a difference in efficacy. “By manifesting

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the sacred,” Eliade explains, “any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surroundings.” Instead of embracing the transitory nature of the world, and of ourselves, we convince ourselves that what we are, what we have, and what we know are more certain, more permanent, than they are. Moreover, it is this act of clutching or clinging that produces anxiety/suffering, not only because these things will inevitably be lost, but because the mental state we inhabit while trying to convince ourselves of their permanence is delusional and this delusion causes us to make false distinctions. Once we make these distinctions—often taking the form of dualisms—we then live our lives in reaction to them by desiring one and hating the other. The more we suffer, the more we attempt to solve the problem of suffering by seeking permanence, not recognizing that this pursuit of permanence is what caused the problem to begin with. Indeed, all too often the categories we use to comprehend a problem, and thus use to frame the solution, only reinforce the problem itself. Hence, only an insight distinctive to Buddhism, but is at the heart of Agamben’s critique of western onto-politics as well. In both cases, the manner in which we frame the problem must be undone (DeCaroli, 2012, p. 127).

Chapter 3

The Hidden Power: Kama/Eros Introduction The empty search for power seems to focus on worship, glory, supremacy, but all these features seem to be ruled by another force which, while not explicitly announced, appears in various forms. Thus, before we get to the driving source of any, including modern Western, power—the subject—and the crowd of postmodern writers and their presumed ground of all human events, the desiring machine, this source has to be articulated in terms of Eros in the West and Kama in the East. The reason is this: There was and continues to be a great cultural emphasis, with furious controversies, concerning sexuality, as well as the women’s sexual revolution, all the way to “sex sells everything” advertisements. The sexual revolution seems to have transgressed all the limits of civilized societies. Moreover, such a revolution also opened a pathway to reduce all human self- and other awareness to events “below the waist,” so insistently extolled by all postmodern explanations in terms of Freudian psychological dramas, Lacanian psychologically laden rhetoric, with all the varieties of understanding of the human world in terms of “floating phallic signifiers” and “vulva” envies. The final outcome: we all are desiring machines and, to speak with Nietzsche (1969), all life as will to power is a battle of all against all. There is even a common suggestion that the Indian Kama, appearing in the form of the heroine of the epic Mahabharata, Draupadi is pure erotic passion and fire, such that all men of virtue and valor are ready to go into a pit full of poisonous snakes to win her (Narayan, 2013). The limit of any civilized propriety is transgressed, and these forces cannot be stuffed back behind a safe boundary. The much-advertised and propagated clashes, called “cultural wars,” seem to be ideological, but their subject matter is “who sleeps with whom” and how such bedsharing should be called in terms of gendered and degenderized language, and ultimately the wars are driven by powers which are expressed in murderous terms pervaded by uncontrollable passion. “Leaders,” whose task is to manage the affairs of the state, spout irrational rhetoric, with followers cheering, attributing divine characteristics to such leaders and worshiping them—a return to the “you will not have any other gods but me”

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tradition. Those who dissent do not have different views—they are evil, to be eliminated. And poor science, the darling of the modern secular West, does not produce medicine but a “mark of the beast” to be denounced. Of course, the denouncement is couched in terms of modern secularism as “freedom of speech” which for them includes shouting and screaming to deny the others’ right to freedom of speech.

Revolution Let us turn to some more recent events, revolutions, one of which was the refusal of women and younger generations to live under the “normal” rules. The basic denominator of this and similar revolutions is “sexuality,” with a claim that its origin is the recognition of the Freudian “discovery” of libido and its unconscious power. Libido is a force which, in its striving, has no specific aim, no specific objective. This means that this striving infects everything with its desire, and thus everything in the world is its object. No prohibitions can quench this striving, and all invented limits by civilizations are frameworks within which this striving is permitted, i.e., how it becomes sublimated (Freud, 1989). This “understanding” coincides with the appearance of significant works concerning matriarchy, wherein the power of feminine eros ruled the world, and the way that patriarchy has oppressed such eros; there was no room for doubt that all the cultural limits, expressed morally, religiously, biologically comprised a terrorism against a free sexual life, having no necessity. Moreover, this revolution has two directions. First, it is a liberation of woman: She had no right to show her erotic passion. Even in sexual relationships, she had to be a passive participant to gratify the needs of man. Any erotic passion could lead her astray with the danger of becoming unfaithful to her man and his moral edicts, backed by divine threats. In accordance with this logic of man’s satisfaction, only the “immoral” street women could lure clients with passionate looks and poses. Second, neither can men be erotic since that would be an expression of feminine “emotionalism,” which men must avoid; after all, real men neither get excited, nor can they cry. Their momentary relationships must be a simple discharge of libidinal excess. This is well-stated in Latin America: “The three best things in life are coffee before—cigarette after.” Since only street women could be passionate, men were always in danger of ending up in the embrace of such women, and at the

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same time, accusing them of blinding and ensnaring them, despite the fact that they, too, wanted to be erotic and desired and even be praised for their fire. Here, the street woman makes the man transgress the limit which he himself has imposed. Her power is irresistible. The efforts to break the rigid limits appeared in the “sexual revolution,” which, nonetheless, is limited by the assumption that all activities of life are sublimations of libido; thus, releasing libido from restrictions as a flow of unrestricted sexual engagement is identical with freedom. The young generations of that time, 1960–1980, discarded all limits and “loved in the open,” but only sexually. This “revolution” became global news and a global pastime. From magazines through television advertisements, it was taken for granted that sex sells everything, and in fact, that helped promote this revolution. Every young person, especially young women, could not wait to shake off the garment of innocence. The greatest shock was the behavior of the young women of the middle class leading the parade of liberation. Before that, only girls of the lower class were “bad and easy,” specifically as a way to capture a youngster of the middle, or even upper, class in bed—we see the popularity of Payton Place (Metalious, 1999). A long tradition held a myth that the lower classes have no morality, and the girls are a little “darker” and dress in a “trashy” style. Yet, the middle-class revolution signaled that the “double standard” no longer held, where the “duty” of men was to sow their wild oats until they, too, had to settle for a respectable and responsible life, while the duty of a woman was to raise a family and keep up the moral standards of the family. Even if it were not the most popular, the most impressive shock of the sexual revolution was a text, Sex and the single girl (Gurley Brown, 1964), where a single girl and a bed were for sex. It is to be noted that, before that time in films and television programs, even married people went to sleep in separate beds, and suddenly such separation vanishes. The shock: A single girl has a full sexual life, never boring and stuck with one partner; her choice of lovers is limitless, and all are “interested” in her; she is a role model for everyone to be with anyone, anytime, and in bed. This phenomenon is an extension of the Middle Eastern patriarchy, depicted in royal and divine terms: The lords could have a harem for sexual use—no eros was required. Now, women and men can have as many partners as they can for a one-night stand—a mutual harem on the run. Although erotic passion has been limited to libido, no one can deny its force, and thus all the moralizings against libidinal polymorphous perversion, against the sexual revolution, miss the more pervasive erotic presence. Free

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sexuality is a disruption of moral order, and even the sinfulness of such a disruption, resulting in immoral promiscuity. The battle against it is heard from pulpits, in the promotion of new laws against gay rights, against who can have sex with whom and in what positions, in calls for family interventions and lessons promoting abstinence, and finally in lessons on how to avoid “temptations.” Even ideologies are brought to bear, promoting street brawls against “gay pride” parades, and the latter are accused of promoting Western decadent secularism. The Orthodox collusion with Putin is quite telling; Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, calls Putin “a miracle of God” and the current war “a godly affair” which will keep Russia safe from the horrors of gay pride marches. This went even farther when a priest in Rostov, next to the Ukrainian border, declared that the Russian Army was cleansing the world of a “diabolic infection” (Kaplan, 2022). This anointment is equivalent to raising Putin to the status of law above the “earthly laws of mere humans.” A note aside: Putin’s autocratic friend Trump was extolled by American Christians as the “gift of God,” sent to save America from satanic, secular democracy. The fundamentalists worship Trump and Putin for saving Christian morality, i.e., banning sinful sexual relationships. Yet, it is most interesting that none of the objections against perverse sexuality are sexual, but are furiously passionate, caught in erotic fire—not against the decadent others, but against their passion in defense of a minor biological spasm. This is to say, such a spasm could not provoke the passionate fury unless it contained a presence which could not be coded by all the “how-to” texts, based on the positivistic depiction of body as a sum of parts related to other bodies as sums of parts. In brief, positivistic pornography. The promotion of the cultural wars might speak of sexuality, its deviance, its political rights, but such promotion is fueled by impassioned hate, calls for mass murder, the rhetoric of demonic forces sweeping the globe, an appearance of a mood space seeping into all daily discussions of any topic.

Passion The constant appearance of erotic passion, even in its suppressed form as sexuality, indicates that its force is not to be denied. Yet, it is equally important to extend the various forms of its suppression in the modern day—above all, of its disarming by something deemed empirically obvious: sexed bodies or, more generally, sexuality. For the modern age, its preeminence came with

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psychiatry, proclaiming the doctrine that all human encounters are sexually laden. This notion of sexuality is regarded to be scientific and therefore universal. This means that art is equally a way that sexuality manifests itself, and it does so explicitly when bodies or their parts, are exhibited in “the flesh.” To extricate Western Eros and Indian Kama from this sort of sexuality, it is best to show the limits of the basic psychiatric position, claiming that the sex drive or libido, without any involvement from Eros and Kama, can account for all human affairs. Moreover, equally significant is the imposition of libidinal interpretation on artistic creations of our own and other civilizations. And, as mentioned briefly above, the impositions can take various layers, from moral to political, and even “religious,” where the body is a priori evil. While we develop the logic of suppression of cultures and, by extension, arts, it is necessary to explicate the more concrete and subtle ways that the suppression might play a role. To these ends, it is best to start with what the modern and postmodern West take to be obvious: life as a biological process, expressed by psychiatry as “libidinal.” This will form a background for the many postmodern “thinkers” to “discover” human life as a “desire machine” (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013). It is of note that the critique of popular culture, by the Critical School, as low, even dehumanizing, dumb, controlling, and manipulating, does not offer any point of “reflection” from which to show the failings or inadequacies of the production of popular culture. After all, the contemporary political critics of the Critical School claim that popular culture would not be popular if people did not enjoy it. In short, there is nothing wrong with it, specifically in light of postmodern claims that all cultures are equivalent and need no standards by which they could be evaluated. The Critical School points out that, to detach society from mass-produced culture, one needs classical art that would both reveal another possibility, as well as the banality of the global cultural industry and its attendant popular politics that appeal only to emotions, slogans, and popular stars. Yet, while the Critical School is dissatisfied with the popular culture industry, it has not paid attention to pop culture and its self-proclaimed criticism of high and popular cultures. This criticism can be seen in terms of parading and/or flaunting the parts “forbidden” by “normal” people. In principle, it is not art but the showing of as much as possible of the parts that are below the waist. Thus, one begins with gyrating hips, twisting, grinding and bumping asses, “alluring” poses, holding on to the crotch, and making the movements of having sex, indeed, stripping down to naked skin. There is no discourse apart from a statement, “Everything is sex,” or “Let’s get it on.” Pop

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culture is not limited to paintings, music, dance, or above all, cinema, since the same pop stars appear on billboards, in magazines, in the secret lives of these stars and, finally, in being highly paid prostitutes: Sex for sale, and sex sells everything (Sloterdijk, 1987). Finally, pop culture is a highly dramatized and accentuated contrivance of bare-bodyness; it does not refer to anything “original,” and thus it has led to the grand theories of “simulacra.” This means that everything is an arbitrary contrivance, that there is no difference between pop culture’s images and any other reality. After all, the images not only advertise, but the very commodities consumers “consume” are coextensive with the styles of the pop stars—every girl must look like the latest Madonna or Lady Gaga, and every guy must wear baggy rapper pants. The rap beats are the beats in every car, heard from every mall, and “walked” down the street. Indeed, pop culture is not representative of anything because it is a mass media culture. In this sense, it has a horizontal, self-referential process: One image, style, body contortion, beat, refers to other images, to other contortions, all leading to the contrivance of the “latest” and equally boring contrivance—boring since the “fans” are already tired of the one they have screamed with, and they are looking for something else, and the something else will not outlast its own fame. Thus, self-reference does not point beyond itself, but is a way of proliferating pop culture as the sole “reality” present across all media. What gives pop culture intellectual credibility is the modern invention of psychological accounts of all human behavior and self-understanding. Such accounts purport to show that human actions, purposes, high “ideals” are driven by forces, functioning “below the waist.” The libido, the phallic signifier, the biological drive to propagate appear in a sublimated form as culture. In brief, paintings, music, dance, and even rituals, are expressions of suppressed sex. In this sense, the pop culture “theorists” can happily proclaim that gyrating hips, the exhibition of all the parts that are at the background of all culture, are plain, naked truth. And the naked is nothing more than a bundle of desires for coupling with anything that will fulfill momentary desires—without personalities, passions, “getting to know you”—that are at base indifferent, marketable commodities. Yet, the significance of pop culture is that it has become popular culture, and mass media has become adherent to its requirements. Indeed, the images of what was once popular culture—the media personalities—became reinterpreted in terms of the language of pop culture: sexuality, brutality, and banality. Even the pastors, the priests, the pop stars exploit the vulnerable without any passion—just simple momentary release. Those in power did not express

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erotic desire, nor did they expect such a desire in return. There is nothing dangerous in this sexual exploitation for those in power—except that they are dangerous to the exploited and abused and must hide their actions from the law. Among numerous others, the founder and the stars of Fox News regarded their positions as license to demand sex of women working for the organization. Their extolled nationalist conservative Fuehrer, Trump, was at least honest and open about the use of his position to demand simple sex. As Jonas Mekas once told me, after Stanley Kubrick, there is no need for avantgarde (Pilotta & Mickunas, 2013). To avoid the banality of desire as a machine, it is advisable to open broader horizons, all the way to philosophy as “erotic wisdom.” In this sense, a brief recounting of Western Eros and Indian Kama as a pervasive dimension is in order. The force of Eros and Kama is the ground of all reflection in the sense of a feeling that senses itself and, in this sensing, intensifies itself. When one expresses a desire in a look and gestures, the desire spreads to others, who in turn express the same desire, and in perceiving their desire, one’s own desire intensifies. One’s desire is directly reflected in the others’, and the desire in the others is directly reflected and intensified in one’s desire. Desire feeds on desire in a process of reflexivity. While being limited to an individual, and to someone, the erotic desire transcends their singular beings and tends to generalize itself by eroticizing everything. The spread toward generality is at the source of the Platonic concept of erotic transcendence. According to Krueger (1978), for Plato, the erotic compulsion to transcend all limits to the limitless, to infuse itself into every order of being, does not depend on its being banned, suppressed, for its continuous expansion; its own nature is a compulsion to universalize, to encompass and to pervade the All. Its spread is both horizontal and vertical. Hence Eros is the very transcending movement which finds no other issue, no other desire for anything except itself, a desire of desire, an eros for Eros. One could even say that its search for wisdom is its “highest” happiness. The human desire to attain the highest object, the perfect and ideal, is driven from within, and yet at the same time, it is attracted by Eros, which envelops the object of desire. The highest object is desired, not because it is the highest, but because it is desirable, it is charged by eros (Krueger, 1978). The human desires the highest object because the object is itself enveloped by eros, by desire. Human erotic desire is here desire of desire. Eros, pervading and driving the human toward the highest, is an eros which is attracted by itself, by its own infusion of desire in the object of attraction. One could almost define the erotic drive in terms of the Nietzschean

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(1999) notion of life as a dark and mysterious force which desires itself. In this context, it should be obvious that philosophy as “erotic wisdom” is constantly denied and opposed by religions and their narrow rigidity, which allows for and demands the reduction of all terms to sexuality and thus the battle over all sorts of “deviances.” If the divine magic invented “male” and “female,” then the sexual transgression of such magic is a disruption and even destruction of divine order—demonic, calling for passionate hate. Yet, a fuller understanding of the problematic of Eros, and the way it appears in civilizations, such as India as Kama, requires a brief delimitation of the “libidinal” preoccupation in the West. Because of the tendency to regard all phenomena in terms of “bodies” that have properties to be judged, not by their expressive features, but by their “moral” look, then it becomes necessary to note how numerous expressions—either in behavior or even in arts, through Western and other traditions—were libidinized or “sexed.” This was of profound importance in Asia, manifesting in suppressions and destructions. We already explicated the logic of suppression, but now it is important to show what the troubling reasons for it are. The latter are, at base, of two kinds, with other less significant variants. For the modern West, it is the reductionism of everything to the so-called empirical presence of bodies, needing no explanation for their interaction. The latter is fundamentally sexual and serves biological impulses, one of which is propagation. Since the West became dominated by Mid-Eastern personality cults, it is religious. Here, the body is regarded as a priori sinful and even evil, exposed to the temptations of demonic forces, usually manifesting in women and their cunning use of sexuality. We shall see how the latter, even in its biological functioning, must be guarded against. This sort of guarding involves arts since the latter can contain images of “temptation” and corruption. This preoccupation is spreading across the globe in the form of taking out and excluding deviant books and even those which might contain secret demonic messages. This practice extends the tradition of burning books which express different and immoral understandings. The question then is: Being a simple biological function, sexuality could hardly cause such a fury called the “cultural wars.” The so-called libido consists of a momentary spasm—as we mentioned, the saying goes in Latin America—three fun things in life are coffee before and a cigarette after. It is usually contended that the Freudian thesis of libido as a sex drive would have to be opposed to Platonism, if not to Sartre. For Freud (1989), the libidinal urge has no transcending move to the infinite, the ideal, no vertical ascent to

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the perfect, no telos. There is no direction for the libidinal compulsion. It is more like a force seeking to discharge itself, seeking to die. The libidinal tension seeks to release itself through gratification, it seeks to subside, at least for a moment; its orientation is toward diminishment, toward the abolishment of intensity, toward sleep and death. Such libidinal energy is sexual, physiological, but not erotic. In his late writings, Freud (1989) discovers Eros and realizes that it is distinct from sex and from libido. Here, eros can be in opposition to libido. Fully satisfied libido leads to inactivity and finally to death—the death instinct—while eros, as the spirit of life and regeneration, is brought in to rescue libido from self-destruction. Eros tends to keep the human intense, awake and alert; it wants union, it desires to be with, where the desire of desire is here augmented in mutual excitement. The rapist does not merely want to discharge his libidinal energy, to reach a state of “death.” He wants to be desired, to be intensified and alive. He wants to feel regenerated, elevated by the other’s desire, to be elevated as someone who is wanted, craved, and exciting. He does not seek release and death, but intensification, rejuvenation, and life. He seeks to charge his otherwise dead world with eros, with attraction; he seeks to have a living world. Of course, he does so in a vengeful way by attempting to prove his superiority and “pure” masculinity, removed from passion; after all, passion that envelopes everything, is for him equally present, but also to be passionately destroyed. He hates being attracted and hates the demand to escape the encompassing force of Eros. Thus, he must reduce the other to a body that he can possess and demonstrate that the victim has no power, cannot be a presence he would never wish to escape. This will become more important in face of the various ways that cultures attempt to suppress the erotic and its dimensions by turning against it in violent fury. Although Freud’s distinction between libido and Eros is valid, his conception of libido at the outset has the fundamental characteristics of Eros and is open to an interpretation which would make it akin to the Platonic notion of Eros. While the libido seeks to discharge itself, it is not merely a wish for sex or for sexually enticing objects. Any specific direction of libido is a culturally instituted aim; the erotic drive has no natural aim. It can be attached to everything, and yet it is not satisfied with any specific object because, without eros, libido would not have the positive, self-generating force to transcend all terms. Of itself, libido tends toward death, toward an equilibrium, a kind of nirvana. Regardless of how far the circle of libidinal activity is expanded, it reaches an end in an equilibrium of satisfactions and ultimately in the extinction of the fire of life. The erotic passion comes to

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rescue sex and libido from extinction. While libido tends toward the elimination of tension, eros surges with the increase of tension. In the language of the 19th century, eros is the “life instinct” whose tendency is to increase, prolong, intensify, and not to subside and diminish. The rediscovery of eros amidst the libidinal drives lends the libidinal force its movement beyond sublimation, beyond frustrated sexuality. It is the discovery of a force which ultimately seeks itself, even if it is inadequately understood in terms of libidinal drives. Indeed, this very inadequacy compelled Freud to take up eros as a genuine principle, and not as a phenomenon of psychobiology. It seems to be a force which moves on, which overflows every term until finally it has no other issue, no other object except itself. This is quite obvious, even in the Freudian logic of the libido: Since all cultural creations and achievements, lending meaning, height, and purpose to life, are products of repressed libidinal drive, they ultimately reflect that drive. But this reflection is precisely inadequate to account for itself, unless it is at the outset enveloped by eros. The products of the erotic drive are the very objects of desire in which the erotic drive invests itself and resultantly meets itself. Although without an aim, without a specific term to which it could ultimately attach itself in order to attain satisfaction, the erotic drive is incited by its own creations and thus by its own excitement, by its own desire. In meeting its own products as results of the erotic desire, the desire encounters itself: It is a desire of desire, a desire of the eroticized world and not the naked, factual world, or the organs, or of factual sex. Indeed, the Freudian libidinal, erotic drive seeks to discharge itself, to dissipate, yet it does possess the force of creativity. When the concept of creativity is related to sublimation, it achieves freedom from, and undermines the very notion of, libido as a mere sexual drive. Thwarted libido tends to infest all events, all things with an urge which makes them into objects of libidinal objects for release. Yet, in a strange turn, no particular object, natural or cultural, can count as its proper object. In this sense, libido, of its own compulsion, is frustrated and thus inventive of new forms of gratification: it is pornographic. While the libidinal force may have an aim in immediate gratification, no specific gratification is adequate to its needs; suddenly, libido is all erotic and thus is the changeless force behind every form of gratification and sublimation. In this sense, it has no telos although its “endless” drive does not contradict the Platonic notion of Eros as teleological, as having an infinite aim. It should be obvious that infinity cannot be an aim since it offers no direction; in another sense, if the libidinal force were to seek an infinite aim, it would of necessity be frustrated, would have to

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transgress every limit, and comprise an endless and aimless drive. Its only recourse is to turn upon itself as an inexhaustible transformation of libidinal forms. This very wandering, transformation, seeking itself, is its end, its telos; and it is equivalent to the Platonic telos as the endless aim offering no direction and no attainment. In this sense, Freud is not a denial of Plato, but an affirmation of the Platonic “teleology” at the libidinal level enveloped by erotic passion. In this sense, any passion expressed in art or other cultural creations, including religions, is an erotic creation, invested and enveloped by erotic passion—and the latter can appear in any aesthetic creation because erotic phenomena are the sensuous attractive–repulsive, exciting, and troubling (Mickunas & Menon, 2014). The libidinal urge, pervaded by erotic passion, being without an issue apart from its own gratification, and failing that, sublimation, destroys any notion of norm, be such norm natural or cultural (religious). Such norms would be mere deviations, byways through which this urge moves in its endless quest. But, quest for what? Obviously, not for any object. This is already evident in Plato’s aim at the infinite, and more obvious in Freud’s libidinal infestation of everything with desire. It is a search for libidinal reflexivity, i.e., libidinal desire’s search for itself, for its own desire of desire. Only such a reflexivity accounts for the restlessness, never exhausting itself, never reaching a final term, and never culminating in a satisfaction. It seeks to feed on itself. It is a self-motivated and ultimately self-generative process. This reflexivity appears even in auto-stimulation which is excited by phantasms expressing one’s desire in the other’s languid receptivity, excitement, trembling voice, closed eyelids, and heavy breathing. The phantasms are not of the organic constitution of the other, but of eroticism haunting the constitution. The main issue with the Freudian eroticized libido is its location in the subject. This appears quite obviously in the notion that the libido’s energy “infests” the environment and its own creations with its own dissatisfactions and torments, while the environment, left to itself, is a sum of things with indifferent characteristics. Yet, subsequent arguments will show this not to be the case. In this sense, libido might be a sex drive, inherent in the subject, but the erotic passion, in its sensuous presence, is an erotic phenomenon, irreducible to “sexed bodies.” The very transgression of all created and encountered events as erotic is an indication that the desire of desire is cosmic. To understand this claim, it is worth noting the contributions of Sartre (1956), who extricates desire from psychology and detaches it from sexuality:

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Erotic desire is not an aspect of some subjective interiority, of some interior psychological state or sex drive which is projected onto others and objects. The erotic desire is an expression which is not reducible to the bodily dimension of life. It appears as something that can capture the human, thicken and cloud the awareness, abolish human situatedness and the movement toward temporal possibilities and purposes. As a phenomenon, erotic desire is read directly in perception and has a force of immediacy capable of capturing, arresting, and enveloping the participants. This envelopment is what constitutes the desire of desire, the expressed erotic want of one being for another, where eros seeks to encounter this want, and not just a body. What attracts and captures is what appears as sensuous on the body surfaces, just as does a “look.” When a person gives a “dirty look,” the latter is neither reducible to, nor analyzable in terms of, empirical features—the distance between the eyebrow and eyelashes, between mouth and nose, cheek and chin; the look “haunts” the visage and is read directly, without any intermediaries. Nowadays, it has become in vogue, even in public institutions, to speak of “body language,” obviously pervaded, even if not understood, by the sensuous dimension, the expressive envelopment. Sartre is quite clear on this point: While writing at night by a window, with a light cast upon the paper and outside the window, there appears a “horrible face.” I would want to jump up and check whether my doors were locked. I might want to escape through the back door, but the horror is at the front and at the back door, enveloping the environment and horror on my face. For Sartre, the erotic is a more intense, creative, and moving phenomenon, irreducible to body parts. Thus, what are paraded as “sexy bodies” for Sartre are not erotic but pornographic—someone walking and manipulating body parts for exhibition or sale. Such parts might address body parts of the other, calling for a point-for-point reaction, but without passion. Such pornographic bodies are positivistic, and, as the saying in Latin America goes, modern Westerners “love positivistically.” An entire “beauty” industry is premised on “improving” different body parts, each designed to correlate to the improved body parts of others. Sartre’s arguments for the primacy of the aesthetic, or the expressive, suggest that all perceptions of things require a sensuous medium, whether the medium is “the golden tone of the day,” as per Van Gogh, or the look of erotic desire that envelopes and pervades everything. What is important is that such media are not caused by things, by body parts, by sexual drive, and even by a will to live. In principle, they need no accounting by anything else (Sartre, 1956).

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It can be said that these phenomena are equivalent to a “principle.” The notion of principle leads directly to the Greek notion of Eros and the Indian awareness of Kama (and the other aesthetic dimensions, from Shakti through Maya and Lila, to Kali), as principle, origin, archē of all life. For the Greeks, everything that exists must be brought about by something other than itself, or it must be ungenerated. Every principle of generation must in itself be ungenerated in order to be a principle, an archē, an origin or source. What is ungenerated has its generative power within itself. It is self-generated. Such a principle can never reach its fulfillment in something that it generates. What is generated and propagated is imbued and propelled by the force which generates it. This force must be present in and through everything; it must pulsate through the All. Eros, by generating all life, is itself ungenerated: It is an origin, a principle. It can never be satisfied with any limited term, event, or object that it generates. It seeks no specific term except the continuous generation and, resultantly, itself. It is not a movement toward self-realization in various forms of concretion. It is simply a recognition of itself as the restless force aiming at the transgression of any generated object. In the final account, it does not desire the object, but desires the desire expressed through the object. In this sense, both Freud and Plato are correct in lending Eros the transcending movement, the latter in terms of continuous vertical ascent, the former in terms of sublimation and repression. Yet, what accounts for the movement in both cases is the erotic principle which, in its very essence, cannot seek anything else but itself; the self-seeking of an origin is an endless process. The same is present in Kama, as shown by the birth of Draupadi in the Indian epic story Mahabharata: She is ungenerated, born of her own fire, although her playful Kama and her weaving of Maya encompasses all and thus generates all living phenomena, an all-pervasive and all-passionate encompassment of all (Narayan, 2013). And in arts, this force meets itself and continues to spin out more passionate images, each reflecting the others as the desire of each other. All one has to see are the impassioned stone figures of Khajuraho, breathing and flowing, exploding with Shakti forces, and yet gazing at each other with benevolence, mutual and gentle joy, and above all kamic ardor. And this is not just human to human, but all to all; every figure is enamored with every other figure, mountains with rivers, with stars, the Sun. Here, no oppression is exhibited, no degradation, no moral judgment is imposed. It is mutual and all-encompassing cosmic passion in all aesthetic creations, such that everything reflects this aesthetic ardor. It is different from

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the negative side prevalent in current Christian fury and hate. This fury is full of sadistic passion to murder, destroy, break all the rules for the Lord.

Escape: Power to Control One of the first signs of escape from this encompassing power is a specific kind of sacrifice—under the guise of transcendence, encompassing all sorts of rituals of purification, enclosure, rejection and denouncing of “this world,” and even suicide. Sacrificial transcendence has at least two moments: placation and surrender of something to which one is extremely attached. Such forms comprise a movement away from dissolution and submersion in the immediacy of life’s passion. In placation, one does not aim at atonement for guilt; rather it is powerlessness in the face of some inescapable force, some attraction encased in strict demands. Here, taboo is beyond good and evil; yet, it is at the same time an all-pervasive dimension which reflects across everything that is to be avoided. Sacrifice, here, is a way of establishing a defense against being submerged, drawn in, and incorporated by the irresistible play of erotic cosmos. In some cases, this form of sacrifice can turn to radical virulence and call for the sacrifice of those who manifest this cosmic passion although the latter will be marked as demonic, decadent, and evil. It is hateful and must be purified by diverse means—currently, by the demand for the mass murder of the deviants. The purifications are signs of the efforts to enhance and maintain transcending efforts, bent on providing a way of detaching from the allurements of the erotic, playful passions and their threats. Such efforts appear mainly in prophetic and patristic mythologies. This may include sacral secularisms such as Marxism, fascism, and historicisms, all proclaiming that the immediacy of living must be sacrificed for some vision of the future, of the good, the true, and valuable. Thus, the furious attacks on those, mainly women, for being a threat and danger, and above all polluting, unclean, and to be avoided. The contemporary cultural wars manifest this effort to abolish the dangers of erotic passion by reducing it to “normal” and deviant sexual relationships. Transcending immediacy reflects various facets, including the inadequacy of the world, the society, their fallen state, their unholiness and darkness, the need to violate, hide them, and to sacrifice them for the sake of the transcending movement. Such rituals reveal the fascination, the attachment to the dissolution in the passion and fire of the cosmos. To establish edicts, laws,

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prohibitions, and rules is to establish an extremely strong attachment to, and recognition of, what one attempts to transcend. Every detail of the erotic danger is reflected in the laws and prohibitions. Those in power, the patriarchs, who write the prohibitions, are the ones who are completely attached to the erotic world. The laws offer an opposite movement to the “ways” which comprise the reflective understanding of the passionate domain. The transcending reflection reveals an escape from the dimension of dissolution, reflects all the traps by positing prohibitions and edicts. The prohibitions reflect what is there as dangerous and sinful, indeed belonging to the dark and demonic side—thus the escape demands, as mentioned above, the sacrifice of the very traps which are constantly enticing. The violent mortifications of the flesh of Mid-Eastern religions and their Eastern Orthodox extensions, are a few examples of this movement. It seems that this form is one of reflective immediacy; the law, the prohibition, is written in the flesh, is functioning in its immediacy of excising the enticements. A peculiar limit is imposed on this reflective immediacy: Only one side of the dissolving rituals is allowed: the painful. While in such rituals both pain and pleasure, joy and suffering are intermingled at an ultimate level of intensity and fire, in the transcending edicts, only the pain of excising should be appreciated. Here, the joy is one of releasement from, and passionate obedience to, the law of the Lord—all the way to sadistic holy war. At this level, it is clear that the oppression of the cosmic passion is severe, demanding its complete abolition and even destruction, but it is equally clear that this passion pervades every crevice of the suppressing edicts—even if in a negative way of “guarding against,” and thus of recognizing, its full cosmic force. If, for Mid-Eastern personality cults, the “Father” as the “Lord” of the universe is deemed to be cosmic and demands the surrender of all passions, he, too, wants passion from his servants. Thus, Augustine (1993), way back at the beginning of one trend of this suppression, presented an edict stating that the Lord needs new souls to worship him, to love and adore him, but that the creation of such souls requires humans to have sex for procreation. Sex, as a bodily attraction, is a priori sinful and evil, and thus the sex act is sinful; Augustine thus demands that the sex act should be “suffered” and not enjoyed, and the sex partner not loved since, if a human loves something of this world, he/she detracts love from the Lord. In brief, the Lord wants to be loved and is jealous if the total cosmic passion is not directed toward him. In artworks, this passion for the Lord is depicted in images of “impassioned adoration” of the Lord, his son, or his prophets. Obviously, even the rituals of purification,

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rejection of worldly joy, cannot abolish the cosmic passion. The upward movement of all the saintly figures, with raised and impassioned faces, are efforts to say that the passion is not abolished but “belongs” to some “pure” world—with the Lord. But is it the case that, in the pure world, the passion, the erotic fire, will be different from the cosmic? Thomas, who has attempted to “accept” this world, a world of created things, although he attributed passion to the soul, also sought the “other world” where he would encounter the ultimate joy by being face to face with the Lord, but lo and behold, his second greatest joy will be watching the tortures of the “damned.” The latter are, of course, the ones who could not escape the solicitations of this world, could not transcend the enveloping passions, and resultantly must pay—for the passionate enjoyment of the saints. This is a passionate sadism. The extrication from the cosmic passion, requiring purification and selfsacrifice, i.e., sacrifice of the erotic and creative flood, suggests an effort to maintain individual identity or, as Freud (1989) stated, defense of the ego. Thus, the transcending move is also a promise of an “eternal” life, a continuity, and even an escape from time as one image of the dynamic cosmic play. It is no wonder that the arts, depicting transcendence, going up, reveal a hope of continuity of identical self—as long as one submits to the rules of oppression and suffering. The extremes of such submission and defense of the ego appear in monastic images: Men, walled in against the worldly solicitations, perform rituals of flagellation, prostration, supplication, and adoration in order to be pleasing to the Lord or his son, who will guarantee eternal identity—no dissolution, no play, no reverie, no submersion in the encompassing cosmos— only passion for Lord, or son, or prophet. No love for anything in this world— remaining celibate. This attachment to an individual, such as the Lord, is equally a request that he will offer love in return. Even women are convinced or forced into convents, or at least into celibacy, with the seeming ability to escape the aesthetic cosmos—but to no avail. Just to see the images of the “blessed” women, the stories of their “confessions,” reveals the enveloping presence of this passion. They enter monastic life and are devoted to the most “perfect” man as wives. They suffer, torment themselves, awaiting the hour when they, too, will enjoy the embrace of their beloved and offer to him their innocence. It is he who will be present to maintain their eternal lives. But it has to be mentioned that, to reach this life, the women must satisfy the sadistic joys of their “spouse.” They must sacrifice all the joys; indeed, they must suffer, deprive themselves, and even approve of their suffering as the “will” of the “Lord,” in order to be worthy of his embrace. Mother Teresa depicts

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well this state of affairs in a “conversation” with her beloved Jesus. He demands sacrifices of her since, by becoming his wife for the love of him, she should not be afraid to take the last step. And she agrees and promises to serve only him and his glory, and to be only his. But, at times, she begins to doubt his love and suspect that he has abandoned her for others. In desperation, she tells him that, in his harem, she must be his first one, that no one loves him as she, and that he should reject all others and be hers alone. She reveals her wish for singularity, exclusivity, even in a heavenly harem. While demanding that she oppresses the cosmic passion, he demands of her sacrifices and promises an eternal reward—with him, at least in her view. No doubt, he will keep his harem as befits his tradition, not of Eros, but of sex (Mickunas, 1992). The attractions, which one must surrender, will have to be designated negatively as “evil, low, hateful.” The transcendent being, as a reflective relief, will then be regarded as “lovable, good, high,” and at the same time, revelatory of the hateful negativity of the cosmic dissolution of individuality. This designation can become virulent and destructive of the solicitous domain in order to become totally free from it. The destructive movements by all sorts of orders, and their artistic images and stories, reveal this tendency. It can also endanger the being of reflective transcendence, turning it into an object of hate and deprecation for demanding sacrifices and ascesis. Thus, one lives an ambiguity. The erotic fiend, the passionate involvement, wants to devour me, to dissolve my uprightness, myself; it must be resisted, and any giving in, a most desirable way out, becomes attached to an ambivalence: wanting and rejecting, and hating the very attraction, and simultaneously, the very need of rejection of both the surrender and transcendence. It is pain, yet in the transcendence of it, it is a sweet pain of revenge, a sacrifice which is worthy because it is thought that in the denial of the attraction, the other is punished, pained, and is either moved to assume reflective transcendence upon her own degradation, or must be destroyed. The “burning times,” or the torture and burning of “witches” is most telling, where artistic depictions of women as horrible, ugly servants of the devil dominate the landscape. They will be seen and will have to see themselves as ugly and sinful. This is the juncture at which morality emerges, teaching only the feminine the virtues and prohibitions which man has already inscribed in his flesh and has shown his worth. Now, she must become beautiful and pure in terms of his designation. It is no wonder that the Baptist Convention in the U.S. just announced that women cannot be pastors; they should submit graciously to man’s edicts (Southern Baptist Convention, 2023).

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Contemplation, as one mode of reflection, practiced by such mythological figures as Shiva, is most revealing. In masculine depiction, Shiva is striving to liberate himself by transcending the immersion in the cosmos, pervaded by Kama, Lila, Shakti, Maya, Kali. The guiding signposts along the way of this move are detachment, non-participation, purity, and science. Yet, one must recognize that the signposts signify two structures: First, a singularization, centering on some univocal signs, such as soul, mind, and spirit, all being substantial yet pure, untainted by the dissolving flesh. Second, a convergence with, metaphysically speaking, purity itself, pure light, pure bliss, and purity that go beyond such descriptions. One encounters here the entire Platonic tradition of pure beauty, and all the purification means that sway through monasticism and pure scientific rationality. The dissolving eros, the beauty of the sensuous, the vital are mastered, subdued, and dismissed. And yet it returns to reflect the pallor of the transcending purity in the rituals of rebirth, in the deadly sacrifices for salvation, salvific oil, in rites of rejuvenation, in the rising from the dead, and the ejection from the Earth’s womb. Be that as it may, there emerges a striving to reflect upon and transcend the reverie, the erotic corporeity. The creative origin is being shifted toward salvific purity. The cultic orgiastism is transformed from an erotic dissolution into a sort of decadent pastime of a Roman hero. Regarding the erotic reverie, he is biologically cynical. By transcendent reflection, yielding pure episteme and practical sophistication, we know how things are and how they work. Although the female might show up at Spring–Easter rites, Mary is already regarded as a “natural creature,” mortal and fallible. Christostomus was no longer held back from calling her “despicable as all women,” while Epiphanius and Nestor are firmly set against any Mother-Mary cult (Muehlmann, 1984). In this context, the verdict of Luther against some of the papal rites is completely understandable. How can one make Mary divine: a most gruesome superstition. Calvin concurred. Here is a turn to Paulinism and the prophetic–salvific reflectivity of transcendence. The erotic flesh is a dirty, although biologically unavoidable, duty. Here, all reverie was replaced by barren walls and a stern mien. Punishment without warmth, boring and dull, ascetic, extending the Medieval monasticism across entire populations. For Calvinists, there is no passion, but only a “duty to love.” This is the consequence of the transcending reflection in its salvific form, denigrating everything in the face of a presumed “higher unity.” This salvific transcendence has two forms, one religious, and the other secular. Both seem to converge in the effort to extricate from the passionate cosmos, the source,

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the dynamic, and to attain salvation in a future, “higher state.” In this context, the cultural wars are waged between a full and multitudinous passionate life and a life reduced to functional sex. The latter is permitted if done in the right way by “normal” people.

Sexy and Erotic Bodies There is no other shrine as sacred as my body, and there is no world that is not my body—so goes the awareness of India. To understand this pronouncement, one must understand the difference between the Western body and the Indian. It was already noted that all events are encompassed and pervaded by the Eros/Kama cosmic play, and this cosmic presence is available in the West. Yet, at one level, the destiny of Eros in the West was determined by Plato (1974) and his arguments for a vertical aim at perfection, at absolute “beauty,” wherein resides “Platonic love.” Thus, a youth begins the journey by loving his friends, later by turning to women or men, and moving on to universal ideals, comprising changeless identities. This vertical ascent is the desire in all desires—it is, according to Plato, the essence of desire. This desire seeks immortality and immortal beauty. The latter is deemed to be classical beauty, having no lacks or faults, having no imperfections, composed of perfectly harmonized parts. At the outset, even an attraction of youth to another youth is possible in the presence of a body that already points to perfection, indeed to the “perfection of an Olympic body.” Yet, this beauty is also an “embodiment” of a beautiful soul, expressed through the body. In this sense, body is significant because it points to “internal intentions” oriented to specific objects. The Western, Olympic, or even Aryan bodies compose signs of internal orientations to tasks, and thus bodies are semiotic systems. Every part has a function and must be developed accordingly as if it were facing a specific task—a Bauhaus body with vertical, phallocentric orientation, a body that, in all of its parts, must be upright and hard. Under the skin, the Westerner must sense an Olympic ideal, must look phallic. Yet, this vertical Eros, this passion for perfection, extends to the Western “love” for science and technology, the love for “hard facts” and scientific “penetration” into the secrets of “Mother Nature,” and the reduction of the latter to functional requirements. In this sense, even “natural” bodies are technical, and the latter require that everything turns on “hard shafts” that are forever vertical and need constant improvement for perfect performance—this is to say, phallocratic

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engineering, organized world, and functional bodies. This Western body is an expression of Western identity, appearing on beaches where the Olympian Aryan children play, revealing the inscription in their bodies of hard and heavy metal weights designed to “acquire” a Bauhaus edifice and phallic look. To be comical, although not too far off the mark, it could be said that the entire Cold War turned upon the phallic shaft, where competing technocrats constantly surpassed each other in demonstrating that they could have a bigger and harder rocket. These bodies walk rigidly, displaying their parts for the admiration of “sexy” partners who are equally interested in obtaining “sexy” bodies to accommodate the parts of the Olympian phallocrats. The encounter, as already suggested, between such sexed bodies is positivistic—part for part. It ought to be obvious that these bodies are intentionally constructed to exclude the spontaneous passions, the cosmic envelopment, although they are instructed in how to pose, wiggle, and contort themselves to be “sexy.” Indian bodies “think” differently. As already suggested, the cosmic passion has no “position” at which it could be located, and hence does not raise the question of “space–time” locations. Cosmic passions thus have no directions, no “signifying” power where parts would point to parts. But in this sense, the aesthetic passions disclosed in arts are “dangerous” to any position, disruptive of the posited “perfect” orders. Let us listen to a story of the way the world in India is self-created from its own fire. Before the appearance of the world, so goes the story, Vishnu (a divinity) is lolling in his watery essence; meanwhile, Brahma approaches from above and begins a controversy as to who is the creator of the world. During their controversy, from the waters rises an enormous lingam (phallus) and expands to transgress all limits. The side of the lingam explodes, from which emerges Shiva, the creator and destroyer of worlds. Having received recognition from Vishnu and Brahma, Shiva declares that he is born of Kama, who is the source of the cosmos. Meanwhile, Shiva is a dancer, and his dance unlocks a cosmic fire that not only explodes the hardness of the lingam, but breaks all containments. Shiva is depicted as living on Mount Kailaso as a naked yogi. Although he wants to reject all cosmic involvement, he is burning with the fire of Kama. His consort, Parvati, Devi, Kali, is the most magnetic passion of the cosmos, capable of enveloping the strongest rejectors of the cosmos. Shiva is her complete servant, and his efforts to reject her make the cosmic fire burn more intensely. And thus, Shiva is equally called not only “Shiva Nataraj,” but also “Shiva–Kali,” having the fire of feminine Kama. In short, no one can escape the cosmic fire and the passions of Kama. From this cosmic fire, with its Kama passion, not a single

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body is contained and enclosed in a rigid posture. The bodies of men and women cannot be contained within their form; they do not enclose their fire or shakti, their cosmic energies, their passions; everything explodes beyond the skin and abolishes simplistic bodily identity. Thus, the bodies have no vertical, frontal, left, or right orientations, which are required for purposive engagement with discrete objects. The bodies are explosive but not hard—flexible, dancing, graceful, capable of living the formations of all worldly events, assuming the positions of cobras, tigers, streaming rivers, and the path of the Sun, revealing each position as yoga— passionate, and without any restrictions, prohibitions, taboos. One prays anywhere since cosmic passions cannot be locked inside some spatial location or temporal point. After all, the cosmos there is not reduced to a sum of things arrayed one after another, one next to the other. One can “worship” the cosmos totally naked, without any embarrassment, under an open sky, caressed by breezes and tickled by grass blades. One cannot be separated from the cosmos by some attire, hidden from the solar waves. This belonging with the encompassing passions, the aesthetic cosmos, allows one to look at the others with a radiating magnetism from which one cannot turn away. Here, all metaphysical limits, including aims, have no bearing. The transgression of the singular is the same as involvement in the Kama passion of every event, in the Lila (play) of Shakti, cosmic energies. It is equally obvious that the cosmic Kama fire abolishes anything vertical on which to attach hierarchies of beings, allowing some to be more important over others. These pliant bodies do not offer their parts to solicit the parts of others, do not disclose the demeaning of others or shame, as if one were transgressing some rule or personal identity. There is graceful flexibility without prohibitions, and thus no sublimation to be adjudicated from above. Yet, the aesthetic sensuality of Kama is nowhere abandoned, so that even the very cosmic figures are enveloped in the sensuous Kama passion, such that the latter is full of respect, without any libidinal purpose of propagating the species. The sensuality of Kama is not depicted as seeking some aim, as if to become released, as if to discover an aim in final balance. Men are equally graceful and flexible, without an Olympic, phallocentric shaft around which women could twine. They, too, weave and twine and breathe with ardor. In this sense, the body is a disclosure of the cosmos, such that one could say: In this body, there is Ganges and Juma, Sun and Moon, all sacred places. Never have I encountered a place and temple for joy as is my body. This conception is apparent in “temples” with a very unique relationship between architecture

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and dynamic plastic arts, disclosing the same exploding and radiating energy, comprising their own constant creation of a transgression of all limits. After all, art is nothing other than a disclosure of the formation of cosmic Kama relationships—the latter showing no preferences of who, with whom, or with what, no normative statements about which creatures “belong” together by categorical distribution. All is enamored with all. It is equally astounding that the fire of Kama radiates with sensitive intelligence, exploring all the figurations of yoga postures as aesthetic passion. The artworks disclose a society where no oppression, no gradation of erotic passion is manifest. Sensuous sensitivity to nuances is not transgressed, and the deepest contemplation is a gentle smile with erotic radiance. This radiance seems to want to tell the onlooker that these figures have understood everything (Lingis, 1985). It is most significant for the understanding of the difference between Western sexuality and Indian Kama to note the absence in the bodies, enveloped and exploding with passion, of any hint of sex. Although naked, these bodies maintain the simmering fires of the cosmos, display and maintain the erotic intensities without any sexuality of libidinal release. As was suggested, comparative cultural studies methodology can be enhanced by the presence of phenomena in one culture that allow the disclosure of suppressed phenomena in another, and in turn, demonstrate that the phenomena of the disclosing culture must become suppressed by an imposition of a foreign culture. And the imposition, in the latter case, is the “immorality” of the naked body since it is sinful, to be covered, an object of shame, designed for the sexual reproduction of species—hard, Olympian, functional, and phallic. It must be vertical, pointing all passions to “perfection,” so visible in the postures of grand figures such as saints, encased from tip to toe in heavy robes. Even if nakedness appears in some saints being pierced by arrows, the saint’s body is enduring suffering, with a face elevated in passionate supplication, and not in the impassioned ardor of the cosmos. In this case, even a naked body, as sexed, is deflected in favor of being dressed in “suffering,” following the prescription that sex is to be suffered through, but not enjoyed. Yet, following the logic of Kama/Eros, even if deflected toward and concentrated on another being, the aesthetic passion appears, indicating its inevitable presence. Here, we come to a fundamental question: Is the erotic passion an ultimate threat to any “rule” from above, a threat to the very posture of metaphysics and, indeed, sciences? The banning and demeaning of the cosmic Kama, the passion, by the British rulers of India, and the treatment of the passionate and

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exploding statues as naked, sexual, and obscene bodies, suggests that it is not the bodies that torment the powers of the Empire; the real enemy is the presence that cannot be contained and yet cannot be ignored. Sexed bodies and sex can be controlled, covered up, blanketed, but the cosmic passion is nowhere to be extinguished. What is fearsome is a presence that no human, creature, divinity can conquer or escape. The suppression takes many forms, but the Kama of India troubled the upright British rulers, leading to ludicrous efforts: When a book of poems by a Telugu poet, Muddupalani, titled Appeasing Radhika (brimming with passion), was published in 1910, the British government declared that the book would endanger the moral health of their Indian subjects. In 1911, police commissioner Cunningham seized all the copies and charged the publisher for producing an obscene book (Tharu & Lalita, 1993). It is a strange attitude, presuming that it is possible to ban a book, and therefore, the cosmos which the book discloses can also be banned. This power dominates the entire eminent text of India—the Mahabharata. In this text, the king is expecting the birth of a son, and yet who appears is a female, Draupadi, born in full blossom from her own fire (agni), and thus she is self-birthing, and gives no deference to any of the patriarchal figures. She is the irresistible Kama, erotic passion for whose hand numerous warriors strive; she mocks them and plays with their passions, and thus she is Lila, a cosmic play; she has power over their desires, and thus she is Shakti, cosmic energy; she promises and withholds, and thus she is Maya. What is to be noted is that the Satrya—the warrior caste, as the very essence of patriarchy—are not effects of her, as a cause of their actions. They, too, are swayed by these cosmic powers and passions in ways that they do not recognize. While the patriarchal side is the upholder of dharma, the law that sets limits, in the presence of Draupadi and her erotic fire, the warriors break their laws and engage in passionate strife over her. No law, no rules, can encase this power. Indeed, the final blow to limits is depicted by the myth of Shiva who, as a symbol of cosmic creation and destruction, decides to escape all attachments and contemplate his purity. All is well, except for one problem: He cannot shake the presence of the troubling Kama. Thus, with the power of his third eye, he burns Kama, and as soon as the deed is done, all other divinities show up and demand that Shiva revive Kama because, without her, the universe is dead.

