On... and on...

ON.... AND ON......

“Empedocles says that the elements and the principles and the One are gods, and that the One is necessity, but that it’s matter is the four elements, while it’s forms are Strife and Love. He calls the elements gods, and the mixture of these, the Sphere, and says that the cosmos will be dissolved into this uniform entity. He moreover thinks that the souls are divine, and those “pure ones” who share in them “purely” are divine as well”1

There is a certain similarity between what is reported of Empedocles’ teaching in the above account by the ancient doxographer Aetius, and the -quite remarkable- philosophy of early 20^th century British Idealist philosopher, John McTaggart. The latter, while denying the Absolute was a person, nevertheless suggested that souls are immortal, and undergo processes of reincarnation. What Empedocles says is rather less optimistic. He says that Love and Strife hold perpetual sway, and that all things, cosmic phenomena, ineluctably change in accordance with the shifting hegemony of one or the other aspect or principle of the One.

The controversy continues, and is evidence enough that the problem of free-will and determinism is neither trivial, nor likely to be resolved. I am more persuaded by arguments for an ultimate determinacy, with only apparent individual free-will (though no less vital and important for all it’s status as mere appearance, after all, we ourselves, as we normally consider ourselves, are in these accounts mere surface phenomena).

In Empedocles’ account, the fate of the world at any given point is determined by the rule of Aphrodite (love) or Neikos (strife), as aspects of the One whose being pulsates between dispersal and integration. It is – contrary to every purely optimistic philosophy and theology, to every exaggerated self-help affirmation, to every neoliberal maxim, dictate, and fabricated fantasy of the “self-made” man or woman, the “all you need is belief, hard work, and some supernormally strong boot-straps”- a philosophy of profound realism.

We awake into this life, with all its matrices of pre-conditions and determinations, including the hopelessly complicated constitutions of the human body/mind, family, class, society, culture, nation, to name only some of the particularly human aspects of the world, never mind everything else, either understandable or beyond the possibility of human understanding. From birth to death, all experience passes through the concatenated filters and processes of these matrices. And then, the apparently inescapable fate of mortal condition, death itself, and on.....

The universal optimism, of the Abrahamic religions for example, might have done, and might still do afford comfort and beneficial inspiration to the lives of many, and in this much, they are good. However, outside of personal conscience and devotion, I cannot but regard their eschatological views, when imported, impressed, and imposed on general populations, as a source of wild imbalance, confusion, and added suffering……And to be consistent in my views, I must also regard their partial dominion as somehow pre-determined and necessary….

So, while I have often voiced very strong criticism of such religious ideologies, I must nevertheless recognise that if they are a phenomenal condition within the world into which I was born, then they are necessary; though no more or less so than other features, like the opposition to them, and the efforts to reawaken native Indo-European understandings of the world, of which I am – to the extent that I am anything – an advocate.

Absolute fate and relative uncertainty. Love and Strife. Not the same, but never apart, and no less burdensome for the recognition of their rule.

LIR’S THRENODY

‘Burned out and down, to seed release

by night, dispersing as the range

of stars, around a realm of peace,

there bound, and turn in need of change

***

Where vain desire summons grief,

for slaves to greed, the soughing storm,

and flame, they come with pain relief,

there rise and crash in waves reborn’