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Body and Passion We already mentioned that libido can be reduced to body parts functioning mechanically in terms of action–reaction, leading to the notion that modern Westerners “love” along the thesis maintained by positivism: as a sum of functional parts. But we can introduce another storyline of the demarcation of spirit and body. Already, Socrates (and many others in different civilizations) complained that he could understand everything, including the ultimate being, if he could only shed his body. Ultimately, this means that only after the death of the body would the spirit be freed from the mortal coil and continue in its pure form. Of course, Socrates was led by a powerful erotic drive to reach this ultimate and pure understanding. During other periods, after Socrates, the body, specifically the body of a woman, became the ultimate site of evil, destined, if not for complete destruction, then at least for its hiding, veiling, suppressing, and sacrifice for “higher purposes.” The efforts to deny the “dangerous” body consist of its reduction to a dead mechanism, functioning with mathematically measurable and predictable results. If there is something like passion, then it belongs to the “inner spirit” or psyche–soul. This is the dualistic metaphysics of mind/body, soul/body, internal/external. Of course, efforts were made to glue these two aspects together. But all efforts failed when one had to prove that, after the death of the body, the spirit will detach itself from the body and find its eternal place—joy or suffering. Yet, even in these places, the body reappears as a requirement for enjoying the fruits of paradise, or to be fried and scream in agony. In other parts of the world, the body looked different. The body there does not exhibit any signs of duality. It rather shows the body as expressive and radiating the very “spirituality” which is directly visible. Not only the body, but all things in the universe, are radiating an erotic passion pervading divine and demonic beings who cannot extricate themselves from the simmering passion either. Without the latter, there is no reality or life, and its rejection means a disappearance of any reality—as in the case of Buddha. It can be claimed that the understanding of body in terms of Western metaphysics cannot be given universal credence and must be placed in the context of MidEastern and partially Western metaphysics and religions. While discussing the body in a religious context, it is necessary to explicate how the body is conceived in such a context. If the body is regarded purely materialistically, acting in terms of causes, then it would be difficult to condemn such a body and accuse it of being sinful. After all, under the laws

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of causality, it cannot act other than it does. For this body, there would not be any shame to walk around dressed only “in space,” and no one could ask of it to feel some sort of guilt. In fact, the body is changing and has no specific unity—it comes and passes, and thus it is scattered in time. Perhaps, then, one should accuse the spirit hidden “in the body” for misleading the body from its innocence toward sinfulness. Somehow, this claim reveals something to be inside-out. Everywhere, the claim is propagated that one must “purify” himself in order to avoid being led astray by the wiles of the polluted and sinful body, and yet the material body is misled by the spirit residing in the innocent body. It seems, then, that the spirit is sinful, but in this case, it cannot claim that it could not resist the influence of the solicitations of the sinful body. If the material body is innocent, what kind of solicitations could it inspire? Here, we face a peculiar ambiguity: The material body is innocent, but it misleads the innocent spirit. The spirit is innocent, but it misleads the body toward sinfulness. This is the crucible which even crushed the claims of metaphysics. The spirit is an entirely different being, and its destiny is an awareness of the immutable perfection of ultimate being; yet, such an awareness is disrupted by the body. Yet, how does such a body, having an entirely different ontological essence—in space, time and motion—affect the spirit which is free from such essence? In this context, Augustine’s (1993) treatment of time and its location in the soul discloses the way theology strives to reject the body. The reason for locating time in the soul is precisely the ontological status of the changing material cosmos with respect to changeless Being. The soul may turn to Being and grow, or it may remain among beings and diminish (magis esse and minus esse). If the soul reaches out toward Being, it becomes stable/permanent, especially when it obtains Being, and if it turns away from Being, it becomes less, leads toward nothingness, and even becomes “nihilated” (tendere ad nihilum, inanescere). He suggests that the soul, wherein resides time, is a place of decision to move either to Being or nothing. A person who selects terrestrial pleasures, material–bodily happiness, the taste of sensuality, the will to dominate, and curiosity selects also the “nihilation,” as expressed in the turn toward the changing and impermanent world, toward nothing, in contrast to the edification, “solidification,” and “constancy” of the self if one decides to turn toward Being. When the soul turns toward what is less than Being, it turns toward the nothingness of the universe. This turning toward the material universe is a “fall” into a world of sin. In this sense, by adhering to temporal things, which are carried away toward extinction–nothingness, the soul is

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mistaken about its wanting to be (esse uelle). It can only have Being if it accepts its true status as turning to what is absolutely stable—in the image of divinity. This divinity alone truly is, and being with it is truly good, while becoming attached to things and bodily pleasures is evil. Thus, the evil is not the corruptible body, but the soul’s choice to be attached to it. In this sense, the soul is ultimately the sinner, while there is no indication that the body is capable of corrupting the soul. After all, the only corruption on the part of the body is its coming and passing, its being scattered, and not its being sinful— unless the soul invests it with desirable features (Mickunas, 2014). In order is a brief consideration of the way that the soul—as spiritual— can continue to be, even if it has not initiated its tendency toward Being and thus remains only as tendency toward the things of this world, i.e., it does not know Being. After all, if the soul tends toward the corruptible, does it not end by passing away, as all mutable things do? Is there any mode to the soul when it becomes attached to the scattering, temporal events? Does such an attachment to material, corruptible events include an attachment to material bodies, leading to the question: Why are these bodies desired by the soul if they do not exhibit “desirability”? Lacking such desirability, the soul must become completely absorbed into materiality, resulting in bodies functioning mechanically—part for part, so well paraded by the entire industry of pornography. But if the bodies are desirable, then they are already “besouled,” and thus the soul does not just want the contingent and temporal body, but something more. This means that what troubles religions is not the sexual body, but the inevitably “spiritual”—erotic and passionate bodies which escape the corruptible, temporal beings. One can say that it is the soul, the passion which sins by being attracted to a great many corruptible events and bodies instead of investing all erotic passion into one all-loving being, hoping, in return, to be loved. Eros, as well as Kama, seek “unity” with themselves; Eros is attracted by Eros. This means that “soul” cannot be divided—it is not made of parts. As is the case with philosophy, passion for wisdom, so it is with everything else; no matter which “school” of philosophy one defends, one does so with the full erotic search for wisdom.

Chapter 4

Eros and Mythos Introduction Our discussion, so far, has disclosed a difference between sexuality and Eros. The prior, in the form of libido, projects a desire for bodily, even a biological need for, propagation, while the latter is a dimension which captures and surpasses all the bodily—sexual—rules and norms and becomes an inescapable threat. In this sense, the various personality cults, the mentioned Lord of Lords, the efforts to obtain power and worship, are driven by sexual, libidinal prowess, leading to the creation of harems and women as objects of sexual submission. Thus, all efforts of such cults are focused on the battle against the “sinful,” and not the biological, body. This is evident in the elevation of the monistic efforts to proclaim that there is a presence of only one Lord and the dismissal of all other “divinities” as false or even evil. When the Judeo–Christian monistic deity laughed the pagan gods out of court by proclaiming its solitary right to the divine attributes, it failed to abolish an elusive, pagan divinity, Eros. Initially, the monistic deity was one minor being in the crowded world of Southwest Asia: There was Baal, Marduk of Babylon, Ninurta of Mesopotamia, Adad of Assyria, Teshub, Ra, and many others. Meanwhile, he began his career as one of the 70 children of El, the Levantine father of gods. His role was that of a minor storm god until he usurped the throne. His primary concern was to defend his prerogative to have sex with anyone he chose. Thus, to Eve’s grateful surprise, he fathers Cain, and he treats Israel as a maiden at the age of lovemaking. What is notable is that this god does not exhibit any erotic fire although he is totally sexed, following and forming a tradition of polygamy. Every ruler and important figure could have many wives. In this context, Eros does not belong and is, in fact, the most dangerous presence and threat to an entity who assumed the title of God of Gods, Lord of Lords. This assumption grants polytheism but demands that no one should worship other gods. Even the Abrahamic covenant with this usurper, Yahweh, is explicit. He agrees to protect the tribe of Israel, and in return, the tribe will worship him. Those who do not kneel before him must be destroyed. In short, he is the protective power, and for protection the tribe must be devoted to him: For thine is the kingdom, and the glory, and the power.

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This is well reflected as one, among numerous other, structural designs: Imperial Persia and the divinities signifying such a structure. It could be said that divine figures are images of imperial power structures; they reflect each other (Mickunas, 2019). Yahweh was not only worshiped, but was elevated to the power of creator, of forming all things by his pronouncement of the appropriate words. When he speaks, things appear. Hence, the divine edicts are not some ethical commands of how humans must live, but they are identical with the way humans and all things in nature are. At this level, we are faced with an understanding of verbal power that becomes coextensive with making, and indeed with an indistinction between word and event. The power holder’s every uttered wish becomes coextensive with law, deed, and reality. The population in his empire owes everything to the Lord and his magic power and thus must worship, pray to, adore, serve, and kneel before him and even his images or symbols. To date, humans go to places of worship and service. While we have indicated this activity to be identical with ritualistic and verbal magic, there is also its extension into the language of social relationships. To date, the personality cults are designed to worship “Lords, Masters, Lords of Lords, Kings of Kings,” and the followers of such cults must live on their knees, slither on their stomachs, sing “praises to the Lord,” go to “places of worship,” be grateful and thankful to the Lord, and pronounce that everything depends on the “will of the Lord.” Suddenly, the minor storm divinity, usurping the throne, Yahweh is elevated to being the Lord with an absolute and infinite power; he knows and does everything—a sort of panoptical being and demands that the transgressors of his rules confess their misdeeds. He is magnificent, perfect, vengeful, and, once in a while, may be merciful. Let us be clear on these points at the metaphysical level. The human being, made by the power of magical words, must continue to be shaped and ruled by additional words. Hence, a human being may be declared a “sinner,” not as some characteristic of his human essence, but as the very essence he acquires due to the divine power of verbal pronouncement. When some high shaman of these personality cults pronounces that a person has been “excommunicated,” it does not mean, as is usually taken, that he is separated from the group, but that he has become, by the power of excommunication, a transformed entity. This verbal power to make and remake is evident from the rituals of “forgiveness.” One can become transformed back into a humble follower, not by one’s own efforts but, in the final analysis, by a declaration of forgiveness by the supreme authority or by an appointed servant

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empowered to forgive the “sinner” and remake him into a worthy being, grateful to the Lord. It is important to understand the extent to which the notion of being a “sinner” is pushed. Being made in the image of the Lord and Master, one is born inadequate, a “fallen angel,” and must be made complete by a magical ritual, usually called “baptism,” where mysterious words are pronounced to ensure that this being is truly a human and therefore a worthy worshiper and, if need arises, an obedient warrior in the service of the Lord’s army: forward Christian Soldiers, Allah is great. Another significant aspect of these cults is the ranking of human beings in a hierarchy of social positions: While everyone is made by the same magic words, in this life, each is destined to have a specific place in society which he cannot alter. If he is born a peasant, he will not be able to become an aristocrat, no matter what he does. It is the will of the Lord that he is born and must be nothing else but a peasant. An aristocrat is born to be nothing else, and regardless of his fortunes or misfortunes, he and his children will be aristocrats. While everyone is equal in the eyes of the Lord, this equality is postponed for a life in the “other world,” but not in the world of flesh and blood. And everyone is watched to ensure that the established order is observed—one cannot escape the all-seeing eye of the Lord. This all-seeing panopticon, appearing in a minor and silly image of Bentham’s (1996) prison, is an encompassing conception of the Middle Eastern world—extending into the all-seeing Lord of Lords. The origin of such a vision is the birthplace of Yahweh: It is a structure of empire. It is not only the emperor who has spies everywhere—eyes and ears that see and hear everything—but the ultimate authority forever knows everything a priori, wherein no one can escape his gaze. Any hope of hiding is completely abolished. The servants, the appointed shamans of this “panopticon” are empowered to “hear the confessions” of the sinners and to pass judgment as to the status of the very being of those who confess. While the shamans act as eyes and ears of the supreme master in the sky, the extent of their vision depends on the total vision of the master: The sinner may attempt to get away with some omissions in the confessional, but he cannot escape the vision of the ultimate master, the Lord of Lords. This is evident from the rituals of the personality cults where no mediating shaman is required for confessions. The individual must admit his misdeeds and transgressions directly to the master and proclaim that he was forgiven and therefore restored to the “ranks of the faithful.” One aspect of this ritual shows up with the so-called “Evangelicals” who are “reborn” as one with their master. The appropriate shouts and noises,

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words repeated from some fable, empower them to become totally different as persons and, in principle, they, too, become empowered and commanded to “spread the word” by any means. The current fever in the United States among such groups to “spread the word” around the globe, which translates into military crusades for the conquest of the “unbelievers” or “infidels,” is just one outcome of such empowerment. Some may object that some members of their group do not use weapons to spread the word but are engaged in doing good works among the poor and the unbelievers—or believers in “false gods.” That may be the case, but using weapons to kill may be more kind than destroying people’s entire worlds as a way of life that made sense, was meaningful, and allowed them to live in their simple ways. To make these people live on their knees in front of imported personalities is worse than death: it is enslavement and the destruction of any vestige of human dignity. Of course, among the fables of the original texts of personality cults, slavery is sanctioned. That is why the slave trade, practiced by the members of these cults, was not considered to be evil. In fact, it was regarded as doing a favor to the unbaptized, heathen savages who needed to be subjected to the true faith and thus saved from their own erroneous ways. As we know, the conquest of the New World included the destruction of total populations in order to make them subservient to the new masters, their angry Yahweh and his prophets and sons. The suggestions so far also delimit an entirely different concept of the human than that offered by philosophy. Not the free person empowered to question and interrogate all positions in an open forum with others including oneself, but one that is “subject to...,” is subjected to edicts, to the various strategies and techniques of controlling human actions and their very essence. There are, obviously, various levels of strategies and techniques which not only address the human, but as noted, primarily invent it on the basis of verbal power. One might want to argue that the human is pregiven and his various characteristics discovered, as would be the case in genuine philosophy, yet one will be hard pressed to offer any evidence of the preexistence of such humans in the unphilosophical tradition prior to their articulation as an “ought,” as permitted and prohibited, normal and deviant modes of being. At the very outset, the humans (and all things of the world) are defined by what they “ought to be” and not “what they are.” Such notables as Emanuel Levinas (1991), while rejecting philosophy, could not escape the pull of this tradition, where the “ought” is prior to everything, where everything is measured by a mysterious infinity who “freely” creates the other. Here, we have a

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reappearance of the arbitrary will at the highest level of the tradition of personality cults. But in all these imperial and divine powers, their servants and worshipers, there is no erotic passion which would encompass and liberate the human from the edicts of the will of masters. The independent and creative Eros, which would move divinities to abandon their narrow and angry limitations of all things within their verbal magic, is never found. There is no joy in this life, and if it is exhibited, then it is to be damned. The damnation appears in contemporary “cultural wars.” Those who deviate from the verbal magic of the creator are absolute enemies, at the service of Satan himself. After all, the only real humans—male and female— are imago Dei, and anyone who fails to correspond to this image is corrupted and designed by Satan to spread this corruptive disease through society, specifically through the young, innocent, and unsuspecting population. In this sense, the liberal establishment, which tolerates the “rights” of these deviants, is also part of the demonic plot. Here, even the sexed, libidinal bodies, even if not erotic, become radically sinful and must be eradicated. Here, we encounter an alliance between autocratic–theocratic global tendencies, such as that between American fundamentalists and the Russian dictatorship—both on the side of the Lord to save the world from the spread of gay and lesbian infection. The attack on this infection is most radical—the invasion of Ukraine on the one side, and a call for capital punishment to be imposed upon all “deviants,” including the demonic liberals who support these deviants. The radicalism is also moved, not by libido, but by passion, which transcends any bodily sexuality—it is the danger from the erotic, sensuous cosmos. This might sound like an exaggeration, but in fact, it is an understatement. Charles Marsh (2022), in his Evangelical Anxiety, tells of his life in such a community. This life is placed in a cosmic battle between good and evil, the Hebrew Yahweh and Satan, between serving and obeying the Lord and the temptations of this world. From childhood, each is indoctrinated with a giddy superhuman destiny, a cosmic entitlement, and the obliteration of difference. It is a narcistic identity of a totalitarian type, with answers for every question. Social, sexual, political, and racial difference must be obliterated and overwhelmed with power. One’s truth cannot abide difference since the latter is absolute falsehood and evil. It cannot be ignored—it must be removed. Race, sexuality, government, and civil rights are defiling forces, and to yield to them is a total ruin of one’s life. What is significant for our theme is that God is interested in everyone’s genitalia and sex, and they are at the center of all decisions. Religious authorities are micro-managers of sexual desires and

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everyone’s body and attire. After all, one is under constant persecution by the evil forces of the world, assaulting one’s purity. To yield to a momentary weakness to premarital sex would cause one to be a fallen being, leading to a suicide. Destroying and murdering those different others is a divine prerequisite and thus not a sin. This context provides a clear indication of the difference between simple sexuality and erotic passion. Here, the divinity and his servants are sexual voyeurs attempting to strip away the erotic passion from the bodies and from the evil world and to make bodies into positivistic sexual beings capable of retaining their “purity.” Purification means discarding the cosmic passions and thus making the purely sexed bodies just that: mechanisms without any attraction. Yet, it is also evident that the evil world is pervaded with passionate solicitations constituting the all-present danger. Thus, such a world must be attacked and destroyed with full erotic– sadistic passion. As mentioned, the one divinity, declaring itself supreme, had to diminish Eros. Yet, in various forms and guises, in various interpretations, it has appeared throughout history and reached our day in a somewhat diminished stature as eroticism and sexuality—in the image of traditional sexed Yahweh. A similar fate befell the power of Mythos: it was submitted to much derision and abuse, yet its resiliency withstood the designs of its undertakers. Of course, the toll was heavy, and the scars were sufficiently serious to detract from the power it once enjoyed. Indeed, there are voices proclaiming that Eros and Mythos are relics, residua of unenlightened ages, residua which are finally swept aside by the light of scientific reason and the understanding of the biological functions of life. Strange as this may sound, one form of this reduction is that Eros is not needed—everything is adequately understood by sex, and this understanding coincides with the prowess of Yahweh. He is to be worshiped for his power, but he is also a power which can possess everything, specifically women, as his and for the fulfilment of his libidinal drive—just as any emperor, all women are, in principle, members of his harem. The reason for being worshiped is to be the most attractive sexual power. Of course, while the Lord of Lords has no passion for the members of his harem, he insists that all women adore him, desire him, are passionately in love only with him. This means that the attainment of power and the worship that comes with it are premised on the sex drive, to be enhanced not by his erotic passion, but by the passion for him. While various reasons are available to account for the meager state of Eros and Mythos in our age, one major reason is perhaps the all-pervasive

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movement toward anthropocentrism and its resultant reductionism of all cultural phenomena, from art through religion, to specific human “drives, needs, and fantasies.” In this sense, Eros is reduced to a sex drive, while Mythos becomes a function of storytelling, of fables, as the generation of cohesion of social life, or the ideological purposes of the ruling classes. The subsequent pages are designed to challenge such conceptions by returning to the essence of Eros and Mythos; this is not to say that the mythical figures will be taken to be something transcendent, unreachable in experience, something extra-worldly: The task is to understand Eros and Mythos within the context of experience, and hence within our world, and why their power is such a danger to the empyreal Lord of Lords and his supplicants. It is hoped that, in this sense, the text will not be speculative.

Eros and Wisdom The poetess Sappho depicts the feminine eros as the great flame that burns with desire for others (Sappho, 2007). The full force of Eros was discovered by the Greeks. In his Theogony, Hesiod (2018) depicts Eros as the creator of all life. When the planet was without seeds of life, Eros infused the Earth with a life-giving power, and the Earth blossomed. It breathed the spirit of life into man and woman, a spirit of unity and unification through which life intensifies, augments, and spreads indefinitely across all boundaries. Eros was considered to be one of the original divinities whose task was to generate and proliferate life. Its tendency to unify and intensify had assumed various forms. Sappho, the poetess, honored by the Greeks as the tenth muse, spoke of a woman’s world, although not in the sense of Greek tradition, where a woman was a wife, a mistress, or a mother. Sappho reveals the unity between poetic inspiration and teaching. Her poetry centers on an idyllic life between childhood and marriage, a period of playful reprieve during which a woman attains the highest nobility of spirit. Yet, Sappho’s unity of poetry and teaching is attained only through the power of Eros, which alone can release the potency of spirit. The feminine eros was sufficiently powerful to create a community of Sappho and her young charges, to join souls into a higher unity manifest in sensuous dance and play. Eros itself was embodied in the glorious figure of Sappho; she was its very expression and an ideal of her charges and youthful companions. Jaeger (1945) suggests that it would be most inappropriate to offer a psychological explanation of Sappho’s eros and to

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inflict upon it the views of emotion approved by bourgeois Christianity. Her writings are a clear testimony that Eros was a passion possessing a force capable of shaking up the entire being of anyone who dared to submit to its full impact. It pervaded both the senses and the spirit. Only much later did Greek thought recognize the power present in Sappho’s lyrics, using it to show the unity between spirituality and sensuality by eroticizing both. Sappho’s was the feminine eros which did not seek to transcend the sensual, the immediately felt and expressed. It was not the Platonic effort to attain the universal, to ascend to the ideal, the masculine. Such an ideal, a purification of the sensuous, an ideal without pain, sorrow, or tragedy, fails to appreciate the full measure of Eros. It is experienced only in the full surrender, only in a state of abandonment, in a loss of all controls and interventions, only when consciousness thickens with limpid desire. Eros stirs the desire which fuses body and spirit into sensual expression, which encompasses both the desiring subject and the desired entity. Its force radiates and pulsates through both. But this abandonment, this surrender to Eros does not mean a surrender to sexuality. It is noble and vital; it is Dorian and aristocratic. Eros here is a relationship between men, specifically between a teacher and an apprentice, between a poet and his young follower, between a philosopher and his charge. The love of a man for a youth was an indispensable part of the early Greek aristocratic way of life. Although the lower classes of Athens and Ionia rejected the Dorian ideal, the nobles of Athens and Ionia regarded the Dorian Eros as the ultimate spiritual and manly perfection. No wonder. In a culture which directed its most refined and indeed its strongest energies toward the perfection of body and mind, and ultimately their unity, such an Eros had to play a vital role. This led to the close relationship between Eros and arete, virtue, in the sense of achieving perfection. “Lovers,” while bound by Eros, were simultaneously protected by a deep sense of honor and nobility from engaging in any debasing activity. They were ruled by a noble impulse, leading them to honorable and courageous deeds. Even in Spartan society, Eros was deliberately related to arete, to a perfection of manly nobility. Yet, it is in “educational” relationships, through which arete is achieved, that Eros assumes a supreme function, where the teacher’s authority supersedes even that of the parents. Here, we find that the relationship between Eros and arete culminates in Plato’s attempt to lead his students toward the most perfect, most noble and sublime, toward the ideal as an aim of all life. The erotic aspect of educational power is most obvious in the excellent work

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by Jaeger (1945), where the teacher can give wings with which fly over land and sea. Wisdom and Eros cannot be separated. Euripides (2009) would argue that Eros teaches the poet even if he has no music in his soul. And it is Eros which lends the human a power to beat the wings against social barriers and to break their limits in order to attain the unlimited freedom of spirit. This is the point at which one recognizes that the power of the Lord of Lords, and its strict and bounded world, is exposed to danger—not from sexed bodies, but from the all-present power of Eros. To the eagle’s flight, the whole of Heaven is free. Such freedom is charged with Eros and lends sophia, wisdom, its highest aims, its daring to think with the gods, and its passion to question its own folly. In all autocracies and theocracies, philosophy is banned, philosophical books and their writers are burned, because its very name means “erotic wisdom.” The Greek expression of Eros culminates, according to Krueger (1978), in Platonic thought, where Eros is defined as a great spirit, a daimon, and like all spirits, he is an intermediate between the divine and the mortal. This is a different destiny than the phallic rigidity explicated in the previous chapter. He spans the chasm and bounds all into unity. The aim for which Eros yearns is transcendent, the perfection itself, the limitless idea which no mundane thing can adequate. In Platonism, the most exalted ideas, the ultimate realities, are attained through stages. Each one is reached by the propulsion of Eros, which is dissatisfied by any attained term; it seeks to transgress every limitation and aims at the universal, the limitless, the infinite. The ideal, the formal, the limitless, and eternal constitute its ultimate aim, its telos. Such an eroticism is not a reproduction of the species or an attainment of pleasure in a release of accumulated tensions; it is a force which does not originate in any practical domain, does not arise from any pragmatic need. It has a different aim. Although Plato was credited with establishing Western teleological thought, a vertical ascent to the perfect and the unlimited, the teleology breaks down when Eros enters the picture. First of all, Eros cannot have a telos which is the infinite, the unlimited. By definition, the infinite, the limitless, is not a point of orientation, not a direction, and hence cannot yield a guide to ascent or descent. All that can be said is that, to aim at the infinite is to aim at everything. But this is not a telos, not a guide to orientation. The infinite does not provide a direction and hence cannot play a teleological role as an aim of Eros. The very notion that Eros aims at the infinite indicates that Eros has no aim, at least no specific aim. Infinity has no fixity, has neither “whereto” nor

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signposts leading to its locus. Secondly, if Eros transgresses all limits, bounds everything into a unity, moves to the universal, then the universality is the very movement of Eros. If the nature of Eros is to pervade everything with its lifeinfusing, creative, intensifying, and explosive power, then the perfect Platonic idea, the limitless, is not an indication of an erotic aim, a direction, but a sign of an Eros which overflows all limits, surpasses all restrictions, and in its aimless wander, it encounters its own unlimited drive, its own joy and torment. Eros in Plato infuses with its own life the ultimate, the perfect being, and this eroticized ultimate becomes the telos of Eros, but also a telos which finds Eros facing itself, finds its own desire in the ultimate. The ultimate is an expression of the erotic search for itself. In this way, Eros aims at itself, elicits its own movement, becomes its own propulsion, its autokinesis. Eros is driven by Eros. It is the force which invests its excitement into everything and remains dissatisfied with any invested limitations. It spreads to infuse itself into everything, where the universal and the limitless, the ideal and the eternal, are ways of expressing the erotic craving for itself, for self-elevation, intensification, and desire of desire, which increments itself without end (Krueger, 1978). This is the hidden secret as to why the idea of the ultimate good had to be accompanied by the idea of the beautiful, the attractive, the desirable. The good, in itself, has no attraction; it has to be beautiful to elicit our desire, our craving. Even when the good, as the motive force, became the Aristotelian prime mover, it moved by being desirable, by being wanted; thus, when the prime mover was translated into the Middle Eastern paternal God, it turned into an “object” of worship and became both a “loving father” and a “vengeful God.” He also desired our desire, exhibited in the arts where worshipers looked up with expressions of passion and adoration. Of course, he did not desire us as humans, but desired our desire for him, and was jealous if someone desired anything else “before” him. “You shall not have any other gods…,” and thus all your worship must be just for me. This erotic drive is the ground of reflexivity in the sense of a feeling that senses itself and, in this sensing, intensifies itself. When I express a fear across my face, the fear spreads to others who in their turn express the same fear, and in perceiving their fear, my fear intensifies. My fear is directly reflected in the others, and the fear in the others is directly reflected and intensified in me. Fear feeds on fear in a process of reflexivity. My expressed desire of someone spreads across that someone’s face and intensifies my desire. While being limited to me and to someone, the erotic desire transcends our singular beings and tends to generalize itself by eroticizing everything. The spread toward

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generality is at the source of the Platonic concept of erotic transcendence. For Plato, the erotic compulsion to transcend all limits to the limitless, to be found in every order of being, does not depend on its being banned, suppressed, for its continuous expansion; its own nature is universal, encompassing and pervading the All. Its spread is both horizontal and vertical. Hence Eros is the very transcending movement which finds no other issue, no other desire, for anything except itself, a desire of desire, an eros for Eros. One could even say that its search for wisdom is its “highest” happiness. The human desire to attain the highest object, the perfect and ideal, is driven from within, and yet, at the same time, it is attracted by Eros, which envelops the object of desire; the highest object is desired, not because it is the highest, but because it is desirable, it is charged by Eros. The human desires the highest object because the object is itself enveloped by Eros, by desire. Human erotic desire is here the desire of desire. The Eros pervading and driving the human toward the highest is an eros which is attracted by itself, by its own infusion of desire in the object of attraction. One could almost define the erotic drive in terms of the Nietzschean (1999) notion of life as a dark and mysterious force which desires itself. Erotic desire is intentional, it is a desire of . . . something, a desire for someone. Yet, the desire requires more than a presence of an object; the object or the other must assume a characteristic of desirability, must also have a look, an expression of desire. What brings out our desire is not our own initiation; it is the manifest desire in the other in such a way that both the desiring subject and the desired other are captured, immersed in the power of Eros. Eros does not aim at the physiology or organic constitution of the other, but at the other’s Eros: Eros seeks Eros, seeks itself, is excited by itself. It is Eros in both the desiring and the desired that deploys each as possessing sexual attraction. Erotic desire is prior to, and more fundamental than, sexual physiology. It haunts the surface of actual processes but is not reducible to them. It is like the look, like the expression which is ahead of all physiological aspects. To penetrate to physiology is to miss the expression. The inviting look is not identical with the specific contortions and lines of a face. It is captured, carried, and expressed by the face and can be transmitted to other faces, other gestures. What attracts is the expression; it is what creates desire. Eros appears as an expression carried by, and manifest through, things, humans, ideals, and mythological figures. In the modern age, Sartre (1956) depsychologizes desire: Erotic desire is not an aspect of some subjective interiority, of some interior psychological

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state which is projected onto others and objects. The erotic desire is an expression which is not reducible to the bodily dimension of life. Erotic desire appears as something that can capture the human, thicken and cloud the awareness, abolish human situatedness and the movement toward possibilities. As a phenomenon, erotic desire is read directly in perception and has a force of immediacy capable of capturing, arresting, and enveloping the participants. This envelopment is what constitutes the desire of desire, the expressed erotic want of one being for another, where Eros seeks to encounter this want, and not just a body. Although Freudian libido is regarded sexually, it becomes overdetermined by Eros. For Freud (1989), the libidinal urge, without an issue apart from its own gratification, and failing that, sublimation, destroys any notion of norm, be such norm natural or cultural. Such norms would be mere deviations, byways through which the libidinal urge moves in its endless quest. But quest for what? Obviously not for any object. This is already evident in Plato’s aim at the infinite, and more obvious in Freud’s libidinal infestation of everything with desire. It is a search for libidinal reflexivity, i.e., libidinal desire’s search for itself, for its own desire of desire. Only such a reflexivity accounts for the restlessness, never exhausting itself, never reaching a final term, and never culminating in satisfaction. It seeks to feed on itself. It is a self-motivated and ultimately self-generative process. This reflexivity appears even in autostimulation, which is excited by phantasms expressing one’s desire in the other’s languid receptivity, excitement, trembling voice, closed eyelids, and heavy breathing. The phantasms are not of the organic constitution of the other, but of eroticism haunting the constitution. While libido is distinct from Eros, in the Freudian account of libido lurk most of the characteristics of Eros because, without Eros, libido would not have the positive, self-generating force to transcend all terms. Of itself, libido tends toward death, toward an equilibrium, a kind of nirvana. The tendency of the erotic autokinesis toward generality, continuation, propagation, unity, and intensification, is accompanied by a tendency toward singularity and extreme individuation. It is just this particular object, person, or idea that becomes charged with desire, becomes attractive, and calls for human response, elicits desire—the specific characteristics, expressions, gestures, the specific designs which attract, which form a desirable configuration just for this specific person. It can be safely assumed that Antony’s sexual needs were fully satisfied by the concubines accompanying the Roman Army; yet, it was a specific person, a Cleopatra, who elicited the erotic desire in Antony, a desire

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which transformed him and moved him in ways unaccustomed. The singularity of the erotic force and investment is, at the same time, its impulse to generality, to encompassment; because of this investment, all things, events become erotically charged, assume a glow, a desirability, and lend the one who is captured by Eros an air of self-importance. In this sense, Eros does not demean but elevates, does not subjugate but valorizes. As May (1969) suggests that, when one falls in love, one feels more valuable and thus treats oneself with more care. The sense of worth, coming with Eros, affirms the person, extends him/her toward value, toward generality. What is pleasurable in the erotic state is its immediacy, its all-pervading presence; yet, it is tormenting since the immediacy of the singular term of erotic investment of desire is immediately spread across everything, is already dissatisfied with any singularity, and leads to a longing for something more: for itself. This accounts for both sadism and masochism: Eros turned completely toward the other to seek full satisfaction in the individual and, finding no ultimate satisfaction, turns upon itself to inflict its own force upon its own craving, its own endlessness. The tension between the most general, the endless Eros, is the origin of the notion of sexual eroticism, of the most individual preference for a partner, the immediate gratification, and at the same time, of the process of sublimation, the seeking out of itself in everything. Sublimation is no longer a product of suppression, of frustration, of libidinal craving, but a positive process where the very movement to sublimation is another form that the erotic drive transcends every term in seeking itself, in seeking excitation with its own desire of desire. It again has no other end, no other issue apart from its own self-generation. The erotic desire does not seek to destroy, but to rejuvenate. While singling out this individual, the lover wants to rejuvenate, to bring the other to life, to become a life-giver, not only to this individual, but to become desired by all. Even the rapist wants to express his desirability and, through this individual, to become a lover desired by all. In the singularity of his victim, his phantasms are charged with the desire for him by all who want and crave his desire. The desire in his phantasms reflect his desire. The turning upon itself, the erotic reflexivity, is not a destruction, but an intensification, not a release, a discharge, but an augmentation, an extension over everything, its generalization from the individual over everything without the loss of the sensual, the immediate, the perceptually given, expressive configurations which solicit desire. This expressivity, this desirable configuration which

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excites, intensifies, elevates and propagates itself, is what connects Eros to Mythos.

Mythos The understanding of myth is usually associated with a primitive attempt to master the threatening, the fearsome environment. Myths are seen as something anthropomorphic, as projections of the human to make the world appear safe, accustomed, and human-like. Only with the shift to reason, with the abandonment of myth, did humans begin to recognize the world “in itself.” Yet, it can be contended that myth is not anthropomorphic, and that Mythos is equivalent to Logos and even Ratio. It is commonly assumed that the Greeks initiated the basic shift from Mythos to Logos, thus establishing a basic cleavage between them. It can be shown that the shift is not as pronounced as it once appeared. It is noteworthy that Mythos and Logos, for example in Homer, meant “word.” It was thought that Logos was characterized by the fact that it was an expression of a concept. Yet, such a distinguishing characteristic is inadequate. A deeper understanding is required to show why the word as Mythos belongs to the poetized, to the fable, while the word as Logos belongs to epistemic, conceptual truth. According to linguists, Homer uses Mythos to designate shorter or longer conversations, while Logos appears quite rarely. It is common to derive Logos from legein, which has been translated as “gathering.” Although the translation is not incorrect, “gathering” is only a secondary meaning of legein. The primary meaning of legein is “to attend, to reflect-consider, to become cognizant” (Durante, 1968). These are related to the Latin neclegere and its derivatives, legio, relegio, etc. Legein has a telic intentionality to accomplish something, such as convincing, deceiving. It is reflective, calculative, and one could say, volitionally intentional. Mythos, in the Homeric sense, is word. But what is present in the word is not something calculated, reflected, considered, but rather the real, the factually expressed. Mythos is the thing in itself apparent in word. In The Odyssey (2020), the appearance of Ulysses brings everything to silence until, finally, Echeneos is gripped by the word, enabling him to tell the king how to act in such a situation. Since he was called to speak the decisive word, he was seen as the elder, distinguished by Mythos. This means that he knew much of history, much of the proper ways of being in factual situations. His word was

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an expressive gesture, transmitted, but not created, by him. Echeneos is characterized by the possession of Mythos, as a direct gestural presence of “facts as histories”; for example, when one awaits the answer of the king concerning the way Ulysses is to be regarded, one awaits a mythos, a decision about how events are to take place. To experience Mythos is to experience events as expressed, announced. Mythos corresponds to an older tradition of the meaning of “word.” It is an expressive presence of what was, is, and will be. Mythos is the very appearance of being in expression; it captures, and is identical with, the expressivity of being. The primordial myths are not questioned; they are beyond truth and falsity since, in their speaking, they are the very expressivity of being. The expressive power of the word as Mythos is identical with the expressivity of an event, thing, or living gesture. This power of Mythos was suppressed with the shift from expression to application and representation and covered over the human ability to encounter the events in their expressive configurations; the mythical person once dared to confront the silent powers, such as the power of Eros, without resorting to psychological obscurantisms and obfuscations, such as prayer, salvation, damnation, guilt, and forgiveness. The sons of the Earth dared once to drink the heavenly fire of passionate Eros; those touched by its overabundance did not shun their destiny. Being overwhelmed by this fire, they found within themselves the same fire as a requirement to merge into the erotic process of creation and sublimation. And when this fire shimmers in the myth, the expressive word, the poetic announcement, it becomes manifest for all to see. Poetic and cultic activities are human answers to the presence of the felt fire of Eros, and not an arbitrary projection of human needs for sexual gratification. While human affinity to the divine, to the greater than human, is found in all cultures, the “divinity” of Eros is most forcefully expressed in Greek mythology. The Greeks saw the human in such magnitude that their gods were tailored to seem like humans to accommodate such magnitude. This is not to say that Greek gods were anthropomorphic. Rather, the Greeks saw themselves in the image of the divine; in the divine, they recognized themselves. This is the significance of the Olympic gods. The movement was not to humanize gods, but to divinize humans. The movement is theo-morphic and theo-centric (Otto, 1954). It was an attempt to sway with the powers and to give them names, to announce them in mythoi. In such mythoi, the overpowering, the terrible, and the sublime are related to the temporal, the singular, and fragile. It is the relationship between the cosmic and the specific,

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the all-pervading, encompassing, and the unique, the singular. And the conjunction is such that neither has lost its genuineness. But the confrontation between the cosmic–divine and the singular is also the origin of the agonal tension in the entire Greek culture. All human achievements and abilities were introduced into the circle of agonal battles. The human–cosmic tension, the over-fullness of the cosmic flow seeking announcement in mythoi, in word, offers the playful–tragic sense of life, with its full range of creative freedom and torment. Myth offers a different kind of truth, a truth of immediacy of experience for which reason cannot be given, a truth which grips, elevates, and transfigures. It is not a human imagination projecting itself in various attractive modalities. After all, as phenomenology has shown, imagination is prepositional, an imagination of something, about something other than itself. Imagination of horror feeds on horror expressed in someone’s face. Moreover, imaginary projection could not grip the human with a higher, more profound significance. Regardless of its designation—divine or natural—such an experienced expression demands submission, and in submission, it elevates the human into a height where daily reckonings and mundane time no longer bear a stamp of necessity. It is a domain of a purposeless human elevation, a display of enchantment which mildens the seriousness of the Sun-god. Here, the poet, the singer, the chanter and enchanter, does not sing from his/her own heart; he/she is the inspired, the inflamed one, and an elevated being comes to his/her aid. Such a being is Eros, which grips and carries away. The experienced presence of such an elevating and enveloping divinity is a release from all purposes, plans, and desires—above all, from all that is not purely present, purely captivating and engulfing. The human attains a true selfhood when he/she participates in the pure presence of this elevated experience in which all direction is lost, where the display of desire is enveloped by the encounter of desire, where erotic enticement is pervaded by Eros. Here, the human desire, the human eroticism, assumes a form of self-display for no purpose apart from this display: a human eroticism which encounters the countenance of Eros expressed across the face of all beings. It is a process without a purpose, a sui generis event expressing a dimension of being human. In the presence of a mythical figure such as Eros, the human answers with an elevated voice, a dancing body, which are truly with themselves, direct expressions of a human selfhood in an eroticized, theo-centric world. Here, the voice rises to a chant, to an enchantment; the song breaks forth, not in an epic or a hymn, but in a pure lyrical form. Human fulfillment, a full self-

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understanding, calls for this elevation, this inspiration from the mythical figure, from the deeper and higher dimension where all chains fall by the wayside, and the theo-centric human surges forth in an elevated festivity. To the enchantment of the presence of the mythical figure, the human answers with an elevation of his/her nature. Thus, the dignified step, the wild rhythm, the elevation in a song to the Sun-god, the drawing into the wind of chant, spell the wondrous voice of the presence of the mythical figure. But what are these wondrous mythical figures? From whence hails their power to move, to inspire, to torment? What is announced in their names? Many answers have been offered; until of late, the scholarly consensus is tending toward one interpretation. Greimas (1985) points to the general trend that national general social structure finds its correspondence in the structure of the divine world and the division of divine functions. A religion is a national ideology with whose aid a society reflects upon itself. Indeed, if mythical figures are conceived as entities, then they may well reflect human social order. But, can a reflection of social order possess a power of transfiguration, of elevation, and ultimately of self-abandonment to the immediacy of display of functions, expressions having no aim, no purpose apart from such display? Is there not something more immediate, direct, more primordial in the mythical figures with power to arrest us, to move us in unexpected ways? Phenomenological research has suggested a dimension of experience which fits precisely the mythical requirements of enchantment, of capturing and transfiguring, of eliciting and tormenting: the dimension of expression. Prior to human perception of the characteristics of things, the human is attuned to the world and things in terms of their expressive domain: the repulsive, the attractive, the horrible, the ludicrous, the tender, the indifferent, the noble, and the mean. The peculiarity of the expressions lies in that they are phenomena which are not identical with, or reducible to, the characteristics of the world of things. No description of the materials and their arrangements in an instrument, no analysis of the succession of notes, no investigation of the “inner” psychological states of the musician will imply a sad sound. Yet, we hear directly a sad melody which fills us with sadness. The musician is not required to assume a sad inner state in order to play a sad melody; the sadness is in the melody, captured and transmitted by, although not identical with, the characteristics of the instruments, the musicians, or the listeners. The sadness, as an expressive dimension, moves, pervades, and dissipates. It is analogous to the notion of the Sartrean (1956) “look” which appears across a human face, across a thing, an event, without being identical with any of them. It goes

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before the eyes. No investigation of anatomy, no description of physiology, can tell us about the look. It is immediate, direct, and yet not a characteristic of a thing. It has the power to capture and hold our attention. The returning hero glimpses his sweetheart in the crowd, and she gives him a passionate look, but she does not calculate the look, she does not rehearse the look before a mirror; rather, the passion captures her and appears on her face—fleeting and transient. She could not repeat the look at will; she could not contrive the expression in any genuine sense unless it captures her and appears across her face with its force. The hero may not notice the details of her face, but the look is unmistakable, and the expression sends a wave of shivers across his entire being. He recognizes her expression without mediations and is captured in its wind. His face lights up with passion: an encounter of passion for passion. The direct experience of expression mediates the world of things; things are originally present through their expressive configurations. And the mythical figures are the fundamental expressive dimensions within whose context the world is present. The mythical figures are ways of summing up, in an intensified form, the expressive dimension, a dimension which, in its immediacy to human experience, mediates the entities and events of the world. It must be stressed that the mediation is of a particular kind. Expression, while appearing with a singular thing or person, tends to spread, to generalize itself into an all-pervasive presence. The horrible, the grotesque, send shivers through everything; the flash of joy brightens up the dull day. Precisely this individuating transcendence is what is concentrated in the mythical figures. In their individuality and uniqueness, they are present everywhere, their visage is manifest across the face of all things. And yet, manifest in their specific ways. Look at Hermes. As Otto (1954) has suggested, Hermes has a specific characteristic: eroticism. And this is related to the nocturnal domain, the dark side of life. Nonetheless, it is not an indication of the joyless nocturnal hours of forlornness, but of the enchanting solitude of wonder. Hermes is the way that darkness can bewitch the human. He is the wonder of the night, pervading every facet, every domain of things mundane and sublime, pervading night’s dangers and favors, its play of goblins and the deep sense of solitude, its anxieties and protective embrace. Hermes, in this sense, is an expressive dimension, immanent to the world, and yet transcending the characteristics of things.

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And human experience assumes a different form when it is confronted by the expressive dimension announced by Aphrodite. The wind of the All plays differently, shimmers with a different light across the face of all things, and lends a different attunement to the human. It is the tenderness of everything calling to enchantment, to embrace the sweet and breath-taking flow of all into all. It is an expression, haunting all things as attractive and harmonious. And she is contrasted with Artemis, the feminine. This goddess is the soul, the expression of wildness, with its heights and depths, with her animals and tormenting beauty, with her rejecting look and maternal care and her bloodlusting hunt—lust, playful tenderness, and gleaming glory, inaccessibility and horror—all expressive modalities. In their immediacy to human experience, they mediate the world. The domains and spheres of the mythical figures comprise the expressive domain of this world. It is not a mundane domain, insofar as it can elicit the same expressivity in the human, where horror is intensified by horror, lust by lust, sadness by sadness, and Eros by Eros (Mickunas, 2004). Since the expression is not identical with the characteristics of things and humans, even if it is carried and transmitted by them, it could be called “spiritual.” In this sense, the divinities, as the pure domain of expression, are completely “spiritual” and entirely worldly. The divinities thus reveal the disruption of the daily limits, the dullness, the commonality of things, reveal the expressive dimensions which send the human to roam freely and without a telos. Elevated and “theocentric,” unhindered by the narrow halls of shrunken souls, the human can play with the expressive forces through his/her own expressive, aesthetic capacities, and reveal these forces in myth, in poetic saying, and in the solemn chant of a procession. Here, the human encounters the clarion call of Eros as an expressive character of all, spreading and pervading every limited term, dissatisfied with all terms until it encounters itself, and the human is swept up only to appear with the erotic expression of desire, of enchantment and rebirth, elevated and noble, tormented and joyous, the human can find a creative destiny. The problem of the modern age is not, as Heidegger (1994) would claim, the fleeing of gods, but the threat of the abolishment of the expressive dimensions. It is the reduction of the expressive powers to psychophysiological functions, to biological needs, and even to material conditions. It is an attempt to strip the world and the human of their expressive movement, to peer through the look in order to find an eyeball, and not an erotic desire calling for desire. Yet, the eyeball, the naked facticity, does not

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explain the expressed desire; it merely disregards it. The measuring of perspiration, blood pressure, and heart rate does not reveal the heights of erotic rapture or depths of desperation. The expressive dimension, with its power to solicit the heights of human self-display, and indeed creativity, is not something metaphysical, extra-worldly; it is immediately perceptual, sensual, singular, and unique, with its own power to spread toward generality. Yet, the generality is not one of a concept, an idea, but one that is sensed everywhere, present in more varied media, and transmitted through ages in print, art, and linguistic institutions. The pliability, the transformability of expression, is best achieved by human corporeity. While expression is fleeting, it is not present unless it inhabits some corporeal gesture, some posture, vocal announcement, or visual inscription. The utopian dreams of days to come are inscribed in the uplifted postures of the forward-looking statues of the “revolutionary classes”; the victories glare from canvasses tensed with fierce steeds and proud warriors, while the defeats are spread across the prostrate bodies—all corporeally captured and arrested expressions. And the mythical figures are also captured and fixed in the plastic arts, in painting, in poetic chant, and in ritualistic performances, all expressions finding their reflexivity in us, and we in them.

Chapter 5

Eros, Autopoiesis, and Transformation Introduction: Autopoietic Network of Power An autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production, transformation, and destruction of components that produces the components that, (1) through their interaction and transformations, continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes that produced them, and (2) constitute the machine as a concrete unity in the space in which they exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as a network. Autopoiesis literally means “self-making” and is effectuated by means of recursive communicative feedforward and feedback loops. (Varela, 1979, p. 13)

According to Semetsky (2003), There is a link here between Eros, the magical son of Porous and Penia, a symbol of a union that came into existence. That is the conjunction of two opposites, as the color of passion of red Eros over white, the color of sincere and serious intentions, and the practical skill is to unite opposites. Being formless in itself, Eros’ purpose, nevertheless, is to inform, that is, to create and repeat, contained in a surplus of information or novelty that arises in the creative act of magic. The demand that turns every bent, every alternative possibility, a decision to be made in the image of the uncontained Eros, literally bordering on the edge of chaos, is seen as creative. Indeed, the operation must guarantee operational closure to a series of structural couplings, correcting and ordering the course of events. (p. 6)

Certainly, the word “magic” has a common root with “imagination,” but it is also a route for making, and the German word “macht” (“power”) provides the opportunity to see the possible in the actual and respectively becomes the code for a duality that increases the number of degrees of freedom in the space of the potential. Imagination and magic are the active deliberations that carry the creative power of the genesis of new forms. It terminates in a modification of an objective order in the institution of a new object. It involves

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a dissolution of all objects in the formatting of new ones—beyond the old object and yet a new one. There is a zone here of indiscernibility between the two orders. Poetic function is complementary to the spontaneously emerging and relatively stable structures in the totality of the process (Gebser, 1985). The irony, however, for a modern, secular, post-scientific culture such as late capitalism claims to be, is this: Given the apparently irreducible role for some kind of divination in human culture, it is in part because markets are structured as divination tools that neoliberalism succeeds. All cultures of divination practice some form of discernment, and even contestation, about whether and how to use oracular relations to chance. But neoliberalism’s disavowed form of divination undercuts whatever processes of contestation— in particular those of liberal democracy that might enable anticipation and even production of future contingencies in accord with values other than those of profit, efficiency and the endless quest for control over the chaotic systems (Ramey, 2015). Divination rites are often linked to cults of sacrifice. Perhaps most importantly, it is this sacrificial aspect of divination that neoliberalism can hide (even though it is glaringly obvious) behind gestures toward sociobiological, cybernetic, and information-systems models of market ‘reality.’ Translating the oracular power of chance into the pseudo-science of risk management undermines the imputation of any truly oracular, prophetic, even merely meaningful quality to the marketplace forces neoliberalism nevertheless praises as the essential embodiment of human freedom. “If market ‘realism’ claims they are blind, mechanical systems of order emerging in randomness rather than as service to any particular gods, then the sacrifices made to those gods—even the sacrifice of planet Earth itself—can be disavowed” (Ramey, 2015, n.p.). Tambiah (2017) points to one intersection of magic and science: The analogical mode of thought has always been exploited by man generally. While both “magic” and “science” are characterized by analogical thought and action, they comprise differentiated varieties whose validity it would be inappropriate to measure and verify by the same standards. Magical acts, usually compounded of verbal utterance and object manipulation, constitute performative acts by which a property is imperatively transferred to a recipient object or person on an analogical basis. Magical acts are ritual acts, and ritual acts are in turn performative acts whose positive and creative meaning is missed and

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whose persuasive validity is misjudged if they are subjected to that kind of empirical verification associated with scientific activity. Neither magic nor ritual constitutes applied science in the narrow sense. (Tambiah, 2017, p. 451)

The Azande, as studied by Malinowski, provide an interesting perspective on this topic: “Here we find the seeds of an approach to Zande magic (and indeed other magical systems) which I shall call ‘analogical action’” (Tambiah, 2017, p. 454).

Apparently, the Azande themselves recognized the analogical and metaphorical basis for the use of material substances in their rites—a revelation which is also embedded in Malinowski’s account (Tambiah 1968): 1. First an object may be named or described by referring to another object which it resembles. 2. Secondly, the recognition of a resemblance between two objects may serve as the basis for an explanation of one of them, that is an account of its cause. 3. Thirdly, the resemblances between things may be thought to form magical links between them and attempts may be made to control or influence certain objects by manipulating other objects which resemble them… (Lloyd 1966:178). (qtd. In Tambiah, 2017, p. 456) The last inference is the most important (it includes the other two as well), for it is the basis on which philosophers and historians of science see the similarity and difference between magic and science as well as the ground on which they postulate linear evolution from magic to science. Lloyd thus takes the next interpretative step: We can see from these examples how analogy fulfils two roles in what is now for us largely, though not exclusively, the province of science, namely to provide explanations, and to control reality. As regards the second function, the most important difference between science and magic may be simply their relative effectiveness. Magic fails in practice. Yet its general aim is similar to that of applied science, to control events,

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta and one of the means whereby it hopes to achieve this is using the links which it believes may be formed between things by their similarities (1966: 178–79; my italics, S.J.T.). (qtd. in Tambiah, 2017, pp. 456–457) Most historians of science begin with the Greeks, and one of the principles of thought attributed to early Greek natural philosophy is that “like attracts like,” which in its application meant that a relationship of similarity may sometimes constitute a magical bond between two things, so that what happens to one of them may influence what happens to the other...’ (Lloyd, 1966, p. 180). Thus Hesse (1961) explains that one of the commonest analogies in “primitive” Greek thought was “the analogy of attraction”: men apparently, having experienced sympathy and antipathy, attraction and repulsion, between themselves and other men, and between themselves and nature, therefore see these as forces which can produce effects in nature. Popular maxims based on ideas of attraction and repulsion provided, we are told, concepts of motion and change—thus “like attracts like” was supplemented by other maxims such as “like nourishes like,” “like affects like,” “like perceives like.” The doctrine of attraction explained why animals flock together with their kinds, seeds of different size seek each other when shaken in a sieve, and likewise pebbles on the seashore. (Tambiah, 2017, p. 457)

For the historian and philosopher of science, the analogy of attraction is principally of interest because the early Greek philosophers used it to explain the phenomenon of action at a distance, a perennial problem in scientific explanation, The Greek breakthrough from primitive analogy into “scientific” thinking, we are told, began to occur when two things happen. As Tambiah (2017) notes, “When a firm distinction was made between the animate and inanimate, and in recognizing that phenomena of gravity and radiation were different in kind from the behavior of animals” (p. 457). Taking the argument further, Tambiah (2017) notes: Indeed, when, later, Newton’s theory of gravity was propounded, the Cartesians attacked him for propounding a theory of “attraction” in the occult idiom, i.e., action at a distance without contact. The linear evolution and transformation of Western thought from the 6th century BC to the present day in the field of science should not be taken as an intellectual model when investigating the societies anthropologists study unless at the same time one is deeply conscious of the underlying

Eros, Autopoiesis, and Transformation intellectual interests of the scholars who formulated it. Their interests were the foundations of scientific thought and of formal logic in Greece and the unique development by which Greek analogical thought became subject to empirical verification, falsification and deductive-inductive reasoning. Must analogical thought of the Azande necessarily be examined and its form and meaning unraveled in relation to these intellectual preoccupations? (Tambiah, 2017, p. 458) Two kinds of dyadic relations…should be recognized, the horizontal and vertical relations. If it is to serve as a material analogy in science, the pairs of horizontal terms (echoes, reflection, etc.) should be either identical or similar, and the vertical relations (between the properties of sound such as echoes, loudness, etc.) should be “causal,” which term given a wide interpretation should mean at least a tendency to cooccurrence in that certain properties are necessary or sufficient conditions for the occurrence of other properties. (Tambiah, 2017, p. 459) In the second “looser” example given opposite the horizontal relation may show similarities of structure or of function, and the vertical relation that of whole to its parts depending on some theory of interrelation of parts, evolutionary or adaptive. (Tambiah, 2017, p. 459) How must this analogy work if it is to succeed as political rhetoric? The relation of father to children bears some relation of employer to workers (positive analogy) in the sense let us say that just as the father provides for the material needs of his children so does the employer provide work and wages for his workers. Let us next say that the relation of children to father (and vice versa) is much more than this dependence; children should love their father, obey and respect him and so on. These meanings are not necessarily implied in the employer–worker relation (negative analogy). It is precisely this expansion of meaning or the transfer of these additional values to the employer–worker relations that is sought by invoking the father–children analogy. Since in this case the ultimate aim is to make workers believe that they are like “children,” there is a sense in which we can say that the operation consists in “transferring” (rather than “predicting”) from the postulated three terms, the value of “children” to the fourth term, the “workers.” It is for this reason that this analogy and its variants are labelled “persuasive,” “rationalizing” or “evocative.” (Tambiah, 2017, p. 460)

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Ritual operations by word and object manipulation, the analogical action conforms to the persuasive rather than the “scientific” model, I shall later illustrate the argument that in Zande rites (as well as those of many other societies) the operation rests on the explicit recognition of both similarity (positive analogy) and difference (negative analogy) between the vertical relations of the paired terms. And the rite consists in persuasively transferring the properties of the desired and desirable vertical relation to the other which is in an undesirable condition, or in attempting to convert a potential not-yetachieved state into an actualized one. The corresponding objectives in (magical) ritual are “persuasion conceptualization,” “expansion of meaning,” and the like, and the criteria of adequacy are better conveyed by notions such as “validity correctness,” “legitimacy,” and “felicity of the ceremony performed” and the “performative” nature of the rite (Austin, 1975). The semantics of the transfer itself; the logic of construction of the transfer, in the Trobriand case depends on (1) metaphorical and analogical transfers by word mediated by realistic contact transfer through objects used as “transformers,” and (2) on imperative verbal transfer of energy to a “whole” through the metonymical naming of the parts. One of the points I made was that the same laws of association that apply to ordinary language apply to magical language—I reiterate this because one reader at least has managed to misunderstand my effort and thinks I tried to deal with the special character of “magical” utterances, thereby also not appreciating my critique of the theory of “magical” language held by Ogden and Richards, Malinowski, and others. In Austin’s (1975) How to do things with words, the chief topic of elaboration is what he calls the “performative” or “illocutionary act, in which the uttering of the sentence cannot merely be described as saying something but is, or is a part of, the doing of an action.” When in a marriage ceremony the man says, “I do take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife” (or some such formula), or the man says in a will “give and bequeath ...,” to utter these sentences in the appropriate circumstances “is not to describe my doing of what should be said in so uttering to be doing or to state I am doing it: It is to do it; issuing of utterances in a speech situation,” which makes any stating “performing an act.” How many senses may there be in which to say something is to do something, or in saying something, we do something, or even by saying something, we do something? The following classification of speech acts may help to answer the question:

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1. to perform a locutionary act: to utter a sentence with a certain sense and reference (an assertion, a descriptive statement of fact) which is true or false in referential sense; 2. to perform an illocutionary act: this relates to an utterance which has a certain conventional force, a performative act which does something (as implied in promising, ordering, apologizing, warning, etc.). These statements cannot be subject to the true–false test, but are normatively judged as “happy”/“unhappy”; 3. to perform a perlocutionary act: this refers to what we bring about or achieve by saying something (as connoted by convincing, persuading, misleading, etc.). We can say that ritual acts and magical rites are of the illocutionary or performative sort, which simply by virtue of being enacted (under the appropriate conditions) achieve a change of state, or do something effective (e.g., an installation ceremony undergone by the candidate makes him a “chief”). This performative aspect of the rite should be distinguished from its locutionary (referential, information-carrying, and perlocutionary) consequences for the participants features. It was quite evident to Austin that, while he focused on the role of speech in illocutionary acts, the utterance was not the sole thing necessary if the illocutionary act was to be deemed to have been performed, and also that actions other than speech whether physical or mental were entailed for the full realization of the performance. Indeed, it is even possible at the other extreme to enact a performative act without uttering words at all—a hypothetical example would be the establishing of blood brotherhood by the physical exchange of blood (without an exchange of words). The vast majority of ritual and magical acts combine word and deed. Hence it is appropriate to say that they use words in a performative or illocutionary manner, just as the action of the manipulation of objects and persons is correspondingly performative. The rite usually consists of a close interweaving of speech (in the form of utterances and spells) and action (consisting of the manipulation of objects). The utterance can be analyzed with respect to its “predicative” and “illocutionary frames.” As Grene (1948) explains, In all these cases it is an “incantation,” using the body, that transforms the world. In other cases it is the world itself that suddenly appears as

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta magic without our active agency. That is so, for example, when one is suddenly horrified by the appearance of a face at the window: one is startled out of a routine technical handling of a situation into the immediate confrontation with something unknown and unexplained in the familiar world of action gives way to the strange one of fright. But in either kind of “transformation” it is the sudden shock of a descent (chute) from technique to magic that constitutes an emotion. (n.p.)

Operationalism as Transformation Language testifies to identification and unification, to the systematic promotion of positive thinking and doing. The elements of autonomy, discovery, demonstration, and critique recede before designation, assertion, and imitation. Magical, authoritarian and ritual elements permeate speech and language. Discourse is deprived of the mediations which are the stages of the process of cognition and cognitive evaluation. These identifications, which appeared as a feature of operationalism, reappear as features of discourse in social behavior. Here functionalization of language helps to repel non-conformist elements from the structure and movement of speech. The feature of operationalism—to make the concept synonymous with the corresponding set of operations, recurs in the linguistic tendency. Here, the functionalization of language expresses an abridgement of meaning which has a political connotation. The names of things are not only “indicative of their manner of functioning,” but their (actual) manner of functioning also defines and “closes” the meaning of the thing, excluding other manners of functioning. The noun governs the sentence in an authoritarian and totalitarian fashion, and the sentence becomes a declaration to be accepted— it repels demonstration, qualification, negation of its codified and declared meaning. This style is of an overwhelming concreteness. The “thing identified with its function” is more real than the thing distinguished from its function, and the linguistic expression of this identification in the functional noun, and in the many forms of syntactical abridgment creates a basic vocabulary and syntax which stand in the way of differentiation, separation, and distinction. This language, which constantly imposes images, militates against the development and expression of concepts. In its immediacy and directness, it

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impedes conceptual thinking; thus, it impedes thinking. For the concept does not identify the thing and its function. Such identification may well be the legitimate and perhaps even the only meaning of the operational and technological concept, but operational and technological definitions are specific usages of concepts for specific purposes. The functional language is a radically anti-historical language: Operational rationality has little room and little use for historical reason. Is this fight against history part of the fight against a dimension of the mind in which centrifugal faculties and forces might develop faculties and forces that might hinder the total coordination of the individual with the society? Remembrance of the Fast may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory.

Scapegoats The ritual of cleansing the Tabernacle, which was to take place every Yom Kippur features the “sent-away goat” …ritual. Aaron is to take two billy goats from the Israelites (v. 5) and stand them at the entrance before the tent of meeting (v. 7). He places lots on the two goats, one for YHWH and the other for Azazel (v. 8) (Ayali-Darshan, 2020). Scapegoating is as old a tactic as political power itself, and a vital tool in the perpetuation of political, economic and social privilege. James Madison, the father of the US Constitution, expressed a great truism about state power when he described its fundamental role as being to defend “the minority of the opulent from the majority.” What Madison neglected to mention was that the defense of the minority of the opulent against the majority tended to entrench and exacerbate social and economic inequality. This in turn precipitated social chaos as inequality and disorder exacerbated social and class conflict, threatening the stability of the system as a whole. Faced with this situation, the minority of the opulent required some mechanism or other to neutralize social conflict and ensure stability without having to address its root causes in the defense of their economic and social privileges from economic democracy and social justice. They needed to be able to establish and maintain a state of peace without justice, a state long understood to be synonymous with tyranny. Whether the tyranny concerned was that of an individual autocrat, or a class of them, the same problem

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remained; what the minority of the opulent needed in effect was an ideological safety valve to take the pressure away of actually existing social conflicts and tensions and divert them onto a scapegoat, onto one or another ideological punching bag for the shortcomings of a society devoted to maintaining the minority of the opulent in the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed. Moral panics in defense of the minority of the opulent seem often to contain elements of older ones so as to resonate with a ready-primed, if not especially self-aware, audience, and bury its message of fear deep in the back passageways of the collective unconscious. We find the roots of the scare-mongering dynamics associated with moral panics, the ideological safety valve and the defense of the minority of the opulent from the majority in what historian Norman Cohn (1975) described as an “ancient fantasy.” The essence of the fantasy, what we might describe these days as a propaganda trope or cultural motif, was, as Cohn wrote, that “there existed, somewhere in the midst of the great society, another society, small and clandestine, which not only threatened the existence of the great society but was also addicted to practices which were felt to be wholly abominable, in the literal sense of anti-human” (p. 200).

The Scapegoat, Evangelical Revelation, and Ressentiment An examination of the trope of the “scapegoat” may shine more light on the issue. With the term “scapegoating mechanism,” Girard (1989) indicates the starting point of civilization: the scapegoat is the sacrificial victim who attracts to and around himself or herself the violence of a community torn apart by the intensification of rivalry. Divided by competing desires, the community risks collapse without the corrective intervention of the scapegoat, who puts a halt to the self-destructive tendencies…. (Tomelleri, 2018, p. 224)

Tomelleri (2018) goes on to explain: Girard’s scapegoat-thesis can be compared to Emile Durkheim’s anthropological theory of the sacred. The main similarity between the two positions on the origin of the first forms of social organization

Eros, Autopoiesis, and Transformation concerns the false transcendence of the sacred. The sacred is, for both, a lie everyone believes in. According to Durkheim, the “totem” is an illusory representation of society, while Girard views the “totem” as an illusory representation of the scapegoat. Nevertheless, unlike the French sociologist, Girard recognizes that the lie of the sacred has been exposed: the perverse intertwining of mimesis and the sacrificial process has been revealed by the Evangelical message, which has laid bare the mimetic dynamics of the scapegoat. (p. 227) The word “sacrifice” in English has a crucial ambiguity, covering up the difference between the two totally different meanings of sacrifice. In one case, sacrifice is something done to you—the victim is lynched. In another case it involves giving something up, renouncing something. In myths, the scapegoat victim is divinized in retrospective recognition of his sacrifice. Victims are sacrificed—murdered, immolated, lynched. But this is transformed retrospectively in people’s imaginations into selfsacrifice, with the victim supposedly renouncing the desire to continue living, for the sake of the community. The Greeks had two words that are both translated in English as “sacrifice”: thyein, the verb, and thyia, the noun, which means to immolate a victim, literally to make smoke, to honor a god or the gods; and askesis, a noun meaning “to give up something,” to renounce something. These words mark a thoroughly useful distinction and so they must be employed in a careful discussion. (Tomelleri, 2018, p. 227)

Scapegoat Victims But why is the scapegoat left to stand alone, defended by no one? We do not defend scapegoat victims for a number of reasons. One is fear; defending a victim means that there is an excellent chance that you too will be immolated and we are afraid for our lives. Another concerns mimesis; scapegoating occurs when there is unanimity about the guilt of the victim. It is extremely difficult to avoid social conformism. Imagine that all your friends and all your family members concur as to the victim’s guilt. It is likely to be very hard to continue to believe in the victim’s innocence under those conditions. When absolutely everyone disagrees with something important that you believe and for which

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta everyone has seen the evidence, then you might even feel yourself to be mad. The word “idiot” is connected with unique perceptions such as if you were to see little green men that no one else could see. In the famous “line” experiment, it is demonstrated that if a large group of people collaborate in falsely claiming that line A is longer than line B, the one person excluded from this elaborate ruse will also agree that line A is longer, disavowing the evidence of his own eyes. Everyone has found themselves to be wrong when he was very sure that he was right. There is nothing inherently implausible about being wrong about guilt or innocence. (Tomelleri, 2018, p. 227)

Autopoietic Magic As Luhmann (1979) notes, “The theme of factual experience always relates to other possible, but unrealized, experiences. The world gains its unity solely from the boundaries of this ‘et cetera!’” (p. 52). Luhmann (1979) explains: Through the generalizing capacity of such media, structures of expectation and patterns of motivation are formed which make it possible for selections made by one individual to be relevant to another, in the sense that he/she is aware of them and does not treat them as an open question, but performs his/her own selections as consequences of them. (p. 48)

As such, the code guides the purposive selection from among the innumerable cues empirically present in any particular context: It filters simple context information to permit serviceable “what counts” determinations. Most important, the communication medium can perform this function so efficiently and unobtrusively that the fact that selections are actively being performed never receives a second thought. Seen in this light, communication media clearly have a motivational function; in other words, they “urge the acceptance of the other’s selections and make that acceptance the object of expectation” (Luhmann, 1979, p. 111). When one member’s selection serves simultaneously as a vehicle motivating some other member’s choices, a communication medium can be said to have been formulated. Media code is self-reinforcing; it makes the following two assumptions:

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1. Media-guided communication processes bind partners who complete their own selections and know about this from each other. 2. The transference of selections entails the reproduction of selections in simplified conditions abstracted from their initial contexts. (Luhmann, 1979, p. 112) The command/consensus dichotomy offers a convenient illustration of the kinds of processes involved. First off, commands are exceptions to the rule of procedure. Indeed, command/acceptance can actually become dysfunctional when it restricts the subordinate so severely as to negate the natural plasticity of individual initiative and competence. Second, the most effective command is doubtlessly the unspoken one. Generalized authority—or, if you prefer, the power to command—selects the other’s premises of action in such a way that the subordinate anticipates on his or her own accord the appropriate activity (Luhmann, 1979). When they must be employed, spoken commands can tend to personalize superior–subordinate relations to such a degree that the persons become the theme of interaction instead of the means/end particularity of the task situation. Personalization of this sort can in turn introduce a vast array of communication contingencies that the established channels of communication may or may not be equipped to handle (Mickunas & Pilotta, 2014). Cooperative action among different actors and elements within organizations is not as much a matter of consensus as it is a matter of the coordination of particular interests. This coordination is accomplished through the elicitation of commitments from the affected parties. Networks of mutual obligation form important, if often covert, communication systems in their own right. Commitment transforms private concerns into public themes, while permitting continued relatively free play to personal rationalization and interpretive mechanisms. From the process standpoint, what is happening is that commitments, regardless of how obtained, generate communication structures that are indifferent albeit hardly irrelevant to individual premises (ideas, values, motives, etc.). Formally or informally achieved commitments, whatever their grounds, frame communication relationships that can readily be evaluated by the affected parties in the simplest, most immediate terms—namely, as the irretrievable allocation of scarce communication resources. Trust, good will, influence, information, command, respect, integrity, self-esteem, and the like are examples of such resources. More than that, an individual’s personal evaluation of the relationship readily becomes translated into palpable

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behavior for organizational actors on the basis of the relative cost/benefit to each party of reneging/honoring/extending the commitment. Thus, commitment secures both a basis for cooperation and a framework for evaluation against which various interests can assess their allocations. The processes of simplification and abstraction highlighted by the nature of relational commitments presuppose symbolically generalized codes. To take the analysis one step further, the illustrations provided by Luhmann’s (1979) discussion of power furnish a clear example of the motivational role of media codes. Power serves as a communication medium by ordering situations containing binary selectivity (yes/no). Power assumes the following: 1. Uncertainty exists in relation to the power holder’s selections. In other words, for whatever reason, the power holder has more than one available option. Moreover, executing this choice produces or removes uncertainty with respect to the power receiver. 2. Alternatives are available to the power receiver. Power can be said to be greater if it can exert influences in the face of attractive alternatives, and it increases proportionally as there is an increase in freedom for the power receiver. Because the function of a communication medium is to transmit reduced complexity, rather than to emphasize actual applications of power, Luhmann’s (1979) perspective underscores the structuring of the other’s possible selections. In this way, power as a media code regulates contingency by relating to a possible, and not merely an actual, discrepancy between the preferred selections of the power holder and power receiver, and removing that discrepancy. Power secures possible chains of effects independently of the will of the power receiver; not against the receiver’s will, but indifferently/independently of that will because, from this point of view, power is not a cause but rather a catalyst: It accelerates events, and thereby increases the probability of the ratio of effective connections between the system and the environment. In other words, “Power is an opportunity to increase the probability of realizing improbable selection combinations” (Luhmann, 1979, pp. 113–114). To recapitulate, power within an organizational (action) system exhibits the capacity to influence individual choices among available selections simply by translating preferred selections into expectations. In this way, power helps

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articulate and integrate the organization’s “doing” environment without constraining individuals. By defining power as a communication medium, it becomes possible to avoid the concept of power that regards it as either a possession or as an attribute of individuals. Rather, in order to employ power successfully within any organization, the individual must learn to access the power code. It is true that such theories of power abound in sociological literature, and are imported by a number of disciplines, including communication. One characteristic shared by most, if not all, of these theories is the view that power is somehow communicated and not something that communicates. This seemingly sweeping dismissal of language requires further elaboration. It is easy to misread Luhmann’s (1979) intent, and to therefore regard all conversation as irrelevant in any attempt to uncover these communication media/codes which so efficiently condense and impart interpretation as well as motivational patterns of action. Communication media differ from conversation in the information-exchanging sense in that communication media or codes are not neutral in regard to action selection, nor are they sensory in an ordinary sense. Codes do not carry any explicit sense of alternatives or choice, rather they carry a motivation force of an expected/anticipated action or behavior. Codes are akin operationally to the motivational force that causes American drivers to stop at stop signs and red lights, regardless of time of day or traffic conditions (or rather, the absence of other traffic) and to the presumed influence that both detergent packaging has on consumer purchasing or the public announcement to vote for a certain candidate has upon voting behavior. Luhmann (1979) suggests that the motivational power of the communication code is partly a result of its embedding in the web of social conventions which constitute a society. What Luhmann is observing as regards language is that it would take at least one and possible several lifetimes to explain all of the social conventions and expectations that underlie both the daily activities and the pivotal life decisions faced by each member of a social system. This difficulty is magnified geometrically in the case of a highly complex and differentiated social system, within which individuals are often members of more than one subsystem, each in a variety of ways and differing to various degrees. If individuals were bound by linguistic explication, such crossovers of multiple subsystem memberships would be impossible. Likewise, if language (e.g., natural language) were the only communication medium available, the development of social complexity would be restricted

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by its natural limitations. Luhmann does not preclude the possibility that language might function in an adjunctive capacity or even an elemental capacity to other communication codes. In looking to language as a code adjunct, it is necessary to bear in mind the salient qualities of communication codes: because they are condensed and motivational, these codes must be atemporal and ahistorical. In order to relieve the need for explication, the content of communication codes must be in a highly abstracted form, comprehensible instantly, as well as independently of the context of its origin. Talk, or verbal exchange, can in some regard be said to function as a model for all communication research. Often in communication, research language is largely taken for granted as a code. Communication researchers are frequently concerned with the content of that code, and occasionally with its surface structure (e.g., syntactic characterization by sentence type such as interrogative, command, etc.) and thereby focus on language as a noun. In seeking to examine language not only as a noun but also as a process, communication must recognize and distinguish its approach from that of other interested disciplines currently cooperating under the rubric of cognitive science to examine language as a psychological or cognitive process, as a neurophysical, neurochemical, and neuroelectrical process, and as a mechanical process. Luhmann’s (1979) communication codes provide one means of examining linguistic phenomena as a social process or social code. The examination of language as a social code would require a shift in focus from the now predominant psychological and cognitive emphasis to those aspects of communication which transcend (yet encompass) individual use and divergent episodes/acts. I am not here referring to the schema of communication act with which all communication scholars and students are familiar: a sender/encoder, a medium, a message, a receiver/decoder, an environment potentially disruptive. While this scenario clearly depicts a great many communicative acts and enables a kind of post hoc analysis of a given event, it possesses little capacity to explain those aspects of human communication which create and recreate the necessary social knowledge to in turn facilitate social process. Put another way, inasmuch as individuals both feel themselves and can refer to membership in a collective, non-material entity labeled as “society,” what role or roles does communication play in the maintenance of such a dynamic entity? Luhmann might suggest that the (communicative) mechanisms by which individuals accomplish social interaction are the product of the history of the social system. In this regard, these mechanisms are also in process, so that they are comprised of the past

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episodes and all contingencies to these episodes. Yet these mechanisms/codes are abstracted from that history and time. What makes the codes (or mechanisms) ahistorical is that they compress and abstract elements or features of their original social interaction in a manner that does not require knowledge of that original context and episode as a precondition for use of that code. These codes are atemporal in their abstraction of information and motivation, so that through the employment of these communication codes, the action choice of individuals is structured to produce a selected outcome, moments, months, even generations removed from the original “context.”

The Word in the Beginning as Magic An investigation into the linguistic roots of “word” may now be in order. As Abarim Publications (2014) notes, The root ‫( דבר‬dabar) is complicated. It occurs about 2,500 times in the Bible and is most commonly translated with “to speak.” Yet it rather means to formalize, i.e., to transcend the realms of subconscious intuition, the mental equivalent of muscle memory and the subliminal governance of experience, and to consciously describe what is going on with very precise words that everybody can understand and take to heart without having to accumulate years of experience and mental muscle memory. This verb is obviously a very big deal. …the Word is a living being. Abram was seeing the word of God. (Abarim Publications, 2014, n.p.) Our verb dabar is distinguished from the verb … (‘amar), meaning to say or talk, in that ‘amar brings the focus on what is spoken, but dabar brings the focus on the actual speaking. Hence the verb ‘amar always comes with what was said…while dabar may occur without content (e.g., and, after clearing his throat, he spoke. (Abarim Publications, 2014, n.p.) Our verb ‫( דבר‬dabar) can generally be translated as to speak, declare, warn, threaten, command promise, sing, and so on…. ‫( דבר‬dabar) is commonly translated with “word,” but rather describes a full message, a whole declaration, a whole warning, a whole threat, a whole command

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta or a whole song. And since the verb essentially describes how a careful definition gives clear boundaries to any thing in order for that thing to exist as an autonomous thing, our noun (dabar) may sometimes be translated simply as “thing.” (Abarim Publications, 2014, n.p.) The derivations of our verb are: The masculine noun ‫( דבר‬dabar), meaning a word, a message, a thing (as explained above). Our noun denotes a thing that was made to come about…. In conjunction with YHWH, the word dabar denotes both the whole of all things that exist in the universe, as well as the formal knowledge of all these things in the whole new world in us. (Abarim Publications, 2014, n.p.) The feminine noun … (dibra), meaning “cause” (Job 5:8), “order [of Melchizedek]” (Psalm 110:4), “anything” (Ecclesiastes 7:14), “for the purpose of” (Daniel 2:30), “in order that” (Daniel 4:17). (Abarim Publications, 2014, n.p.)

In terms of specific examples, one might look at Dionysus. His powers derive from the idea that he is like the grape. The sparagmos is a metaphor for the process of making wine—one tears the grape apart, and the fluid is like blood. You bury the casks in a cave, and after a time, spirits are produced. (In the Christian conception, this becomes formalized in the idea of resurrection in the spirit. The Eucharist is another form of sympathetic magic.) Dionysus’ power of resurrection is partly based on this, and partly based on the regeneration of the grapevines in spring. Another power of Dionysus is to induce madness. He has this power because intoxication is a type of madness. Euripides’ The Bacchae, which is, at its core, a commemoration of Dionysus’ dismemberment and resurrection, demonstrates how sympathetic magic is applied in relation to the people of Thebes, and Pentheus in particular. Pentheus (ntɛvēkús) literally means “suffering,” and I don’t think it’s much of a leap to take that particular ending, “theus” as a form of “theos,” which renders his name “divine suffering,” which is a precise description of Pentheus’ story. Pentheus, who starts out the opposite of Dionysus, slowly becomes like Dionysus as the play progresses, with the ultimate end of his taking the place of Dionysus in the ritual commemoration of the sparagmos.

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Emotion The role of emotion in this complex should not be overlooked. Greaves (2022) notes that “Temperament too, whilst not itself a transformative emotion, might be fruitfully considered in this framework as the rate and rhythm of emotional transformation. Further comparative work on the parallel intellectual development of Sartre and Collingwood may well help in this regard” (p. 295). Magical practices are formed through the social mediation of relatively immediate emotional expressions. Such mediations can be understood as generating a field of shared and often conflicting transformations or metabolic exchanges. In the case of magical “attacks” such as the ritual destruction of nail clippings, Collingwood describes the immediate expressions of two persons. The first person feels that something forming an outpost of his personality must be cherished, “protecting it from accidental or malicious damage” (Collingwood, The Philosophy of Enchantment, p. 119). A second person expresses anger or repugnance towards another by damaging or disrespectfully treating something cherished by their enemy. However, emotional expressions of this kind do not tend to remain isolated events. Fully fledged magical attacks occur when performed in an open-ended social situation, incorporating these two relatively immediate expressions. (Greaves, 2022, p. 287) The practical world is not initially or primarily “instrumental” or “magical,” but a continual cycle of transformation between the two. The two types of emotion are better understood as transformations from a more to a less determined world and from a less to a more determined world). Sartre does stress the importance of the social situation that informs and is informed by emotions. However, in the Sketch he describes isolated situations, as though social life consisted of a series of vignettes from a single point of view, rather than a social field involving shared emotional transformations. What Sartre does emphasize is the embodiment of magical expressions in the form of incantation and dance. Thus, when discussing joy, which he initially puts forward as a potential counterexample to his claim that emotion is a response to practical difficulty, Sartre argues that through incantation and dance, joy becomes an attempt to realize the impossible: “to realize the possession of the desired object as an instantaneous totality” (Sartre, Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions, p. 72). The activity works symbolically: “To dance, or

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Chapter 6

Erotic Machinery, Desire, Perversity, and Tyranny Introduction Ideology of desire, lover of the city, lover of the people, the metaphor of Eros is/was of part of classical Athens. Pericles urges the people to fall in love in Athens and its power and become its lovers. Cleon loves and woos through political gifts. Alcibiades loves the people, they love him, although they sentence him to death. Eros suffers the political relationships between the demos and its leaders. Athens is not only a lover but a love object. International relationships are also a love affair. Thucydides speaks of imperial power as a diseased passion and shows imperial power, like democratic politics, driven by lust. Thucydides develops a complex political psychology around Eros. Political relations were implied by the citizens’ sexual relations and were mutually defining. As only men were citizens, politics and sexual relations were a political category, as to be an Athenian is to be one with the injunctions and prohibitions implied. Hence, political decisions were driven by desire. The movement of desire banded its citizens and was coterminous with political Eros. It can be said of the erotic politics of imperialism that Eros is the object of empire, and empire is the mechanism of Eros. Thucydides’ dichotomy of foresight and chance, Eros leads astray the leading Athenians to act against their own best interests. The logic of imperialism is the logic of masculinity, and its costs are a part of Eros. Things either draw us towards them or push us away from them. The attributes of a thing that have this effect can be designated as “expressive” qualities. Affectivity is a particular mode in which one is affected by something. We can say that the individual relates to a world of things and is motivated by them—if we look at this from an affective perspective. One is attracted or repelled in terms of how it affects one’s practical life.

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Desire Desire is an example of the affective perspective. Desire is not just a subjective state. Rather, it is an orientation in that the individual is open to all the affective characteristics of things, which in this case, attract an individual. It is this attraction, as a quality of the good or service, which is a correlate of desire. Desire is practical mediation (whereas perception is cognitive mediation).

The Role of Cognition in Desire Desire is a movement in a direction toward the desired “thing.” The “toward” indicates the oriented and elective characteristics of desire. This aspect of desire—taken as desire of this or that—can be articulated by the individual’s cognitive capabilities. The aim of human desire is illuminated through the perception of the absent thing: How can it be reached or obtained? Imagination, for example, not only anticipates perceptual implications, but it also anticipates the obstacles, the sadness or joy, the pleasure or pain, of being joined to or separated from the desired thing. Desire is a correlate of the attractive or the good characteristics of thing.

Self-Understanding in Desire In the same way as perceptual activity, the activity of desiring is an expression of the individual from a particular perspective: A desiring individual may express that desire through action as a way of uniting himself with the desired thing. Yet, the way in which the individual acts while approaching the desired thing depends upon how he interprets or understands himself. This selfunderstanding in terms of the desire for things is a cognitive understanding, a process of self-interpretation of what is good for oneself; to will the desired is to will for oneself what is good; this is self-love. The affectivity is not an intentional act stemming from an interiority of a subject, but a movement of expressivity which comprises the very sense of gestures and is transmitted through gestures, postures, and mobile face and limbs. This means that the immediacy of expression is not so much faced or

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confronted as participated in and lived through. It is like the “lively” tune which sends our limbs into frenzy. This conception of expressivity abandons not only the inner–outer dualism, but also abandons the distinction between our corporeal expressivity and its characterization, and the expressivity manifest among the experienced phenomena. The fearsome storm and the fear forming across the face participate in one expressive movement; the lonely night and the lonely heart, the bright morning and sparkling eye converge in the medium of expressivity which does not lend itself to separations.

The Desire for Desire In advertisements, the erotic is never in desire but in signs. Naked bodies refuse the status of flesh, of sex, of flaunting desire, instrumentalizing part of the body in a gigantic process of sublimation and denial of evocation. Parts of the body, particularly those of women, are fetishized as symbols of sexuality that cannot be accessed. Shampoo suds run down naked torsos; legs in stiletto heels emblematize a seductive feminine consumer and imperative that move to replace erotic impulse. All politics, media, and robotics are seduction. “Seduction is immediately reversible. It is a power of absorption and fascination, a power that causes sex, power, and defiance. And it is pure gaming—neither energies nor investment. We seduce ourselves with vulnerability. Therefore, all seduction is selfseduction” (Pilotta & McCaughan, 2016, p. 129). One major aspect of corporeal expressivity is erotic desire. The logic of communication of this desire may well constitute a standard for all expressive social communication. Erotic desire communicates itself in the sense that it desires the other, not as a physiological entity, but it desires the other’s desire. It desires to be desired. The intimacy of mutual expressivity and intensification suggests that erotic desire feeds on erotic desire, that it creates an atmosphere from which one cannot easily extricate, run away, and cease to communicate. After all, desire as expressivity transcends bodily anatomy toward kinesthetic figuration and refiguration as expressive, and spreads its general scheme as an inescapable presence. One cannot turn away from it, and all the sensory fields, from vision through touch, all gestures, are pervaded by its troubles. The general scheme that erotic desire comprises leads directly to the ways that erotic communication shifts to ambiguities and leads to numerous collapses of

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communication. If one desires the desire of another, and if such a desire makes all events desirable and indeed desiring, then any deflation anywhere and anytime, will be a deflation of everywhere and at all times. When a loved one returns home late at night and announces that “I am sorry, but I do not love you anymore,” the detraction of desire for the other’s desire means that the entire world collapses into an indifferent, remote, meaningless sum of objects. Not only does this person no longer love me, but my mother, my dog, and even my god never loved me. Indeed, no one loves me, and the universe is cold and indifferent.

Eros The Greek expression of Eros culminates in Platonic thought, where Eros is defined as a great spirit, a daimon, and like all spirits, he is an intermediate between the divine and the mortal. He spans the chasm and bounds all into unity. The aim for which Eros yearns is transcendent, perfection itself, the limitless idea which no mundane thing can approximate. In Platonism, the most exalted ideas, the ultimate realities, are attained through stages. Each one is reached by the propulsion of Eros, which is dissatisfied by any attained term; it seeks to transgress every limitation and aims at the universal, the limitless, the infinite. The ideal, the formal, the limitless, and the eternal, constitute its ultimate aim, its telos. Such an eroticism is not a reproduction of the species or an attainment of pleasure in a release of accumulated tensions; it is a force which does not originate in any practical domain; it does not arise from any pragmatic need. It has a different aim. Although Plato was credited with establishing Western teleological thought, a vertical ascent to the perfect and the unlimited, the teleology breaks down when Eros enters the picture. First of all, Eros cannot have a telos, such as the infinite, the unlimited. By definition, the infinite, the limitless is not a point of orientation, not a direction, and hence cannot yield a guide to ascent or descent. All that can be said is that to aim at the infinite is to aim at everything. But his is not a telos, not a guide to orientation. The infinite does not provide a direction and hence cannot play a teleological role as an aim of Eros. The very notion that Eros aims at the infinite indicates that Eros has no aim, at least no specific aim. Infinity has no fixity, has no “whereto,” and no signposts leading to its locus.

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Secondly, if Eros transgresses all limits, bounds everything into a unity, moves to the universal, then the universality is the very movement of Eros. If the nature of Eros is to pervade everything with its life-infusing, creative, intensifying, and explosive power, then the perfect Platonic idea, the limitless, is not an indication of an erotic aim, a direction, but a sign of an Eros which overflows all limits, surpasses all restrictions, and in its aimless wandering, it encounters its own unlimited drive, its own joy and torment. Eros in Plato infuses with its own life the ultimate, the perfect being, and this eroticized ultimate becomes the telos of Eros, but it is a telos which finds Eros facing itself, finding its own desire in the ultimate The ultimate is an expression of the erotic search for itself. In this way, Eros aims at itself, elicits its own movement, and becomes its own propulsion, its autokinesis. Eros is driven by Eros. It is the force which invests its excitement into everything and remains dissatisfied with any invested limitations. It spreads to infuse itself into everything, where the universal and the limitless, the ideal and the eternal, are ways of expressing the erotic craving for itself, for self-elevation, intensification, desire of desire which increments itself without end. This is the hidden secret of why the idea of the ultimate good had to be accompanied by the idea of the beautiful, the attractive, and the desirable. The good in itself has no attraction; it has to be beautiful to elicit our desire, our craving. Even when the good, as the motive force, became the Aristotelian prime mover, it moved by being desirable, by being wanted; and even when the prime mover was translated into a Christian God, it turned into an “object” of worship when it became a “loving father” and not merely a “self-thinking thought.” This erotic drive is the ground of reflexivity in the sense of a feeling that senses itself, and in this sensing, intensifies itself. My expressed desire of someone is a body movement, a self-shaping gesture that spreads across the gestures of the other, of her transforming look, and intensifies my desire. While being limited to me and to the someone, the erotic desire transcends our singular beings and tends to generalize itself by eroticizing everything. The spread toward generality is at the source of the Platonic concept of erotic transcendence. For Plato, the erotic compulsion to transcend all limits to the limitless, to infuse itself into every order of being, does not depend on its being banned, suppressed, for its continuous expansion; its own nature is a compulsion to universalize, to encompass and to pervade the All. Its spread is both horizontal and vertical.

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Hence, Eros is the very transcending movement which finds no other issue, no other desire for anything except itself, a desire of desire, an Eros for Eros. One could even say that its search for wisdom is its “highest” happiness. The human desire to attain the highest object, the perfect and ideal, is driven from within, and yet at the same time, it is attracted by Eros which envelops the object of desire; the highest object is desired—not because it is the highest, but because it is desirable, it is charged by Eros. Human erotic desire is, here, desire of desire. The Eros pervading and driving the human toward the highest is an Eros which is attracted by itself. The erotic desire, as described above, reappears in Sartre. In his Being and nothingness, Sartre (1956) argues that “erotic desire is not identical with sexual compulsion” (p. 93). Even sexual compulsion is not identical with the physiological constitution of human beings. Prior to the full development of an organic constitution, the child is erotic, and after old age dissipates one’s physiological prowess, a person does not cease to have erotic desires. Sex is merely a derivation of erotic desire. We discover the sexuality of the other from the more basic phenomenon of our desire for the other person’s desire. It is unnecessary to apprehend the organic physiological stimuli—which would be transmitted by the other’s body eliciting our organic response. Erotic desire does not disrobe the other in order to attain to the naked level of organic stimulation. Rather, the desire demands the desire of the other. It wants to be wanted. Both the desiring subject and the desired other, be the other a subject or an object, must be enveloped by, must express desire. Erotic desire has a level of intentionality as a desire of something, a desire for someone. Yet, the desire requires more than a presence of an object; the object or the other must assume a movement of desirability, must also have a look, an expression of desire. What brings out our desire is not our own initiation; it is the manifest desire in the other in such a way that both the desiring subject and the desired other are captured, immersed in the power of Eros. Eros does not aim at the physiology or organic constitution of the other but at the other’s Eros: Eros seeks Eros, seeks itself, is excited by itself. It is Eros in both the desiring and the desired that deploys each as possessing sexual attraction. Erotic desire is prior to and more fundamental than sexual physiology. It haunts the surface of actual processes, but it is not reducible to them. It is like the look, like the expression which is ahead of all physiological aspects. To penetrate to physiology is to miss the expression. The inviting look is not identical with the specific contortions and lines of a face. It is captured, carried, and expressed by the face and can be transmitted

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to other faces, other gestures. What attracts is the expression; it is what creates desire; Eros appears as an expression carried by and manifest through things, humans, ideals, and even divinities. In the modern age, Sartre (1956) depsychologizes desire: Erotic desire is not an aspect of some subjective interiority, of some interior psychological state which is projected on others and objects. The erotic desire is an expression which is not reducible to the bodily dimension of life (note 395). Erotic desire appears as something that can capture the human, thicken and cloud awareness, abolish human situatedness and the projecting movement toward possibilities. As a phenomenon, erotic desire is read directly in perception and has a force of immediacy capable of capturing, arresting, and enveloping the participants. This envelopment is what constitutes the desire of desire, the expressed erotic want of one being for another, where Eros seeks to encounter this want and not just a body. Eros tends to keep the human intense, awake, and alert; it wants union, it desires to be with, where the desire of desire is here augmented in mutual excitement. The tendency of the erotic autokinesis toward generality, continuation, propagation, unity and intensification, is accompanied by a tendency toward singularity and extreme individuation. It is just this particular object, person or idea that becomes charged with desire, becomes attractive, and calls for human response—elicits desire. The specific characteristics, expressions, gestures, the specific designs which attract, which form a desirable configuration just for this specific person. It can be safely assumed that Antony’s sexual needs were fully satisfied by the concubines accompanying the Roman army; yet, it was a specific person, Cleopatra, who elicited the erotic desire in Antony, a desire which transformed him and moved him in ways unaccustomed. This singularity of the erotic force and investment is at the same time its impulse to generality, to encompassment. Because of this investment, all things, events, become erotically charged, assume a glow, a desirability, and lend the one who is captured by Eros an air of self-importance. In this sense, Eros does not demean but elevate, does not subjugate but valorize. The sense of worth, coming with Eros, affirms the person, extends him/her toward value, toward generality. What is pleasurable in the erotic rapture is its immediacy, its all-pervading presence; yet, it is tormenting, since the immediacy of the singular term of erotic investment of desire spreads across everything, is already dissatisfied with any singularity, and leads to a longing for something more.

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The tension between the most general, the endless Eros, is the origin of the notion of sexual eroticism, of the most individual preference for a partner, the immediate gratification, and at the same time of the process of sublimation, the seeking out of itself in everything. Sublimation is no longer a product of suppression, of frustration of libidinal craving, but a positive process where the very movement to sublimation is another form wherein the erotic drive transcends every term in seeking itself. It again has no other end, no other issue apart from its own self-generation. The erotic desire does not seek to destroy but to rejuvenate. While singling out this individual, the lover wants to rejuvenate, to bring the other to life, to become a life-giver—not only to this individual, but to become desired by all. The turning upon itself, the erotic reflexivity, is not a destruction but an intensification, not a release, a discharge, but an augmentation, an extension over everything, its generalization from the individual over everything without the loss of the sensual, the immediate, the perceptually given expressive configurations which solicit desire. This expressivity, this desirable configuration which excites, intensifies, elevates, and propagates itself, is what connects Eros to Mythos Such a mythical being is Eros, who grips and carries away. The experienced presence of such an elevating and enveloping divinity is a release from all purposes, plans, and desires, above all from all that is not purely present, purely captivating and engulfing. The human attains a true selfhood when he/she participates in the pure presence of this elevated experience in which all direction is lost, where the display of desire is enveloped by the encounter of desire, where expressive enticement is pervaded by Eros. Here, the human desire, the human eroticism assumes a form of selfdisplay for no other purpose apart from this dis-play; a human eroticism which encounters the countenance of Eros expressed across the face of all beings. In the presence of the mythical figure of Eros, the human answers with an elevated voice, a dancing body, which are truly with themselves a direct expression of a human selfhood in an eroticized, theocentric world. Here, the voice rises to a chant, to an enchantment; the song breaks forth not in an epic or a hymn, but in a pure lyrical form. Human fulfillment, a full selfunderstanding, calls for this elevation, this inspiration from the mythical figure, from the deeper and higher dimension where all chains fall by the wayside and the theocentric human surges forth in an elevated festivity. To the enchantment of the presence of the mythical figure, the human answers with an elevation of his/her nature.

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Love Marks Love can handily dispense with the rules and protocols of its writing, searching, and emailing, that is, the rules of communication. The private and the public are life-reflexive and demand no less than the emotions and observations prescribed in literature—primarily fiction seen through a side of life. We constantly see and know love via television, movies, celebrity magazines, and romance novels. Love as the “lovemarks” (Roberts, 2004) concept is not the “love” of today, but rather it is more appropriate to 17th Century romance and the epistemology of beliefs. Love is no more conceived as an idea of Plato or located in the heart to be evoked. Rather, love is enacted. There is no a priori involved today. Love, intimacy, and friendship are collapsed. In the 18th century, love was an embodiment of an open system, faced with individuality and the difference of lovers who are out to create their own rules. Society is forced to develop new, more subtle codes of love and human relationships. Generally, to love as open, each individual goes through a transformation of the psyche in light of the contact with each person. This is the difference between the contemporary experience of love and love in the past. With love, intimacy and familiarity are together. There is no need for an expression of love when love is instead acted out. Passion is a synonym for complex communication during the Enlightenment, and love is initially a deviation from convention. So, when lovers are driven outside social norms, their passion, paradoxically a codification of love, eventually emerges. Love is open to failure because of the complexity of communication. In the real world, life is based on separation. Love, however, inspired by religious fervor, retains an element of identification (fusion)—as opposed to separation. A public example of fusion in love may be the outpouring of emotion after the death of Princess Di. Although there can be identification in symbolic love, as love in a love story, the expression of love becomes almost equivalent to love itself. According to Julia Kristeva (1987), love discourse has been impoverished: “We are drowning in a cascade of false images” (p. 375). Kristeva echoes the voices of the 1960s and early 1970s. Rubin (qtd. in O’Neill, 1972) expressed it this way: “Language prevents communication” (p. 55).

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It’s So Divine Of late, the scholarly consensus is tending toward one interpretation. As Greimas (1985) indicates, “national general social structure finds its correspondence in the structure of the divine world and the division of divine functions. A religion is a national ideology with whose aid a society reflects upon itself” (p. 11 ff). Indeed, if mythical figures are conceived as entities, then they may well reflect human social order. But can a reflection of social order possess a power of transfiguration, of elevation, and ultimately of selfabandonment to the immediacy of display of functions, expressions having no aim, no purpose apart from such display? Is there not something more immediate, direct, more primordial in the mythical figures with the power to arrest us, to move us in unexpected ways? Phenomenological research has suggested a dimension of experience which fits precisely the mythical requirements of enchantment, of capturing and transfiguring, of eliciting and tormenting: This dimension is expression centered in the presence of Eros. The latter pervades all other mythical figures with attraction and envelopment. Hence, such figures are equally dimensions that transcend the singular, and yet are worldly. They provide the very space of human intercorporeal life and direct communication.

Seduction1 Seduction represents mastery over the symbolic universe, while power is mastery over the real world. Transformation of sex into signs is the secret of seduction. Seduction rules over the power of production, and seduction has a ritual order of sex, but seduction is wider, and invisible. Power seduces by virtue of a reversibility that haunts it. Narcissus says, “I will be you.” The mirror of Narcissus quenches his thirst by his image of the other. It is surface that absorbs and seduces. Narcissus could approach, but he could not get beyond: No reflexive distance between him and his image. The water is not a surface of reflection, but of absorption. It is seductive to the seduced. One is fascinated by being seduced 1

The original version of this essay appeared in Pilotta, J. J. & Mickunas, A. (1990). Science of Communication: Its Phenomenological Foundation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Press.

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by self-image. The mirror image has no depth. The mirror speaks, “I will be your mirror” (but does not signify). “I will be your reflection” (and I will be your deception). Narcissus furnishes an illusion as he turns from truth and turns the other, as other, into a model of love. It becomes a strategy of seduction, the very production of illusions. It has to wait for desire. Neither magic nor seduction can create make-believe without employing signs. The logic is not mediation but immediacy. Proof is not necessary. The spell is cast by the unmediated resonance of signs. The spell belongs to the declaration and profession, requiring neither deciphering nor belief. Seduction supposes no signs of desire, but as artifice, the sirens remain unseen. God is a seduction of a piece of esoteric machinery that fascinates. All seduction begins with sorcery in a slow and exhausting complicity among signs. Concatenated secrets are beyond exchange. Its power is to remain unspoken, the power of the secret is in illusions of ritual, never secret. The secret moves beneath the words and outstrips them. Seduction operates by deception and secrecy, inaugurating a secretive ritual and immediacy that plays by its own rules. To seduce is to lead the other from truth. The truth is a secret that escapes from one. Seduction is immediate, and reversibility is constituted by its challenge. It is a power of attraction, distraction, absorption, and fascination. Seduction is a passion that can result in sex, but can exhaust the passion of intensity, as a pure form of gaming, vertiginous, reciprocal, engulfing by meaningless signs. Challenge and seduction are quite similar. We seduce with weakness and vulnerability. It’s void, as seduction is always sacrificial. Playing with death, seduction operates between strategy and bestiality, linked by body rituals in the aura of secrecy produced by weightless signs. God’s mockery of seduction, bread/wine, miracles, walking on water, three-person/one God, rising from the dead, seduction lies in transformation or transubstantiation and pure appearance. Disenchantment comes from seduction and its failure, but to be deprived of seduction is castration. Fetishism is contra-seduction. Violence, rape, as well as the abject. Fetishism is the seduction of death, as seen, for example, in the movie The Collector, the title character of which captures butterflies and pins them on the wall. Faith in the religious sense is similar to seduction in that it is a game of love. Belief in God and faith is a challenge to God’s existence. One seduces God with faith, and God with grace challenges the faith. God is compelled to respond, but God is not compelled to exist so that belief is satisfied.

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New media usher in the era of fascination vs. seduction, which is a cold seduction, Narcissism, the spell of electronic info systems, ludic and libidinal flirts, a combination of polyvalence and play. The Narcissism of today sees cloning as self-seduction.

Perversity within the World of Seduction As Lacan (1966) points out, the power of seduction is not as straightforward as it might appear: Anti-seductive figures can become figures of seduction. Power seduces, not as the complicity of the masses, but in the reversibility of power of dominant/dominated, executioner/victim, if these can’t be exchanged power disappears. Power as stable structure (logic of hegemonic reason) doesn’t exist since power itself demands its exchange, reversal in a cycle, seeks its own death. Power seduces re: challenging itself. Seduction is stronger because it is reversible disaccumulative & mortal, while power seeks to be irreversible cumulative & immortal (Lacan, 1966, p. 46). Power is of the order of the real & tends to become its own imaginary, seduction is not of the order of the real so it can reverse & contain power. The real is boring, the imaginary catastrophe behind the real is what fascinates. The real is the stockpile of dead forms (dead labor, bodies, language) & simulation is the recirculation of dead forms, which seek to be irreversible instances. Unlike sex, seduction challenges & reverses processes always increasing the stakes. Foucault believes sexuality is produced but is too fascinated by the field of power & production. If sexuality & sociality are staged by power, then perhaps power is staged by theory. Power now proliferates cancerously & increasingly is absorbed into its signs in its disappearance & simulation; So we must wager on simulation reversing power & question the emptiness of this positivism of the reality of power, sex & production. This question of the reversal of power etc. is the question of seduction. (Lacan, 1966, p. 46)

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Mirare—Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Mirrors, letters, not fruit or flowers; weightless objects suspend time, light, and perspective. Trompe l’oeil is the sign of slight vertiginous appearance before reality in a light without origin. The appearance of the double seduces in the subject’s desire to vanish into reality which require that we lose ourselves (hallucinated death, unmediated before perceptual order). The seizure “as though one could take hold of them” reveals the real world is staged re: a principle, a simulacrum undermined by the trompe l’oeil.

“I’ll Be Your Mirror,” Says the Authoritarian Seduction also presents unique challenges upon analysis: Seduction cannot be represented since it obliterates the distance between the real and its double. The image is not an “other” but an absorbing surface into which Narcissus looks; being seduced is what is seductive. The great stories of seduction are stories of incest & end in death. Incestuously seduced by our own image, which consoles us with our death, we gain our power to seduce. To seduce is to die as reality and reconstitute oneself as illusion. Turning from one’s own truth & others from their truth is a model of love. Seduction is deception that confuses itself w/reality, returning production & power (desire, the unconscious, psychoanalysis) to their illusions. All science reality & production only postpone seduction; deception = recognition of the endless power of seduction. Seduction = non-sense, i.e., seeking to be seduced by one’s sign; failing to be seduced by one’s sign (death coming at the wrong time) is worse than real defect or misfortune; Only senseless signs seduce us (Red of fox’s tail), meaningless signs have power. Repetition (e.g., ritual) empties signs of their meaning, so does fascination w/the void (e.g., door). That which is arbitrary takes on total necessity, nullity it compelling, improbable prophecies come true when cryptic non-sense is seductive. Seduction & magic, signs which resonate immediately w/o belief, intent, action, logic or decipherment of utterances.

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta Any system will fascinate which colludes w/its own absorption. Any selfsufficient/destructive thing fascinates (e.g., God). The attraction of the void (not messages of desire) grounds seduction, which begins in secrecy which exhausts meaning making the rules of the game enchanting. (Lacan, 1966, p. 46)

The Secret and the Challenge Both a secret and a challenge arise: Intensity of secret about the secret: knowing another’s secret w/o revealing it, & them knowing that w/o acknowledgement. The bit of info is irrelevant, the secret can be shared but not communicated or it loses its power (of elusive ritual exchange, of enigmatic duel solved by seduction w/o revealing the secret). An invisible seduction under, before, discourse since nothing/secret/unsignified (not sex) lies beneath the words. Repression is not seduction; it wants to speak; it is merely psychological the unconscious created along w/the techniques for its revelation. Yet language returns to its secret despite efforts to interpret & uncover it. Seduction is instantaneous & its own end (unlike means/ends). Its rhythm is a ritualistic cycle of secrecy w/o active/passive, subject/object, inner outer; the best way to seduce is to be seduced. Seduction is reversible (each leading the other from one’s truth) absorbed in its secret implying a challenge, escalation of violence & grace, radically indeterminate, & so w/o origin or determinate force, its intensity comes from purely formal bluffing. Why respond to a challenge? = What seduces? Reciprocal vertigo arises from a challenge in a ritual pact, that dissolves all laws, transacted in meaningless signs obliging each to respond in a rhythm of increase according to a fundamental (never to be stated) game rule. A challenge a contract, but a risk & a pact/individual, but duel/psychological, but ritual/ natural, but artificial/strategy, but destiny. Mirrors are the watchdogs of appearances which wait for someone to catch self in reflection. Seducer gives himself skillful humility of mirror (like Perseus & Medusa). Seduction is non-linear, oblique so that it can

Erotic Machinery, Desire, Perversity, and Tyranny touch the secret. 1st, in order for seduction to engage a fate, the girl must be free to go to, like a sleepwalker, her own fall. 2nd she must fall into a reduplicated state of grace & sovereignty = the secret provoked by states of absence, suspense & deflection of signs: omissions, denials, humility, deflections, diversions, ploys of distance, delay, neutralization of speech, letting signs hang to push her to the point of taking the initiative; esp. the ritual of her engagement (a suspended moment of enchantment & terror), like an initiation rite w/phase marking her death as emptiness, the fatal quality of which grounds pleasure, destining her to fall into his trap. Beauty, meaning, substance, God are ethically jealous & self-possessive, seduction is aesthetically possessive. Seducing is interesting, but aesthetics is interest in the interesting to the 2nd degree, faithful to the pact. Seduction the transformation of things into pure appearances. The last ironic stroke is the setting which replays the scenes of the duel in a perfect illusion brought together in a parody of a funereal & fiery consummation. Seduction is over in a single night. After she was spiritually diverted, robbed of her own seduction which was turned against her leaving her changed to herself turned inward to find herself. Everything, even I, am symbol & myth. Rituals ≠ transgression; festival rituals belong to the Rule not the Law. Magic is not utility, but a ritual to keep signs cycling in play. Gambling is also misunderstood if understood objectively as seeking wealth, but should be understood as the game’s seductive transmutation of value; money burns—a stake, challenge, not an investment. All money, language, sex & affect are completely transformed when changed from investment to a stake. Offering a challenge (e.g., “Send me a dollar for my defense”) to miraculous exchange not a swindle; con man challenges suckers & they challenge fate; a sacrificial challenge reducing the Gods to nothing challenging them to appear. Our actions are never grounded in belief, but in stakes & challenges: on provocations & play. Faith challenges God to exist seducing him to die by man’s sacrifice. Symbolic efficacy circulates goods & signs, not economically, but by resuming symbolic ties with other circuits: seduction of the order of things. Dismissing the transcendent value of things, making them partners, adversaries; chance is summoned as a

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta player in a duel. Chance does not exist, since it is not the Great Neutral Aleatorium in games which deny contingent arrangements to the world & question the reality of laws of chance; by ritual obligations in a charmed universe. Superstitions assume the world is a web of noncontingent symbolic relations. Everything & sign can be seduced hence games of chance are immoral since they seduce even the Law. Seduction also ritual (agonistic/magical) then aesthetic (ironic/diabolical) forms, then “political” form w/o content, i.e., informal (max diffusion/min intensity). Benjamin [1935/2010]: ritual forms w/o original—aesthetic form w/aura—now political form of reproduction w/o original; political form maximizes circulation/minimizes intensity. (Lacan, 1966, p. 47)

Perverse Eros and the Magic of Seduction Freud argued that those who are attracted to authoritarian leaders idealize them. The leader is seen as an exemplary, heroic human being shorn of every serious flaw. Second, he argued that followers identify with the leader by substituting him for what Freud called the ego ideal. The ego ideal is a mental representation of one’s guiding values. It consists of beliefs about right and wrong, what is obligatory and what is impermissible. It is our moral compass: essentially the same as one’s conscience. “In taking the place of their ego ideal, the authoritarian leader becomes the conscience of his followers, and his voice… becomes the voice of their conscience. Whatever the leader wills is, by definition, good and right” (Koontz, 2003, p. 50) In her book The Nazi conscience (2003), the historian Claudia Koonz writes that “when Heck watched the Gestapo rounding up the Jews in his village for deportation, including his best friend Heinz, he didn’t say to himself: ‘How terrible they are arresting Jews.’ Instead, having absorbed knowledge about the ‘Jewish menace’, he said: ‘What a misfortune Heinz is Jewish.’ As an adult, he recalled: ‘I accepted deportation as just’” (p. 67) The fact that the community of followers has a common identification with the authoritarian leader has another important consequence. The followers identify with one another as parts of a “movement,” and they experience themselves as merging into a collective whole.

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This intoxicating sense of unity, and the subordination of personal selfinterest to a greater cause, is a very important component of authoritarian systems. It is found in a great deal of authoritarian rhetoric, as exemplified by the Third Reich. The idea that the individual human being matters only as a vehicle for the race or Volk, and that one’s duty to this greater, transcendent spirit trumps narrow self-interest, was pervasive in Hitler’s Germany. German children were instructed to keep their blood “pure”—that is, to avoid miscegenation. Their blood did not belong to them, they were told, but to the German race—past, present, and future—and through it they would have eternal life. Participating in authoritarian systems has unmistakably religious overtones as discussed in The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler (2012) by the historian Laurence Rees: The hordes of Germans who travelled—almost as pilgrims—to pay homage to Hitler at his home in Berchtesgaden; the thousands of personal petitions sent to Hitler at the Reich Chancellery; the pseudo-religious iconography of the Nürnberg rallies; the fact that German children were taught that Hitler was “sent from God” and was their “faith” and “light”; all this spoke to the fact that Hitler was seen less as a normal politician and more as a prophet touched by the divine…. The most compelling illusions qualify as delusions. Delusions are illusions that are both false and highly resistant to rational revision, because of the immense power of the wishes that fuel them. (p. 67)

Politics is, explicitly, a response to human vulnerability. Our deepest hopes and fears permeate the political arena, and this makes us susceptible to political illusions, which are often clung to with such impassioned tenacity... monotheistic religions. Like God himself, the leader is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. His words define the horizons of reality. He must be praised and appeased, but never challenged. His enemies are, by definition, in league with the forces of evil. Rees (2018) notes, ... Observing Hitler and Goebbels in action led Money-Kyrle [2015] to the idea that, for political propaganda to work, propagandists must elicit a sense of helplessness in their audience (the poison) and then offer them a magical solution (the pastry). First, they make the audience depressed—to get them to feel that they have lost or destroyed something immensely good and valuable. They have been brought to their knees.

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta They are a laughingstock. They have betrayed the great destiny of the German people. As Money-Kyrle describes it: “For 10 minutes we heard of the sufferings of Germany... since the war. The monster seemed to indulge in an orgy of self-pity.” The second step is to identify some minority or group of outsiders as perpetrators of one’s suffering. They are forces of evil, persecuting us from the outside or consuming us from within. Money-Kyrle wrote, ‘The third step is to offer a manic cure for the terrors of helplessness: [S]elf-pity and hatred were not enough. It was also necessary to drive out fear... So the speakers turned from vituperation to self-praise. From small beginnings, the Party had grown invincible. Each listener felt a part... (Rees, 2018, p. 55)

The Greek term Eros does not solely signify love in the sense of a sexual attraction, but rather it designates an intense desire that can apply to all sorts of actions and objects (from the most sublime to the most trivial); other interpretations should be considered. If the term Eros designates a romantic passion, could Eros designate rather a general voracity for carnal pleasures or a more egotistical passion: a violent desire for conquest, for example, an insatiable appetite for glory, an intense political ambition (Larivee, 2012)? In a recent article dedicated to the figure of the tyrant in the Republic, Richard Parry (2007) highlights the mysterious character of the intervention of Eros at this point in the text. Before investigating its object, let us quickly describe its effects. With the appearance of Eros, the thorn of desire (póthos) puts an end to the listless dispersion of the democratic man: “tyrannical Eros, established inside, takes control of all things relating to the soul.” Eros intensifies the desires by uniting them under its command, and it is this concentrated, insatiable voracity that leads the young man to the worst transgressions (paranomía). As such, the tyrannical man proves himself to be formidable because he is strained, unified, and obsessed by a dominating passion. The effects of Eros seem clear, but the passage cited above nevertheless gives rise to several questions largely overlooked by interpreters (Larivee, 2012). It is impossible to segregate the tyrant’s sexuality from his political power: each symbolizes the other. His notorious perversions (adultery, bigamy, rape, incest, sadism, necrophilia) are the sexual manifestation of his

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extraordinary relation to the laws and norms of the polis. He exercises his rule in the form of sexual power. Given his lifestyle, it is therefore not surprising that Alcibiades was suspected of aspiring to tyranny, or that he was blamed for the scandal of the mutilated herms (Larivee, 2012). Wohl (2002) illustrates the issue at hand: How does one translate the term paranomía? Ludwig suggests “contrariness to the law” but what is aimed at here is rendered by Wohl... In the democratic context discussed at the end of book VIII, the “fact of having power over others” is an affair of seduction and that seduction is necessarily linked to eros. The democrat on the road to tyranny, like Alcibiades, is essentially erotic: not only is he violently animated by eros but he also knows how to arouse it in others. ... The eros that moves Alcibiades corresponds to Plato’s eros. (Wohl, 2002, n.p.)

The splendor of a flamboyant lifestyle is actually a method of realizing an immense political ambition. All of Alcibiades’ excess is dedicated to his project of political rule. The only way Alcibiades as one man can hope to bring his project to fulfillment is by becoming in every way bigger than life. This he does in part through an opulence that for any ordinary, “private” individual would be the height of unjustified, even boastful, self-indulgence. The spectacular character of Alcibiades’ Olympic victories, for example, and the splendor with which he surrounded himself on this occasion can be seen as a source of prestige, as the means to rouse admiration and therefore to acquire political power. Alcibiades’ metamorphosis between the two dialogues leads one to think that, according to Plato, the genesis of the political tyrant occurs when a thumos, ignited by Eros (intense desire for honor and political conquest) is somehow contaminated by epithumia (a desire symbolized and nourished by the demos). Thumos then likely becomes the means of finding the necessary resources to satisfy those erotic desires which know neither limits nor norms (Larivee, 2012).

The Perversity of Eros and the Magic of Seduction A central argument of Foucault’s History of sexuality (1978) is that perversion is not repressed at all; rather, culture actively produces it. We are living through what he calls... the “perverse implantation.” Perversion is the product

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and the vehicle of power, a construction which enables power to gain a purchase within the realm of the psychosexual: Authority legitimates itself by fastening upon discursively constructed, sexually perverse identities of its own making.... Perversion is a concept signifying (1) an erring, straying, or deviation from (2) a path, destiny, or objective which is (3) understood as natural or right, right because natural (with the natural possibly having a yet “higher” legitimation in divine law). The violence of the hierarchy is displaced, through the concepts of violation and perversion, onto its subordinate terms—women and slaves. The attribution of perversion often involves this process; that is, a displacement of violence, contradiction, crisis from the dominant, wherein they are produced, onto the subordinate and especially the deviant. The pervert deviates from the “straight and narrow,” the “straight and true”: even such commonplace remarks as these bear the trace of Western metaphysics, the epistemological, via metaphor, here picking up with the linear or the teleological. Western metaphysics can be represented in terms of three interrelated tenets: teleology, together with essence and universality. One reason for recovering the linguistic histories of perversion is that they have often constituted a transgression of normative and prescriptive teleologies. Such transgression was especially feared in the Renaissance, an age obsessed with disordered and disordering movement, from planetary irregularity to social mobility, from the vagrant and masterless man roaming the state to the womb which supposedly wandered the body of the “hysterical” woman. All such phenomena contradicted the principles of metaphysical fixity as formulated in those three main categories: essence, universality, and teleology—three categories which between them have profoundly “fixed” the social order in Western culture. The charge of perversity was at once a demonizing and a disavowal of an aberrant movement that was seen to threaten the very basis of civilization; this is why, time and again, metaphysical fixity—fixed origin, nature, identity, development, and destiny—is invoked in the condemnation of that movement. In the numerous citations which the OED does give for the word and its cognate terms, two other kinds of pervert recur, the wayward woman—the wayward, assertive woman, the woman on top—and the religious heretic. At the beginning of Christian history, they went together. The philosopher David Hume (1740/2003) paraphrasing Epicurus, as cited by Lactantius: “Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?” For Augustine (1993), the most pernicious form of evil occurs when the

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human will deviates from good: “When the will leaves the higher and turns to the lower, it becomes bad not because the thing to which it turns is bad, but because the turning is itself perverse (perversa)” (City, XII.6. 478). Although such perversity is unnatural, against the order of nature, nothing actually in nature is evil: neither the nature of that to which the evil-doer turns nor, even, the evil-doer’s own nature. Augustine adds, in an extraordinary passage, that “not even the nature of the Devil himself is evil, in so far as it is a nature; it is perversion that makes it evil” (sed perversitas eam malem facit) (XIX.13. 871). We can begin to see then that for Augustine the perverse turning away from good (itself a perversion of the order of nature) is the essence of evil. Here is the beginning of a theory which will become the rationale for a history of untold violence: “Essentially, perversion becomes the negative agency within privation” (XIX.13. 871. Evil not only erupts from within a divinely ordained order but, more telling still, it erupts from within the beings closest to God, those who participate most intimately in divinity, first the angels, then man, or rather woman, who makes, according to another theologian, “an inexplicably perverse misuse of their God-given freedom,” which is to say that they allegedly pervert their most divine attribute, free will, which then becomes the primary, or for Augustine the only, source of evil. In short, a negation/deviation erupts from within that which it negates (divinity), only to be then displaced onto the subordinate term of the God/man binary—and then further displaced onto the subordinate within man (i.e., woman): Proximity is the enabling condition of a displacement which in turn marks the “same” as radically “other.” Nature erring from itself: The perverse originates internally to, from within, the natural. From within that erring movement of the first line, a perverse divergence within Nature, there erupts by the last line its opposite, the “unnatural.” Additionally, in the accusation of perversion, misogyny and xenophobia are rampant, but so too is racism. Desire and—object—conjoin in the multiple meanings of “will most rank” where “will” might denote at once volition, sexual desire, and sexual organ. Freud primarily came to terms with the magical vital structure of “man” in the realm of instinctual drives and sexuality. The magical structure’s emphasis on the erotic as the kinship of the words live and love primarily constitute the magical dimension (Gebser, 1985, p. 208). The acoustic magic power appeals to the pre-rational in us. To obey or submit as part of the hearing mode, exhorten, to hear, the words and what they mean are subordinated to

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the power we ascribe to things, events, or human beings, whether as possessions, authoritarian beliefs, or sexuality. They are always connected to a loss of responsibility (Gebser, 1985, p. 60). In short, the magic structure presents magic man as phallically standing up to Mother Nature in order to control her (Gebser, 1985, p. 46). The magical is strongly tied to the sensuous, erotic, vital energy entanglement and enmeshment with nature. There is a oneness; the magical is visceral, punctiform, predominately acoustical, colored by halos and auras, interconnecting with its environment, as evidenced in Christian iconography, the transmutation processes in alchemy, a transformation of making/made (power/macht). The Christian doctrine of salvation is based on an irredeemable debt to God, necessitating the self-sacrifice of a God–man in the person of Christ. The maximum form of indebtedness is founded on God the creator, who selfsacrificed on the cross, creating an endless indebtedness to the miracle of being. God, at once, is a creditor, a debtor, and a scapegoat. In the JudeoChristian theory of salvation—where God is the creditor and man is the debtor—man was meant to suffer and die for his debt (sin), had Christ not died for his sin. Soteriology was founded on the debtor–creditor, pleasure–pain economy as penances for one’s sins are handed out based on their (quantitative) severity. The erring/aberrant movement is marked as a deviation to the left; this is not arbitrary: psychoanalysis and, more significantly, anthropology, confirm an intriguing cultural connection between deviation and left-sidedness. But our language has always confirmed as much: sinister has, as one of its meanings, “lying on or towards the left hand” (shorter OED, 1989), while the Latin sinister has “perverse” as one of its meanings (Simpson, 1927). If we fear the other, we also fear the same, especially of sameness within the other (homosexual congress constituted as the other of heterosexuality). Therefore, we see that the other is sometimes only feared because structured within an economy of the same. Discriminations like homophobia occur not in spite of, but because of, sameness.

Chapter 7

Self-Created Being Introduction The striving for power to fulfill the desire to be worshiped was assigned to a Lord, an autocrat, a king, a king of kings, the Origin of the Universe, and the servants of such Lords. Something went wrong, and the “divine right of kings” lost its career, and with it, the careers of the divinities that were posited as the guarantees of such a right. The desire to be worshiped, shifted to a lesser being who, nonetheless, dared to proclaim itself as a greater one. Of course, the common theme that all living entities are “bundles of desire” or even “desire machines,” so-called by various postmodern psycho-philosophers, continues to prevail. To discuss what kind of desire this new being promotes, and what kind of power it employs, are the tasks of this chapter. While numerous autocrats and even theocrats still perch themselves on a higher pedestal, they seem to be the remnants who fight a retreating battle, today called “cultural wars.” One side wants to retain the Lord of Lords and its demands, specifically in the area of sexuality, so angrily defending the Lord’s edicts which still retain a semblance of the world and humans as imago Dei, while the other side promotes the self-creation of sexual identity without restrictions—depending on momentary “feelings”—one can be any sexual type, or none at all. For the former, the big issue is deviant sex in the form of homosexuality and even women’s rights to sexual freedom. It is assumed that this God is above the laws established by humans and their written constitutions—He is some kind of “transcendent” being. As mentioned in previous chapters, he is paraded as inaccessible and empty of content, and any content is a mask, an image which, while initially a minor guy, usurped the throne and disappeared into transcendent invisibility. A brief consideration of this transcendence is in order. In this chapter, we shall explicate the principles of the modern world, providing the most fundamental reasons for the “cultural wars.” The latter will include the reasons for demonizing democracy, liberal institutions, and even sanctioning and promoting murder by the just-mentioned Christians. In brief, the Zoroastrian battle between good and evil has returned in full force. No one can escape this battle, and each must take a side.

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The Old Magician The movement toward transcendence also leads to the preeminence of the ruler’s will over nature; after all, nature is created by his will. This will is also a law; it acquires its most salient expression with the stories of creation, and later with the conceptions of a supreme–transcendent being, usually called a monistic divinity. This lends credence to the ruler’s edicts, stemming from his will in the sense that nature is not an independent domain with its own strength, but a product of a will, a created realm. After all, the initial depiction of creation is imperative and verbal: By speaking, the highest story figures make things happen, thus indicating that the word is simultaneously the law and the deed. The word could have been spoken differently, and the world would accordingly be different. This abolishes the necessity of the natural order and relocates it in the imperative power of the will. The eminent stories invent a transcendence that is imitated by nature and is superior to nature. It is paternal thought that is purified from the contingent imperfections of Mother Nature; the latter becomes an imago Dei, an image of supreme authority. Nature is an image of, and depends on, the thought that can be turned into reality by an act of will, such that even thought itself can become a result of the command of the will. In principle, this priority of the imperative power of the will appears in the prerogative of the supreme will to perform “miracles,” and thus to disregard the order of nature that he himself created. While this is a story of the will, it will subsequently appear as the metaphysics of the will— specifically in its modern Western guise, which becomes the ground of science and technology. In this context, there is a constant appearance of the primacy of will over all events and identities. This suggests that anything else, even reason, is subject to the will since the world could be otherwise than it is if the supreme authority decreed events to be otherwise than they are now. While our modern age is enlightened, our ritualistic practices still presume the world of identity. The shamanic sayings and ritualistic practices have remained intact. Again, numerous examples can be offered. If there is a dry season, our shamans—the priests, ministers, presidents, and governors—call upon the public to pray for rain. The prayer consists of poetic sayings that, once ritualistically performed, are identical with the power of rain or the power of some maker of rain. When a modern shaman, such as a priest, minister, rabbi, or dispenser of herbs, says, “Eat of this, this is my body; drink of this, this is my blood,” he/she offers a ritual that says, “You will be identical with the body and power of the founder of a cult.” For some major personality cults,

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such as Christianity, not only sayings, but statues and paintings are not representations of some entities, but are identical with them. People kneel before them, kiss their feet, and implore favors; the paintings, the statues, are carried in processions, and at times are accused of not making events happen that the population wants and are therefore beaten. Here, the artwork, whether it is a matter of poetic sayings, such as prayers, or of statues and paintings, is identical with the very events. A person can live a normal life and then, convinced by some story, can become “reborn” and “one with the body” of a cult founder. This is taken literally with the saying “Drink this, it is my blood; eat this, it is my flesh.” A symbolic ritual is performed in every sacred place in the form of “communion.” And prior to this ritual, the body and soul are cleansed by confession in order to become a pure receptor of the flesh and blood of the founder of a cult. The praying “power” appears in the most tragic places—the murder of children in schools. After each tragic shooting, the politicians, the “men of the cloth,” pronounce in one voice: “Our prayers go out to the families.” Instead of relying on merely human rationality to deal with idiotic laws, the appeal to a “supreme being” in prayers will do the trick. This is another mode of blood sacrifice for the glory of the Lord, and the Lord demands bloody sacrifices. After all, the good pastors, demanding the death penalty for homosexuals, demand blood—shoot them in the back of the head. The servants of this Lord are just as sadistic and blood thirsty as their Lord. There were efforts to legitimate this Lord by “demonstrating” “rationally” that it is the very origin of this world. The traditional efforts proposed to decipher the presence of the Lord, if they were capable of deciphering the mutual relationship between the transcendent and the worldly, such that the explication of the one would imply the explication of the other, and conversely. The transcendent Origin of the world is a self-sufficient Lord who requires no world. The fact that the world is there, and this Lord is its Origin, is the result of a free and uncompelled decision. But this means that one recognizes this Lord solely in terms of its will to the phenomenal world. How this Lord is beyond these ventures in itself is not given. All that one knows is the world-direction of this Lord. This knowing is here most interesting, specifically since it is tacitly granted, although not yet explicated. Through various statements by the servants of the Lord appears the question of the unmediated mediation, at times assigned to the transcending, at times to the worldly, at times to a not-yet-deciphered domain that mediates both. The mediation may be expressed in a variety of ways, yet it appears with the servants who claim to have direct access to the will and thinking of their Lord,

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to the ways that the world is his true image, and to the ways that the world has strayed from this image. Hence, the servants are called upon to correct all deviants and, failing that, to sacrifice them in bloody and legalized rituals. Of course, the sinners are working secretly with the archenemy of the Lord, the Devil himself, in secular disguise, most likely wearing a mask of science. The criteria, then, must be reflected in the criticized and transcended world of phenomena—an inadequate and fallen world to be corrected by those who remain true to the imago Dei. Thus, the criticized and transcended phenomena will be reconstructed from the transcending domain. Instead of speaking about the unspeakable, the reconstruction proposes to organize the worldly phenomena in such a way that the phenomena will be given a genuine voice. If the voice is misread or violated, then, instead of ultimate claims, we shall have ideological impositions. The truth of ideologies is the will to transform the phenomena, such that the very phenomena are transparent with the structure of arbitrary will. Here, the priority of value, of an “ought” becomes preeminent, so well-paraded by theologian Levinas (1991). His infinite is the traditional ens realisimus, the “reality in itself,” while the rest is the creation by the power of his will. One preeminent example (among many others) of such a ritual of identity is provided by a two-hour advertisement film called Triumph of the Will. It shows a Nazi Party gathering in Nürnberg. A mass of 200,000 uniformed men is awaiting the arrival of Hitler—the Führer, leader, a savior who descends from the sky. The key to this gathering is very simple: the Party is Hitler; Hitler is Germany, as Germany is Hitler. Numerous images, huge parades, and “speeches” that have no logical content are designed to make all Germans identical with the German nation, and the German nation identical with Hitler. And all must be embodiments of a “fixed pole”—the Nazi ideology—that alone “gives meaning to life.” While addressing tens of thousands of young boys, Hitler demands that they must discard their identities and become embodiments of the “pure ideology” as their identity. With every ritual of identity, there are shouts in unison of “Heil, Heil, Heil,” which compacts several meanings: first, it means “holy” (identifying Hitler with sacrality); second, it means “light” (Hitler, the bearer of light); and third, it means “whole, wholesome, healthy.” In fact, Hitler proclaims that the party will be like a “holy order” and will abolish the “fleeting shadow” of democratic disorder. It was not the economic troubles that propelled Hitler to his “heights,” but his ritualistic–verbal magic of identity. His word became identical with law, just as the words pronounced by divinities and autocrats

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become law—the reality of life. In addition, such identification is grounded in one form of permanence, a significance that offers not only individual or cultural self-recognition, but also personal stability. The Nazi rituals demanding that German youth become “empty” in order to completely embody the Nazi ideology are based on this principle of total disappearance into the other and becoming identical with it. It is equivalent to confession which empties the soul of all transgressions, allowing it to receive the will and word of the Lord. The youth grew up and marched off to die for the “vital” interests of the permanent order, incantated by a new Lord, Hitler. This is simply a repetition of “Onward Christian Soldiers.” We should note the theological meaning of these pronouncements: In all creation stories, the creator is the ultimately real, while the world is its dependent image. Thus, identifying Germany with Hitler, and proclaiming that he and his law alone are German reality, is to identify him with the magical creators of the world, the divinities. Given this, it is understandable that one could not walk into a simple grocery shop without raising an arm and announcing, “Heil Hitler,” just as much as earlier, one would say “Praise the Lord.” The same was afforded Lenin and Stalin—when communists brought communism to the Baltic States, the event was celebrated as “bringing Stalin’s sun” by “poets” such as the Lithuanians Venclova, Neris, Cvirka, and numerous others. Stalin became the Hegelian spirit creating the new world and the new man. In this context, to speak of philosophical reason becomes a transgression, and philosophical books must be burned. It is the will—in all its theological and “value” forms—promoted over reason. The ritual chants and dances are not causes that make something happen; they are identical with the happening, and hence there is an immediate leap, without any distance, from the saying to the event, such that the event is the saying, and the latter is its power. Let us be emphatic: Such magic is present as normal, without anyone ever noticing its magic nature. People identify themselves with ideological movements, with sports teams, and the latter are identifiable by vital names: there are Bears, Lions, Bobcats, Spartans, or Vikings, and the fans identify with them. One has only to consult the literature of revolutionaries and the storyline such literature reveals. For example, in the Marxist story, an initial “paradisiacal” society, without social divisions, failed and “fell” from its perfection into corruption and evil ways, and human history, with its “dialectical laws,” progresses toward overcoming the evil ways and returning to a “higher” level of society where everything will be mastered by “scientific discourses” providing all human needs and allowing

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humans to be one with the paradisiacal/utopian images of the Marxist story. Entire societies were subjected to this story, full of minor discourses of “making a new man” via the discursive power of scientific socialism.

Modern Ultimate Being The “making” of the world comprises a silent introduction of a new maker capable of replacing the theological maker and the world as its image, the imago Dei. The modern “experiment” is an attempt to replace the rule of nature and its divine creator. While the medievals claimed that the natural world and its divinely imposed laws could not be transgressed, this theological understanding includes an ambiguity between the creator as a lawgiver and as a will. First, the creative act is the act of a will, and second, the creator can change the course of nature by all sorts of “willful miracles.” This lends priority to the will. Such a view will be accepted by modernity at the human level, giving priority to the metaphysics of will over the ontology of reason. This is a unique conception in human history, leading to a self-evaluation of the human as omniscient and omnipotent. The process of transformation from the old to the modern stretches from the late medieval period through the Renaissance. Yet, the issue is basically one: The emancipation from all traditions, from the environment, and building the future without hindrances, either from the past or from divinities. Each generation should be free to repeat the break with the past and to create its own world and itself in accordance with its own willed designs. Pico Della Mirandola, in his work Oratio de dignitate hominis (1968), declares that man is magnum miraculum and extends this notion to theos anthropos. Pico develops the divinization of man from three assumptions: (1) There is no specific nature of the human; (2) The human can make of himself what he wills, and (3) The great wonder in this world is the human who, in his self-determination, can become divine. Indeed, as an unconditional source of reason and will, he is identical with the traditional definition of the divine, the Lord. The way Pico depicts the creation of the human reveals the modern assumption of complete human freedom and its destiny to control the world. According to Pico’s depiction, by creating his “new son,” the creator has not assigned for him any fixed place nor given him a specific form. In fact, he did not give him any specific talent. Man will have to determine his place, his form, and his talents in accordance with his own wishes and standards. Radical

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as this might sound, Pico adds that man is not created as heavenly or earthly, mortal or immortal; he can create himself freely from his own power, shaping and transforming himself into a form which he wishes to acquire. He can reduce himself to an animal or elevate to a divinity. In principle, the human has no natural form—once seen as the mainstay of human belonging to nature—and resultantly he can be a maker of himself, and indeed of his world. This is the modern subject who does not belong to the material nature and hence has no “objective” existence, and indeed, no existence. It is only if he creates himself “out of nothing” and creates his environment on the basis of his “projects.” Pico’s view places the human in a light that favors the human, even over the old gods. The latter are fixed by their nature, while the human can become anything. Pico stresses persistently that the human can become what he wills. This is the “wonder man” of modernity, constituting a philosophical anthropology to fit the modern age. Without this anthropology, it would be difficult to understand the development of the autonomous, free being who is a maker of himself and his world. This is the modern revolution. By the 18th century, one had an enlightened view, and an enlightened anthropology, and no longer had any question but that the human creates and exists from himself. One of the initial interpretations of this self-elevation was “naturalistic” in the sense that the human follows his rational self-interest. The world was reinterpreted as a geometric machine to be arbitrary manipulated by human interests. It was assumed that the Philosophie Nouvelle was true, rational, scientific, and the old was mistaken, nonsensical, and illusory. The rejection of the old was not a loss, but a gain over errors and illusions. Thus, everyone ought to be thankful to the old philosophies for having exhausted most of the false opinions and for having set us free from their nonsense. The previous humanity was a youthful stage, while the modern man has reached maturity and need no longer be in error. Thus, it is no longer a question whether current human activities are good or bad, have good or bad consequences, have value or disvalue; rather, each activity is justifiable if it replaces something old with something new, something “progressive.” This is one of the sources, not only of progress, but of the view of truth as historical. Whoever lives today is superior to those in the past because he is more modern, novel, has acquired a greater mastery over the environment, and resultantly, has more truth. Not only is the novel way truer, but it is also better because it leads to the improvement of humanity through science and technology (Mickunas, 2012).

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One overlooked reason for the rejection of the traditional divinity is that his creation is ambiguous, confused, and unclear. The categorical differentiation of things is a source of mistakes which cannot be corrected. Is a bug-eating flower an animal or a plant? Can one really say that a little house cat is of the same species as a tiger? Moreover, what would an essential difference be between a puppy and a kitten? Not even the creator of these creatures could know their essential differences. In short, the different categories are not only ambiguous, but they are relevant only as human conveniences, and not as representations of reality. Even what is male, or female, is not clear. Thus, the new human subject can create a universal language without any ambiguities—a language far superior to the one inscribed by the traditional divinity. In this sense, this subject is in a position superior to that of any previous divinity. This is the background for the modern pronouncement that “God is dead.” New science and its language are best equipped to disclose and master the world. And the language is found in the human mind, reflecting upon itself and its own powers. Here, we find the emergent ens realisimus and its absolute will. But to be absolute, it had to “kill” all life and make the world into a sum of dead, material objects, composed of the smallest building blocks of the universe, accessible through one method: mathematics. Since the modern subject does not belong to the realm of the material universe, then it contains everything that is not material, including qualitative, valuative, all cultural and theoretical compositions. What is perceived directly must have a “place,” and this place was designated to be a subject, containing the secondary qualities, while the real objective world, was composed of primary particles having quantifiable magnitudes— atoms. The method for achieving the truth is mathematics. By the time of Descartes, the language for the theoretical formulation of nature had to be mathematical—quantitative. There is nothing in the world, including divinities, that is not submitted under the laws of quantification. With the latter, the motive for mastery and conquest of nature reaches almost lyrical stage, a stage that allows the human to equate himself with divinity. The world is material, atomistic, and mechanical; it functions in accordance with the new universal language and its mathematically precise laws. Hence, if humans can decipher such laws, and if the latter are created by a divine being, then human knowledge becomes equal to divine knowledge. With Galileo, there is no qualitative difference between human and divine knowledge. With this equation, we acquire another elevation of the human over nature, subtended

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by an intention to master and have power over all. If human knowledge is absolute, then he is in the position of a creator of the world. All the modern thinkers, from Galileo, through Bacon, and even including Newton, repeatedly emphasize their conviction that the new Filosofia Naturale will place man in such a superior position oven nature that the human will have power even over himself (Mickunas, 2012). The conception of the modern individual is premised on a construction of nature that is very different from that of the Greeks. The modern regard of nature is a postulate that all things, whether trees, stars, cucumbers, dogs, or humans, are an aggregate of the smallest material parts, called “atoms.” Since everything is composed of such parts, then, in principle, there are no essential differences among things; the differences are the ways that such parts are aggregated in terms of mechanical laws. This morphology is called “objective” and can be accessed quantitatively; all other features of which humans are aware are “subjective.” Hence, any qualitative presence, from colors through sounds, feelings, values, social norms, ethics, and religious beliefs, are subjective; they belong to an individual. In this sense, society is also composed of a sum of individual “atoms,” each with its own subjective experiences, inaccessible to others. The results of this invention of the modern subject as individual are profound. Objectively speaking, humans have no essence; they are physical bodies just like any other physical things. Subjectively speaking, each individual has her own views, morality, values, and feelings, which cannot be judged to be wrong, bad, immoral, or illegal. Any judgment by any individual concerning qualitative affairs has no objective criterion. In addition, since the individual subject is not part of the mechanical–material universe, she is not determined by any causes. What she thinks, decides, proposes is free, indeed, autonomous. She can set any rules for her life without appealing to any causes—she is “self-generated.” Since individual thinking is the ground for everything, then decisions have no other criterion, and no one can judge whether the thinking or decisions of others are wrong or immoral. In this sense, all individual subjects are equal. This ontological composition is the basis of the sudden appearance of “the will to equality.” This self-generation is at the heart of the current “cultural wars.” The modern subject, having no essence, can transform himself into anything. The reason for such transformation rests with modern ontology. An objective body, as a sum of parts, be they material, chemical, or genetic, can be changed by various technical means: Parts can be recombined to produce what one wants to be. This means that there are no “objective” genders since one can

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technically create oneself into any “gender” in accord with subjective “feelings of identity.” If one does not identify “themselves” with a current body, then one can use chemistry, genetics, or DNA recombination to obtain a body that fits their inner feelings of identity. This is a complete disregard of the traditional Lord’s design—an absolute challenge to his authority and the authority of those who serve him. But this is also a positivistic body without erotic passion or cosmic fire. Coffee before and cigarette after. This positivism is accepted by the members of Mid-Eastern personality cults. We can take Christianity, expressed in principle by fundamentalists. The purity rules for women—no sex before or outside of marriage—leave her in ignorance of “satisfaction”; she does not know any better. She is duty-bound to provide satisfaction for him—without passion or erotic desire; meanwhile, he is only interested in “getting off….” The rule is simple: Sex is enforced ignorance by ignorant force. Men care very little if a woman is satisfied; after all, they are subservient providers for a man’s needs, and for men, erotic passion is not permitted. Then, there is another interesting feature. Without erotic tension and passion, no depth of satisfaction is possible. This might account for the constant attention to sex. There were and are many indications that people are constantly interested in and talk about what they do not have. If there is no sufficient sexual satisfaction, then the constant talk, preaching about, paying attention to the sexual activities of others, is a sure sign of a “lack.” The ontological shift in modern philosophy toward mechanistic atomism strips all essential structures from nature and replaces all beings with a sum of material parts functioning in accordance with mechanical laws. Therefore, no beings of nature have any purpose. This ontological conception of all nature leaves one entity, the human, as a thinking subject who has purposes. But such purposes have nothing to do with the real, material world, including human bodies that function mechanically. Moreover, such thinking and its purposes have no fixed rules or laws; it is basically voluntaristic. Human actions, directed by will, make their way, which is distinct from the world of ontologically posited reality. Humans make history as a purposive process which might aim at some final end. The latter has been depicted by various utopian images, including some versions of Marxism and capitalism. If material events are needed in this purposive history, they are not ontologically material, but practically, i.e., what we can make of the indifferent, mechanical, and purposeless stuff for our aims and presumed needs. We know the rest of the modern story as the progress of technology and human mastery of the

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material environment (including the material human as part of the environment). We also know the story of the metaphysics of the will pervading all modern philosophies in such guises as autonomy, arbitrariness, pragmatism, and their manifestation as power. As just mentioned, such power is superior to the traditional Lord’s since it can transgress any limits of the ultimate creator. The sociopolitical consequences of the above-depicted structure are farreaching. If there are no “standards in reality,” if all standards stem from the reflective thought of this new subject, then each individual can become a standard within his/her own domain of functions, desires, and volitions. This is to say, all individuals are equal. As long as rights, duties, and social positions were determined by the will of an ultimate authority, either in autocratic or theocratic form, the social and political conditions were remote from each individual’s influence. In principle, everything and everyone belonged to the Lord. But when such forces are abolished, when the individual is envisaged as equal to other individuals and at the same time as an autonomous lawgiver, then the social and political fabric depends on human will. In this sense, traditional powers become instruments of human volition, and either a product or a supporter of human projects. Let us be clear on this point. The objective world is a sum, no matter how vast, of the “building blocks” of the universe, ruled by quantitative laws; all else, including qualitative, valuative, aesthetic, and essentializing awarenesses are characteristics of the modern subject, the ens realisimus. Thus, the cultural phenomena, including the old divinities in ancient texts, are subjective fairy tales. They exist only because a group wants to impose its own will on other groups by using the images of such fairy tales as a threat: My god is bigger than your god. But at the level of “reality,” they are equal as results of subjective projections.

Individual Equality is a well-known factor: Every socioeconomic position, every occupation, every level of education: they are open to all, as long as the individual is capable of performing the required functions. All such equalities are deemed “private.” If the human being is understood as a reflexive and autonomous process, then he/she can make of himself/herself what he/she may think. Each has ideas and can select which of the ideas are to be realized. This

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autonomy of thought and self-realization is a form of self-seeking. In this sense, the fundamental autonomy manifests itself in the form of an individual who is self-seeking. Practically speaking, the human seeks to realize his/her ideas, i.e., to establish those ideas in the material world. In this sense, each demands an equal right to realize the ideas, projected by the will toward the future, in the practical and political arenas. The human seeks to realize his/her autonomy by transforming the material world to suit his/her desires and projects. In this sense, each individual has a full right to be a concrete lawgiver with respect to the material and political conditions under which he/she wants to live. Of course, he/she has an equal right to have his/her divinities, resulting in the “religious freedom” of anyone to worship, adore, pray to, and live by his/her divinities’ commands. Since civilizations have various religious cultures, then, as purely subjective, they must be tolerated for the sake of peaceful coexistence. But as we suggested in previous chapters, various contemporary religions are being promoted as the sole way of life at the exclusion of others—to the point of holy wars. The psychological characteristics of the autonomous individual, bent on a concrete shaping of his/her own destiny in the realm of material welfare, are quite unique. The individual is self-seeking in his/her aim at material selfrealization. He/she demands the prevalence of his/her ideas, morality, and even religion. Such an individual tends to negate the interests of others if they are contrary to his/her own welfare. While this self-seeking may be a moral problem, it also has a political side which is more dangerous. This individual tends to be concerned only with his/her private welfare and to leave the questions of the public domain to others. In fact, he/she tends to remove himself/herself from the public sphere altogether. This leads to a psychological state of apathy in the public sphere. Another psychological characteristic is the feeling of indifference toward others and the sense that the individual owes nothing to others. This is to say, “I make my own life; you make your own life. If you fail, then that is your freedom; if I succeed, that is my business.” The only owning is premised on a mutual self-interest and its protection through political functionaries. At the same time, such an individual is psychologically insecure since his/her welfare is exposed to the fortunes and misfortunes of the economic material welfare of the society. This insecurity leads to demands that the socioeconomic order should remain constant in order to guarantee the individual’s well-being. This is to say, such an individual has a psychological tendency toward authoritarianism in the political arena, including theocratic guarantees.

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Such a personality is fearful of freedom, of disruption of what it has attained, and is most eager to call for strong government, strong measures, and even for a strong man to maintain law and order. Even the rich cannot escape this striving; having won their wealth through struggle, they have established a mode of life in which the acquisition of more and more is second nature. No one will guarantee or secure his social position and material survival. Thus, he must live in an incessant striving to secure his own livelihood in a free competition with others and in face of a possible loss. The loss is more present in a modern world of progress where one not only has a position but must constantly surpass one’s achieved skills in light of new technical requirements for more “advanced” technical abilities—the well-known requirements of persons to take their work home with new technologies—your computer is your office, so take it with you, and continue your work late into the night. The striving is subtended by the modern notion of progress. Any position that is technically achieved is exposed to constant transformations due to the latest technologies and the need to keep up with them—one must acquire newer skills in order to keep up. This acquisition means that the person is reduced to a technical functionary—regardless of the level of skills required in the field of progress. By now, it is obvious that the “income gap” is based mainly on the level of technical skills one acquires and not on the wealth one inherits. Thus, the new entrepreneurs are the ones who are either up-to-date or ahead of their technical fields. This situation is not only dangerous to freedom, but it is also a final indication that freedom and equality have been rendered asunder (Mickunas, 2015). There is hardly any need to mention the irrelevant proclamation that science is value-free. This claim might look good as an adornment to give science an innocent look and therefore allow the modern, and above all the contemporary, “philosophers” to defer all truth claims to science, i.e., to be handmaidens to scientific “truths.” At a more fundamental level, the constructed theories and methods point to a different ground: The construction of a metaphysical method is a valuation for projected possibilities; one can construct a variety of mathematical theories and methods, neither of which point to anything. Hence, the choice of one over others is based on its value for what it can make. There is no escape from the value language, ranging from the value of science to the value of everyday environment. The glittering shopping malls have nothing else to sell but values: old and new values for sale, reduced values and improved values, family values and cultural values, religious values and secular values, moral and political values—one cannot

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find any restful region in the environment without it becoming designated as a value. And everything can be made into anything. All parts in the world can replace any other parts. Liquid can become as hard as steel, plastic can become a heart, metal can become a replacement for bone, a computer chip implanted in the brain can become intelligence, a chemical pill can become love. Progress is a creation of power over the environment and ourselves. It is no wonder that postmodern writers have “discovered” power in discourses. The discovery is a mere extension of modern metaphysical language— mathematics—and its power to make what it defines. All technical disciplines are power-laden. Since humans are equal to the sum of their material parts, no matter how complicated the aggregation of such parts might be, then every part can be reproduced to replace the old one. We are engaged in the production of new and improved humans and, at the same time, a “rejuvenation” of the worn-out parts. Progress promises the reversal of time— to stop the process of aging and make us young again. At any rate, the legitimation of the production of increased material power through the conjunction of science and technology is offered by the lure that such a power is for human benefit. More things, more benefits, more enjoyment, more health, more. . . more. . . . One could even say that this power incrementation becomes self-legitimating in the face of the public’s demand for more securities in the material sphere. Above all, progress guarantees an easier and more pleasant life, specifically prolonged sexual “powers” through chemistry. But this raises an immediate question concerning the legitimation of the polis. What must constitute its arena? The free discourse for the public benefit is not an issue; the issue is material well-being—private. Hence, the public domain, in order to be legitimate, must be reduced to the sum of private material interests. The political parties must shift their operations toward the fulfillment of material wants. But once this shift is made, there is no turning back since, in order to be legitimate, the political parties must fulfill the material promises. Failing this, they cease to be regarded as legitimate. This is what constitutes the legitimation crisis of the political domain in modernity. In order for the political parties to maintain themselves in power, they must possess material power capable of satisfying the demands of the masses. If not in practice, at least in mass propaganda, the two systems vying for “the minds of the masses” offer their lines of wares in terms of material fulfillment. Both economize every facet of sociocultural and political life. The populations, in turn, take the economization for granted and exert pressure on the systems to “produce” visible results. Failing such results, one can justifiably argue that

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the system has no legitimation. The system responds by either military power to keep the populations working, or by promises of future improvements, or finally, by political theater in various forms, inclusive of rituals and above all, ideological incantations. As Ricoeur (1981) suggests, there is a credibility gap between political rule and its legitimation. Since the gap cannot be filled by material means, i.e., neither system can fulfill its promises of material wellbeing, then it must fill the credibility gap by other means. Ideology is one preeminent mode of filling this gap and, at the same time, of providing an inexpensive way of obtaining legitimation. It is important to note that the filling of the gap is not offered by some purely conscious structure, i.e., ideality, which would be distinct from materiality. Rather, the promises are of direct material fulfillment in the multileveled modern sense. The first principle that rules such a fulfillment is the final “ideal” of modernity: Man is the maker of himself; the second principle is: Man is on the way toward fulfilling this state of affairs. Thus, ideological incantations and theater constantly stress human self-realization, fulfillment, and material security in everyday language. The ideal self is already taken for granted by the modern man: the material power to enhance oneself and to make of oneself what one wills. And the “ideals” of the ideological structure of consciousness are directly perceptual, sensuous, bodily, offering everyone the means to achieve those ideals at any corner drugstore, beauty parlor, grocery outlet, or exercise place. Moreover, there is a skin-deep equalization in numerous domains, lending the appearance of increasing material equality. Everyone can have similar foods, spices, drinks, even similar-looking clothing—despite differences in quality—and hence the promises seem to be approximated. While there might remain vast differences in social class distinctions, economic and political power inequities, at the surface level, there seems to be an apparent equitable fulfillment. Everyone is “enjoying” an apparent equality in terms of the socially proliferated ideals and looks. “She looks like a million,” and this despite the fact that she is working on an assembly line and is not the manager of production or an owner of the means of production. This seems to be an ideology of the ruling class inscribed in the commodities for the subservient class’s consumption, lending the appearance that the working class is fully participating in the “style of life” of the ruling class. The saturation of all domains with the images, tastes, sounds, conceptualities of the good life, the working class is completely submitted to the power of ideology in “flesh.” Semiotically speaking, this constitutes the trick of the codification of the lower classes with the signs of the power of the

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upper, ruling class. Here, the new “power class,” the consumer, is also ruled by one level of desire: she buys her looks to appear like the expensive star advertising creams, paints, attires, and to look as sexy as the star. He, too, is the image of the sexy T.V. star, sports star, and all wiggling and screaming for the joy of being sexy. If ideology is to function at all, it cannot directly display power. Rather, it translates power into significance and makes it “rational.” We can no longer think of ideology in terms of the 19th century when it was deemed that ideology expresses the interests of a dominant economic class. Semiotics has dispelled this view by pointing out that economic power is not for the sake of economy, but for the sake of numerous socially coded, important positions. This is to say, ideology prescribes signs of prestige and significance and, with the material power of transforming all events into a humanly designed image, it also imposes the coded bodily “look,” both “on the skin” and as an attire (Baudrillard, 1994). Images of an ideal female, ideal male, ideal body, from toenails to hair, are proliferated for the “consumer.” This is to say, ideology is no longer a matter of consciousness reflecting the material–economic or technical conditions, but it is an inscription in the body, in the images, the passions and desires appearing through the images, and on the body. The idealities of the ideologies in the period of late capitalism and state–corporate systems are coextensive with the daily discourse, daily imagery, mass media, sounds and tastes, architecture, and pop arts carried by vast systems of circulation, thus making any artform accessible, sexy, and “popular.” The increased submission of events under human control is designed to yield more technical means to increase power for increasing controls. This is the source of what comprises the modern notion of progress. Progress does not mean an acquisition of greater wisdom, but an incrementation of technological–material means to yield projected material results; the latter can also become technological means, or a quantity of material force to yield further results, etc. The shaping of matter into new technologies opens a demand for other technologies and discoveries. If a technological means makes material discoveries possible, the new discoveries will call for their technological implementation to suit our needs ad infinitum. No achieved technical stage is adequate; every stage calls for new and improved technologies to yield new intrusions into the material domain to yield new results. What is peculiar about progress is that it has no “subject” which would progress. Its aim and its subject are itself, and thus it is self-referential. Progress is its own destiny. When we build something, such as a house, we

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have a purpose which tells us when the progress of building is achieved. In brief, if we live in terms of purposes, we can understand progress in its limitation by reaching the purpose. But if we raise the question concerning the “purpose” of the modern notion of progress, we shall find a quandary. As we have discussed above, we set possible future results as an empty purpose to be fulfilled by material constructs. Once this purpose is achieved, it becomes a means for other possible purposes, and once they are achieved, they too become means for other purposes, without any end. All that is left is progress for the sake of progress—the purpose of progress is progress. Modern Western metaphysics and ontology establish the well-known conception of reason: instrumental. It is not designed to present the world, but to form representations which become reality. On the assumption that we can reflectively establish discourses that define “reality” and realize these discourses through human physical activity, the selection of which discourses we shall “apply” to intervene into the material world, requires the function of will. Will is the projective intentionality that swings between the metaphysical–quantitative and ontological atomism. In technological thought, will is required, not as a function which accounts for choices among “realities,” but more fundamentally for (1) the projection of future empty purposes as possible results, (2) the selection or invention of required calculations which can yield the projected result, and (3) the selection of the materials and their combinations to yield the result and the selection of human physical activities as part of the material conditions to fulfill the results. By now, it is obvious that the will’s intentions are creations of possibilities that nature, left to itself, could never “invent.” It must be equally obvious that the variety of philosophies, including the notion of awareness as a temporal horizon, or we are always projected ahead of ourselves, and even a future possibility of our “Non-being,” are minor wrinkles in the grand sweep of modern Western reflection from its future horizon and its metaphysics of the will to become a magical creator of the world.

Global “Ethics” The appeal of progress is simple: One can have anything, be anyone, go anywhere, relate to “others.” Apart from the right to symbolic designs of identity, there is the entire modern globalization of magical metaphysical productivity. While everyone has equal rights, the latter are, in a practical

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domain, the right to obtain a profession through training, the right to engage in private enterprise, and the right to move to any region to sell one’s expertise—to become nomadic. One becomes detached from one’s specific region and its symbolic designs of identity and joins the emergent nomadic civilization of detached experts whose only real commitments are to technological or entrepreneurial global “progress.” This is not to say that such nomadic civilization is negative in any way; it is most attractive since it introduces continuous novelties in every area of social life: conveniences, medicines, travel, and communications, establishing new global communities, and allowing the maintenance of ethnic ties around the globe. The mass means of rapid transportation—by air and luxury ships—has created “roads” on which masses have become global nomads. They are the tourists who are everywhere, obsessed with photographing and recording everything, including themselves, but never really experiencing anything. It is a nomadic, mechanical ritual without any cultural awareness. To speak principally, they have not been anywhere and have not understood anything—just so many more video images. For the new nations, and the post-colonial civilizations, the metaphysical magical discourses—algorithms embedded in vast technical systems— promise and produce directly perceptual, sensuous, bodily chemical, and “beauty” technologies, offering everyone the means to achieve all sorts of advertised “ideals” at any corner drugstore, beauty parlor, grocery outlet, or exercise place. Moreover, there is a skin-deep global equalization in numerous domains lending the appearance of increasing material equality. An emphasis must be placed on “needs” although the needs are just as invented as are their fulfillment in a unique consumer imperative: The consumer not only wants the latest; he must want. The idealities of the ideology are imitated in the mannerisms of the “happy people.” It is sufficient to add some examples from India; it produces and exports countless technical experts to various continents and countries. They are diligent, industrious and, as with Central Europeans, nomadic. But they do not bring their home cultural symbols with them, and they do not adopt the symbolisms of the cultures in which they settle. They are detached experts and accept their assigned role by becoming consumers of the global standardized tastes, sounds, looks, advertised in all department stores, hair salons, exercise centers, and cinemas. They are no different in their wants from any other Westerner, and the men advertise for wives with specific properties: Western looks, model-like figure, at least a master’s degree, although a “real Indian

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woman.” At the “cultural” level, they are as skin deep as any Westerner. Yet, they are most desired as technically superior in the area of their expertise (Menon, 2010). Given this context, there emerges a unique “ethical” theory. Unique— because it is non-sensical: It is utilitarian and claims that everyone naturally seeks pleasure, and therefore, it is a “moral duty” to seek pleasure. In a strange way, a “natural” compulsion is made into a moral edict. It would be a similar case with eating: Since to live humans must eat, then we add a “moral edict” that humans are duty-bound to eat. In this sense, the entire animal kingdom is under a moral edict: “Your duty is to eat.” Of course, the other side of such morality is “Avoid pain.” Thus, when one’s child misbehaves and runs away, knowing that he might get an “unpleasant” lesson, he is behaving morally: avoiding pain. This “morality” can explain why freedom and its attendant responsibility are hardly mentioned in public discourses: The most difficult undertaking in principled democracy is the acceptance of one’s duty and responsibility. Such acceptance is extremely unpleasant and to be avoided. Since to avoid something painful and unpleasant is a moral duty, then avoiding responsibility is moral. Of course, a philosophical discussion might raise the question as to whether it makes sense to “seek pleasure.” Pleasure cannot be an aim; rather, it is a result of a more basic aim, such as accomplishing a difficult task, performing a civic duty, helping someone in stress, and many others. But, since the production of all sorts of novelties increases pleasures by fulfilling our “wants,” then we must want more pleasures and more “novelties.” The pleasures are also nomadic: Changing sex partners, wearing the latest style, wiggling to the latest “music,” changing sex, becoming multi-sexed, and thus in a constant search for novel—although without any novelty—pleasures. One must always catch up with the new inventions, know the latest movie and television stars, look like the latest heroine advertised with a shiny—although cold—smile on huge billboards. To speak philosophically, the aim of pleasure is the most self-defeating nonsense imaginable, and thus eternally nomadic. Finally, it is no wonder that the “latest philosophies,” going under the now-famous rhetorical name “postmodern,” are designed to support both the magical power of discourses and the incessant consumerism—“we must want.” The latter is supported by philosophies under the psychodrama of “desire.” The pronouncement that “The subject is dead” allows the emergence of philosophical anthropology, proclaiming that “humans” are “desire machines,” understood in a great variety of metaphors: desire of one area on a

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surface of the skin for another area, desire of an infinite being for another, desire of a tourist to swallow a live fish in a Tokyo restaurant and feel the surface of the throat tickled by the wiggling fish. Add to this desire machine a claim that value is more fundamental than being, and the circle is closed. After all, the priority of values and will, grounding modern metaphysical projects, calculating possibilities of conditions and results, is a value selectivity: We project what we desire and thus make it valuable. We evaluate what possibilities are valuable and produce visible results as an embodiment of our values. Poor Levinas (1991) fell into the trap and accepted this modern ontology of the primacy of valuation and simply put a magical discourse of the theological infinite on it.

Chapter 8

Identity and Populism: Telling the Code Introduction American mythology still contains the empty promise of equal and ample opportunity for all; a curious sense of entitlement has evolved among minority members. But, it is entitlement to what others already have, and not to the means of that attainment. If one believes that agency lies external to oneself (because the system treats one as without agency), then one is unlikely to value access to the means of attainment for only agents can transform means into ends. Indeed, even minority members who gain access to a means of attainment, such as higher education, will frequently manage the opportunity as a chance to manipulate the system, and not as a chance to develop and hone new skills. This is to suggest neither that scamming the system is tied in any way to racial or ethnic membership, nor that this is an unreasonable or ineffective strategy. Rather, this is to point out a difference in a manner of participation between what is socially prescribed and what is (sometimes) enacted. To continue, the sense of agency seems to be displaced into a sense of identification as a minority, as though enacting an identity as a minority were both a means and an end. Although most sociocultural acts of identification are certainly ends in themselves, the particular nature of central city community identification as a minority has at least two qualities that render it significantly different as a subcultural identity from many other minority (subcultural) identities. The first of these is the displaced and abbreviated sense of agency previously described, and the second is a cultural (systemic) characteristic described in the anthropological literature as liminality. In sociocultural terms, that which is liminal is that element or group whose identity is sufficiently ambiguous as to contain at least one set of paradoxical conditions, such that its members are disenabled from participating in the larger social system in a meaningful, productive, adult way. So, what are the paradoxes comprising the label minority in application to central city communities? To begin at the most general (and pervasive level), to be “Black” is to be “not White” (or some other color binary). If to be White is to be successful by working inside of the system, then to be Black is to be

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successful by working against or at least outside of the system. The problem this appears to create is that, for a Black person to succeed in a WASP society by following conventional (White) means, that means simultaneously rejecting one’s minority membership or identity: a crippling paradox. For example, the educational system is viewed as oppressive of Black historical experience and repressive of Black cultural expression. This is an identity based not on some particular cultural articulation, but rather on difference from, if not opposition to, mainstream (White) culture. This stands in contrast to some other minority groups, who embrace much about mainstream culture (goals, values, and so forth), and who demarcate difference or subgroup membership by the use of primarily ritualistic events (i.e., specific marriage customs and costumes, religious displays, food preparation, rites of passage, jewelry, emblems, and organized community activities or events). However, each of these cultural demarcations, although emphasizing unique subcultural features and a sense of community and identity, occurs while individual members participate in general and on a daily basis within the structure of the (White) sociocultural hegemony. Clearly, this conclusion flies in the face of the partially articulated perspective underlying many of the comments and explanations offered by “minorities,” many of whom have voiced the sentiment that they are denied success as well as access by virtue of their race. At this point, the question seems to be: Is their lack of access and success the result of self-imposed minority identification or the result of sociocultural racism? In fact, both perspectives are partially valid because the social system and the subgroup each participate in the articulation of minority membership as agentless and liminal. Each participates in the communication code that articulates “Blackness, Brownness, or Yellowness,” and this code binds its participants in a kind of reciprocity that perpetuates the code and the social system. One of the key consequences of this code is the lack of consistent economic cohesiveness. What does not occur is the sort of economic solidarity that would take the form of central city Black consumers purchasing primarily from other Black business owners, which would generally mean patronizing neighborhood businesses. For instance, as one respondent noted, Jews living in the far northwest corner of the Columbus, OH commonly travel to the east side, a 20- to 30-minute trip, to patronize Jewish-owned businesses, whereas Blacks living only several blocks away make no effort to patronize Blackowned businesses. In short, as a group, they seem not to display economic solidarity.

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How we can understand this theoretical and practical theory of communication codes has an intellectual and political benefit in that such codes are posited to operate throughout a system (e.g., society) without distinguishing among cultural variations. These codes reduce contingencies that might overwhelm an individual, and thereby enable great amounts of social differentiation along economic lines, while enabling the nowdifferentiated segments to interact predictably. Thus, the codes provide the means to relatively stable system ends by providing or perhaps “enlisting” a kind of compliance on the part of all individuals. Because the codes remain out of the conscious consideration of most system participants, compliance does not require consenting cooperation on the part of these same individuals. Because their behavior is compliant only in terms of the system’s needs, and not in terms of the needs of an individual’s psyche, it is not necessary to resort to either personality characteristics nor to hypothetical genetic or cultural predispositions to explain and understand the behavior of individuals and groups. In short, in applying this theoretical construct, it is not necessary to blame individuals in order to explain social phenomena. Communication codes are characterized by both reducing the field of alternatives, and reciprocity. Communication codes are complexity-reducing mechanisms that are accomplished through the management of fields of contingency. In a social system, the fields of contingency are the alternatives (action and meaning) available to individuals. One way to define meaning is as a reduction of these alternatives through the mutual acknowledgment of the participants. In this way, meaning is created by the increase in the probability of the selection of some very limited actions on the part of the participants. The net result is that each participant can be said to understand the situation in the sense that it is predicable to a large degree for the participant. This is, of course, a limited and specific way of defining meaning and is not meant to deny or invalidate other ways of defining the term. It is also not to suggest that alternative or additional kinds of meaning both actually occur and are possible to discern, given the same parameters as are utilized here. The point, instead, is to sharpen the focus of this theoretical discussion in a way that will enable us to more clearly understand the detail and application of communication codes to minoritization. The first step is to determine whether any set of transactions can be said to be constitutive of, or at least indicative of, a communication code. We can judge communication processes for clues to the existence and enactment of codes by looking for the following pattern in the exchange: participants who

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complete their own action selections and know this from each other. Immediately, the participants are linked because both the selection choices and their completion require confirmation by the other. Once this takes place, the participants become bound because their future exchanges and action selections are predicated upon confirmation on the part of the other. It is, in part, this particular kind of interdependence which earmarks the formulation of a communication code. Communication codes seen as mechanisms, as catalysts that guide transactions, the specifics of the selections, are not as important as is the motivating quality of the selecting process. It is motivating in terms of the selections made by the other. That is to say that, when the manner of one partner’s selections serves simultaneously as a motivating structure for the other, a communication code can be said to be formulated. Clearly, if it is the manner, and not the content, of the selections that is the compelling or conditioning aspect of the transactions, then a code is formulated because it can be said to be both abstract and ahistorical in nature. By encoding the manner of the selecting, a code is freed from the boundaries of the here and now and can operate out of consciousness because, in fact, it is the code which now orders the situation and not the situation that determines the encoding. One of the benefits of employing the concept of communication codes is that it provides a way of specifying how that which communication scholars call context affects human interaction. Thus, we can operationalize the variable context as the presence of a specific code or set of codes that cocondition the selections of the actors, so that the interpretation or meaning created is wholly a product of a highly reduced field of contingencies perceived by the participants. Contingencies are further ordered by a code so that some specific combinations of selections are rendered highly probable. Because probability (determined by codes) greatly enhances predictability, and predictability constitutes one basis of/for meaning, context operationalized as communication code(s) directly affects the range of possible and likely meanings available to the participants. Because codes manage complexity by reducing contingency, they not only reduce the number of action alternatives available to the participants, but they simultaneously order those contingencies, the remaining preferred alternatives, and in so doing, significantly increase the probability of a few of those remaining selections (This sequence of contingency reduces “motivation” because of the net effect: the high probability of the selection of some few alternatives by the participants).

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For a participant, the field of options appears to be intrinsically limited, that is, limited due to the nature of the world or of the situation, not as the consequence of the operation of codes. Two results follow from this apprehension: Limited and narrow changes seem possible, if any do; and, the actors do not see themselves as participating in the mechanism responsible for the curtailment of their options. This net effect is further reinforced by the fact that codes are ahistorical and atemporal in nature, and these qualities render them invisible to social participants. When a mechanism is invisible and only the effects of it are manifest, it is easy to conclude that either some completely different mechanism is at work, or that nothing in particular is at work; that the effects merely constitute “reality.” In this respect, codes gain potency and efficacy by being ahistorical and atemporal, in contrast to the more typical assumptions communication researchers make about the nature of context: that it is very much a product of the specific histories of both the parties involved and their joint history (their relational history) in addition to immediate situational variables. Although most studies are too exploratory to provide sufficient data to allow us to hypothesize that the social and environmental conditions combine to formulate a hitherto unidentified and unnamed communication code, it is not beyond the scope of this scholarly effort to suggest that, because communication codes have such potency and get the desired effect (as previously discussed), their characteristics operate as a kind of blueprint for the creation and interpretation of much of social reality. As a functioning member of this social system, I implicitly abstract the general pattern of communication codes and then typically utilize that pattern to deconstruct (if you will) many or most aspects of my experience in the social world. The abstract and ahistorical nature of codes renders them the ideal sort of mechanism from a system perspective because, as such, they are both generically and specifically replicable and are therefore both triply efficacious and yet versatile. Their versatility resides in their potency in transforming any and all actual and potential contingencies. Capitalist society was able to survive the decline of paternal figures, becoming a society without fathers organized upon a narcissistic logic whose pathologies would no longer be neurotic conflicts with the law, but narcissistic ideals of performance and borderline demands of love. Remember Laclau’s discussion of the political possibilities of the Freudian model in his work on “populism.” Laclau (2005) maintained that there is “no political intervention

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that isn’t, in a certain degree, populist.” Starting from the same descriptions of the birth of mass societies that had influenced Freud (Le Bon, Tarde, McDougall) and showing how these descriptions were reactions against the emergence of proletarian claims in the political field, Laclau returned to the Freudian text to expose the ambivalence of the identificatory phenomenon that grounds mass psychology. Everything turns around the key notion of identification, and the starting point for explaining a plurality of sociopolitical alternatives is to be found in the degree of distance between ego and ego ideal. If that distance increases, we will find the central situation described by Freud: identification between the peers as members of the group and transference of the role of ego ideal to the leader. If, on the contrary, the distance between ego and ego ideal is narrower, the leader will be the object-choice of the members of the group, but he will also be part of the group, participating in the general process of mutual identification. But the proximity between the ego and the ego ideal in the identification between people and leader isn’t enough to determine whether the political system will be authoritarian. Recall how Adorno, reading Freud, stressed that the fascist leader isn’t someone really far from the members’ group: He’s a kind of “little big man,” “someone like us,” who shares some imaginary traits with us, which gives rise to strong indignation against the political and intellectual elite. Laclau (2005) describes how the particularity of the leader should remain an empty signifier such that this “particularity assumes a universal signification incommensurable with itself” (p. 205). The political body thus becomes an unachievable totality. Instead of a totality that is grounded on the authoritarian return to some original essential social bond, this totality appears as the ground for an open horizon. Populism divides society into antagonistic fields and advances interests that are not represented in political institutions, giving visibility to demands that aren’t otherwise taken into account, including demands related to poverty, or in defiance of austerity politics. Populist strategy is able to transform non-hegemonic demands into an anti-institutional political force. But let’s remember that there is also a huge set of demands coming from various sectors of the economic elite. This leads Laclau to state: “There is in any society a reservoir of raw anti-status-quo feelings which crystalize in some symbols quite independently of the forms of

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their political articulation.” Anti-institutionalism can take on discourse of a very different political nature. First, Laclau’s perspective allows us to understand how Freudian political thought can help us to stress the complexity of the relationship between institutions and anti-institutional demands. The irreducibility of the place of leadership in democratic societies implies the need for a sovereign that isn’t completely institutionalized but expresses demands for radical social transformation. This could prevent politics from becoming the mere management of a set of possibilities predetermined by the legal order. But it could also open up the space for the resurgence of figures of authority and leadership that are grounded in archaic fantasies of security, protection, and fear. This is the ambivalence of processes of incorporation in politics.

Network Magic Network-making power is the capacity to include new actors into a network, and to exert the effects of the network’s extant protocol and power relationships upon them. This form of power has two methodologies. The first is the place of the “switchers.” Switchers police the barrier between inside and outside the network. While these are usually individuals, the second is the abstract methods deployed by the meta-programmers—these are those who determine the architectural structure of the network that is produced by programmers and define the terms under which the code and protocols of the network are structured (Castells, 2011, p. 781). Through their manipulation of switchers and programmers, the meta-programmers predominantly determine network-making power. The notion of a sovereign is traditionally rendered in two formats, both of which have their application: “Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception,” claims Carl Schmitt (1996, p. 5); while Foucault (1978, p. 136) places the sovereign as “he” who has the “power of life and death,” however that right may be expressed. Death should be understood to be a metaphorical case, but the notion of “let live and let die” has profound ramifications in terms of the existence of Facebook profiles, which can exist long after the end of the life of an individual and will continue to constitute a node of connected individuals for data mining into the future.

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Furthermore, the conditions of power are cast as flexibly structured, open to changes in protocol and relationships to other networks, and variably constituted by actors or networks of actors. Through their relationships of interaction, individual systems move towards constituting the network society. The full extent of his observational approach to the problem of power and resistance can be read in the extensive, but certainly not problem-free, account of the agglomeration of global political dissent in the period from December 2009 to November 2011 that is recorded in Networks of outrage and hope (Castells, 2012).

Negri on the Power of God’s Nature Negri’s typology of power is a tripartite ontology: constituent power, constituted power, and sovereignty. Negri’s perspective is very much a case of privileging beings, rather than institutions, as the locus of power, and the idea is tied to a three-decade project dedicated to philosophizing the process. The multitude is innately resistant of the capacities of Empire, and indeed Negri defines resistance to oppression as existing prior to the expression of power (Hardt & Negri, 2004, pp. 63–65). The inversion of this model of power comes from the fact that the self-organizing power of the multitude must first be overcome by Empire in order to organize it towards whatever goal. This self-organizing aspect of the multitude resists the impositions of external authority before that authority can subject individuals to its whims. Negri’s theses clearly prioritize the material aspects, and he advocates at multiple times for a political ontology that is innately democratic (Negri, 1999, pp. 61– 80). Negri’s idea of constituent power is power in its pure potency. Negri is mirroring Spinoza’s analysis of God/Nature, wherein he identifies physical action and thought as operating on the same immanent plane. There is no distinction between the reality of thought and the reality of objects—both have a place within being. First, Negri sees all institutions as expressing largely the same set of characteristics when it comes to oppression: a reduction of individual capacity to act (but never its removal), a corruption of selfidentification, and the expropriation of material and immaterial productionconstituted power are best engaged by locally determined practices. Constituted power, in this sense, is organizational power, which rules over the arrangement of objects and things in the world. Sovereignty, in the field of

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Negri’s theories, operates as the suprema potestas, which is to say, the supreme institution of constituted power (Negri, 1999, p. 13). As Hart and Negri (2009) close with in Commonwealth, “Our inclination is to appropriate this concept of governance, subvert its imperial vocation, and reformulate it as a concept of democracy and revolution. The challenge for this analytical regime will be not to drive home a prescriptive antidote to Empire, but rather to open up the recognition of similarity between struggles on the face of the globe” (pp. 372–373).

Charismatic Authoritarianism As viewers of recent American media can attest from experience, “Donald Trump painted a picture of America in crisis, with ‘poverty and violence at home’ and ‘war and destruction abroad.’ But, he proclaimed, ‘I am your voice’ and ‘I alone can fix it’” (Lukes, 2017, n.p.). These are not accessible to the ordinary person but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them, the individual concerned is treated as a leader. The social relations involved are “purely personal.” “They recognize the personal qualifications and characteristics of the charismatic leader, whom they view as having been chosen, as belonging to God’s grace. The religious analogies are significant. Charisma is linked by Weber with both magic and prophecy, realms where power derives from personal gifts” (Lukes, 2017, n.p.). Lukes (2017) rightly notes that The charismatic leader depends on his followers for recognition. Once the followers cease to believe in the leader, the leader’s charismatic power disappears. So, charisma, secondly, requires perpetual reanimation. And thirdly, Weber thought, it is temporary, because, like magic, its appeal and its efficacy only last as long as it is seen to be successful. The charismatic leader, Weber wrote, is “the eternally new” and is fated to descend from a “stormy and emotional” beginning to a “slow suffocating death under the weight of material interests.” The emotional bonding resulting from excessive expectations will not long survive the perceived failure to fulfil them. (Lukes, 2017, n.p.)

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Algis Mickunas and Joseph Pilotta Charisma is, fourthly, irrational. Like the mystic, the charismatic leader is believed in because his message goes against common knowledge of how the world works, because it rejects and disrupts what is taken for granted, including the everyday pursuit of interests and the impersonal norms governing daily life. Weber thought that this meant that pure charisma rejects economic gain and indeed any type of routine and regulated economic life. (But, as we know, many charismatic leaders have, for a time, been seen as economic saviors: Hitler put Germany back to work and ended hyperinflation, and under Mussolini, as the saying goes, the trains ran on time). (Lukes, 2017, n.p.)

Charismatic leaders could resist the ever-growing disenchantment of a graying world that was under the increasing sway of soulless experts and bureaucrats. On the other hand, Weber also wrote of the charismatic leader as a “demonic” type who appears only in chaotic times. Scholars and commentators have seen historical and contemporary leaders as charismatic in Weber’s sense. Weber mentioned Cleon and Napoleon. Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, and Gandhi are often described as charismatic, and Raymond Aron thought that de Gaulle was the perfect embodiment of Weberian charisma. What Weber called a pure “ideal type” is abstracted from real cases in which, to get their way, political leaders draw on multiple sources of power: the threat of force, tradition, legal authority, economic muscle, incentives, negotiating skill, coalitional alliances, and so on, with more or less success. Let us quote from Lukes (2017) at length: As a president he [Trump] is unprecedented, in numerous ways. He has refused to release his taxes, retained his lucrative business interests, communicated to the people via tweets, run White House business chaotically, installed his family into the administration, surrounded himself with generals, exhibited systematic hostility to the press, rejected compromises with political opposition, brought far-right forces into the mainstream, advanced the coarsening of public discourse, and, in sum, seemingly adopted the advice of his former chief strategist Steve Bannon to “deconstruct” the administrative state. To begin to take the measure of this development, we need to turn to another concept—bullshit—and another thinker, the philosopher Henry Frankfurt, for whom the essence of “bullshit” is “lack of connection to a concern with truth. For the bullshitter, unlike the liar, “the truth-values

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of his statements are of no central interest”; he is “unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.” The liar intends to deceive us about what is true; the bullshitter does not care. Many make much of President Trump’s lies, but we need to grasp the significance of his bullshitting. Lying, after all, is as ancient as politics itself, but leading a multitude who follow you in discarding any concern with truth and truthfulness is something else. With policymaking increasingly disconnected from expert knowledge and administrative experience, this has brought a new level of uncertainty into our politics, one that is all the more dangerous as the globe warms. (Lukes, 2017, n.p.)

Most commentators agree that Trump’s base of support is a White working class that has lost out due to globalization and that looks to him with the misplaced hope that he can restore the economic basis, the jobs, and opportunities of the world they have lost. In fact, his base extends across the country and across social classes, but the common denominator is that it is predominantly White, and it is his appeal to “Whiteness” that seems to underlie his charismatic appeal. Overt racism and nationalism are once again central in American political life.

Bond Struggle over Common Good Through their antagonism—in which the organization, the raison d'être, and the goals of society are under debate—the antagonists affirm themselves as members of the same community. Conflict establishes a common bond. To paraphrase that point within the language of traditional political philosophy: It is not through a pregiven substantial common good, nor through submission under a consensually or otherwise derived common good, that a bond between the members of a given community is established, but it is the very struggle over the common good, which, in actual fact, is that bond. The political philosophy of Claude Lefort constantly stresses that the “evacuation” of the place of power does not eliminate power as such. He does so because of the absolutely necessary symbolic role played by the dimension of power (not by its specific content). On the other hand are the specific ways in which antagonism is symbolically regulated by particular “powerarrangements.”

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So, it is safe to conclude that the purely negative relation of the umori points to a lack that precedes their positive content. In the axis of internal division, there is a relation of mutual implication between the void instantiated by conflict and the emergence of the social bond. Thus, any social bond must pass through the experience of this void, through the experience of a constitutive absence at the very heart of society. There is an assumption that the “manque” at the heart of the relation between the two classes can be identified with the place of the subject, and this hinges on the category of “desire.” Rather than being independent, the two umori constitute “two poles” of a single desire. And since the two poles cannot be unified (since they are originary), it follows that the “subject” of that desire is internally divided between these two poles; it can never attain full identity. On the one hand, Lefort’s theory of democracy is the dispositive which disincorporates the “body politic.” On the other hand, there is “disincorporation” or division of the subject in its relation to the disincorporation and division of society. One could say that, for Lefort, the symbolic defines the very way in which the chiasmatic, instituting dimension of society’s self-externalization is operationalized and institutionalized. In its most basic form, as a “symbolic system” of society, this dimension is specifiable as a “configuration of the signifiers of law, power and knowledge” (Lefort, 1986, p. 186). While in the “monarchic” dispositive these signifiers are unified or incorporated in the single signifier of the body of the king, in the symbolic dispositive, ... The Egocrat, who seeks to fully incarnate the place of power within society, is in possession of a single body only: corpus mysticum and corpus naturale are indistinguishable. The Egocrat coincides with himself as much as totalitarian society coincides with itself.... both above and below himself. (Lefort, 1986, p. 306)

The main feature of totalitarianism—with respect to the founding conflict—is that any form of antagonism will be concealed, and a homogenized and self-transparent society will be postulated: “social division, in all its modes, is denied, and at the same time all signs of differences of opinion, belief or mores are condemned” (Lefort, 1988, p. 13). This means that, on the internal axis, the originary division is erased, or rather displaced. It is erased in the sense that what the Egocrat incarnates is the “People-asOne,” that is to say, society without internal division and antagonism. Yet,

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since it is an ontological dimension, it can never be completely erased and will continue to surface in the form of disturbances of the imaginary concealment, it has to be displaced. And, in order for the “People-as-One” to be presented as a totality, as a full identity, a relation to some sort of outside is inevitable. What acts as the new outside is a series of internal substitutes representing the “enemy within.” The identity of the people is established vis-à-vis the enemy of the people (the Kulaks, the Bourgeoisie, the Jews, spies, and saboteurs). The metaphor of the body starts tainting political discourse: The identity of the body of the people and society depends on the elimination of its parasites. And yet, totalitarianism is entangled in a paradox. Its goal is to get rid of internal division, but in order to achieve that goal, an enemy has to be produced: “division is denied [...] and, at the same time as this denial, a division is being affirmed, on the level of phantasy, between the People-asOne and the Other” (Lefort, 1986, p. 298). Totalitarianism needs the enemy as a reference point and thus relies on division in the very moment in which it decries it. In totalitarianism, power, as Lefort remarks, “makes no reference to anything beyond the social: it rules as though nothing existed outside the social, as though it had no limits.” Communication provides a common background in front of which all differentiated spheres of action, as well as scientific, economic, cultural and political contents become interchangeable. This permanent background of the ceremony of communication is the new “foundation, this accompaniment is the lining continuously spun from the intolerable fact of social division” (Lefort, 1986, p. 228). A social bond, a between-us (entre-nous) is created; however, this bond is not predicated on a constitutive absence. Rather, conflict is pasted over by the incantation of familiarity: It installs within mass society the limits of a “little world” where everything happens as if each person were already turned towards the other. It provokes a hallucination of nearness which abolishes a sense of distance, strangeness, imperceptibility, the signs of the outside, of adversity, of otherness. (Lefort, 1986, p. 228)

This omnipresent ritual of communication assumes its general political significance by obliterating the gap between society and its outside and between society and politics: The political is occulted, power turns into a place like any other. Its effectiveness “lies in the fact that it is only partially

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manifested as political discourse and it is precisely because of this that it acquires a general political significance” (Lefort, 1986, p. 227). Political “round table” discussions on TV are a case in point. All relations of domination seem to disappear insofar as the invisible ideology incorporates all opposition by simulating within itself a place for the contradictor while, at the same time, equivalence is simulated between rulers and ruled—an equivalence which does not correspond to the factual antagonisms outside the studio. A “phantasmagoria of reciprocity” is established, “according to which everything is in principle sayable, visible, intelligible, for such is indeed the ultimate effect of the occultation of division: the image of an unlimited discourse in which everything would become transparent” (Lefort, 1986, p. 229). The following typology provides a heuristic way to articulate the core of differing social and political valuations and codes within the present scope of Western civilization in the present year. Social Values of Leftist Populism    

Anti-elitism Speak for common people Anti-capitalism, anti-globalism, social justice, and pacifism The enemy of the people is the socioeconomic structure of society

Social Values of Rightist Populism    

Promote social division, exclusion of minorities, immigrants, and indigents Tendency towards nationalism, fascism, and authoritarianism Propagate disinformation and conspiracy Traditional gender and sex roles

Authoritarian Values    

Cynicism and disdain for humanity Need to wield power Focus on violators of their value system and oppress them Belief in mystic determination

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Prefer social uniformity

Liberalism       

Equality and individual liberty Private property and individual rights Support limited constitutional government Importance of pluralism, tolerance, autonomy, and consent Political freedom and right to participate in political process Individual liberty Individual freedom and equality

Conservativism       

Individual freedom Limited government Rule of law Peace through strength Fiscal responsibility Free market Human dignity

The values in the above typology are part of the political and social spheres. They operate as shibboleths of power in the formation of populist identities in the landscapes of US and European variation (Western civilization). Clearly, fleshing out the typology of valuation can have many variations, but these abstractions have been both the basis of common bonds as well as that of divisiveness. The values are binaries which function as codes, both for identity and for imposing negative attributions. Modern democracy has been premised on the two-party system—conservative versus progressive. The binary dominates the Western civilization code. However, the emptiness of a concept and finding the middle way of the neither/nor is best presented by the medieval thinker Nagarjuna, which is the focus of the Conclusion.

Chapter 9

Skin Culture Self-Destruction In the modern episteme, the human has the dual role of being both the subject and object of knowledge. In this sense, the domains of reality, such as economic riches or cultural forms of language, have been regarded as historical modes of the being of the human. The world now becomes divisible into as many spheres as are required for human self-fulfillment, i.e., continuous existence among the power struggles. All these are regularities announcing human existence. The efforts of postmodern anthropologists, including Foucault (1974), to abolish the presence of the subject is to demonstrate the dispersal of the fundamental concept of the subject through the appearance of the numerous scientific branches in modernity. Here, he discovers the principal difficulties that result from new research. The progressive self-reflection of the subject not only encounters conditions of existence which are independent of consciousness, but also domains in individual activity which are beyond individual consciousness. Significantly, Foucault neither attempts to explain the dissolution of an established world view by another world view that would be imminent to the problems of scientific development, nor does he interrogate the force of validity found imminent in the theoretical model of reflection. His historical model is descriptive. Discontinuous phases are described, wherein epoch-making modes of thought yield revolutionary new modes that cannot be explained from the imminent problematic in the previous mode. Each mode of thought encompasses, by a specific number of categorical determinants, entire reality. This is an index of diverse styles of rationality and constitutes an inevitable scepsis concerning scientific progress as a search for some basic reality. All the “objectified” and realized projects have become independent from their creators and assumed power over the subject by dividing him into the very discourses and disciplines which he himself created. He became subjected to, and thus an object of, such disciplines. They are the cultural unconscious dimensions as a great variety of powers dominating individual life. In short, we invented fairy-tale beings who “escaped” us and became the Lords demanding to be worshiped, obeyed, requiring that we kneel before them, be

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grateful for every possession, and fearful for our lives. The modern subject, the grand ens realisimus, is now subjected by the powers of myriad discourses and cultures. These “objective” discourses allot us power positions which make us attractive, important, and desirable. In fact, we cannot struggle for power without accepting the requirements of such discourses. We have power because the hierarchy of discourses says that we do. But what form of “adoration” is in vogue in our modern culture? Let us ask so-called “objective research.” An achievement of a power position, with its attendant glory of being worshiped, allows one to be most “attractive” and desirable, specifically in the modern and postmodern interpretation of human beings as desire machines. The intellectual postmodern elite, following the great enlightenment that the world is composed of discourses, discovered that discourses make sense on a shared ground: a floating phallic signifier which infests everything with meaning and even metaphorical variations. Just like traditional world-creating figures, the phallic signifier cannot have meaning since meaning is structured by it. In brief, it is invisible and most likely empty, and no discourse can fully satisfy it. All the females would love to twine around it for support. The phallic signifier is now common fare among rap performers who keep grabbing their crotches and then, in a wide gesture, floating the signifier across adoring audiences. Their shouts and screams are indications of the ultimate pleasure which makes life worth living. This is one aspect of the “sexual revolution” discussed in previous chapters, with an added “ethical” demand that one’s duty is to maximize pleasures. Since there are no criteria that determine which pleasures are more valuable, then each subject can decide which are most pleasant. This claim was aimed against the “intellectuals” who proposed that great books and classical arts are more pleasant than that brought by being in bed with three guys, as enjoyed by the just-liberated young woman. The answer: Your preference to read books is just another choice of pleasures—no better and no worse. It was decreed that there are evils in the world, among which death is the greatest since it deprives humans of maximizing their pleasures. Add to this great evil Heidegger’s (1996) announcement that we are “beings toward death,” that among all the possibilities, the possibility of “Nonbeing” is the closest, and that the evil is forever knocking at one’s door. The answer to this evil is an invention of “life after death” or, as Nietzsche (1999) suggested, an ultimate stability as revenge against time. The stability in the form of “eternal paradise” is the place of ultimate pleasures, above all, sexual in nature. If you submit to the power of Allah and commit suicide for him, you

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will get 70 virgins, and if you are a saint, you will enjoy watching the tortures of the damned, and if you are a nun, a bride of Jesus, you will be able to share him with thousands of others as a member of his harem. This is how it is on Earth and in Heaven. This evil threat of dissolution might be premised on the maintenance of a continuous subject which, in accordance with modern Western thinking, has no objective reality—it does not exist, although it pretends to be the master of the world.

Popular and Pop Cultures There are debates by historians, anthropologists, economists, sociologists, supposed “intellectuals,” mass media researchers, and even self-proclaimed philosophers, such as Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, concerning the nature of culture, popular culture, and pop culture. And cinema is one major aspect of culture, yet, its understanding is equally diffused, specifically when intersected by broad political or even ideological claims. It is, therefore, beneficial to make some sense of the plethora of “views” by distinguishing among the various meanings of culture, not to speak of the background of each culture—civilization. A somewhat protracted introduction is needed to sort out the confusion. It is deemed that popular culture consists of the “mainstream” ideas, attitudes, images, and rituals, propagated by various media, from print, through arts, to manners. This supposition is being promoted by globalization—a modern Western push toward a “homogeneous world order.” And the latter means a way of providing whatever “the people want.” Popular usually means what has been, and continues to be, generally accepted as arts, appreciated by most people, whether it would be “nature scenes” or two-step dances, even folk music (country tunes). Indeed, in the Soviet Union, it was the “people’s art,” wherein some “talented” collective farmer was good at wood carvings of “normal” people’s daily scenes. Pop culture has a connotation of “mass appeal,” paraded by various media, including advertisements, film, television, and “underground” movements that would become seen as radically subversive of common decency. One difference between popular and pop culture is that the latter regards the former as “dumbed down” and intellectually mediocre, having no daring to make a critical statement regarding the mores of society. In this sense, it might correlate to the “high culture” that belongs to the “elite minority,” despising the popular culture’s banality. Popular was and is regarded to be the general

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“taste” of the lower and middle classes, in contrast to the sophisticated upper class, whose “taste” provides a standard for “official culture.” Yet, one immediate difference appears between high and pop cultures: The former does not engage in sensationalism, while the latter has to be sensational and shocking, a demonstration of what is not to be seen in a polite, middle-class, average, mediocre family. The important change came after World War II, when the meaning of popular culture began to converge with mass culture, media culture, image culture, and above all, consumer culture—images, stories, shows, films, music, dances, and even paintings—began to be regarded as “products for mass consumption.” It can be said that popular culture was compelled to turn toward mass culture for “anonymous” audiences and not for “regular folks,” such as country music or kitsch art. Yet, the general popular culture became a part of “production” for the sake of consumers. This trend was named the “culture industry” by the members of the Critical School (Adorno, Horkheimer, and some of their contemporary followers, such as Zygmunt Bauman), who suggested that popular culture is a factory, producing standardized commodities—films, radio, magazines—used to manipulate the population into passive acceptance of the political status quo and the market system (Geuss, 1981). In short, there is a consumption of superficial pleasures that blocks thinking, reflection, critical questioning of social norms, and, by consuming the mass-produced “culture,” a financial support of the very system that is designed to continue by a “dumbed down” public. The popular culture industry produces something that is completely unnecessary for the public; it produces “false needs” that create a “facade” in every average home of being cultured. Yet, it is also the case that the mass cultural products are cheap and inferior and equally comprise an abolition of individualism— everyone wears the same gaudy style, buys the same plastic Mary and baby for Christmas. It depends on homogeneous rules of taste “from above,” abolishing the distinction between “market societies” and “national States.” Habermas (1989) was concerned about its communicative incompetence since, in its homogeneous mass understanding, there are no critical challenges. This kind of popular culture and its industry are still quite pervasive and conservative, with mass outlets around the globe, such as Walmart, selling the cheapest plastic “art” made in China. Indeed, Walmart could be renamed China Mart. The same can be said of cinema—appealing to dull senses that see only surfaces, and indeed the cinema is produced to appeal to surfaces—

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superficial—the global convergence of Hollywood and Bollywood (Mickunas, 2017).

Discarding the Subject Other efforts to abolish or discard the subject must also be considered since such efforts are quite pervasive in Europe, and in particular, they are preeminent in Lithuania, where postmodern trends are very much in style. One such trend stems from the texts of Lyotard (1984), who attempts to discard the subject—and the human individual—by positing an erotic carnality as a force without any objective or purpose—since these factors require a subject; for him, this force is a gratuitous excess. The sensuous body is not only different from the functional system, but it can be also contrasted with the organismic system. For Lyotard, the corporeal surface is orgasmic, and not organistic. This surface is neither constituted by, nor coextensive with, the practical and functional operations that are a vectorial and oriented system of daily life, with all its discursive articulations and connections in and of the world. For Lyotard, the organismic and the organistic cannot be contrasted as physical with metaphysical. They overlap in a way that the organic surface is orgasmic and circulates its own intensities. It is only due to the latter that an organic surface is constituted and extended. There would be no organic surface without the orgasmic. The organic would be a punctiformal discontinuity, a discrete and disconnected bombardment of stimuli deprived of communication, even at the functional level. Yet, according to Lyotard, the surface excitations are out of all proportion to the stimuli. The latter are inadequate to account for an organism with an extended surface. It must be noted that the very lack of punctiformity also compels Lyotard to abandon a notion of time for the intensive surface. It is an intensity in passing that does not trace a retentional or memorial residuum. It is a singular tension that, in its surging, is an ephemeral, delocalized shudder. This delocalization is what distinguishes it from punctiformal and organistic stimulus. The passing and delocalized intensities exhibit no direction or aim, as if they were a disclosure of a lack, a need, but incite other intensities without being complements or completions of one another, without forming a system. Their nexus is jealousy that is more primary than the Oedipal envy, and they excite one another without being causally connected. The term jealousy is laden with modern psychological meanings and fails to convey this domain in

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its fundamental “force.” Perhaps the term vital is more conducive for speaking of these intensities and their nexus. The intensities cannot be called “excitations” without verging on intentionality. Rather, they are primary circuits that subtend the organic body; they do not point to external references, but first compose intensive distributions of the organic surfaces. The phenomenal field, then, is deployed in accordance with such distributions and not in accord with some prearranged system of objective or subjective stimulations resulting in excitations. The intensive nodes are positivities, affirmations of multiple and incompatible arcs; it is only upon slackening the intensities that the incompatibility is articulated, and each intensity segregates toward something or other, and thus becomes a sensuous and primary trace, a memorial sensuality. Here, intensities become desires. It could be said that this distribution of delocalized and atemporal intensities is what primarily constitutes the extension of the organic surface and thus undergirds the logic of Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) phenomenological investigations of the significative overlapping of corporeal functions. While for Merleau-Ponty the overlapping and/or substitution depend(s) on the power of field signification, for Lyotard (1984), the intensities comprise a shifting theater of inner political economy where all events, regardless of their location, become invested with a libidinal intensity. This is clear in light of the breakup of the organism in a libidinal encounter—an organism reverted to the orgasmic deployment of intensities, jealous of one another, and thus forming a vital nexus, one with the other. None of these processes should be grasped metaphysically. Lyotard objects to the view that surfaces are systems of coded meanings—although unconscious. If one were to take Lacan’s (1966) view that the unconscious is structured like a language, one should not assume that the carnal surface is a system of significations, of intentions that point beyond themselves to absences, calling for communicative fulfillment with the other. The body surfaces are regarded by some to be references to ideal significance, by others as arcs that both deploy and trace the world, and still by others as deriving their meaning from the phallic signifier. For Lyotard, these are metaphysical speculations. While the surfaces bind the intensities, they are equally constituted by them. The entire organism forms by a distribution of intensities that do not point beyond, but transmit, their force to one another; each has its “place” only in the context of the others. One could say that they constitute a semiotic system without a semantic arc. It is this mutual jealousy of each, the positive calling up, one of the others, that comprises their affirmation without

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absence or negativity. Obviously, the semiotic system is not linguistic; it is more like a bricolage with unpredictable connections. Given one touch, other intensive nodes resonate with “jealousy” without being signified. For a worker, for example, Mr. Smith does not only signify a boss, a singular individual, but a guardian, all-seeing, the power over one’s destiny, a tool of exploitation and subjection, evoking and provoking tingles of anger, anxiety, hate, deprivation, irritation, and indifference. Mr. Smith covers a collage of intensive processes. The edicts by Smith are coequals with divine edicts since they regulate even the carnal functioning, demanding a deviation from what every other creature takes to be normal. But this may not be interpreted in dialectical terms—as is done by Sartre (1956)—of mastery and subservience. After all, Mr. Smith is not a designation of a unitary and sovereign subject, but the intensive effects evident in the workers’ intensive processes of disconnecting organic functions, allurements of rewards, intense ambivalences crawling up the skin—wanting to thank and to choke at the same time—and jealousies vibrating across contradictory feelings. Mr. Smith is equally in the same situation; in the face of the worker, he, too, can no longer maintain his identity. But this is not a face-to-face situation. Whatever each says, it vibrates across all intensive nodes—and in unpredictable ways, such that even the formed habits that have diminished the intensities to function as sensations cannot be counted upon to maintain their patterns. Thus, Lyotard does not regard the orgasmic surfaces as comprising codes for carnal intersubjectivity. In his understanding, there is no longer a subjectivity having a libido and radiating its vectors of signification from a central ego. The intensities are passions conducted by an anonymous circulation of the surfaces of a dismembered body; these very surfaces undergo constant shifts and transformations. There is no hidden libido that strives for self-manifestation and expression in dreams, writing, sayings, myths, and cults. Obviously, if the very surface of the organic body depends on, and is structured, extended by, the organismic process, then it would be difficult to offer a localization to the organismic, a place “in” something like an organically delimited system. The intensities of the organismic carnality are excitations at the conjunction of surfaces, whether one’s own or another’s, whether Earth, solar outlays, or a social system; all are productive of the intensive flow. One could, then, contend that there is an organismic economy in the circulation of capitalist and communist commodities, comprising the political economies of modernity. Is it not fascinating that such systems are regarded organically? At every juncture of his investigation of the vital,

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Lyotard (1984) follows it in large traces on the skin of capitalism. This is not to say that his reading of the vital is a denouncement of capitalism in favor of some more elevated utopia. One could interpret some of the more recent uprisings—from Budapest, Prague, and Paris, and more recently to Vilnius, Riga, Talin, Warsaw and Berlin—as irruptions in capitalist and communist orders, with their revolutionary zeal that signifies a telos, a purpose for which such uprisings occur. For Lyotard, such uprisings are events that comprise intensities, rather than being teleological actions, and they belong to the organismic, and not to political economy. No doubt, political economy is designed to circulate commodities on the skin of capital, yet such a circulation comprises one means for carnal and organismic couplings with the pleasure nodes, the points of intensities, the tourist thrills at designated locales. Modern political economies are organic systems constituted by an organismic extension of intensive excitations around the globe. Each node—a city, a secluded enclave, a place for thrills and spills—spreads the economic organism by allurement, the jealousy of novel couplings; each node of intensity communicates its force directly, without representations, through shivers and phantasms. Even the stoic and conservative stalwarts of modern economy in China and Russia can hardly maintain their territories against the pull of jealousies constituted by the “exciting” places that are being replicated in those very territories. After all, this is what increased productivity—the pain of being a functional body— promises: couplings by the peasants and collective farmers with the soft cushions of sleek and accommodating new cars and the luxurious, phantasmagoric ladies that advertise them. The young ladies in post-Soviet Russia had to attend workshops in order to learn how to walk, sit, and cross their legs and to advertise their sexiness. It should be clear that there is a difference between the semiotics of the organism and the organismic. The organism itself is a representational system, whether it is a physiological body or a monetary system, yet the organismic is not a representational system. The intensive nodes are not disclosures of being, truth, falsity, or even images of allurement. They are productive of phantasms that are not apparitions of anything, nor are they expectations of some future possibility. The phantasms cover over with their own excitement the representational and significant, and they comprise an immediate positivity that is obsessive and without a distance. Could one think of Lyotardian analyses as ways of accessing an organismic world that is a constant disturbance of the organic and daily organizational world? Is he offering a

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divinatory re-enchantment with the world, but without anyone being able to say, “This is my joy”? What can be said of the organismic communication that would not be selfdefeating since within its logic any challenge to it becomes another jealous node, full of envy of the grand achievement of Lyotard’s theory. It would be an equivalent to an attempt to disempower Nietzsche’s will to power by another power and hence become subjected to Nietzsche’s logic. No escape! But any viable theory, according to transcendental phenomenology, must be honorable and adhere to its own positing some matter of fact as universal and accessible to all. Thus, Lyotard (1984) would have to admit that his theory is equally a node among nodes, that it does not signify anything more, does not deploy everything as an immediate connection to other nodes, their attractions, repulsions, compulsions toward one another, jealousies, since such a deployment would transgress the immediacy that has no horizons, no implications, no “forebodings” or portents of other nodes, in other places, in other capitals of the world offering pleasure surfaces for coupling, and spreading such couplings to other capitals. Let us take the case of Mr. Smith, the boss, and the lowly worker, and their immediate nodal connections without signifying or representing anything. Mr. Smith wants to screw the worker, and the worker is jealous of Mr. Smith’s secretary, with her tight attire and protruding nodes. All this panorama has no meaning since meaning, as signification, requires an intentional and oriented subject, and it has no connected implications of other places, other points of attachment, since it surges with only what comprises immediate present solicitations that extend the body surfaces which do not “communicate” but comprise excessive flows. And yet, the worker produces capital so that he could have the means to circulate among the globally available nodes, capable of extending more of his body surfaces. In what ways is the worker capable of communicating to himself the “possible” other places and times, and the ways of escaping his immediate compulsions and solicitations to “desire” those possible other options? Moreover, the poor worker, with his phantasms and organismic body surfaces, its obsessions, is presumed to have an awareness of the orientations which would take him to those wondrous places for other nodal encounters. In brief, he must have in place a kinesthetic, active body, a transcendentally given signifying activity without which his labor and acquired capital for global circulation would vanish. He is already in an active, kinesthetic communication with the world; Lyotard (1984) posits a modern Cartesian,

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mechanical body that must obey the constancy hypothesis—part for part, stimulus/response—and pits against it an organismic body. But he fails to note the transcendental, active, oriented, and communicative body that is a condition for any talk of surface extensions or reactions to stimuli. The nodal leaps, the transmission of the force from one to the other, circulate without any purpose and yet provide a ground for all purposive engagements that continuously guarantee this circulation. Such engagements, nonetheless, are deemed to be oppressive, to be made transparent, so that we could participate in the nodal circulation without obstructions. This is a curious state of affairs: The nodal extension of surfaces, their excesses belong to no one, have no needs, make no demands, and discard the last vestiges of the subject as a source of signification, a source of self-esteem and pride, and finally, the extension transgresses one’s body and allows everything in the environment to become excessive, nodal, with leaps from one continent to another. Yet, while there is no subject with identity, there is a nodal identity, such that a member of a tribe points proudly at the scars on his chest as a sign of his having endured the pain/pleasure of a leopard’s claws. Assuming that the claw marks are his identity, there is nothing written in the coupling of this human with a leopard that would signify anything, including pride or identity. The point of identity comes from intentional awareness, oriented to the marks, and pointing to them as “This is who I am.” Even the coupling is not simply a presence without minimal meaning; after all, this human was engaged in an oriented activity of facing, of pushing, pulling, deploying bodily movements to engage the leopard. Most likely, the tribal elders instructed the youngster to seek out a leopard and acquire the marks of identity, and thus the instructions and actions were laden with intentional and oriented body activities—back to transcendental phenomenology and signifying practice. And let us be clear about intentionality: Most activities do not require “I act,” but more fundamentally, acting, such as walking, comprises a kinesthetic awareness as “walking forward,” “from here to there,” walking on a hard, soft, gritty surface, hearing sounds (without some deliberate listening), and so on. All these engagements are “intentional” insofar as they are correlates to some aspect of the world: hearing is the hearing of something, etc. Are we then to say, since kinesthetic awareness—walking—is oriented and makes sense, then it is oppressive and tramples on the free-floating couplings of nodes? The latter could not couple without first getting there as a sensible condition. Without the latter, the organismic body would lie there, circulating its excesses and extending its skin until it would die of starvation.

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But even the nodal leaps, the excessive flows, “desire” other nodes, desire to couple with them and thus reveal a rudimentary intentionality—a desire for the pleasure/pain of coupling with.... Phenomenology has offered analyses of various levels of intentionality, from biological through daily engagements, to the transcendental constitution of non-Euclidean geometry, showing that each is distinct and cannot be derived from others. While the phantasms obsessing over some engagement may account for some psychodrama in daily life, they do not, and cannot, play any role in non-Euclidean geometry. The latter cannot be fantasized, imagined, or even conceived by the use of any psychological, sociological, orgiastic variants, and not even by formalized Euclidean geometry; yet, some learning concerning which activities of awareness are required to access the world of geometries, both Euclidean and non-Euclidean, will make irrelevant all the phantasmic obsessions. The geometer might be obsessed with geometry, but the obsessions are not identical with the intentional activity of awareness that is required to correlate to this field. There is, nonetheless, a signifying, intentional awareness that Lyotard cannot escape: his awareness of the nodal couplings and their production of excesses of force, of obsessions and solicitations. Such awareness—toward this matter of fact—is intentional. It brackets all other phenomena as inessential and regards the various facets of the organismic body as having a specific essence: obsessive, phantasmic, meaningless, fortuitous, coupling, and a bricolage. By reintroducing a transcendental subject directed toward a specific domain of “objectivity,” Lyotard reintroduces, through the back door, all that he wished to negate. As a matter of course, Lyotard takes for granted as obvious to everyone what the subject matter of his transcendental awareness is and does not ascribe this awareness to one of the nodes circulating on the surface of his organismic skin. The obviousness means that the subject matter is accessible to anyone at the transcendental level, which is free of psychological or sociological aspects. Moreover, he must take for granted that his thesis is intersubjectively accessible, i.e., dialogical, without any need for everyone who reads his texts to be in immediate, nodal contact with him. This awareness is in a position to signify its subject matter, as a matter of fact, anywhere and anytime. By accessing such matters of fact, one does not oppress them, does not alienate them, but makes them accessible for all—for discussion, contestation, and agreement. The pronouncements of the death of the subject are equivalent to its reintroduction as the maker of such pronouncements.

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There are others who are engaged in the efforts to rid the world of this “construct” called “subject” since it is an intrusive presence, calling for dialogue, responsibility, and honor. It is best to allow the postmodern essayists to state their position as an incontestable matter of fact. At the outset, we must apologize for introducing philosophy in the presentation and evaluation of the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1983). The apology is necessary since Deleuze and Guattari decreed that Western philosophy is terroristic and oppressive. This means that the very practice of philosophy, initiated by Socrates, is unacceptable since it interrogates any claim to truth by anyone, whether it comes from a divinity or from a shoemaker. The French postmoderns, and Deleuze and Guattari in particular, propose that whatever they say must be accepted without terroristic questioning, without philosophical engagement. This is similar to Levinas’ (1991) pronouncement that the entire philosophical tradition of the West was and is anti-Semitic. To question the pronouncements of prophets—a Socratic venture—is per force unacceptable. Meanwhile, Deleuze and Guattari still propose that they are engaged in philosophy, but of an unquestionable kind: creative and “interesting.” This, of course, does not require following consistency, leading to the “first principle” of postmodernity: Anything goes; any pronouncement is “philosophical” because I say so today. What I said yesterday is irrelevant. To abolish philosophical terror, one must abolish the framework within which this terror has its power: philosophical dialogue. Thus, Deleuze and Guattari (1983), engage in an unrelenting critique of the Oedipal triangle and of psychoanalysis that plies its trade within the context of this triangle. For Western modern understanding, the myth of the Oedipus complex attempts to locate madness as an alienation from the prevalent social institution of the patriarchal family. The cure for any and all madness is a reconciliation, mediated by the doctor, with the family, and a forming of a family of one’s own. Deleuze and Guattari (1983) point out that this cure does not offer a genuine liberation, but instead is a way of psychiatric participation in a repression of the human by the bourgeoise at its most farreaching level. For them, the carnal desire does not have an object; rather, it is invested in whole environments, impulses, and fluxes, and is essentially nomadic. We always make love to the world. Eroticism pervades all; the way a technocrat oils the machinery, the way a judge pronounces a sentence, the way a corporation screws the worker. Only through articulation, exclusion, and isolation does libido become invested in objects or persons. The

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objectification is produced in the constitution of a subject (Deleuze & Guattari, 1983). Yet, it is important to note that the objects or persons are intersections of agonistic and protagonistic confluences of biological, social, historical, and psychic fields which have been equally subject to libidinal investments. The molar structures—organisms and environments—formed from molecular structures, are composed of the processes which are coextensive with their functioning: they do not signify or represent, aim at, or mean anything, and thus no subject is necessary. The method of their analysis must, thus, be functional. This is not to say that they function mechanically or even vitally. Both essayists would see such designations as speculative. The latter are designed to explicate a unitary function of an organism. But for these essayists, the organism is a massive number of molecular processes, and each consists in the formation of a connection—an energy flow—and its interruption and consumption. They are desire machines, and every phenomenon is to be reduced to this level of explanation—even the awareness of non-Euclidean space must be a molecular process, disconnected from other processes. The nutrition, the oxygen, the Earth, the light, are analogates in nature; each system, with its own order, nonetheless connects with the organism as it connects with them. The bee is part of the reproductive system of clover, as is the wind, the human hand, and the tail of the dog. The plan is partially Nietzschean; our customary conception of ourselves as a unitary ego and will, an actor behind the acts, has proffered a pretense of integrality: I am working, and I am enjoying, and I am in love—all reveal at once an illusion of any unity, the nomadism, the constant renaming of the self, and they show that there is no inherent synthetic unity, but only selective processes that overlap and accommodate, tense, and adjust. At the same time, these essayists basically use a modern and partially Marxian terminology to articulate these primordial processes of communication. The molecular processes are productive and equally reproductive of production. In this sense, they never change to negativity, a desire of absences, or a phallic absence beyond all satisfaction. The molecular processes produce couplings that disconnect and disjoin flows and produce satisfaction, a consummate consumption. This conception is a conjunction of readings from biology, child psychology, schizophrenic literature, and above all, a Nietzschean reading of sociocultural history. The Nietzschean (1969) concept of savages and nomads is regarded as definitory of the infantile stages of our history. A barbarian and/or imperial stage followed, which led to the capitalist stage, the conclusive

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development of which, in the positivity of capital as the global and universal decoding and abolition of territories, ends up in savagery and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is writ large in our social world; it is written even in the way we make love with the world in our day and age. Of course, a critical remark must be added: There is no “we” who could make love with the world or with each other. This comprises an attack on two factors: the Oedipal triangle, and the structural linguistic reading of events that are prelinguistic, nomadic, and without names. Moreover, the theoretical issues are more profound; far from being a context of all interpretation where civilization is accessed, reality coded, and socialization enforced, the Oedipal stage itself emerges at a certain conjunction of cultural history. In this sense, it ceases to have a universal and necessary validity, an all-encompassing explanatory force, and becomes contingent, historically limited, and a partial mode of speaking. This thesis is already obvious in Foucault’s (2011) reading of Nietzsche, where the domain of madness and rationality is not seen as pregiven, but as set up. Indeed, such a setting up is not at all a theoretical operation, but a social, practical invention, leading subsequently to a specific concept of reason that no longer engages in a dialogue with its opposite, but is a monologue about the opposite, the linguistically deemed irrational. This is precisely the Lacanian (1966) linguistic thesis. All the separations of science and theater, explanation and poetics, are linguistic power segregations. This is a modern set up where the socially dysfunctional—in terms of the logic of bourgeoise industrialism—are regarded as irrational, deviant, the residua of the Industrial Revolution, in need of supervision or treatment, and are minors who someday might become responsible citizens. Indeed, the rationality becomes not a mere looking into reality, but a very prescription of normalcy and curative practices. When the family, present in the agrarian community, becomes dismantled by industrialism, the curative institution becomes the father for the modern residua. Thus, the psychoanalytic theory of modernity is also established to reflect this practice, to give it scientific legitimacy. Here, one must accept the subjection to the doctor–father and enter the Oedipal triangle; in case one does not integrate, interiorize, and sublimate its laws, one is classified as neurotic; in case one does not recognize its power, reason, and legitimacy, one is named psychotic. This is to say, the retreat in the face of the Oedipal theater would be a return to the precivilized, the primary, the nomadism without designated and transcendent objectivities, the realities of daily and scientific discourse,

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the negativities of the law, the law of modern bourgeoise rationality, the instrumental power of production. What then would be the extrication, not from the conjunction of chemical and biological processes, the constant exchanges and adjustments of energy, the constant intersection of processes to gain and release flows, but in terms of the social psychodrama? The infant who screams with the first breath, with the pain of being born, is a biochemical, unprotected mass. It wants to return to the immediacy of the maternal, undifferentiated enclosure, to the inorganic happiness. The infant now must obtain its sustenance from the maternal substance to replenish the liquidous energy lost through its open tubes and porous skin. Thus, it clings to the mother and produces, for the first time, surface effects by extending its own surfaces through direct touch and liquids consumed. Here, the clinging to the mother produces pleasure. This is the moment at which the infant overcomes the desire to return to the inorganic state and blocks the death wish. The organism does not begin to sense, but it must first produce the pleasure of living. It does so on the surfaces and nodes of undisrupted touching, caressing, and ingesting, on the surfaces that are constituted by these very processes of attachments. This layer of orgiastic communication, of the primary extension of surfaces, is rejected by Lacanian structural linguistics. The latter derives its force from the phallic signifier constitutive of the symbolic order. The infant enters language as Phallus, as an already constituted sign. One can enter language only as an element of language, a signifier, as a part of a symbolic order. The order is not constituted part by part, such that a signifier would be determined by a signifying singular act, pointing to a signified identity; signs function in, and are simultaneously an internal articulation of, a field of signifiers, related in mutual oppositions. In this sense, the world is born as a whole through any sign, and the latter, functioning diacritically, can signify anything. The child thus enters the field, not from outside, but as a Phallic signifier who is constantly referred to different others, and thus is a zero signifier, a floating signifier, that once was called the transcendental Ego, forever absent, although always appearing as an unfulfillable desire—a negativity. This is what defines libido as desire. Deleuze and Guattari (1983) posit the orgiastic body as a rejection of the Oedipal setting. While modern culture would designate such a rejection either as neurosis, psychosis, or schizophrenia, they regard this rejection as a complete positivity. For them, the orgiastic upsurge is neither a need nor a desire but production. It is a force tensing against power, resistance,

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overcoming and extending into libidinal surfaces of pleasure, excesses, gratuities, discharges of the superfluity of forces and tensions that are the primary, nonsignificative, pre-objective, pre-subjective, and even prepsychological processes. Here, the pleasure is not an object to be obtained, an intentional aim that could be instantiated, but a force that upsurges and dissipates. Yet, such force is mobile and fortuitous, appearing here and there, now and then, and from this mobility, one could not compose some sort of pleasure principle as a basic aim, drive, or a bond. Deleuze and Guattari (1983) would regard bonding as the basis of the pleasure principle, as a second-layer appearance of the orgiastic in repetition, ritual, patterns that bind and fix the freely mobile intensities, reduce their force. Thus, the oppression of the orgiastic carnality does not come from outside, from a language and a consciousness, but it is inherent in the very production of the surface pleasures. It could be said that while recognition, the construction of memory, is a function of a constituted faculty, its constitution assumes a repetition as representation enacted, performed, and not added from outside by a reflexive consciousness. This is equally a new conception of repression: One does not repeat the bonding because one is oppressed, but one is oppressed by the very repetition. In this way, it makes sense that the repetition does not represent itself: It is never an object for itself, but an enactment posing no distance to itself, a magic that collapses onto itself. This, now, makes sense of the rejection by Deleuze and Guattari (1983) of discursive power in the Oedipal complex. The power of the law is too late. It promises a synthesis of the similar in quality, or equivalent in quantity. The law allows one to exchange parts, son for father, and with the father’s name, become a member of culture and thus significant. But repetition is a fate of the dissimilar, unexchangeable, unrepeatable, and dispersed singularity. A destiny never consists of determinate relations, following step by step, between presents, succeeding one another in accord with the structure of theoretical, successive time. The dissimilar imply gaps between presents, trace nonlocalizable connections, actions at a distance, recurrences without temporal distances, resonances and echoes, chances, signals and signs, roles that transcend spatial situations and temporal successions. Thus, a singular repeats and has its own singular destiny, and any authentic communication would require an attunement to this, the orgiastic carnality with its rhythm that mocks every language and pretended explanation: a total positivity. It could be surmised that this nomadic positivity pervades even Lyotard’s (1984) conception of the orgiastic body to the extent that the nomadic

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couplings, with surface nodes, productive of force, extend to cover otherwise incomprehensible practices. How is it that empires are set up basically by nomadic “heroes” whose achievements and excesses are not only a spread of the geographic surfaces, but which are on the move for novel couplings with other areas and domains, seeking other “conquests”? Although the imperial patterns seem to establish an inner suppression of the nomadic logic, the latter will irrupt in senseless “games” attended by crowds, lashed from frenzy to coition, only to disperse back to the patterns of self-inflicted suppression. It is curious that Deleuze and Guattari, here, introduce a double movement for the nomad. First, the nomadic extensions of surfaces, the excesses, do not “intend” anything, but simply ply their trade prior to any sense or meaning, run their course spontaneously—even if repeatedly—but then the nomadic “heroes” seek out novel places and spread their geographic possessions and locales for their surface couplings. The spread of empires is an acquisition of more sex. While the “desire machines” are not supposed to desire anything, suddenly they are intent on conquest as a production of more senseless surface pleasures. This moment of intent discloses a basic activity “to go elsewhere,” to move by various means “from here to there, and from now to then.” This requires a horizon of awareness that is not bound to an immediacy without sense or meaning. In brief, the ground of circulation of pleasure contacts is a movement that a priori is oriented, signifying, and not a blind hoping in the bio-psychodrama without a distance. While the bee or the dog’s tail may be a sexual organ of a flower, the bee, too, must get from the hive to the flower, must even perform a dance next to the beehive to point the directions for the workers to find the excess sustenance. It seems, then, that the unintelligible world of surface “communication” is subtended by a more basic awareness without which such communication would cease to communicate. Phenomenologically speaking, the movements, the kinesthetic awareness, whether of the flight of the bee, or the nomad’s excursions to extend the geographic surfaces of his holdings, are not attended to as if they were some objects to contemplate, but they comprise “passive syntheses” on the intelligibility of which all the couplings and spreads of excesses play out their “blind” desires and pleasures. There is no need to repeat what Husserl, in his Passive syntheses (2001), and many other phenomenologists have explicated in detail. Any activity is passive to the extent that we do not attend to it since it effaces itself in attending to the “task at hand,” and yet it is a condition for the accomplishment of the task. The bee does not posit its flight as something requiring attention, but it accepts it as a

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“transcendental condition” to find that cluster of cherry trees as a “task.” Its movement is a passive synthesis to get from “here to there and back” that deploys and unifies very different points of surplus of sweet nourishment for the next generation. In addition, it can be claimed that the spreading of geographic surfaces, either by the nomad or by the bee, are not as random as Deleuze and Guattari would purport: The bee does not blindly attach itself to everything in the immediate environment, but only to what, for it, is “biologically significant.” Thus, it can make “leaps” over other environmental phenomena to attach itself to its specific environment, to what is significant for it. In brief, the bee is not as blind and spontaneous as Deleuze and Guattari would contend. The same can be said of the nomad; neither does he just settle on any arid piece of land, but on a place that is, for him, a “promised land of milk and honey.” The nomad composes a bricolage of discontinuous space because he passes by various places as totally insignificant and makes up a space of places that are connected—“passively synthesized” as significant. For a devout person of some personality cult, living in a section of town that is full of clubs, offering various and immediate options for coupling with wellendowed breasts, the temple, to which he belongs, is closer than such clubs. His spaces are those of significance, and not the immediate things in the Euclidean space. Deleuze and Guattari should have read Mumford and Bahr on architecture. Regardless of how minimal, signifying orientations, at the most fundamental level, are at play as awareness processes without which the nodal world would cease to move.

Terrorism Then, we come to the beginning of philosophical terrorism with Socrates’ attempt to interrogate some extended claims of “self-oppression.” Following Deleuze and Guattari (1983), self-oppression is a simple repetition, leading to the acceptance of Nietzsche’s (1999) notion of the eternal return of the same. One of the basic claims of Deleuze and Guattari is that there is no identity— since all are the pleasure points that immediately get dissolved in the flow of extending surfaces—and yet there is a “repetition.” The very notion of repetition is a priori identity. In brief, repetition makes sense if it presumes identifiable components—eidetic invariants. Hence, the “same” bee repeats the signifying dance to direct the worker bees to the cluster of cherry trees, and the worker bees fly back and forth to the same cluster and thus “repeat”

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their attachments. Without the eidetic invariants, the bees would wander off and never come back to the “same” beehive. And the nomad, having established his rule over a region, does not relinquish his “previous” conquests, but repeats the claim that they, too, belong to him. The very claim to the “same” possessions, comprising the oppression of the disconnected flows of excesses, is what makes the excesses recognizable—even for the nomad. After all, his building of fortresses and palaces, as points of defense and as conspicuous consumption of productive excesses, reveals his “desire” to keep the same conquests instead of going from one to the next. Empires are not built on simple “moving on...” but on an identification of significant locations—the fortresses—to which the nomad clings. It should be immediately obvious that there is no “self-oppression” by repetition since the primary flow of the extension of surfaces has no self, and thus there is no identifiable anything to be oppressed—unless we accept an identity even prior to such oppression. We are not proposing some “eternal” identity, but one that is present to awareness as a condition of intelligibility, without which Deleuze and Guattari could not make such minimal claims as “repetition” and “selfoppression.” Again, there appears a passive synthesis, positing two aspects as identical and hence capable of repetition—a variant of Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same, which Nietzsche (1999) rejected as a last vestige of metaphysical nostalgia. What demonstrates the necessity of intelligibility is the shift from the “true reality”—the extension of surfaces by the logic of bricolage—to the primacy of “virtual reality.” The latter made a big impression on artists, and above all on video and film makers, and on numerous pronouncements of the worthy life as creative. This factor is also at the base of “philosophy,” not as a search for truth, but as writing “interesting stories.” Fortunately for postmodernists, all such “virtual reality” claims seem to belong to a novel domain, opened by a stroke of genius that defies modernity. Those of us of a humbler ilk, who still read books and follow philosophical debates, can point out that the primacy of virtual reality over the drudgery of daily life is none other than modern scientific technocracy, underpinned by modern ontology and metaphysics: Possibility is prior to reality, and the latter is a human construct based on possible conditions and possible results. We are aware that by the 18th century, reality was defined as the “conditions for the possibility of....” The temporal aspect of “possibility” is an empty future horizon that— for phenomenology is indefinitely open—but for Deleuze and Guattari, it becomes a metaphysics of infinity. The problematic of indefiniteness and

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infinity has been addressed and resolved by Nicholas of Cusa (1981) in favor of infinity of time as a prerequisite for God’s infinity. This is the background that Deleuze and Guattari accept so as to claim that there is an infinite divinity. A side note: We would point out that there is a penchant among the French postmodern writers to make a leap into infinity—if that is not speculative metaphysics...? This penchant is manifested once again when Deleuze and Guattari posit, as a base, an “infinite substance” and thus one, univocal language. The ontological source of this metaphysical postulation is the modern Western reduction of all things to a homogeneous, material world, such that all the experienced phenomena—things, events, objects—are, in the final analysis, composed of “basic particles,” accessible and obedient to mathematical laws. This means that mathematical language is univocal since it coincides with the very language of the homogeneous (mechanical) material world. This seems to defy Lyotard’s (1984) notion that there is no master discourse—only multidiscursivity. It must be emphasized that modern “objective” disciplines, regardless of their subject matter, employ mathematics, irrespective of the variation of their systems and applications. Deleuze and Guattari thus offer us a version of modern material ontology and mathematical discourses, disguised in metaphysical garb. They simply make the ontological postulate of materialism into an infinite substance, and mathematical language and methodology into a univocal discourse—without, of course, naming this discourse.

Chapter 10

Ressentiment, Narcissism, and Trump: The Omnipotent Victim Introduction Ressentiment is not simply reactive in general. We react to our environment, and these reactions are embedded in an evaluative framework. Ressentiment is reactive in a more specific sense. It is not a direct reaction to certain social situations or to a lack that one suffers. Rather, it is a reaction to a reaction— a reaction of rage or indignation based on a repression of a multi-mediated affect. The mediating instances are often through the normative assessment of some injustice or some social gratification of desired goods, or through an assessment of a comparative of one’s own situation compared to another. More crucial is impotence or powerlessness in ressentiment, which is not a reaction to a lack of something, but a reaction to an inability to do something about it. This impotence, real or imagined, is the ferment that allows ressentiment to emerge from feelings of revenge and envy, indignation, but it is impotence against one’s own feelings and inclination. Another element is inversion, or “sour grapes.” One may debase the goods of another—not a devaluation of the goods themselves, but a devaluing of the value one is deprived of. Goods are social in nature, as all positional goods, such as honor, fame, and recognition. Impotence is created in respect to the social order of things or a structural arrangement. A more pronounced ressentiment is a pathology of self-love. Such pathologies may emerge in differing social orders with differing structural arrangements, for example, hierarchical and patriarchal forms of domination and/or the unequal distribution of power. The grammar of ressentiment can give rise to authoritarian ressentiment. By displacing the enemy onto a free-floating projection, revenge toward the undefined target makes the thirst indeterminable. Hence, the more illusionary the danger, the more persistent the ressentiment. Today, what is real is ressentiment: the cynical contempt for categories of reality, truth, politics, and disdain for facts. Nobody talks to nobody about nothing: a post-truth dictum.

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In authoritarian regimes, the ressentiment is centered on those who have violated and dissolved the sacredness of homeland. Ressentiment is directed at those who prevent us from innocently enjoying our homeland, whomever they be.

White Christian Nationalism The White Evangelicals organize on the political support for gun control, law and order, abortion, homosexuality, lesbianism, same-sex marriage, which are means to institutionalize conservative Christians values and natural law philosophy based of the complementarity of male and female sexual parts. While White Christian Evangelicals (WCEs) deny social structural conditions producing racism and sexism, they center it on personal beliefs and preferences, legitimizing the historical conception of a Eurocentric collective identity and White supremacy at their very core, which continue to be racialized, sexualized codes in the present. Manifest Destiny and the conservative side of American Exceptionalism, chosen in the eyes of their god, including the trope of the New Israel, the Shining City on the Hill, a major characteristic of Christian nationalism and the Republican platform. With the withering away of racialized advantage and the protection of ethnonationalism, cultural prestige mobilizes the WCE, creates mass patterns and trends in voting behaviors out of spiritual defensiveness and retaliation, which devolve into a form of nihilism. White entitlement is not merely a discrimination against Blacks, but against all people of color. Increasing democracy is an attack on the fragility of White identity, driven by their perception of endangerment and victimhood turned inward upon itself and outward at the same time. The WCE takes his own perceived endangerment, victimization, or suffering and throws his angst outward as a means by which to assert himself. His alleged victimization is a covert means of conjuring and asserting control or dominance in the form of retribution against the claims to be the source of its precarity. The group’s marginalization and suffering reevaluated its status in order to find its meaningfulness, hence repurposing its victimization as a weapon, noted in the US House of Representatives’ new committee on the weaponization of government instituted by the aggrieved.

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Ressentiment as a source of power, not only for protection and retaliation, but for weaponization is nowhere more prevalent than in sexual politics. John Fea (2018), Evangelical historian, remarks about the dissolution of Christian culture in the USA. When LGBTQ activists claimed that Obama was on the right side of history in support of gay marriage, the message to Evangelicals was clear: they were on the wrong side (pp. 27–28) (and Obama is Black). It became easy for WCEs to gravitate to Trump to shift equality in marriage, a threat not unlike the threat they fought on interracial marriage and the intermixing of the race: interracial mixing, interracial marriage, interracial procreation, and forms of interracial intimacy, including flirting. Now, the resistance to same-sex sex, same-sex marriage, and same-sex parenting evinces the newest form of ressentiment.

In Brief Rumination, unwillingness to forget, is preserved in the French term ressentiment, from re-sentir, which means “to re-feel.” One who cannot forget and carries an unforgiving attitude, manifested in vindictiveness and the impulse to detract. Max Scheler links it to revenge aroused by perceived unfairness and impotence, the suppression of revenge resulting in an affect that is easily displaced onto other objects, the remembering, the repetitive refeeling is bound up with the pleasure from nursing the grievance in the masochistic pleasure of victimhood, the moral narcissism of the victim’s position and the release of what seems to be legitimate aggression through the stream of grievance and accusation. At the individual level, the self-satisfying pleasure of victimization can be heard in the following: “Poor me. No one understands me.” A feeling of exclusion, being in the right always. There is a nostalgia of loss and melancholic references to a community which once existed, but which is now disappearing or being destroyed. There is a longing in forms of nationalism and an ideal of an exceptional nation, clung to, but forever just out of reach, but holding the possibility of return. In the musings of the reactionary mind, their apocalyptic inflection that nostalgia can take in White Nationalism and fundamentalism of several types. The present is an alien country. Ressentiment is not a genetic disposition, but it has sociohistorical elements that often arise, by economic stagnation, heightened inequality, and crises within political parties. It should be noted again that ressentiment is not

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an emotion, such as jealousy. Ressentiment is characterized by indeterminate groups of objects and is both toxic and contagious, a fluid medium, and can be given shape by populist movements. There is an atmosphere of contagion we may call the magical structure, which must be addressed as part of the complex of re-sentir.

Ressentiment in General Revenge is an element of ressentiment and “is distinguished by two essential characteristics. First of all, the immediate reactive impulse, with the accompanying emotions of anger and rage, is temporarily or at least momentarily checked and restrained, and the response is consequently postponed to a later time and to a more suitable occasion (“Just wait till next time”). This blockage is caused by the reflection that an immediate reaction would lead to defeat” (Scheler, 2023). In our current political narrative, we have the notion that there are foreign others. They are powerful, and we are agentless. Hence, tropes of toughness and vulnerability are an underlying presumption of a moral world order that is validated by the perpetual existence of a hostile world, a moral framework in which the feelings it affects, such as anger, rage, and revenge, are never at rest. No one act of vengeance can dissipate the nation’s desire for more. The message sustains in affecting others, dressing the intractable enemies with vague and ill-conceived objectives. The audiences are caught between defeat and triumph. The imagined audience is angry. They’re angry because they suffer. They suffer because they are powerless. They’re powerless because they are virtuous. The country, they are told, has been unfairly taken from them. The authoritarian’s resentment and rage invite his audience to see themselves as powerless and incapable of adequately expressing interest and frustration in the piecing together of powerful feelings and moral indignation. The position of weakness that constitutes the political effect of ressentiment demands the audience’s surrogate. I am your voice, and I alone can make it right. There is the cultural logic of White male sacrifice which enables the authoritarian to address the audience as traumatized subjects, people who can be redeemed and made whole again. Through this virtual victim image, the oft-used birth description, with cycles of guilt, victim, sacrifice, and redemption, would suggest that the authoritarian rhetoric symbolically

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accesses evil imperfectly via ritual purification. One can reconfigure suffering and victimhood as exemplars of virtuous leadership, and the performance entitles the supporters to something more grandiose. In short, it’s only the leader’s or the authoritarian’s rhetoric, his pain, and his struggles that ultimately matter. It is ressentiment characterized by feelings of powerlessness, ineffability, that no one act of redemption can dissipate, powerful emotions such as hate and envy. Indeed, his sacrifice is unending because his victimhood is predicated on the relentlessness of an undefeatable foe, but resentful emotions are ultimately suppressed, and fantasies of revenge are perpetually deferred. Indeed, the rhetorical one cannot escape the tormenting conflict between desire and impotence. In fact, one does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely a pretext for grievance. The inability to carry out one’s desire for revenge helps aggregate frustration and indignation so as to keep anger in constant circulation. Ressentiment illustrates some additional registers that help explain how authoritarians are able to maintain their audiences, how they sustain their anger in the very elite institutions they occupy. Moreover, ressentiment explains the rhetorical work of many authoritarians as they embrace the profane, the taboo, and the unvirtuous through the rhetoric of suffering and revenge to successfully aggregate anger to legitimate their actions and cultivate support. Ressentiment encourages individuals to divest from the civic good their own suffering. However mundane or contrived, ressentiment prevents subjects from moving forward because they’re drawn toward a reexperiencing of past grievances. One often directs the audience’s anger toward settling old scores, litigating past wrongs, and resurrecting new enemies. Ressentiment is a cultural malaise, a feature of public life in which the effective charge of rage and envy underwrites participation in the political. Furthermore, as Tomelleri (2018) notes, “…analysis shows that ressentiment is not the expression of a pathological way of acting, as described by Freud in Totem and taboo (1990). To define pathological ressentiment is, after all, just to transform certain types of persons into new scapegoats. Ressentiment is a mimetic strategy that we experience in our complex and varied everyday life—an ambivalent normality” (pp. 231–232). Nietzsche’s account is that the “revolt of the slaves began with the people of Israel, who were always trapped within their history as victims and unable to take revenge on their persecutors, toward whom they harbored grudges and feelings of hatred. Nietzsche believes that Christian love [agape] is the realization of this deep-seated ressentiment. For him, then, we feel

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ressentiment because we are mediocre people—slaves of the other, on whom we depend. Our lack of emancipation from others causes frustration and discomfort, while wisdom can only come from our being independent of them” (Tomelleri, 2018, p. 233). He goes on to say, “The strategies associated with resentment bring to light the incompleteness of every human actor, along with their relational nature: even our innermost affective experience refers to the actions of others” (Tomelleri, 2018, p. 234). As Tomelleri rightly notes, “Rene Girard sees evangelical revelation as the main source of our modern awareness of the mimetic nature of human beings: an awareness that has produced ongoing transformations in modernity linked to resentment. He observes that the Judeo-Christian tradition has itself disclosed the mimetic nature of human desire, as well as the logic of this resentment” (Tomelleri, 2018, p. 234).

Narcissism The term “Messiah Complex” is essentially just another name for the narcissistic personality type. Narcissists can very often be obsessed with image and physical bodily perfection and vanity. An area that is open for debate is for those that are raised by parents to think they are the center of the universe but are able to recognize their selfish behavior and change; this is a classic Prodigal Son mentality. However, narcissists are deceivers in everything they do: They lie, they cheat, they steal, and they may even kill to get what they want or take revenge on those they believe are a threat, or those that have slighted them. Sometimes they just do it for pleasure. They are strangers to the truth. Narcissists enjoy verbally abusing and ripping other people apart emotionally and sometimes physically. They look for a victim when in need of making themselves feel better because that is, in essence, what they are doing. They may have been slighted or may just be feeling fragile and chaotic inside, so they need someone to smack down in order to satisfy their need to feel better. They may also be jealous, envious, and threatened by others and will work to either destroy that person or drive them away. Narcissists are proud and haughty people, especially cerebral narcissists, who see themselves as well above others, almost seem to float, and you can just about see it oozing out of them. In the case of somatic narcissists, they are seen at the gym almost every day honing that physique. They are always very

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well-dressed and adorned with the latest fashion trend; they have the best car, the best home, and they hang out with the best people. Narcissists are tempters and they will tempt others into their clutches with sex, money, charm, and the illusion of a perfect life. They are expert at creating and reading your need and then tempting you into the trap in order to get what they want. They want you to worship them, and in Luke 4:5-8, Lucifer attempts to get Jesus to worship him. Lucifer wants to be worshipped, and narcissists will tempt others in in the same way to get their admiration and worship.

Trump: Ressentiment Embodied “America needs to be saved from the uncivilized animals and the predators.” This is personification as a vulnerable adolescent would see it, mostly coming from the former president. There’s always the brutality of the others, foreign others. We need a toughness. Underlying vulnerability is an underlying presumption of a moral order validated by the perceptual existence of a hostile external world. Trump offers audiences an emotional moral framework in which feelings such anger, rage, and revenge are never at rest, and no one act of vengeance can dissipate the natural desire for more. The audience Trump aspires to is the powerless-yet-vulnerable. Trump promises that this reserve of anger and bitterness shall be satisfied as he is the only one who can save them. Trump’s style manages the delivery particularly well to a media culture that encourages simplicity, cruelty, narcissism, and incoherent vacillations. Its trademark appeals to White audiences, especially White male audiences, regardless of their educational level. He has reframed in his audience a generalized sense of human vulnerability, as if they experience structural racial oppression, marginalization, reverse discrimination, etc., freeing his supporters of any kind of debt or civic obligation to a seemingly cruel and hostile polity, in equality, empathy, and other democratic values. Trump always tries to address the affective environment. He aims at the visceral, the institutionalization of all conventions of common virtues have lost their symbolic efficacy. Trump claims victimhood and anger, calls for revenge, seeks what other philosophers have called “ressentiment,” for an audience who is seething with righteousness, anger, and envy, and also suffering from the impotence to act. Ressentiment functions as a generative

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force providing the needed link between emotions, ideology, and collective identity, and it sustains the effective charge of detraction and revenge. Trump’s imagined audience is angry, they are virtuous, and they are powerless. The country has been unfairly taken from them. The intonation of ressentiment and rage invites the audience to see themselves as powerless and incapable of adequately expressing their own frustration. Their weakness constitutes the political subject of ressentiment without the ability to articulate their own desires. Trump demands to be his supporters’ surrogate as he proclaims, “I am your voice” (the magical surrogate of anger). The thirst for revenge never dissipates. Shifting focus from the rhetoric of ressentiment, Trump is able to sustain the charge of animus without forfeiting the moral high ground of victimhood in his audience. Oppressors, Democrats, the press, criminals, immigrants, foreign adversaries, welfare recipients, the Me-Too movement, globalists, racial others, and on and on. On behalf of the electorate, a rhetoric of ressentiment engenders both moral and affective attachments. Then, he invites subjects to ruminate on their wounds. This focuses their political collective identity on past injuries, which becomes central to the subjects’ identity in their present situation—a personal, collective identity that hinges on the existence of a hostile external world. A rhetoric of ressentiment seeks to cultivate investment and attachment towards one’s own subjugation. The “Make America Great” emphasis on making presumes an injury must be overcome by restoring the subject to an imagined, yet indeterminate, time in which they will punitively hold their identity, constituted through the rhetoric of ressentiment, which is melancholic in that it continually revisits past injuries without adequately mourning them. Thus engendered is a conduit to an object that the subject never possessed and thus constitutes a fantasy of the nation’s greatness. Trump’s rhetoric evokes trauma that is a trauma that also concerns an object never lost, or those privileges neither revoked nor renounced by the White audience’s ressentiment. This is an impediment to moving forward because it directs the subject’s gaze backwards, tethering the self to ruminations on past injuries. Trump frequently centers himself above the occasion. He monopolizes grief, turning himself into the skin for the illusions and perceived insults faced by his supporters. He also levels and equivocates slights by the media and his political opponents as the systemic discrimination faced by women, people of color, and LGBTQ communities. The use of the pronoun “we” could mean a

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sense in which he attacks our part of our universal vulnerability, or it could infer a particular take that he believes he shares with his African-American audience. In either case, victimhood is robbed of its material references and reduced to a therapeutic discourse. Trump views this constituency as warriors and joining the suffering because its mark of virtue and stoic pride, as opposed to the emasculated man who sucks his thumb and cries to his mother. According to Trump, he can say to his supporters that, with a noble sacrifice in his Republican National Committee address, he portrayed himself as a benevolent protector, motivated not by his own political interests. He can beat up on people who cannot defend themselves. He is the savior. Trump symbolically exorcises evil and imperfection via ritual purification. In fact, he ends up by grounding the White male body and its pain as the exemplary citizen subject. The staging of Trump’s pain reconfigures suffering and victimhood as exemplars of virtuous leadership and the performance of which entitles his supporters to something more grandiose than the present circumstance. This is a fitting example of a sacrificial logic as he addresses the Me-Too movement. He is the sacrificial goat, the goat that takes away the sins of the world, and he wants to be the goat who takes away the sins of the world. He is preoccupied with the vulnerability of privileged people who have much to lose, not, for instance, the virtues of precarious communities victimized by sexual assault, harassment, domestic abuse, mass incarceration, and police brutality. If ressentiment is characterized by feelings of powerlessness, ineffability, that no one act of redemption could dissipate, powerful emotions, such as hate and envy, indeed sacrifices unending, because his victimhood is predicated on the relentlessness of the undefeatable foe. Trump always carves out an exception for his supporters to release their legal, civic obligation under exemption. Slights and injuries, even ones of little consequence, can and should be met with an equal, if not dispassionate, measure of retributive violence. Read through the concept of ressentiment, such statements almost illustrate the inner workings of a reactive morality formed in the negative. Revenge is morally correct cruelty for its own sake. It binds together the electorate in the collective enjoyment of others’ suffering. It is not just that the perpetrators truly enjoy it. It is that they enjoy it with one another. The rhetoric cannot escape the tormenting conflict between desire and impotence which constitutes an impassable obstacle and an undefeatable foe whose presence

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confirms the existence of a hostile external world—however paradoxically, one that he suggests is also powerless. The gazes cast backward, lamenting his defeat in the 2020 election and creating a political community forged through and invested in its own marginalization. Trump’s appeal to victimhood and revenge exemplifies how ressentiment acts as an anti-democratic, anti-progressive force. Ressentiment is the animating political force of a precarious political moment and ultimately tests the elasticity of democratic culture to contain and channel the forces of ressentiment. Ressentiment is a cultural miasma of a public life in which rage and envy underwrite participation in the polity more so than empathy. I quote Eric Fromm: The sadistic person needs his object just as much as the masochistic needs his. Only, instead of seeking security by being swallowed, he gains it by swallowing somebody else … In one case I dissolve myself in an outside power; I lose myself. In the other case I enlarge myself by making another being part of myself and thereby I gain the strength I lack as an independent self. (Fromm, 1941; italics added)

The extreme narcissist’s life purpose becomes to sustain his delusion of omnipotence; he must prove his superiority, over and over again. Because this delusion is an attempt to deny extreme traumatic brokenness, it is fragile. It is papering over underlying psychosis. Fromm states that “Psychosis is a state of absolute narcissism, one in which the person has broken all connection with reality outside and has made his own person the substitute for reality. He is entirely filled with himself, he has become ‘god and the world’ to himself.” According to Fromm (1964), “his strategy for sustaining the delusion is to get the consensus of [at least] one other person, and, if possible, [to] obtain ... the consensus of millions. The former case is that of a folie à deux (some marriages and friendships rest on this basis), while the latter is that of public figures who prevent the open outbreak of their potential psychosis by gaining the acclaim and consensus of millions of people” (p. 76). The best-known example for this latter case is Hitler. Here was an extremely narcissistic person who probably could have suffered a manifest psychosis had he not succeeded in making millions believe in his own self-image (After he had failed, he had to kill himself, since otherwise the collapse of his narcissistic image would have been truly unbearable) From Caligula and Nero to Stalin and Hitler, we see that their need to find believers, to transform reality so that it fits their

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narcissism, and to destroy all critics, is so intense and so desperate precisely because it is an attempt to prevent the outbreak of their own insanity. Paradoxically, the element of insanity in such leaders makes them also successful. It gives them that certainty and freedom from doubt which is so impressive to the average person (Fromm, 1941).

Creating Cain with YHWH After leaving the Garden, Eve gives birth to her first son, and names him Cain, which is etymologically derived from her declaration: Gen 4:1 ... “I have created (qaniti) a child with YHWH.” The term is used to describe God as a “Creator of Heaven and Earth” (Gen 14:19). Indeed, Umberto Cassuto (1961) sees Eve’s naming of Cain as a hubristic declaration professing a unique possession of some power on par with God. Eve, who wished to be godlike by eating from the Tree of Knowledge, uses her ability to reproduce, to create human life, as an alternative route outside the Garden to a godlike power she so craved inside the Garden that she can no longer access (Rosenberg, 2020).

“Beginnings” and Attempts to Be Godlike The human attempt to become godlike is a consistent theme throughout the opening chapters of Genesis. Each further attempt is highlighted by a form of the word “began,” which functions as a Leitwort (“leading word: a word or a word-root that repeats meaningfully within a text, a sequence of texts, or a set of texts. The term appears five times in Genesis 4–11. After pursuing the repetitions of the term, the text’s “meaningfulness” unfolds as a series of epochal “beginnings” that chart repeated quests for godlike power inaugurated by Adam and Eve to become like God (Gen 3:5, 22) (Rosenberg, 2020). The Tower of Babel narrative in which the people build a city with its tower reaching into Heaven, a concerted national effort to build a monumental center in order to “achieve a name” (11:4) imagining that human power has no limits. They aim to create a consummately anthropocentric polis, replacing God with themselves.

Conclusion: Emptiness Introduction In earlier chapters, the awareness of emptiness appeared in various forms, including the search for, and postulation of, an absolute permanence which grounds all images, specifically those of power possessors—emperors, autocrats, and divinities. Emptiness also includes a desire to possess the universe and thus be worshiped, adored, honored, and feared by all. As the saying goes, “He is a god-fearing man.” The efforts to fill such emptiness were, and continue to be, a treatment of all events, including each other, as useful instruments to achieve power and be permanently secure. Since others also seek permanent security, the struggle for power can never cease—there is always a danger across the border which must be eliminated. In this sense, all such efforts preclude an awareness of the world or, more precisely, a “world awareness.” This precluding abolishes the cosmic passion and erotic fire and reduces all “loving” relationships to sexuality. But is there another mode of “emptiness” which disempowers its filling by ceaseless struggles and the continuous rush to stay ahead, even of oneself? The reason we ask this question rests with the common obstruction of emptiness by all sorts of images, purposes, social requirements and explanations, which result in the obfuscation of a direct or unmediated awareness of the world, or a “world awareness.” Thus, the cosmic fire, the erotic passion, as pure and unreduced to positivistic and even religious preoccupation with sexuality, is never experienced. To appreciate such experience or even “non-experience” requires another way to the “self” who refuses to be worshiped or placed in power positions for attraction by the “opposite sex” and a continuous demand to be “the same” through all encounters—to be the modern man or woman, using the latest technical means for rejuvenation, to be forever sexy, i.e., a fight against time itself. This very fight is, as we shall see, another form of playing with emptiness, creating anxiety of the possibility of Non-being. Such a possibility is just another appearance of emptiness, couched in the West in the ontological form of nothingness in contrast to Being. In short, the anxiety is in face of the discussed “moral evil” of Non-being which will deprive one of the continuous pursuit of pleasure, most importantly, sexual pleasure, or even the sadistic and fiery attack on deviant sexuality.

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The Emptiness in the Flowing World Through Buddha’s head flows all reality. No doubt, there are countless books and commentaries on Buddhism and its numerous branches, including its impact on the rest of Asia, including Taoism and Zen. It is well known that Buddhism, and in its wake Taoism and Zen, reaches beyond the common “dualisms” that are prevalent in countless theories, metaphysics, and religions. One such dualism, imposed on the West by Mid-Eastern personality cults, is that between life and death. While humans live, at the end of life, they die, and the promise is that there will be “life after death.” Basically, this intimates a dualism between time and eternity; despite the fact that one factor of human life—the physical—is temporal, the other aspect—the soul—is eternal. This duality has been interpreted as that between subject and object, with all of the attendant issues of their relationship, and importantly, how to understand this “subject” without making it into an object. For Buddhism, this duality is foreign since a question immediately arises: What is this “subject” that is posited as continuous through time as having a permanent identity? If experience can be a valid guide, then it is obvious that “life” is continuous living and dying, a continuous transformation of what a person is, a continuous dissolution of one set of actions to which an “identity” is attached in favor of a different set of actions, having a different identity. Thus, such identities come and go on the background awareness that everything changes—any identity is a mere symbol that signifies nothing, or at best it is Maya. In this context, Buddhism does not offer life after death, some heaven of bliss, but an escape from both—life and death, a discovery of an awareness that does not belong to this duality. With the dissolution of this duality, there is also an abandonment of such notions as the beginning and the end of life. As Zen interprets it, this continuous impermanence of everything undergoes an “arising and ceasing” (shometsu suru mono) (Mickunas, 2018). One misunderstanding must be avoided: If life is living and dying, it does not mean that half of it is living, and half is dying; quite the contrary, life is fully living and dying in the sense that every moment we cease and begin, and what ceases and begins is never repeated. To wish to continue as the same, as having a continuation, is an anthropocentric contrivance, not present to any experience. To realize the “arising and ceasing” is, at the same time, to recognize the “law” of everything, the dharma. At this level, Buddha, the awakened one, equals the realization of this dharma. This realization is not some personal or humanistic “salvation,” but a cosmic awareness wherein all

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is in constant passing, including divinities, despite their apparent seeming “eternal” continuity. Such awakening also reveals that, beneath arising and ceasing, there are no permanent things, no substances, no laws governing all phenomena; even if one were to conceive of laws, one would have to recognize that they, too, come and go. Thus, living this realization is nirvana. This realization allowed Buddha to abandon his ascetic contemplation and to turn toward direct-lived awareness in this very happening of life and death. There is nothing mysterious about this realization; this is how arising and ceasing opens a realization—an awakening—to our own continuous transformations with nothing to hold onto. We should introject a cautionary note; it is indeed the case that the constant reminder concerning the impermanence of all things is characteristic of the Indian tradition in general, but in a cosmic, rather than an ontological, sense. Ontology for the West means that natural things, plants, animals, humans, and clouds change, but only phenomenally since they also have an essential component that remains constant: One is born as a human baby, grows, changes in weight and height, matures, and grows old, but one is still a human, even if an old human. The cosmos, meanwhile, is regarded as a space–time container for the movement of things “in” such a container. The latter is interpreted by metaphors such as “empty,” and the relationships between things is measured by the empty distance between things from here to there, from our galaxy to Andromeda, from Earth to the Moon, from my house to your place. If we relate, we do so as stable things; thus, we eat cabbages, bread, bugs, “unborn babies” (eggs), and treat them all as sources of our ability to perform tasks—as “energy.” At the outset, India regards the “things” of our environment, and ourselves, as momentary confluences of cosmic “energies” (Shakti) that are at play (Lila) without any purpose, direction, time, or eternity. The aesthetic creations of India reveal this explosive cosmic energy with full passion: The figures are in excess of themselves—they are momentary intensities of energies that will flow only to create other confluences, without some sort of achievement. In the discussion of Draupadi in the eminent text Mahabharata, it is noted that a human being (in this case, a maiden) is born out of her own fire and is nothing but the very passion of this fire, inclusive of Kama, Lila, and other phenomena. The human visage, even self-perception as having a permanent essence, is acceptable for daily affairs, but actually it is a veil or Maya, leading to all kinds of superficial and equally veiling conceptual divisions between “species” and gradations of beings, as if they had some

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substantial presence with essential characteristics. Thus, any sort of presence of things cannot be taken seriously because even our daily engagements are so much a flow of overabundant, cosmic energies. If there is anything to human life, it is the claim that we are cosmic. We can use the Sun to illustrate the difference between Western ontology and Indian cosmology. The growth of our plants; our microscopic and giant ocean creatures; the fuels, such as oil, coal, trees, and other humans, for our vast productive processes, are deemed to be things. After all, we circulate them around the globe as commodities— they make all civilizations function; they have a purpose. The shamans of our age also suggest that all of these “things” are trapped and solidified solar effulgence. All of these good things come from another thing called “the Sun.” The shamans also remind us that most of the solar outlay of “energy” dissipates in empty space and is “lost,” except for creating magnificent cosmic paintings, shimmering in vibrant colors across the vast open regions. If we could only capture it with our newly invented technologies, the solar life would be more purposeful. The obvious conclusion is that the cosmic play of energies, creating momentary appearances of “things,” has no purpose, direction, reason, and thus cannot be subsumed under any system of concepts or grammar. We have separated Sun from Earth, from stars, Earth from other planets, we have designations for a hierarchy of animals, with humans on top, and hence we presume that we have a language or a rational system that has articulated reality. India is smiling, and Buddha sits with a benevolent expression, intimating that this play of concepts is yet another solar effulgence such that even the Sun, with its vast outlay of brilliant colors, is not a thing, but a continuous churning of dynamic forces that is a purposeless spectacle. But the same can be said of all other “things” that presume to be different from other “things.” The coal we circulate is finally ignited and releases the solar energy to run our factories, but most of it is also dissipates without a purpose. We have great achievers who built empires, all in excess of simple daily needs— displays of glory for no purpose. In brief, all such events suggest that, at base, all things are impermanent, and, as cosmic, in the final analysis, are purposeless, have no direction, and hence can look benevolent. This is what leads to the understanding of life as constant change, without any specific entity providing continuity. This play of energy, then, allows a dissolution of all boundaries, even between life and death. We have reached a point at which the basis, or rather lack of basis, of cosmic passion was first disclosed and then extended across Asia. This “no

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basis” is premised on an extreme rationality. It originated with the founder of Madhyamika Buddhism, Nagarjuna (150-250 C.E.). Nagarjuna (2010) took on the task of “resolving” the controversies that appeared after Buddha’s death in the form of various opposing “schools.” The controversies were not so much about what Buddha said, but about the “real” or ultimate meaning of such things as “causality,” or “being,” or even “soul.” In brief, each school (or sect) was looking for metaphysical explanations that would be required to understand Buddha’s teaching. If Buddha said that desire is the cause of all suffering, then the members of different sects would compose their positions as to what a cause is. But Nagarjuna (2010) did not propose some more superior arguments to demonstrate which sect had a more plausible answer, nor did he propose his own explanation, but he decided to demonstrate that the controversies could not be resolved by suggesting some absolute and final answer. Every thesis proposed against other theses demonstrated distinctions which could never be final. But Nagarjuna was no philosophical amateur; he recognized that his claim would be illogical because it would contradict itself. If no position is absolute, if all positions are provisional, then he would have to admit that his position was equally provisional. Here, he faced a paradox. More than 1,500 years before Emmanuel Kant, he had discovered the “principle of self-inclusion.” If one holds a position, then one has to include the position as part of the initial claim—leading to the just-mentioned contradiction. Yet, he found a way of dissolving the paradox by a unique method. He wrote down the major differences of important terms assumed by specific schools and showed that, if such differences were to be regarded as absolute, then they would lead to absurdities. If the differences assumed in the debates among the schools were not valid, then the arguments for or against them would become “empty” (sunya). This, again, preceded Kant’s (1988) demonstration that pure logical arguments for any position are “empty.” In Kant’s antinomies, the question of whether the universe is finite or infinite points to two different positions, and despite whichever position is given an absolute status as “the truth,” it will lead to a contradiction; in brief, either claim turns out to be empty. In accordance with these strict demonstrations, Nagarjuna needed not take any position; he simply granted the different schools their positions and demonstrated their emptiness (sunyata). These demonstrations are presented to avoid the usual Western rejection of Buddhism of any type, including Zen Buddhism, as so much mysticism, with suggestions that such terms as “emptiness” are posited without any “reason.” But Nagarjuna is disclosing emptiness through the very

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philosophical positions that make totalizing pronouncements. Moreover, he shows that any relationship between claims, or things, or events, is required to explicate them in terms of difference and identity. But it is obvious that such an explication is not possible since a relationship has to connect two terms and thus make them relevant to each other; it has to identify them. Yet, in connecting them, a relationship has to differentiate them; thus, a relationship cannot be had between identical claims, nor between different claims. In this sense, all the talk of a relationship between nirvana and the world as illusion is empty. The same could be maintained for the relationship between god and world, or time and eternity. Even a simple daily discourse concerning time as having past, present, and future, is paradoxical. After all, each of the terms makes sense only in relationship to other terms: The present is meaningful only if we can have a past and a future. The problem is very simple: In whatever realism, the terms must refer to reality (past, present, and future) which can never exist synchronically. Thus, the presumption that terms refer to some reality apart from our convenience is empty. In short, if the terms about time were to name some real components of time, then there could not be any possible relationships among these real components—after all, they do not exist synchronically. If there are no real relationships in such a reality, then the terms—once again—are empty. Given the suggested problems, Nagarjuna (2010) argues that such notions as cause and effect cannot be taken seriously as parts of reality, even if they are one of the most convenient ways for humans to “explain” all events, including human actions, divine miracles, or the creation of the world. Such explanations are both in excess of experience and too limited for experience. While conceptual explications lend priority to stable substances and transcending metaphysical entities, the question must still be asked concerning the origin of the stability and duration of such entities. Nagarjuna (2010) suggests that a linear time allows a reading of events as given at a temporal point in a way that the now point remains forever constant. The now point never changes and is the condition for the direct presence of all things. All that is must be given now. The latter assumes an inordinate preeminence of stability such that all ontological conceptions signify the permanence of things, and the latter points to their substantiality and duration in the continuous now. Thus, the consciousness of the given assumes a stability insofar as the consciousness is present to the things at present. The present of the now is deemed not only changeless, but eternally present, and in this sense provides the metaphysical hinge for the various contentions against flow as

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either inessential or nonexistent. This is to say, even in the West, the metaphysical arguments of the Zenonian type, leading to their expansion in Platonism and the mathematization of all phenomena, are pegged on the argument of the eternal givenness of the present, i.e., always there. This metaphysical presence is revealed in the arts of modern Western Renaissance paintings and perspectival philosophies, such that everything is deployed at the now point as a perspective from which everything is seen or “represented.” But this sort of space and time is not a way of revealing the dynamic dimensions, but precisely their reduction to the characteristics of objects. The punctiformity of now constitutes, as well, the flattening of time to a line, such that the present now, instead of revealing anything, is infinitely flat. This leads to remarkable and complicated phenomena. Since the now is deemed as always present, it not only guarantees the permanence of the thing, but it can also lend an appearance of priority to things over time and allow that time will be measured by the criteria of things. Stated precisely, the deployment of everything within the cosmic context of past, present, future, where the present–now is preeminent, is the condition for the presumption of the stability of things, and thus the presumption of static objects and their characteristics. An obvious result is that the cosmic passions, the aesthetic, sensuous dimensions, must be excluded; after all, they are in excess of any location, be it the now point or the here point. This would lead to the conclusion that, since the thing is now and not yesterday, therefore yesterday is no longer. In this sense, the thing not only over-determines the modality of the givenness of time (the past and the future), but it also creates an appearance that, just as things, past and future are equally given as no longer and not yet. Of course, the priority of the now is the condition for this syndrome. Nagarjuna’s point precisely—with an added remark: The now, as a point between past and future, does not exist, it is nothing, it is empty, just as are the terms “past” and “future” since, after all, they are no longer and not yet—they are empty. It is crucial to understand what Nagarjuna is disclosing for Eastern awareness: Emptiness, not as a container, but as a condition for all awareness and all temporal prejudgments. This means that the “presence” of emptiness is not mysticism, but a precisely argued claim, the avoidance of which would simply be its acceptance. The future is not yet, and the past is no longer, and hence they do not exist. Yet, even the now embodies a paradox: Since it is not a stretch but a point between past and future, it cannot exist; it is nothing. We are facing a curiosity: the past, the present, and the future are nothing. Hence, what are we talking

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about when we speak of time? How can one measure and have stretches and continuities of nothing? It is the case that when we speak of stretches, we use a spatial metaphor in such a way that, given spatial distances, we can measure them, but how can one measure what is either no longer or not yet? We may be able to measure spatial distances to the extent that we may presume returning to the same place, even if this returning is problematic, but how can we return to the no longer? This paradox is the catalyst for the search of a locus where time can be measured. After all, measuring assumes that what we measure must be. Even if the no longer and not yet were to be regarded as not something that is not, but as something that is empty, i.e., empty time and empty space, we would be at a quandary to speak of directions in such an empty container. Indeed, emptiness discards the very understanding of directions. All this leads to the efforts, as already mentioned, to locate time. Moreover, the efforts to locate time experience in the psyche, even in the most rarefied sense of a pure form of one event after another event, or a succession, would fail in the effort to grasp tri-partitional time. A succession does not show traces from past to present or from present to future. But even taking for granted that such a succession of events or things were to intimate, in some mysterious way, past–present–future, the recollected image and the expected image have no indices of coming either from the past or the future. An image of a friend who is not with me, whether recollected or expected, does not trace any temporal difference in itself. Nagarjuna provided a strong catalyst for Taoists and Zen Buddhists to mistrust conceptual explications of the world. Conceptualization functions only with relative connections, having no foundations in the world. After all, when concepts are investigated, they reveal their limitations; words do not refer to any reality, and conceptual distinctions must accept antithetical elements, leading to contradictions. Moreover, any claim accepts one side of a distinction, while rejecting its opposite, which is just as relevant to the first claim. What can be said for Nagarjuna is that he is an early precursor of semiotics, where terms do not have a univocal meaning, but are a part of a diacritical field. Terms do not refer to reality, but their meaning depends on their relationship to other terms; the same can be said of concepts. This, Nagarjuna (2010) argues, shows, that philosophical thinking, based on language and concepts, cannot access reality, and if it does, then the factors called “reality” will become exactly what the specific field of concepts and/or terms demands. Resultantly, ontological distinctions, premised on conceptual differences, are arbitrary and fundamentally empty. If one is to reach

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experienced reality, one must abandon the arguments based on empty conceptual differences that do not “mirror” the way the world is present to awareness. The West has recognized this problem, but it was not ready to admit that, no matter how one attempts to escape the emptiness of conceptualized time, emptiness returns. Thus, there were efforts to extricate time awareness from its impalement on the now, reversing the order of temporal phases and proposing that the projections of the future possibilities are prior to the now and the things in the now. According to Heidegger, Sartre, and others, such projections allow us to transgress the present and thus avoid reducing consciousness to a present thing. What is of note is that the projections are equally expectations of . . . something. The future comprises possibilities of the appearance of objects or Being. This means that the projections of future possibilities are directed either toward fulfillment or disappointment of such possibilities by things. The future can be a project simply because the things that supposedly shall fill the expected possibilities are not yet there. A reified thinking dominates the effort to avoid reification. Possibilities are none other than reversed actualities. Indeed, the projections can be regarded as stretches of time: Some are longer, others are shorter in time. This is to say, the future consists of empty stretches, and possibilities can be projected as diverse distances in the future horizon. But the latter is regarded as a possibility of temporal, empty continuation. Eastern philosophers regard Sartre as having had the courage to announce that such possibilities are nothing and, above all, empty (see Mickunas, 2018, Chapter 2). Following Nagarjuna’s logic that reveals the emptiness of temporal concepts, both at the ontological and metaphysical levels, and excluding the psychological or even mental efforts to find time “inside,” and finally realizing that Heideggerian and Sartrean projectionism toward the future is empty, we can concur with Nagarjuna that awareness cannot be based on any temporal prejudgments, and hence it cannot be anything—it must be “empty.” Conceptual distinctions, as relevant as they are for daily life, are quite obstructive to the realization that Buddhism, Taoism, and Zen point to emptiness. We can operate in the world of conceptual dualities and recognize their relativity without forgetting that wisdom, as awareness, is different from conceptual systems. This wisdom, prajna, as awareness, does not contribute anything to dealing with daily concerns—except as a reminder that the useful concepts rest, in the final analysis, on emptiness. Obviously, the world of awareness is not illusory, but our depiction of it is, in principle, contradictory,

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paradoxical, and forever tentative. Without an awareness of the world by way of wisdom, it is most likely that we would take the conceptual world as absolute instead of “nominal,” fit only for momentary tasks. We can begin to make hints that what is called “attachment” to reality does not mean attachment to the world, but to the conceptually and linguistically divided and defined reality which gives us “things” the way we make them appear for us. This is to say, gold is of “greater value” than clay, not because of their reality, but because of our conceptual divisions that make this experienced thing worthier and thus to be desired. The world of awareness does not have such evaluations that make gold “worthier” than clay, and hence there is no specific desire for one over the other. In brief, detachment, at this level, is not a proclamation that the world is illusory, but that the very constructs by which we live are empty, albeit full of interesting allurements. While Nagarjuna’s sharp insights are accepted as the main background of Chinese Taoism and Zen, he did not suggest anything like a “theory of awareness” since any theory is equally a conceptual construct, a convenience. Chinese Taoists, most noted among them Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, were interested in an analogue to emptiness—nothingness. Nagarjuna regarded emptiness as a phenomenon that shows up any time we investigate conceptual meanings, while the Taoists interpreted nothingness as the source of Being. But what is this “Tao” in Taoism? For us, it might seem somewhat cryptic to speak of the “unspeakable,” but Tao is precisely that which cannot be spoken or given any designation. After all, designations would immediately require differences, and Tao has no opposite. The way that Taoists proceed to disclose the presence of Tao is through a very precise movement that locates itself “between” various opposites, showing that they contain each other. To say “white” is to say “black” and conversely, and thus to find a presence that is between them, as neither one nor the other, and yet present in both. This presence is the “hinge” of the Way (Tao). Yet, Taoists also suggest that while Tao is absolute, unchanging, pervading all things, it is also dependent on nothing. It seems, then, that Tao is more akin to Being, and the source of Being is nothing (wu in Chinese, and mu in Japanese). There is no need to engage in the metaphysical debate over which came first as the source of Being; suffice it to say that Non-being can be regarded as the source, the ineffable, and thus akin to the ineffable Tao. This means that Non-being cannot be equated with emptiness since it is at the base of, or is a “source” of, Being (see Mickunas, 2018, Chapter 3).

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Yet, how are we to understand Non-being as a source in its relationship to Being? One way of explicating this relationship is to use the Japanese understanding of emptiness by way of a simple bell of a temple. The bell is suspended from a wooden pole, yet the bell does not have a “clapper” inside to make the sound. The sound is made by a wooden pole hanging on two ropes in such a way that the pole is pulled away from the bell and then released to strike the bell. For Zen, the bell may have been cast at a specific time, such as 600 years ago, but the emptiness within the bell is atemporal. When the pole is pulled away from the bell and then released to gently strike the bell, the resonance does not come either from inside or outside, but it pervades the entire “universe,” leaving one in amazement: The bell has resonated itself. This sound reveals the cosmic purity, just as our previously discussed purity of cosmic erotic fire. But the question that arises is this: What made the sound, the metal bell or the emptiness “inside”? If we return to the Chinese question of Non-being and Being, we can note that the bell is Being, and the emptiness is Non-being. This is to say, the sound is neither in the bell nor in the emptiness. Without the latter, as the “interior” of the bell, there would not be an all-pervasive resonance, but without the bell forming the emptiness, there would only be silence. Thus, for the resonance to appear, there must be the Being of the bell and the Non-being of its emptiness. For the Westerner, the first and perhaps only awareness would be the visible bell as making the sounds; but for Zen, emptiness is equally required. It is obvious that the atemporal emptiness is not the same as that disclosed in the case of the inadequacy of opposing conceptual distinctions. Whatever beings there are, specifically the ones humans make, they are designed to enclose emptiness. A cup, a pot, a pitcher are not primarily the material out of which they are composed, but of the emptiness they enclose. But emptiness is indifferent to the enclosures; in fact, the material may vary radically, but the emptiness is indifferent to it and does not change due to the differences among the enclosing beings. In this sense, one cannot find emptiness as some entity with characteristics, something to be found in the crevices of things by taking them apart. Yet, it is the cosmic condition for the way that the being of things emerge and acquire phenomenal presence. Moreover, it does not depend on a specific time, for example the age of the being—the bell—that resonates with emptiness. Just as the cosmic Eros and its pure play may appear through a great variety of forms, such as those mentioned in the carvings of Khajuraho, or the impassioned adoration of St. Teresa. The carvings and statues could have been made yesterday or a thousand years ago—but the cosmic passion

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is available through all. The bell could have been made yesterday or in ancient Japan—and yet all such temporal differences are irrelevant for emptiness. Of course, as mentioned, Tao regards the enclosed as the source of everything and names it “Nothingness.” The latter, too, has no time or place and appears only through Being, and Being has its “place” in Nothing. It could be said that Non-being has no “ontological” presence, no reality; it is pre-ontological in the sense that it transcends the either/or dualism: Instead of “It either exists or does not exist,” “It neither exists nor does not exist.” For Taoism, it is rather the intertwining of the formless and the forming. While the ontological quest for Non-being is important for Taoism, it does not seem to be of much concern for Buddhism and Zen, which emphasize “practice.” Yet, it is significant to suggest that the ontological question of Nonbeing is also at the core of Taoist practice. If Non-being is the source of Being, then a human being, as an aspect of the interplay of Non-being and Being, is equally indeterminate. The Taoist acts in accordance with what is, but in a unique way. To make the self into an object possessing activities would miss Non-being as the source of all Being and hence real activity. How are we to understand activity? It is wu-wei, or non-doing, a “passive” engagement without self-consciousness, i.e., a direct doing that does not yet have an identifying “subject.” The “activity” is a “letting events happen” without our interference, being harmonious with them in our engagement with them. If we were to “confront” things, we would encounter resistance, yet activity that “flows” with the very flow of events does not encounter resistance. One could use a water metaphor: It senses the movement of things, and yet it yields to them. In the West, this “non-action” is known either as pre-reflective or passive synthesis. What is important for Zen in relationship to Tao is the understanding that one brings nothing that would be personal, manipulative, interested, and remains in quiescence as a spontaneous being with the flow of things. At this level, the Taoist ontological conception of Non-being relates to the nothing of Zen Buddhism, as a regression to the source of “activity” being a basis of, and prior to, discrimination, separation, articulation, and indeed, conceptualization. The difference is that Zen is not interested in Non-being as the source of all Being, but rather in nothing as a source of direct experience of the universe. We shall offer this “nothing” in a variety of modes, including emptiness, and Western modern metaphysics as a system is covering emptiness or, for that matter, creating emptiness. Emptiness is neither physical—such as an empty cup—since there would be an immediate argument that there is air in the cup, and to fill the cup with

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water would be equivalent of replacing air with water, or later, pouring sand into the cup would displace water, but there would not be such a thing as emptiness in reality. Neither can it be metaphysical, such that “at the beginning” there was nothing, pure emptiness, a void, and then some divinity, after a substantial meal, let out a burp and filled the void with spirit—holy emanation. Zen, rather, speaks of awareness and may use either natural or metaphysical images as metaphors, but not as being a thing or a spirit, or an absence of being. Following Nagarjuna, Zen points out that being aware of the way the phenomena are present is to make certain that no obstructions, on the part of awareness, are imposed on phenomena. Thus, the metaphor of emptiness is a way of saying that one can achieve a level of awareness devoid of a human clutter that would be detrimental to experiencing whatever is present as phenomenon. In this sense, it is clear that awareness as emptiness is not some blank state of consciousness, but an activity that does not interfere in disclosing whatever phenomena are given. Zen also accepts all phenomena, including the expressive qi/ki, without reducing it to some sort of subjective state of the inner psyche. This is significant to the extent that no metaphysically or ontologically imposed conceptuality would define a priori what is some ultimate reality. If phenomena, such as joy or sadness, appear, they are not to be denied. This is more obvious if we note that, across Western tradition, there were many proposals for what is “ultimate reality,” demonstrating the emptiness of many claims, and indeed leaving even the most plausible to be questioned by future realities. Here, we have two major aspects of Eastern tradition—nothingness and emptiness—as presences that have no specific temporal or spatial characteristic and are thus free from any cultural parameters. This means that they are “cosmic” and will allow any temporal or eternal entities and beings to have their ways of constituting specific time and space. While India may seem remote from Japan in ways of life, as a background, the legitimation of claims that Japanese philosophy, specifically Zen Buddhism, is broader than Japanese spirit or culture, i.e., that it belongs to the depth of Asian civilization. The Western emphasis on ontology, which regards the universe as an aggregate of substantial entities, and on metaphysics that requires positing of eternal truths in whatever guise—divinities, essences, universal laws—leads to the acceptance of fundamental stability. Hence, whatever mode of thinking does not comply with this emphasis is regarded as something other than philosophy. Although we may point out that India has all sorts of metaphysical–religious entities—gods and goddesses, demons and

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devils—it is also the case that such entities lack Western stability: they are in flux. A divinity may become “polluted” and thus become demonic, while demonic figures may become purified and replace divinities. All of this flow rests not on ontology or metaphysics, but on the priority of cosmos—as noted above—that pervades and dissolves all permanent entities. In brief, while the West has its philosophical basis in the stability of substantial entities, India has a cosmology that is not something which the West could dispense with as irrelevant, but which serves as a condition for all substantial beings. The importance of this condition cannot be avoided since, from the beginning of Western philosophy, the question of cosmos (space–time–movement) has always been in the background—although not taken to be essential to philosophy. Finally, Kant (1988) demonstrated that, without those cosmic aspects, no experience would be possible, and yet such aspects are not identical with anything. In this sense, the East offers, to speak with Nishida (1987), a place for Western conceptions of substantial and metaphysical beings. In this sense, Asia has no philosophy of Being, but it has a cosmology to accommodate Being. We must be clear about the concrete radicalism of Eastern thought, specifically in the presence of the just-mentioned speculative quest. The required Eastern experience will present us with seeming riddles because we tend to look for some verbal image to fill the request to name such experience. The temptation is obvious, and the verbal images are numerous. Thus, we immediately propose such “comparative” aspects as “emptiness” or “nothingness” and, following current metaphysical speculations, shift our attention to these aspects as some “ground” into which and out of which things come and disappear. All things come from emptiness and return to emptiness, emerge from nothing and vanish into nothing. We point to the Japanese noh stage as an indication of such emptiness. There are images of emptiness in paintings, on stages, we have psychodramas about nothing in existentialisms, nihilisms, and even à la Sartre, in negative statements. The point is clear: Even great commentators and some masters fail to avoid the temptation of means and purpose images, so-called “instrumental reason.” Sometimes, Zen masters engage in such reason when speaking of Zen as going “beyond” dualisms of matter–spirit, or mind–body, and reaching the “unity of all things.” The problem appears in some Westernized versions, offered by well-meaning masters, where one is told that one must believe in “whatever,” Buddha, God, the master, and the belief is a matter of spiritual choice, allowing one to enter a spiritual quest. We have just been advised to go “beyond” dualisms and here

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we are—spiritual (Taisen Deshimaru). Moreover, we must also avoid the easy way that some persons, such as the just-mentioned Taisen, attempt to appeal to Western gullibility by suggesting that, when Buddhism became exhausted in India, it went to China, and when it got corrupted in China, it came to Japan in the form of Zen, and now it is no longer pure in Japan, but it will find its purity in the West, especially in America. Americans, according to him, are “innocent” and without strong convictions; thus, it is very easy to get them interested in “novel” experience. And once this happens, we shall be able to realize that we can become Buddha or God—but “unconsciously.” This is to say, we all are Buddha and/or God, but through Zen meditation, we shall “go back” to our true beings as Buddha or God (see Mickunas, 2018, Chapter 2). At this juncture, there is a realization that, for Zen, Buddha or God is not what one seeks because the very seeking, as a journey, a practice, wants to reach what one already is, and thus realizes that the sought object, Buddha, is not a bringer of salvation, some sort of deliverance to a blissful psychological state of consciousness, but another way of saying that we access the cosmos— not Buddha or God, not a unity of all things, but an awareness that is not aware of itself, that is nowhere and at no time, and hence everywhere and at all times. The danger of misunderstanding, as the one just mentioned about the “innocent” Americans, rests with a “local” culture and its available means of expression. Although Eastern ways might be a fashion in some circles, a passing fad and superficial acquaintance with an “exotic other,” forming schools, belonging to a meditation club, there are also good indications that there was, and continues to be, a very basic recognition by Western philosophical trends of the significance of the East, with an emphasis on Buddhism and Zen. This is recognized by some noted commentators, such as Os Guinness (1973), who points out that the de-Christianizing of the West seems to open a vacuum or a loss of spirit; in the search for its roots, Westerners are drawn to the East, partially to some Hindu images—Krishna— but mainly to Buddhism and its development into Zen Buddhism. Indeed, there is an awareness that even the Greek philosophical style was closer to the East than to the Mid-East (Guinness, 1973). Moreover, as Harvey Cox (2016) notes, there is evidence of a subtle shift in post-Christian Western awareness toward conceptual categories that are typical of Eastern thinking, thus forming an apparent affinity between the basic principles of East and West. The aesthetic passions, the Kama, Maya, Lila, Shakti, Kali, are not characteristics of the plastic works of Khajuraho, pointing one to the others, but a presence of directionless cosmos, not gathered in the art as some sort of

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topos, a place, but already exploded with the cosmic, and thus cosmic. For Heidegger (1960), an artwork gathers the human world with its meanings, but for India—and Asian arts—the human is also cosmic, in “flux” without purposes or meaning, and yet extremely present, encompassing, and inescapable. Even Buddha’s images cannot be conceived as “representations” of a human or divinity, but the very encompassment of cosmic benevolence, in which Buddha is also enveloped. The most prominent among the Japanese is Nishida (1987), who is pushing phenomenology toward Buddhism and Zen, wherein pure awareness is an intuitive fact that cannot be found either on the side of the subject or the object, and thus the Zen awareness is not “personal.” There is no need to demonstrate that the self or the ego is conscious or that there must be others who are conscious. In his later years, Nishida equated pure awareness with human daily experience since the latter has not yet been tainted with any sort of “empiricism” or “sense phenomena” as the “basic” awareness. There is no indication that, while “watching” a colorful leaf in an autumn wind, there is an ego who is watching, and the watching is “sensory.” To say that it is “sensory” is to introduce an overlay of distinctions: Sensory in contrast to mental, physical, biological, and an entire tradition of division into various “senses” and the “super-sensible.” Baring such distinctions, Nishida (1987) unfolded the notion of “place,” a first indication of “self-consciousness” (jikaku), as a nexus of intuition and reflection. Just as with pure awareness, self-reflection does not have an ego. Rather, it is an activity that can center itself in various ways, but the centering “on something” can be anything, including an ego. Thus the “self” is neither individual awareness nor some transcendent ultimate subject, but an “anonymous” event which, when approached reflectively, does not appear as an object, but becomes the reflecting—anonymous awareness. This awareness is, for Nishida, bodily, and body cannot be understood from inside or outside, and thus it is neither subject nor object, since it is at the same time acting and being acted upon. It is a paradoxical, reflecting body that, too, is part of Eastern awareness. After all, to speak of “place” as empty where action occurs is impossible without body. The difficulty in understanding Nishida’s philosophy and his argument for Eastern awareness rests on the problem of a finite subject in face of nothingness. Once there is a subject facing something, such as nothingness, the latter becomes an object and cannot be authentic nothingness. The requirement for Nishida—as well as for phenomenology—is to explicate the origination of the subject and the world of objects that the subject encounters.

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Thus, nothingness, as that which grounds subject and objects, cannot be in opposition to, or faced by, any subject, regardless of how vast the subject might be—such as an infinite divinity. In this sense, the subject and nothingness form a contradictory self-identity: Any affirmation of nothingness as the origination of the subject must be immediately denied. For the Eastern Buddhist trend, the question looks as follows: If Buddha is nothing, then this designation is to be rejected since Buddha would be placed in opposition to himself. This means that the subject is related to nothingness in an inverse correspondence. How so? As long as there is a subject that sees, then there is a direct correspondence to the seen, but the inverse correspondence is seeing without a seer, doing without a doer. This leads to the notion of place (basho). With the disclosure of what place is, we can grasp the essence of Buddhist and Zen awareness: Seeing without a seer—an intuitive awareness that does not require any presence of a subject. Yet, it is important to note, that, as was the case with Nagarjuna, it is completely logical to realize that the very recognition of intuition requires reflection, and a synthesis of both at a common level. This level is “self-awakening,” and the awareness of “place” is a central disclosure of this awakening. It is essential to move very cautiously to disclose what is always and already present but too intimate for any subjectivation or objectivation. At the very outset, pure experience is no different from cosmic awareness, and thus the phenomenon of awareness is the cosmic context of any reality, even if such reality is replete with heavenly and demonic beings. This cosmic awareness cannot be identified with any kind of objectivity since it is a phenomenon co-present with any objectivity, but not identical with it. In this sense, it is pure experience that, as lived directly, is capable of allowing anything to appear. Here, true reality is present without reflective and thinking mediation. It is similar to being swept up by music, by the sound of an Oriental bell, forgetting ourselves as listeners, in fact forgetting to listen, not raising questions as to the origin, nature, or thinking explanations of this sound; awareness is this sound, it is the presence in pure experience. This is to say, pure experience seems to require a subject, but the subject, in this context, is prior to being posited by reflective thought as “intentional,” i.e., a subject who is aware of something. At this level, we want to distance this from a specific understanding of phenomenology that was prevalent among Westerners—all awareness is “intentional,” and the latter can be investigated and accessed anywhere and anytime “objectively.” Buddhist and Zen analyses of the “remaining problem of consciousness” point out that, for the West, consciousness has become an object for consciousness instead

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of the unmediated awareness that is present as it is lived. As lived, it is equal to the experienced phenomena; as itself, consciousness appears as the place of absolute emptiness. Given this complex context, it is possible to ask a first question: To present, or not to present, images of persons, and specifically of Buddha, Bodhisattvas, or Zenjis? It has been a controversial topic, not only in the West, but also in East. Zen Buddhism, following Buddha, regards the visible (basically sensory) world as Maya, appearance (but not identical with the Western term “illusion”), and hence not an aspect of ultimate experience. This means that, being attached to a person’s image, such as that of a master, would mislead anyone concerning the basic experience that cannot be explicated by images. Let us look at some examples: In Kyoto’s Daitokuji Zen temple complex, one of the great teachers, Takuan Soho, (early 17th century), enjoyed having his portraits painted, yet close to his death, he left “final instructions” forbidding any display of his image, but rather that one should display only a calligraphic circle in lieu of the portrait. It is a material, textual, and visual self-erasure. After his death, no disciples were to be recognized, no transmission of robe or bowl, no posthumous efforts to bestow upon him the title Zenji (Zen master), or compile a chronicle, and not even a memorial stupa was to be erected. He was simply to return to emptiness. This is Zen’s rejection of icons, texts, and all mediating forms as insufficient or even obstructive to direct awareness. It should be pointed out that, for Buddha and his Zen “followers,” any perceptual image is a concatenation of diverse and mainly disconnected perceptions, leading to a selection of one as “the real me,” without any indication that it is some sort of representation. In this sense, any portrait, statue, enshrined image, is not a representation of the basic awareness of the “awakened one.” In this sense, the ensō, the calligraphic circle, tracing the non-dualistic awareness of all in emptiness, is more to the point. If there is a portrait, then it may be described by the subject of the portrait in quite telling ways. One can claim to be an all-encompassing non-entity. And yet, despite all the instructions, followers painted the portraits of their masters and wrote chronicles and descriptions of their deeds and sayings, and they placed their images in sacred spaces. This suggests that there is an accepted “intersubjective” continuity of awareness transmitted through individuals, although not of individualistic nature. We must also avoid the modern Western prejudgment of “perspectivism,” wherein a singular perspective is limited and thus is expanded by the perspectives of others, leading to a kind of cumulative multi-perspectivity where, finally, reality will

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appear through a totality of all the perspectives. What is transmitted in Buddhism and Zen through individuals is the same to which one cannot add, and from which one cannot subtract. In this sense, neither the infinite nor the finite—as a duality—are to be taken as characteristics of Zen. These precautionary remarks are necessary because the images of Japanese Zen and Shinto became available in the West and received unique interpretations. The reader will surmise, by now, that the question of showing or not showing images has been answered by Zen philosophy, delimited by Nishida’s awareness of basho, place. The numerous images, statues, icons do not depict beings, or great masters, or Buddha, but are disclosures of a “place of emptiness,” as awareness that anyone can inhabit. Thus, there is no statement made, such as “Follow Buddha” or “Spread the word,” and these images do not say, “Look at Buddha,” but disclose yourself as an empty place for things to appear directly to unmediated awareness. While at social and even psychological levels there may be a wish to celebrate and love a master, at the level of Zen awareness, such social and psychological levels vanish, and in their place, the awareness phenomenon—emptiness—makes its presence. The entire monastic life, for those who choose to enter, is also a manifestation of such emptiness—but not some pure blank, a tabula rasa, on which empirical things leave their impressions which, then, mechanically form a sequence of associations of “ideas.” Of course, there are teachers who insist on instructing how to understand the active awareness, which is lived passively, i.e., which is not attended to by our daily habits of linguistically and conceptually deployed worlds. To disclose the aesthetics of the mentioned awareness, it is possible to appeal to Dogen (1200–1253 C.E.), who was both the founder of the Soto School in Japan and one of the most popular Japanese Zen Buddhist masters of all time. According to Dogen (1995), to practice Zen is to drop off one’s body and one’s mind. This would be equivalent to saying that to learn the Buddha way is to learn oneself. To learn oneself is to forget oneself. To forget oneself is to be confirmed by all things. To be confirmed by all things is to affect the dropping off of one’s own body–and–mind and the mind–and–body of others as well. It is notable that, while Dogen extols situated and undivided activity, in which oneself and things are unified and one is free from not only one’s mind but also one’s body, the term “unified” is somewhat troubling since it lends awareness a metaphysical status, or at least a reality status, such that it can unify with something. This unity is expressed in a metaphor of life as a journey in a boat: When one rides in a boat, one’s body and mind and the

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environment altogether are the function of the boat. The entire Earth and the entire sky are both the function of the boat. Thus, life is nothing but you; you are nothing but life. Of course, he corrects this ontological claim and proposes that at the heart of Buddhism and Zen is genjokoan, (the presence of things as they are), and he equates such an awareness as equivalent to the self. This is enlightenment and equally the forgetting of enlightenment. Here, the way with Buddha (butsudo) means that the following of Buddha is the forgetting of Buddha and oneself since any adherence to Buddha is an obstruction to the presence of the phenomena of the world. Dogen’s understanding stems from the Buddhist notion of anatman, no self, and hence no ego, and “no thinking.” This is not some sort of nihilistic nothingness, but an authentication of awareness—not in the teachings of Buddha or in the demands of a master, but in the understanding of oneself without a self. Obviously, by discovering such awareness, any Zen activity is no different from Buddha’s, not as an imitation of Buddha, but as a realization of the domain wherein all phenomena appear as they are. This is “primordial enlightenment” (hongaku), as the primordially present and enveloping sensuous cosmos. This awareness is, as a given, also a primordial koan, even before the expressive ma, comprising mood intervals (see Mickunas, 2018, Chapter 1). This is identical with “forgetting yourself,” which is not a dissolution into a void, but the very place where awareness merges with the phenomena—but without a “desired” focus. The term “merges” is equally troubling and will be explicated shortly without any mystifications. To make this point, there is a story about a group engaged in Zazen meditation. During one gathering, one member was late and did not even have time to eat; as he was sitting in Zazen position, his stomach began to “rumble” very loudly, resonating through the entire room. The next day, when all had gathered for their meditation session, one of the members said to the person whose stomach had made so much noise, “I hope you ate today because yesterday your stomach was so loud that I could not concentrate.” He got a Zen response: “Yes, I ate today, and I also made sure that the flies and the bees will be silent, and the Moon will be dark; now, you will have no distractions at all.” This is to say, Zen does not evaluate sounds or sights, or touches, feelings as desirable or not. The rumbling of the stomach was part of the presence of things as they are. Thus, immersed in his own efforts to reach meditation as empty tranquility, the meditator was distracted because he could not forget himself. He obstructed the passive awareness and hence could not reach enlightenment.

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This reaching and forgetting oneself has many variations, including the awareness of one’s death and the forgetting of one’s death.

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About the Authors

Algis Mickunas Dr. Algis Mickunas has lectured across Latin America, Europe, Japan, and the Middle East. He has authored and co-authored 45 books in three languages and over 200 articles in five languages on topics of Classical, Modern, and Contemporary theoretical issues, including cross-cultural communication and comparative civilizations. He is a co-founder of The Husserl Circle, The Merleau-Ponty Circle, and Dialogue between Japan and the West. He is a recipient of four honorary doctorates and was awarded the title “Knight of the Cross” by the President of Lithuania. Email: [email protected]

Joe Pilotta Professor Joe Pilotta is an internationally recognized sociologist and theoretician, as well as a practitioner of communication science. His research interests include phenomenological sociology and communication; contemporary social and political theory; cross-cultural communication; social research methodology; communication and technology; economic innovations; contemporary Chinese philosophy; and phenomenological philosophy. He is the author of 27 monographs and 125 research articles. He is also a senior editor/member of the editorial boards of a number of international research journals. Email: [email protected]

Index

A abortion, 184 Abraham, 11, 12, 14 absolute truth, xiii, xvi, xvii absorption, 107, 114, 115, 118 abstract, 101, 150, 151, 153 abstraction, 98, 101 accusation, 20, 125, 185 action, vii, xiv, xviii, xxvi, 5, 14, 17, 29, 62, 86, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 97, 98, 99, 101, 106, 117, 121, 149, 150, 154, 159, 206, 210 activity, xiv, xvii, 7, 32, 47, 66, 72, 87, 97, 103, 106, 133, 143, 163, 171, 172, 173, 179, 206, 207, 210, 213, 214 Adam, 193 adaptation, 8 admiration, 58, 123, 189 Adorno, Theodor W., 165 advertisements, 39, 41, 107, 165 affect, 63, 119, 183, 185, 213 affectivity, xxviii, 105, 106 agency, 92, 125, 147 aggression, 185 ahistorical, 100, 101, 150, 151 Alcibiades, 105, 123 alienation, 33, 174 Allah, 12, 67, 164 ally, xxiv, xxvii American Exceptionalism, 184 analogy, 87, 88, 89, 90 analysis, viii, xiii, xv, xvi, xvii, xx, 34, 37, 66, 81, 98, 100, 117, 154, 175, 182, 187, 198, 203 angel, 67 animal, ix, 133, 134, 145 animism, ix antagonism, 157, 158

anthropocentrism, 71 anthropology, 126, 133 apathy, 138 appearance, 3, 8, 11, 14, 21, 29, 40, 42, 58, 78, 92, 115, 117, 122, 128, 135, 141, 144, 163, 178, 195, 201, 203, 212 arbitrariness, vii, 27, 137 architecture, 59, 142, 180 Arendt, Hannah, 33 argument, xxii, xxiii, xxvi, xxvii, 9, 88, 90, 123, 201, 206, 210 aristocracy, 17 arts, 43, 46, 51, 54, 58, 60, 74, 84, 142, 164, 165, 201, 210 artwork, 129, 210 Asia, 7, 15, 46, 65, 196, 198, 208 atemporal, 100, 101, 151, 168, 205 Athens, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvii, 72, 105 attachment, 52, 54, 64, 171, 190, 204 attraction, 45, 47, 52, 53, 55, 57, 70, 74, 75, 88, 106, 109, 110, 114, 115, 118, 122, 195 audience, 94, 121, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191 austerity politics, 152 authority, x, xiii, xvi, xvii, xviii, xx, 18, 24, 25, 27, 30, 33, 34, 66, 67, 72, 97, 124, 128, 136, 137, 153, 154, 156 autocracy, xii, xvi, 3, 6, 15, 18 autocrat, xi, xii, xvi, 3, 5, 6, 17, 93, 127 autokinesis, 74, 76, 109, 111 autonomous individual, 138 autonomy, 4, 26, 34, 92, 137, 138, 161 autopoiesis, 85 awakening, 197, 211

B Baltic States, 17, 131

226 Bannon, Steve, 156 baptism, x, 67 Battle of Thermopylae, 10 Bauman, Zygmunt, 166 beauty, 50, 56, 57, 83, 119, 141, 144 becoming, ix, xi, xix, xxii, 8, 35, 40, 55, 64, 123, 131, 140, 144, 145, 151, 153 behavior, viii, xxv, xxvii, 27, 29, 41, 44, 46, 88, 92, 98, 99, 149, 188 Being, iv, 46, 63, 64, 67, 79, 85, 110, 127, 132, 195, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208 belief, 34, 115, 117, 119, 158, 160, 208 believers, xiii, xiv, 68, 192 binary, 98, 125, 147, 161 binary selectivity, 98 biology, 175 Black, 147, 148, 185 blood, ix, x, xxviii, 12, 26, 67, 83, 84, 91, 102, 121, 128 body, x, xi, 26, 28, 31, 32, 33, 36, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 50, 57, 59, 60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 70, 72, 76, 80, 91, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 115, 124, 128, 135, 142, 152, 158, 159, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 191, 208, 210, 213 body language, 50 book, 2, 27, 61, 120, 123 bourgeoisie, 20, 29, 159 bricolage, 169, 173, 180, 181 Buddha, 62, 196, 198, 199, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214 Buddhism, x, 38, 196, 199, 203, 206, 207, 209, 210, 212, 213, 214 bullshit, 156 Byzantine Empire, 6, 16, 17

C Cain, v, 65, 193 Cambodia, 6 capital, 69, 170, 171, 176 capital punishment, 69 capitalism, 2, 3, 13, 86, 136, 142, 160, 170 carnal desire, 174

Index carnality, 167, 169, 178 catalyst, 98, 202 causality, 63, 199 cause, 1, 46, 61, 70, 87, 98, 102, 121, 199, 200 challenge, x, xx, 7, 18, 71, 115, 118, 119, 136, 155, 171 chance, 86, 95, 105, 119, 147 change, xv, xvii, xviii, xix, 16, 18, 20, 31, 88, 91, 132, 166, 175, 188, 197, 198, 205 chaos, xv, 37, 85, 93 charisma, 23, 121, 155, 156, charismatic leader, 155, 156 Charlamagne, 12 chemistry, 6, 136, 140 China, 6, 7, 15, 166, 170, 209 Christianity, ix, xiii, 34, 72, 129, 136 Christostomus, 56 Chuang Tzu, 204 cinema, 44, 165, 166 circulation, 120, 142, 169, 170, 171, 172, 179, 187 citizen, 191 civic obligation, 189, 191 civil rights, 69 civilization, xiv, xv, xvii, 3, 18, 94, 124, 144, 160, 161, 165, 176, 207 class conflict, 93 code, 85, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 147, 148, 150, 153, 161 cognition, 92, 106 cognitive science, 100 Cold War, 58 collective identity, 30, 35, 184, 190 colonization, xiii, xiv command/consensus dichotomy, 97 commitment, xxvii, 97, 98 communication, xx, 30, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 107, 113, 114, 148, 149, 150, 151, 159, 167, 171, 175, 177, 178, 179 communication code, 99, 100, 101, 148, 149, 150, 151 communication medium, 96, 98, 99

Index communicative incompetence, 166 communism, xii, xiv, 4, 13, 17, 19, 33, 131 community, 30, 37, 69, 71, 94, 95, 120, 147, 148, 157, 176, 185, 192 complexity, 98, 99, 113, 149, 150, 153 compliance, 27, 149 conceptualization, 90, 202, 206 confession, 129, 131 confirmation, 150 conflict, xxi, 31, 34, 93, 157, 158, 159, 187, 191 confrontation, xxiv, xxviii, 8, 80, 92 conquest, 30, 31, 68, 122, 123, 134, 179 conscience, xv, 120 consciousness, xv, xvi, 5, 30, 72, 141, 142, 150, 163, 178, 200, 203, 207, 209, 211 consent, 161 conservative, 5, 45, 161, 166, 170, 184 consistency, 29, 174 conspicuous consumption, 181 conspiracy, 160 constancy hypothesis, 172 constitutional government, 161 consumer, 99, 107, 142, 144, 166 consumer culture, 166 contagion, 186 contemplation, 56, 60, 197 contingency, 24, 37, 98, 149, 150 continuity, 13, 54, 197, 198, 212 control, vii, x, 1, 3, 18, 34, 52, 86, 87, 122, 126, 132, 142, 184 co-occurrence, 89 cooperation, 98, 149 corporeity, 56, 84 cosmic fire, 58, 136, 195 cosmology, 198, 208 cosmos, 52, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 69, 197, 208, 209, 214 coupling, 44, 171, 172, 173, 180 courage, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxviii, 203 cowardice, xxiv creativity, 48, 84 credibility gap, 141 crisis, 24, 124, 155

227 critical school, 43, 166 critique, 31, 38, 43, 90, 92, 174 cultural studies, 60 cultural wars, 39, 42, 46, 52, 57, 69, 127, 135 culture, 43, 44, 60, 72, 80, 86, 123, 124, 148, 163, 164, 165, 166, 177, 178, 185, 189, 192, 207, 209 culture industry, 43, 166 cynicism, 160 Czechoslovakia, 20

D daimon, 73, 108 damnation, xv, 69, 79 dance, ix, 44, 58, 71, 103, 179, 180 Darius the Great, xi death, 12, 13, 15, 19, 47, 62, 68, 76, 105, 113, 115, 116, 117, 119, 129, 153, 155, 164, 173, 177, 196, 197, 198, 199, 212, 215 debate, ix, xix, xxi, xxii, 27, 33, 157, 188, 204 debt, 20, 24, 126, 189 defeat, x, xxii, 19, 186, 192 deism, 25 delocalization, 167 delusion, 38, 192 democracy, xix, 3, 5, 24, 25, 27, 33, 35, 42, 93, 127, 145, 155, 158, 161, 184 demos, 105, 123 dependence, 89 Descartes, René, 134 desirability, 64, 75, 77, 110, 111 desire, ix, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 33, 37, 40, 43, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 57, 65, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 80, 83, 95, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 115, 117, 118, 122, 123, 125, 127, 142, 145, 158, 164, 171, 173, 175, 177, 179, 181, 186, 187, 188, 189, 191, 195, 199, 204 desire machine, 43, 127, 145, 164, 175, 179

228 desire of desire, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 74, 75, 76, 77, 109, 110, 111 despot, xii destiny, x, xxi, 4, 11, 57, 63, 69, 73, 79, 83, 118, 122, 124, 132, 138, 142, 169, 178 destruction, v, xiii, xv, xvii, xxvii, 10, 14, 19, 46, 47, 53, 61, 62, 68, 77, 85, 103, 112, 155, 163 deviant, xvi, xvii, 25, 46, 52, 68, 124, 127, 176, 195 dharma, 16, 61, 196 diacritical field, 202 dialectical materialism, 4, 5, 6, 18 dialogue, xvi, 174, 176 difference, xxiii, 9, 16, 28, 31, 35, 37, 44, 57, 60, 65, 69, 87, 90, 95, 113, 134, 147, 148, 165, 170, 198, 200, 202, 206 Dionysus, 102 discipline, 17, 35 discourse, xviii, xxiv, 24, 43, 92, 113, 118, 140, 142, 146, 153, 159, 160, 164, 176, 182, 191, 200 disenchantment, 115, 156 dishonor, xxvi, xxvii disincorporation, 158 disinformation, 160 disorder, 93, 130 display, 60, 80, 81, 84, 112, 114, 142, 148, 212 dissent, 40 divination, 86 divine, xii, xiii, xiv, xvii, xviii, xx, xxviii, 8, 10, 12, 19, 20, 26, 32, 39, 40, 41, 46, 56, 62, 65, 66, 69, 70, 73, 79, 80, 81, 102, 108, 114, 121, 124, 125, 127, 132, 134, 155, 169, 200 divine right of kings, xiii, 12, 127 divinity, xi, xiii, 2, 58, 61, 64, 65, 66, 70, 79, 80, 112, 125, 128, 133, 134, 174, 182, 207, 208, 210, 211 division, 26, 31, 32, 33, 81, 114, 158, 159, 160, 210 doctrine, 36, 43, 88, 126 dogma, vii, 5, 6

Index dominance, xxiii, 184 dominant, xi, 116, 124, 142 Draupadi, 39, 51, 61, 197 duality, 62, 85, 196, 213 Durkheim, Emile, 94 duty, xvi, xviii, xx, xxviii, 12, 41, 56, 121, 136, 145, 164

E Earth, 8, 56, 71, 79, 86, 165, 169, 175, 193, 197, 198, 214 economy, viii, 2, 6, 27, 28, 34, 126, 142, 169, 170 education, 6, 137, 147 ego, 35, 54, 120, 152, 169, 175, 177, 210, 214 ego ideal, 35, 120, 152 Egocrat, 158 eidetic invariants, 180 either/or dichotomy, xxiv either/or dualism, 206 elite, 4, 5, 18, 21, 152, 164, 165, 187 emancipation, 132, 188 eminent text, 18, 61, 197 empathy, 189, 192 empiricism, 210 empowerment, 68 emptiness, v, 8, 14, 28, 35, 116, 119, 161, 195, 196, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 208, 212, 213 enchantment, 80, 81, 83, 103, 112, 114, 119, 171 enemy, xvi, xxv, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 20, 61, 103, 159, 160, 183 enemy of the people, 5, 6, 159, 160 energy, 9, 47, 49, 60, 61, 90, 126, 175, 177, 197, 198 enlightenment, 4, 26, 113, 164, 214 ens realisimus, 130, 134, 137, 164 entitlement, 69, 147, 184 envelopment, 50, 58, 76, 111, 114

Index environment, 8, 49, 50, 78, 98, 99, 100, 126, 132, 133, 137, 139, 172, 180, 183, 189, 197, 214 envy, xv, 167, 171, 183, 187, 189, 191, 192 epistemology, 113 equivalence, 160 Eros, xxvii, 39, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 51, 55, 57, 60, 64, 65, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79, 80, 83, 85, 105, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 120, 122, 123, 205 erotic desire, 45, 48, 50, 74, 76, 77, 83, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 123, 136 eroticism, 49, 70, 73, 76, 77, 80, 82, 108, 112, 174 escape, xix, 16, 47, 50, 52, 53, 54, 58, 61, 64, 67, 68, 127, 139, 171, 173, 187, 191, 196, 203, essence, vii, xi, xxi, 3, 9, 28, 51, 57, 58, 61, 63, 66, 68, 71, 94, 124, 125, 135, 156, 173, 188, 197, 211 ethics, xv, 135, 143 ethos, xxvi Europe, xiii, 2, 12, 15, 167 evaluation, 92, 97, 132, 174 Evangelicals, 67, 184, 185 Eve, 65, 193 evil, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, 5, 11, 13, 40, 43, 46, 52, 53, 55, 62, 64, 65, 68, 69, 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 131, 164, 187, 191, 195 evil-doer, 125 evolution, 1, 4, 6, 87, 88 excitations, 167, 168, 169, 170 exclusion, 36, 138, 160, 174, 185 existence, x, xi, 1, 8, 85, 94, 115, 133, 149, 153, 163, 186, 189, 190, 192 expectation, xxvi, 96 experience, xxv, 25, 29, 32, 34, 36, 37, 71, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 96, 101, 112, 113, 114, 120, 148, 151, 155, 157, 158, 187, 188, 189, 195, 196, 200, 202, 206, 208, 210, 211, 212 experiment, 96, 132

229 explanation, xvii, xx, 6, 46, 71, 87, 88, 175, 176, 178, 199 exploitation, 16, 45, 169 expression, 4, 6, 10, 25, 40, 50, 58, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 92, 104, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 128, 148, 154, 169, 187, 198, 209 expressivity, 77, 79, 83, 106, 107, 112

F face, vii, xxii, xxiii, xxv, xxvii, 34, 47, 50, 52, 54, 56, 60, 63, 74, 75, 80, 81, 82, 83, 92, 98, 106, 107, 110, 112, 139, 140, 148, 155, 169, 176, 195, 210 Facebook, 153 fact, 2, 18, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 34, 35, 41, 63, 65, 68, 69, 78, 91, 96, 120, 121, 123, 129, 130, 132, 138, 141, 148, 150, 151, 154, 157, 159, 164, 171, 173, 174, 187, 191, 196, 205, 210, 211 fairy tale, 137 faith, 68, 115, 119, 121 falsehood, 69 familiarity, 113, 159 family, 17, 41, 42, 95, 139, 156, 166, 174, 176 fascination, 52, 107, 115, 116, 117 fascism, xii, xiv, 17, 19, 33, 52, 160 father, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xix, 26, 53, 65, 74, 89, 93, 109, 176, 178 fear, xii, xxiii, 10, 20, 27, 30, 74, 94, 95, 107, 122, 126, 153 fetishism, 115 field, ix, 88, 103, 116, 139, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 168, 173, 177, 202 field signification, 168 Filosofia Naturale, 135 fire, xviii, 11, 20, 39, 41, 42, 47, 51, 52, 54, 58, 59, 61, 65, 79, 195, 197, 205 fixity, 73, 108, 124 flesh, ix, x, 26, 43, 53, 55, 56, 67, 107, 129, 141

230 flow, 8, 41, 80, 83, 169, 175, 180, 197, 200, 206, 208 flux, xvii, xix, xxviii, 7, 208, 210 foe, 187, 191 follower, 15, 19, 66, 72 force, xiii, xx, xxi, xxii, xxvi, 6, 7, 8, 10, 30, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 82, 91, 99, 108, 109, 111, 118, 127, 136, 142, 152, 156, 163, 167, 168, 170, 172, 173, 174, 176, 177, 179, 190, 192 forgiveness, 66, 79 Fox News, 45 Frankfurt, Henry, 156 freedom, vii, xx, xxiv, 3, 4, 5, 27, 40, 41, 48, 73, 80, 85, 86, 98, 125, 132, 138, 139, 145, 161, 193 Freud, Sigmund, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 54, 76, 120, 125, 152, 187 friendship, 113 frustration, 77, 112, 186, 187, 188, 190 function, 1, 8, 28, 30, 46, 57, 71, 72, 86, 87, 89, 92, 96, 98, 100, 136, 142, 143, 161, 169, 175, 177, 178, 198, 214 fundamentalism, xvi, 185 future, xviii, xxii, xxv, xxvii, xxviii, 4, 5, 16, 27, 52, 57, 86, 121, 132, 138, 141, 143, 150, 153, 170, 181, 200, 201, 203, 207

G Galileo, 134 game, xxvii, 3, 16, 115, 118, 119 gaming, 107, 115 Gandhi, Mahatma, xi, 156 gay marriage, 185 gay pride, 42 gaze, 67, 190 generality, 45, 75, 76, 84, 109, 111 generalization, 77, 112 geometry, 173 gesture, 79, 84, 109, 164 global nomad, 144

Index globalization, 143, 157, 165 God, v, viii, xvii, 2, 9, 17, 23, 25, 27, 42, 65, 69, 74, 101, 109, 115, 118, 119, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 134, 154, 155, 182, 193, 208, 209 gods, x, xi, xviii, xix, xxvi, xxviii, 9, 10, 27, 28, 31, 39, 65, 68, 73, 74, 79, 83, 86, 95, 119, 133, 207 goods, xvii, 119, 183 government, 2, 27, 61, 69, 139, 161, 184 Greece, xix, 10, 89 grievance, 185, 187 guarantee, xxvii, xxviii, 2, 9, 54, 85, 138, 139, 172 guilt, x, 52, 63, 79, 95, 186 gun control, 184

H harem, 11, 15, 41, 55, 70, 165 hate, xv, 42, 46, 52, 55, 169, 187, 191 Hegelian spirit, 131 hegemony, 148 Heidegger, Martin, 7, 14, 83, 164, 203, 210 heretic, 124 Hermes, 82 hero, 14, 56, 82 heroism, xxviii hierarchy, xvii, 67, 124, 164, 198 hierophany, 36, 37 high culture, 165 Hindu, xi, 209 history, ix, xii, xvii, xxi, xxix, 2, 4, 5, 17, 18, 29, 30, 70, 78, 93, 100, 123, 124, 131, 132, 136, 151, 175, 176, 185, 187 Hitler, Adolf, 7, 14, 17, 19, 20, 24, 121, 130, 131, 156, 192 holy war, xi, xiii, xvi, xvii, 12, 53, 138 home, 6, 108, 121, 139, 144, 155, 166, 189 homeland, 184 Homer, 78 homophobia, 126 honor, xxi, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, 12, 16, 72, 95, 123, 174, 183

Index hope, xxv, xxvii, xxviii, 54, 67, 123, 154, 157, 214 horizon, 143, 152, 179, 181, 203 Horkheimer, Max, 165, 166 humanity, xvi, xviii, 2, 4, 5, 11, 12, 15, 36, 133, 160

I ideal, viii, 35, 45, 46, 57, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 108, 109, 110, 120, 141, 142, 151, 152, 156, 168, 185 ideality, 141 identification (fusion), 113 identity, ix, x, xi, xiv, xv, 14, 33, 35, 54, 58, 59, 69, 124, 127, 128, 130, 136, 143, 147, 148, 158, 159, 161, 169, 172, 177, 180, 184, 190, 196, 200, 211 ideology, xvii, 3, 15, 23, 81, 105, 114, 130, 131, 141, 142, 144, 160, 190 ignorance, 27, 30, 33, 136 illocutionary act, 90, 91 illusion, 24, 115, 117, 119, 175, 189, 200, 212 image, 12, 14, 31, 44, 54, 64, 67, 69, 70, 79, 85, 114, 117, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 142, 160, 166, 186, 188, 192, 202, 208, 212 imagination, 24, 80, 85, 106 imago Dei, xiv, 69, 127, 128, 130, 132 imitation, ix, xvi, 92, 214 immediacy, 50, 52, 76, 77, 80, 81, 82, 83, 92, 106, 111, 114, 115, 171, 177, 179 impermanence, 196, 197 impotence, 183, 185, 187, 189, 191 Incan Empire, 11 incantation, 91, 103, 159 income gap, 139 independence, xxi, xxii, xxiv India, x, 16, 46, 57, 58, 60, 144, 197, 198, 207, 209, 210 indifference, 138, 169 individualism, xi, xx, 5, 166 Industrial Revolution, 176

231 industrialism, 176 inequality, xxii, xxvii, 93, 185 infant, x, 12, 177 infinite, 9, 46, 48, 49, 66, 73, 76, 108, 130, 146, 182, 199, 211, 213 infinite substance, 182 infinity, 9, 30, 48, 68, 73, 108, 181 injury, 2, 190 injustice, 183 innocence, xxvi, 41, 54, 63, 95 institution, 16, 25, 31, 33, 85, 155, 174, 176 instrumental, vii, xx, 103, 143, 177, 208 instrumental reason, vii, xx, 208 instrumentality, xx intelligence, vii, 4, 60, 140 intensity, 47, 53, 115, 118, 120, 167, 168, 170 intentionality, 78, 110, 143, 168, 172, 173 interdependence, viii, 150 interiority, 50, 75, 106, 111 interpretation, 18, 20, 43, 47, 81, 89, 99, 106, 114, 150, 151, 164, 176 interracial marriage, 185 intersubjectivity, 169 intimacy, 107, 113, 185 invisible hand, 2, 3 Islam, ix, xiii Israel, 65, 184, 187

J Jainism, x Japan, 6, 19, 206, 207, 209, 213 Japanese Empire, 7 jealousy, 167, 168, 170, 186 Jesus, x, 12, 55, 165, 189 Jinping Xi, 15 joy, 10, 51, 53, 54, 59, 62, 69, 74, 82, 103, 106, 109, 142, 171, 207 Judaism, ix judgment, 51, 67, 135 justice, vii, xviii, xx, 3, 93

232

K Kama, 39, 43, 45, 46, 51, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 197, 209 Kant, Emmanuel, 199, 208 Khrushchev, Nikita, 15 king, xiii, xiv, 10, 12, 16, 26, 28, 32, 34, 36, 61, 78, 127, 158 knowledge, ix, x, xi, xviii, 5, 24, 29, 32, 33, 100, 101, 102, 120, 134, 156, 157, 158, 163, 193 Korea, 15

L labor, 5, 10, 116, 171 language, xii, 1, 39, 44, 48, 66, 90, 92, 93, 99, 100, 113, 116, 118, 119, 126, 134, 139, 141, 157, 163, 168, 177, 178, 182, 198, 202 Lao Tzu, 204 Latin America, 40, 46, 50 law, xii, xviii, xix, xxvi, 3, 5, 35, 42, 45, 53, 61, 66, 119, 120, 123, 124, 128, 130, 131, 139, 151, 158, 161, 177, 178, 184, 196 lawgiver, xii, 132, 137, 138 legitimation, xi, xii, xiii, xxviii, 4, 16, 124, 140, 207 legitimation crisis, 140 Lenin, Vladimir, 5, 17, 18, 20, 131 Leonidas, 10 LGBTQ, 185, 190 liar, 156 liberal democracy, 86 liberalism, 15, 161 liberation, 4, 5, 40, 41, 174 libido, 15, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 62, 65, 69, 76, 169, 174, 177 lifeworld, xvi Lila, 51, 56, 59, 61, 197, 209 liminality, 147 limit, ix, 1, 7, 10, 19, 39, 41, 49, 53 limitless, 41, 45, 73, 75, 108, 109

Index linguistic phenomena, 100 linguistics, 177 literature, 99, 113, 131, 147, 175 Lithuania, 167 locus, 24, 25, 74, 108, 154, 202 locutionary act, 91 logic, ix, xvi, xx, xxi, xxviii, 1, 5, 7, 19, 20, 31, 35, 37, 40, 43, 46, 48, 60, 89, 90, 105, 107, 115, 116, 117, 151, 168, 171, 176, 179, 181, 186, 188, 191, 203 logic of power, xxi, xxviii, 19 Logos, 78 look, 10, 28, 44, 45, 46, 50, 57, 59, 75, 81, 82, 83, 102, 105, 109, 110, 139, 142, 145, 188, 198, 208, 212, 213 Lord, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xx, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 52, 53, 54, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 73, 127, 129, 131, 132, 136, 137 Lord–King, xii love, xv, 23, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 62, 70, 72, 77, 89, 105, 108, 113, 115, 117, 122, 125, 140, 151, 164, 174, 175, 187, 213 lovemarks, 113 Lucifer, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xix, 189

M machinery, iv, 105, 115, 174 Madison, James, 93 madness, 102, 174, 176 magic, ix, x, xi, xv, xviii, 1, 14, 46, 66, 67, 69, 85, 86, 87, 92, 96, 101, 102, 115, 117, 119, 120, 123, 125, 130, 131, 153, 155, 178 Mahabharata, 39, 51, 61, 197 making, ix, xiii, xx, xxviii, 3, 25, 31, 43, 66, 70, 85, 102, 118, 119, 124, 126, 129, 132, 142, 153, 163, 188, 190, 192, 196, 205 Malinowski, 87, 90 Manifest Destiny, 184 manipulation, 86, 90, 91, 153 Mao, 6, 15, 17

Index marginalization, 184, 189, 192 market, 1, 2, 3, 4, 86, 161, 166 marketplace, 3, 86 Marxism–Leninism, 4, 15, 21 masculine, 56, 72, 102 masculinity, 47, 105 mask, 14, 15, 127, 130 masochism, 77 mass culture, 166 mass media, 2, 44, 142, 165 mass murder, 12, 13, 18, 42, 52 materialism, 4, 182 materiality, 64, 141 mathematics, 134, 140, 182 Maya, 18, 51, 56, 61, 196, 197, 209, 212 meaning, x, xi, xxviii, 3, 19, 26, 32, 48, 78, 79, 86, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 101, 102, 117, 118, 119, 130, 131, 149, 150, 164, 166, 168, 171, 172, 179, 199, 202, 208, 210 mechanical laws, 135, 136 mechanism, 62, 93, 94, 105, 151 mediation, 82, 103, 106, 115, 129, 211 Melos, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii Mesopotamia, 11, 65 Messiah Complex, 188 metaphysics, 27, 28, 60, 62, 63, 124, 128, 132, 137, 143, 181, 196, 206, 207 meta-programmer, 153 Mexico, 19 Middle East, xi, xvi, 41, 67, 74 mimesis, 95 minority, xxv, 93, 94, 122, 147, 148, 165 mirror, 82, 114, 117, 118, 203 miscegenation, 121 misogyny, 125 modern subject, 133, 134, 135, 137, 164 modern world, 127, 139 modernity, 26, 32, 34, 132, 133, 140, 141, 163, 169, 176, 181, 188 monasticism, 56 monotheism, 9 morality, 41, 42, 55, 135, 138, 145, 191

233 mother, 54, 56, 57, 71, 108, 126, 128, 177, 191 Mother Nature, 57, 126, 128 Mother Teresa, 54 motion, 63, 88 motivation, 96, 99, 101, 150 Muddupalani, 61 Muhammad, 12 murder, 3, 12, 13, 14, 19, 52, 127, 129 Mussolini, Benito, 156 mysticism, 199, 201 myth, xviii, 3, 41, 61, 78, 79, 80, 83, 119, 174 Mythos, 65, 70, 78, 79, 112

N Nagarjuna, 161, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 207, 211 Napoleon, 2, 156 narcissism, v, 116, 183, 185, 188, 189, 192 Narcissus, 114, 115, 117 nationalism, 14, 157, 160, 184, 185 natural selection, 4 Nazi Party, 14, 130 needs, viii, xv, 1, 2, 4, 13, 40, 43, 48, 53, 71, 76, 79, 83, 89, 111, 131, 136, 142, 144, 149, 159, 166, 172, 189, 192, 198 neither/nor, 161 neoliberalism, 3, 86 network, 27, 34, 85, 153, 154 network society, 154 network structures, 34 neurosis, 177 Newton, 88, 135 nihilism, 37, 184 Nishida, 7, 208, 210, 213 nobility, xviii, 71, 72 node, 153, 170, 171 nomadic, xiv, 144, 178, 179 nomadism, 175, 176 non-doing, 206 norm, 49, 76 nostalgia, 181, 185

234 nothing, xi, xii, xiv, xv, xx, xxiv, xxv, xxviii, 3, 8, 9, 10, 13, 16, 20, 25, 29, 43, 44, 60, 63, 67, 96, 118, 119, 125, 133, 134, 136, 138, 139, 151, 159, 172, 183, 196, 197, 201, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 211, 214 nothingness, 36, 37, 63, 110, 195, 204, 206, 207, 208, 210, 214 noun, 92, 95, 100, 102 now point, 200, 201 Nürnberg, 121, 130

O Obama, Barak, 185 obey, xi, xiii, xviii, 2, 11, 14, 89, 125, 172 object, vii, xxi, 15, 24, 35, 38, 40, 45, 47, 48, 49, 51, 55, 60, 68, 74, 75, 76, 85, 86, 87, 90, 96, 103, 105, 109, 110, 111, 118, 122, 125, 152, 163, 174, 178, 190, 192, 196, 206, 209, 210, 211 objectification, 175 objective, 37, 40, 85, 124, 133, 134, 135, 137, 164, 165, 167, 168, 178, 182 Oedipus complex, 174 omnipotence, 192 ontology, 4, 26, 37, 132, 135, 143, 146, 154, 181, 182, 197, 198, 207 operationalism, iv, 92 opportunist, xii, 16, 18 order, ix, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xx, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxviii, 5, 7, 9, 13, 16, 20, 28, 32, 33, 36, 37, 42, 45, 48, 51, 54, 55, 63, 64, 67, 68, 73, 75, 81, 83, 85, 86, 99, 100, 101, 102, 109, 110, 114, 116, 117, 119, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 138, 139, 140, 149, 150, 153, 154, 159, 165, 170, 175, 177, 184, 186, 188, 189, 193, 203 organic, 49, 75, 76, 110, 167, 168, 169, 170 organism, 167, 168, 170, 175, 177 organismic, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173 organismic system, 167

Index orgiastic body, 177, 178 orgiastism, 56 orientation, 37, 47, 57, 73, 106, 108 ought, 8, 18, 58, 68, 130, 133

P pacifism, 15, 160 pain, 53, 55, 72, 106, 126, 145, 170, 172, 173, 177, 187, 191 panopticon, 67 papacy, xi paranomía, 122, 123 part, viii, xxiii, xxiv, 3, 5, 16, 23, 24, 35, 36, 57, 64, 69, 72, 86, 90, 93, 105, 107, 122, 123, 125, 135, 137, 140, 143, 149, 150, 152, 161, 166, 172, 175, 177, 186, 191, 192, 199, 202, 207, 210, 214 passion, xxvii, 11, 15, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 47, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 82, 85, 105, 113, 115, 122, 136, 195, 197, 198, 205 passive synthesis, 180, 181, 206 past, x, xxi, xxviii, 29, 100, 113, 121, 132, 133, 187, 190, 200, 201 pathology, 183 patriarchy, 40, 41 peace, 93, 161 Peloponnesian War, xxi people of color, 184, 190 People-as-One, 33, 158 perception, 50, 76, 81, 106, 111, 184, 197 perfection, 57, 60, 63, 72, 73, 108, 131, 188 performative act, 86, 91 perlocutionary act, 91 persecution, 70 Persian Empire, xi personality cults, viii, ix, 46, 53, 65, 66, 67, 69, 128, 136, 196 personalization, 97 personification, 189 perversion, 41, 123, 124, 125

Index pervert, 124, 125 phallic signifier, 39, 44, 164, 168, 177 phallus, 58, 177 phenomenology, 80, 171, 172, 173, 181, 210, 211 phenomenon, vii, 41, 48, 49, 50, 76, 88, 110, 111, 152, 175, 204, 207, 211, 213 philosophical anthropology, 133, 145 Philosophie Nouvelle, 133 philosophy, vii, viii, xix, 1, 20, 24, 29, 30, 31, 45, 64, 68, 73, 88, 103, 136, 157, 174, 181, 184, 207, 210, 213 physiology, 75, 82, 110 placation, 52 place, xx, xxi, 3, 11, 15, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 33, 35, 41, 59, 62, 63, 67, 79, 93, 102, 120, 129, 132, 134, 135, 141, 144, 150, 153, 154, 157, 158, 159, 164, 168, 169, 170, 171, 180, 197, 202, 206, 208, 210, 211, 213, 214 Plato, vii, 3, 45, 49, 51, 57, 72, 73, 75, 76, 108, 109, 113, 123 Platonic love, 57 Platonism, 46, 73, 108, 201 pleasure, xiii, 53, 73, 106, 108, 119, 126, 145, 164, 170, 171, 172, 173, 177, 178, 179, 180, 185, 188, 195 pluralism, 161 plutocracy, 3 poetry, 71 Poland, 20 policymaking, 157 polis, xvii, xviii, 123, 140, 193 political dissent, 154 political economy, 168, 170 Political Enlightenment, 4 political theater, 141 political theology, iii, 23, 24 politician, 121 politics, viii, xi, xxiv, xxvii, xxviii, 23, 24, 30, 31, 33, 38, 43, 105, 107, 121, 153, 157, 159, 183, 185 polytheism, 65 polyvalence, 116

235 pop culture, v, 43, 44, 165 popular culture, 43, 44, 165, 166 population, xi, xii, xiii, 3, 5, 6, 16, 17, 18, 66, 69, 129, 166 populism, 25, 147, 151, 152, 160 pornography, 42, 64 positivism, 62, 116, 136 positivity, 170, 176, 177, 178 possibility, xiv, xix, xxv, 28, 43, 85, 100, 143, 164, 170, 181, 185, 195, 203 postmodern, 1, 39, 43, 127, 140, 145, 163, 164, 167, 174, 182 poverty, 152, 155 power politics, xxvii, xxviii power struggle, 16 praise, 122, 131 prajna, 203 praxis, 29, 30 prayer, viii, 11, 79, 128 predictability, 150 pre-rational, 125 presence, viii, 1, 36, 41, 46, 47, 49, 54, 57, 60, 61, 65, 75, 77, 79, 80, 82, 107, 110, 111, 112, 114, 129, 135, 150, 163, 172, 174, 191, 198, 200, 201, 204, 205, 208, 209, 211, 213, 214 present, xviii, xxi, xxii, xxviii, 14, 29, 34, 37, 44, 47, 51, 54, 70, 72, 73, 78, 80, 82, 84, 88, 96, 112, 121, 131, 139, 143, 160, 171, 176, 181, 184, 185, 190, 191, 196, 200, 201, 203, 204, 207, 208, 210, 211, 212, 214 press, 5, 114, 156, 190 prime mover, 74, 109 principle, ix, xi, xii, xiii, xv, xviii, xxiii, 6, 18, 20, 26, 27, 32, 33, 43, 48, 50, 51, 68, 70, 117, 128, 131, 133, 135, 136, 137, 141, 160, 174, 178, 199, 203 probability, 16, 98, 149, 150 process, 24, 31, 33, 35, 43, 44, 45, 49, 51, 74, 76, 77, 79, 80, 86, 92, 95, 97, 100, 102, 106, 107, 112, 124, 129, 132, 136, 137, 140, 150, 152, 154, 161, 169, 175

236 production, 2, 3, 5, 13, 23, 32, 43, 85, 86, 114, 115, 116, 117, 140, 141, 145, 154, 166, 173, 175, 177, 179 productivity, 143, 170 profane, 36, 37, 187 profit, 3, 86 progressive, 133, 161, 163, 192 prohibition, 53 proletariat, 29 Prometheus, xvii, xviii promiscuity, 15, 42 propaganda, 19, 94, 121, 140 property, xii, xiii, xiv, xxvii, 10, 17, 86, 161 prophecy, 155 prophet, 12, 23, 54, 121 protest, 27 psyche, 62, 113, 149, 202, 207 psychiatry, 9, 43 psychoanalysis, 117, 126, 174 psychosexual, 124 psychosis, 177, 192 public discourse, 145, 156 public space, xix public sphere, 138 punctiformity, 167, 201 punishment, viii, 6, 56 pure experience, 211 purification, 52, 53, 54, 56, 70, 72, 187, 191 purpose, 9, 10, 13, 33, 48, 59, 80, 81, 85, 102, 112, 114, 136, 143, 167, 170, 172, 192, 197, 198, 208 Putin, Vladimir, xiii, 17, 42

Q qualitative, 134, 135, 137 quantitative, 126, 134, 137, 143

R race, 6, 20, 69, 121, 148, 185 racism, 125, 148, 157, 184

Index radicalism, 69, 208 rage, 183, 186, 187, 189, 190, 192 rape, 115, 122 Ratio, 78 rationality, xix, 9, 56, 93, 129, 163, 176, 199 reaction, 38, 50, 62, 183, 186 realism, 29, 30, 31, 86, 200 reality, vii, xiii, xvii, xxvi, 2, 3, 18, 30, 34, 36, 37, 44, 62, 66, 86, 87, 116, 117, 120, 121, 128, 130, 131, 134, 136, 137, 143, 151, 154, 163, 165, 176, 181, 183, 192, 196, 198, 200, 202, 204, 206, 207, 211, 212, 213 reason, vii, viii, x, xix, xxiv, 1, 2, 5, 9, 25, 37, 39, 63, 70, 78, 80, 89, 93, 98, 116, 124, 128, 131, 132, 134, 135, 143, 176, 195, 198, 199, 208 rebellion, xiv, xv, xix reciprocity, 25, 148, 149, 160 reductionism, 46, 71 reference, 34, 37, 44, 91, 159 reflection, 25, 29, 43, 45, 48, 53, 56, 81, 89, 114, 118, 143, 163, 166, 186, 210, 211 reflexivity, 45, 49, 74, 76, 77, 84, 109, 112 reification, 203 relationship, xix, 7, 16, 18, 25, 34, 59, 72, 79, 88, 97, 129, 153, 196, 200, 202, 205, 206 relativity, 37, 203 Renaissance, 124, 132, 201 repetition, 8, 18, 30, 117, 131, 178, 180 representation, 23, 31, 79, 95, 120, 178, 212 representational, 31, 170 repression, 51, 118, 174, 178, 183 reproduction, 25, 60, 73, 97, 108, 120 Republic, 30, 122 research, 81, 100, 114, 163 resistance, xxvii, 6, 7, 8, 154, 177, 185, 206 responsibility, 2, xviii, xix, xx, 3, 126, 145, 161, 174

Index ressentiment, v, 94, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, 191, 192 revelation, iv, 23, 26, 87, 94, 118, 188 revenge, xviii, xxii, xxiv, 55, 164, 183, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192 reversibility, 114, 115, 116 rhetoric, xii, xiii, 3, 19, 29, 39, 42, 89, 121, 186, 187, 190, 191 risk management, 86 ritual, ix, x, 10, 67, 86, 90, 91, 92, 93, 102, 103, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 128, 130, 131, 144, 159, 178, 187, 191 rivalry, 94 rule, viii, xiii, xiv, xv, xviii, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxv, 1, 3, 6, 15, 19, 25, 27, 59, 60, 97, 118, 119, 123, 132, 136, 141, 161, 181 ruling class, 71, 141 rumination, 185 Russian Empire, xiii, 17, 19

S sacred, 36, 37, 57, 59, 94, 129, 212 sacrifice, 12, 13, 27, 52, 54, 55, 62, 86, 95, 119, 129, 130, 186, 187, 191 sadism, 54, 77, 122 salvation, xxv, xxviii, 12, 19, 56, 57, 79, 126, 196, 209 sameness, 28, 126 Sappho, 71, 72 Satan, 69 satisfaction, 40, 48, 49, 76, 77, 136, 175 savages, 68, 175 savior, 19, 130, 191 scapegoat, 94, 95, 126 scepsis, 163 schizophrenia, 176, 177 science, vii, xvii, 40, 56, 57, 86, 87, 88, 89, 114, 117, 128, 130, 133, 134, 139, 140, 176 scientific materialism, xii scientific progress, 163 secret, ix, x, xi, 19, 44, 46, 74, 109, 114, 115, 118, 119

237 secularism, xviii, 40, 42 security, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, 2, 30, 141, 153, 192, 195 seduction, iv, 107, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123 selection, 96, 98, 99, 143, 149, 150, 212 self, ix, xx, xxvi, xxvii, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 21, 24, 26, 31, 33, 39, 43, 44, 47, 49, 51, 54, 58, 61, 63, 74, 76, 77, 80, 81, 84, 85, 94, 95, 96, 97, 106, 107, 109, 111, 112, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, 133, 135, 138, 140, 141, 142, 145, 148, 154, 158, 163, 165, 169, 171, 172, 175, 179, 180, 183, 185, 190, 192, 195, 197, 199, 206, 210, 211, 212, 214 self-awakening, 211 self-consciousness, 2, 206, 210 self-creation, 127 self-determination, 31, 132 self-fulfillment, 163 self-generation, 77, 112, 135 self-interest, xxvi, 3, 121, 133, 138 self-love, 106, 183 self-oppression, 180 self-realization, 51, 138, 141 self-reflection, ix, 31, 163, 210 self-sacrifice, 12, 54, 95, 126 self-seduction, 107, 116 self-understanding, 44, 81, 106, 112 semantic arc, 168 semantics, 90 semiotic system, 57, 168 semiotics, 142, 170, 202 sensationalism, 166 sensuality, 59, 63, 72, 168 sensuous body, 167 sensuous, the, 56 separation, 4, 31, 36, 41, 92, 113, 206 sex, 9, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 57, 60, 61, 65, 69, 70, 71, 107, 110, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 127, 136, 145, 160, 179, 184, 185, 189, 195 sex drive, 43, 46, 49, 50, 70, 71

238 sexism, 184 sexual freedom, 127 sexual organ, 125, 179 sexual revolution, 39, 41, 164 sexuality, 15, 39, 40, 42, 44, 46, 48, 49, 60, 65, 69, 70, 72, 107, 110, 116, 122, 123, 125, 127, 195 shaman, 66, 67, 128 shame, xxiv, 59, 60, 63 Shiva, 56, 58, 61 sign, ix, xi, xii, xv, xxiii, xxiv, 12, 19, 74, 109, 117, 120, 136, 172, 177 significance, 44, 79, 80, 131, 142, 157, 159, 168, 180, 209 signification, 152, 169, 171, 172 signifier, 28, 35, 36, 152, 158, 164, 177 similarity, 87, 88, 90, 94, 155 simplification, 98 simulation, 116 sin, 63, 70, 126 sinner, 64, 66, 67 situatedness, 50, 76, 111 situation, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii, 12, 20, 27, 28, 29, 31, 35, 78, 90, 92, 93, 97, 103, 139, 149, 150, 151, 152, 169, 183, 190 skin, v, ix, 43, 57, 59, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 163, 169, 170, 172, 173, 177, 190 slavery, xiv, xxiv, 11, 13, 68 social, viii, 1, 2, 9, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 66, 67, 69, 71, 73, 81, 92, 93, 94, 95, 99, 100, 101, 103, 107, 113, 114, 124, 131, 135, 137, 139, 141, 144, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 166, 169, 174, 175, 176, 177, 183, 184, 195, 213 social bond, 152, 158, 159 social contract, 25, 27, 33 social justice, 93, 160 social order, 81, 114, 124, 183 social organization, 94 social power, viii, 1, 20 social reality, 28, 151 social relationships, 66

Index society, 3, 4, 5, 6, 16, 21, 24, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 43, 52, 60, 67, 69, 72, 81, 93, 94, 95, 99, 100, 113, 114, 131, 135, 138, 148, 149, 151, 152, 157, 158, 159, 160, 165 Socrates, xx, 62, 174, 180 solar life, 198 solidarity, 148 sorcery, 115 soul, xi, 54, 56, 57, 62, 63, 64, 73, 83, 122, 129, 131, 196, 199 Southern Baptist Convention, 55 sovereign, 23, 33, 37, 153, 169 sovereignty, 24, 25, 26, 32, 119, 154 Soviet Union, xii, 4, 19, 165 space, xix, 24, 30, 34, 35, 37, 42, 58, 63, 85, 114, 153, 175, 180, 197, 198, 201, 202, 207, 208 Sparta, xxi, xxiii, xxvi, xxvii, xxviii speech, 40, 90, 91, 92, 119 Spinoza, Baruch de, 26, 34, 154 spirit, xxv, 2, 47, 56, 62, 63, 71, 72, 73, 102, 108, 121, 207, 208, 209 stability, xvii, 93, 131, 164, 200, 201, 207 Stalin, Joseph, 15, 19, 20, 131, 192 standard, 41, 107, 137, 166 status quo, 166 strong man, 139 structure, xiii, xiv, xv, 66, 67, 81, 89, 92, 100, 114, 116, 125, 130, 137, 141, 148, 150, 153, 160, 178, 186 subject, xiv, 25, 26, 28, 39, 49, 68, 72, 75, 89, 91, 106, 110, 117, 118, 128, 134, 135, 136, 137, 142, 145, 154, 158, 163, 164, 167, 169, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 182, 190, 191, 196, 206, 210, 211, 212 subjective, 3, 37, 50, 75, 106, 111, 135, 137, 138, 168, 178, 207 subjectivity, 29, 169 sublimation, 48, 49, 51, 59, 76, 77, 79, 107, 112 submission, ix, x, xiv, 19, 54, 65, 80, 142, 157 subordination, 121

Index succession, 81, 202 suffering, xv, xviii, 11, 12, 19, 38, 53, 54, 60, 62, 102, 122, 184, 187, 189, 191, 199 suicide, 12, 52, 70, 164 Sun, 11, 51, 59, 80, 198 superiority, xxv, 4, 6, 47, 192 superstition, 56 supreme being, 129 surface, 8, 14, 75, 100, 110, 114, 117, 141, 146, 159, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173, 177, 178, 179 surrender, xxi, xxv, 52, 53, 55, 72 surrogate, 186, 190 survival, xxvii, 3, 8, 10, 11, 139 symbol, xiv, xviii, xix, 9, 26, 61, 85, 119, 196 system, 2, 6, 18, 28, 31, 36, 85, 93, 98, 99, 100, 113, 118, 141, 147, 148, 149, 151, 152, 158, 160, 161, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 175, 198, 206

T taboo, 52, 187 Taisen Deshimaru, 209 talk, 2, 100, 101, 136, 172, 200 Tao, 204, 206 Taoism, 196, 203, 204, 206 taste, 63, 166 teacher, x, 72 technical skill, 139 technique, 37, 92 technocracy, viii, 4 technology, vii, 57, 128, 133, 136, 140 teleology, 49, 73, 108, 124 television, 41, 113, 145, 165 telos, 47, 48, 73, 83, 108, 109, 170 temporal horizon, 143 temptation, 46, 208 terrorism, v, vii, 40, 180 the All, 45, 51, 75, 83, 109 the given, xxi, xxv, xxviii, 200, 201

239 the good, xxvi, 5, 12, 31, 52, 74, 106, 109, 129, 141, 183 the human, ix, x, 14, 15, 26, 32, 39, 45, 47, 50, 68, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 110, 111, 112, 125, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 163, 167, 174, 175, 210 The Odyssey, 78 the West, ix, xi, xiv, 2, 16, 17, 39, 46, 57, 161, 174, 195, 196, 197, 201, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209, 211, 212, 213 theism, 25 theology, viii, 1, 3, 23, 24, 28, 63 Third Reich, 19, 121 thought, vii, x, xv, 24, 25, 55, 72, 73, 78, 86, 87, 88, 96, 108, 109, 128, 137, 138, 143, 153, 154, 155, 156, 163, 208, 211 Thrasymachus, vii threat, xvi, xvii, xxiii, xxiv, xxviii, 18, 19, 34, 36, 52, 60, 65, 83, 101, 137, 156, 165, 185, 188 time, viii, xii, xiv, xvii, xxii, xxv, xxviii, 10, 11, 17, 20, 24, 37, 41, 45, 52, 54, 55, 58, 63, 75, 77, 80, 88, 99, 101, 102, 110, 111, 112, 117, 124, 134, 137, 138, 140, 141, 156, 158, 160, 164, 167, 169, 175, 177, 178, 182, 184, 186, 190, 195, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208, 209, 210, 213, 214 tolerance, xvii, 161 torture, 12, 13, 14, 55 totalitarianism, 34, 158, 159 totality, 86, 103, 152, 159, 213 totem, 95, 187 tourist, 146, 170 tradition, x, xii, xv, xvi, xix, xx, xxviii, 12, 16, 17, 29, 36, 40, 41, 46, 55, 56, 65, 68, 71, 79, 156, 174, 188, 197, 207, 210 tragedy, xviii, 25, 72 training, vii, 144 transcendence, 45, 52, 54, 55, 56, 75, 82, 95, 109, 127, 128 transfer, 25, 89, 90 transfiguration, 81, 114

240 transformation, iv, ix, 13, 49, 85, 88, 92, 103, 113, 114, 115, 119, 126, 132, 135, 153, 196 transgression, 46, 49, 51, 59, 60, 119, 124, 131 tribe, 6, 10, 11, 14, 65, 172 tribute, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, xxvii Triumph of the Will, 14, 26, 130 trompe l’oeil, 117 Trotsky, Leon, 19 Trump, Donald, v, 42, 45, 155, 156, 157, 183, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192 truth, vii, x, xiv, xv, xvi, xvii, xx, 1, 5, 21, 25, 28, 37, 44, 69, 78, 79, 80, 115, 117, 118, 130, 133, 134, 139, 156, 170, 174, 181, 183, 188, 199 tyranny, 93, 105, 123 tyrant, xviii, 122, 123

U Ukraine, 69 ultimate, x, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, 2, 4, 6, 10, 14, 15, 33, 53, 54, 60, 62, 63, 67, 72, 73, 74, 77, 89, 102, 108, 109, 130, 132, 137, 160, 164, 199, 207, 210, 212 umori, 158 uncertainty, 27, 98, 157 unconscious, 40, 94, 117, 118, 163, 168 United States, xiv, 15, 68 unity, 31, 56, 63, 64, 71, 72, 73, 74, 76, 85, 96, 108, 109, 111, 121, 175, 208, 209, 213 universal truth, xiv universe, xi, 1, 10, 53, 61, 62, 63, 102, 108, 114, 120, 127, 134, 135, 137, 188, 195, 199, 205, 206, 207 unspeakable, 130, 204 uprising, xxv US House of Representatives, 184 utterance, 86, 91

Index

V validity, 86, 90, 163, 176 values, 33, 86, 89, 97, 120, 135, 139, 146, 148, 156, 160, 161, 184, 189 vanity, 188 vedanta, x, xi veil, 18, 27, 33, 197 verbal power, xiii, 66, 68 vertical relation, 89, 90 victim, v, 47, 77, 94, 95, 116, 183, 185, 186, 188 violence, xvi, 94, 115, 118, 124, 125, 155, 191 virtual reality, 181 virtue, 24, 36, 39, 72, 91, 114, 148, 191 vital, ix, 13, 56, 72, 93, 125, 126, 131, 168, 169 void, 115, 117, 118, 158, 207, 214 volition, 125, 137 vulnerability, 107, 115, 121, 186, 189, 191

W Walmart, 166 wants, xv, xix, 9, 13, 15, 47, 53, 55, 58, 77, 110, 111, 112, 118, 127, 129, 135, 137, 138, 140, 144, 145, 171, 177, 189, 191, 209 war, xvi, xxi, xxii, xxiv, xxv, xxvii, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17, 33, 42, 122, 155 warrior, xxv, 61, 67 weakness, xi, xxiii, 8, 28, 70, 115, 186, 190 wealth, 16, 18, 119, 139 weaponization, 184, 185 Weber, Max, 27, 155, 156 welfare, 138, 190 White, v, xiv, 6, 147, 148, 156, 157, 184, 185, 186, 189, 190, 191 White Christian Nationalism, v, 184 White supremacy, 184

Index whole, xxiii, 32, 35, 73, 89, 90, 93, 101, 102, 120, 130, 174, 177, 186 will to power, ix, 2, 8, 9, 13, 39, 171 wisdom, xi, xviii, 45, 64, 71, 73, 75, 110, 142, 188, 203 women, 9, 11, 30, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 65, 70, 107, 124, 127, 136, 190 word, xiii, xiv, xv, 10, 12, 20, 66, 68, 78, 79, 80, 85, 90, 91, 95, 96, 101, 102, 124, 128, 130, 131, 193, 213 working class, 141, 157 world view, 163 World War II, 15, 166

241

X xenophobia, 125 Xerxes, 10

Y yoga, x, 59, 60

Z Zen, 196, 199, 202, 203, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 214