Existential Alienation Proves the Deity's Reality
In a comment on the previous entry, Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred mention an earlier essay on their site that discusses some similar issues. I had criticized Freud's misunderstanding of the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself, in part because Freud seems to think that the only legitimate "commandments" are those which ratify -- and which derive from -- what he came to view as the essentials of human nature. The idea that the commandment might originate in a Transcendent Source and that it might actually be intended to transform human nature does not seem to have occurred to him.
Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred's post begins with an appealing apothegm from the celebrated English essayist, William Hazlitt:
First, though, a digression.
Hazlitt's aperçu also illustrates what is, I think, the real dividing line between human beings and the animals. Just how animals differ from humans was recently discussed in the comments to Gagdad Bob's evisceration of a dailykos screed which (taking off from the recent observation that chimpanzees or bonobos have been observed making sharpened spears with which to hunt bush babies) asserted than man could no longer pride himself on being the only toolmaking animal, and that men are only animals after all.
Leftists were not always so convinced. It was none other than the communist Brecht who wrote these haunting lyrics, with their defiant closing assertion:
Hazlitt is on to something, although I think that animals have been observed to weep, and I think that some animals can be said to laugh, although probably only the laughter of sheer exuberance, and not the rictus sardonicus of satire or schadenfreude.
Where Hazlitt is magnificently accurate is in suggesting that the human "is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." The phrasing he uses is exactly right: the human animal is not struck by the difference between what things are and what they might be, or could be, but by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. In that "ought" I claim to find experiential proof for the Transcendent Source.
Here's how.
If we assume that there is no Transcendent Source (Heaven forbid), and that the human being emerges seamlessly from the natural world, just as the natural world emerges seamlessly from whatever it is that provided the basis for its emergence, without direction, purpose, or meaning, on the basis of purely natural and self-developing processes, then we would expect to discover that the human animal is perfectly at home in the world from which it emerged. Evolving naturally from the world as it is, the human animal would be completely at home in the world, and would find the world "right" just as it is.
As I think the other animals find the world to be.
And yet, the human animal is "struck by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." Why should that be? How could the human animal, emerging seamlessly as part and parcel of the natural world, have any conception that it "ought" to be otherwise? And yet we do. In fact, the very atheistic leftists who rail against the notion that a human being is not merely an animal are themselves motivated by a discrepancy between what they perceive to be the shortcomings of the world as it is, and the utopia that they envisage. Why are human beings able to imagine another world, and realize that this world "ought" to be like the ideal (in Plato's sense) world they imagine?
It is because the human soul partakes of a Divine essence in a way that the animal soul does not. (Now of course the animals were created by the same Transcendent Source that created the human being, and we can be certain, from Perek Shira that the animals are all engaged in worship of the Divine, and we know that human souls can transmigrate into animal forms, and that souls that have been animals can be (re)incarnated as human beings. The simple explanation is that the animals do have a living soul, a "nefesh chaya" [Genesis 1:24], which is of the same order as the "nefesh chaya" of human beings; only human beings, however, have the "neshomoh" [Genesis 2:7] which the Transcendent Source breathed into their nostrils, and it is the "neshomoh" that accounts for the existential alienation that humans often experience in a world that they experience as beautiful but not quite "right.")
To tie this back into the discussion of the Transcendent Source's commandment that we love our neighbors as ourselves, recall that the Transcendent Source has addressed Himself to the human soul in a direct confrontation. The Bible records several such episodes of the Transcendent becoming Immanent, and confronting the human soul directly. The first such was in the Garden, and as we are all descendents of Adam, it was an episode that involved all of us.
The ability to receive the commandment, to participate in the confrontation, derives from the "neshomoh" that was planted, if you will, within the human being and which provides a sort of receiver for the Divine communication. (It's actually a transceiver, but the art and science of prayer are more about tuning the transceiver to the Divine frequency that the Transcendent Source is continually and continuously sending, than about transmitting back to the Transcendent Source what that Source already knows.) I must leave for another posting, and for further consideration, the question as to why the Creator created the human being with a "neshomoh" that requires a further confrontation and the communication of further instructions, in order to transcend its animal nature and become truly human, although I think it is evident that the involvement of the Creator in that communication, confrontation, and commandment is evidence of great kindness and mercy.
Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred's post begins with an appealing apothegm from the celebrated English essayist, William Hazlitt:
Man is the only animal who laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be.That pithy maxim diverted me from further reflexion on Freud's Das Unbehagen in der Kultur, because it provides a very clear way of showing how a human being's sense of alienation in the world indicates the reality of a Transcendent Source beyond material life.
First, though, a digression.
Hazlitt's aperçu also illustrates what is, I think, the real dividing line between human beings and the animals. Just how animals differ from humans was recently discussed in the comments to Gagdad Bob's evisceration of a dailykos screed which (taking off from the recent observation that chimpanzees or bonobos have been observed making sharpened spears with which to hunt bush babies) asserted than man could no longer pride himself on being the only toolmaking animal, and that men are only animals after all.
Leftists were not always so convinced. It was none other than the communist Brecht who wrote these haunting lyrics, with their defiant closing assertion:
Meine Herren, meine Mutter praegte, auf mich einst, ein schlimmes Wort:(To open another tiroir: Why toolmaking should be the archetypal hallmark of humanity's humanity is not altogether clear to me; and although Sir William Osler once remarked that man is the only animal who desires to take medicines, there is good evidence that bears, primates, and elephants seek certain plants when they appear to have certain illnesses, in some cases the same plants that humans in the same habitats use for similar ailments, and in some cases the humans have the tradition that they learned about these medicines by observing the animals. So I don't think that is the difference, either.)
Ich wurde enden am Schauhaus, oder an einem noch schlimmeren Ort.
Ja, so ein Wort, ist leicht gesagt! Aber ich sage Euch: Daraus wird Nichts!
Da konnt Ihr nicht machen mit mir --- Ein Mensch ist kein Tier!
Hazlitt is on to something, although I think that animals have been observed to weep, and I think that some animals can be said to laugh, although probably only the laughter of sheer exuberance, and not the rictus sardonicus of satire or schadenfreude.
Where Hazlitt is magnificently accurate is in suggesting that the human "is the only animal that is struck by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." The phrasing he uses is exactly right: the human animal is not struck by the difference between what things are and what they might be, or could be, but by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be. In that "ought" I claim to find experiential proof for the Transcendent Source.
Here's how.
If we assume that there is no Transcendent Source (Heaven forbid), and that the human being emerges seamlessly from the natural world, just as the natural world emerges seamlessly from whatever it is that provided the basis for its emergence, without direction, purpose, or meaning, on the basis of purely natural and self-developing processes, then we would expect to discover that the human animal is perfectly at home in the world from which it emerged. Evolving naturally from the world as it is, the human animal would be completely at home in the world, and would find the world "right" just as it is.
As I think the other animals find the world to be.
And yet, the human animal is "struck by the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." Why should that be? How could the human animal, emerging seamlessly as part and parcel of the natural world, have any conception that it "ought" to be otherwise? And yet we do. In fact, the very atheistic leftists who rail against the notion that a human being is not merely an animal are themselves motivated by a discrepancy between what they perceive to be the shortcomings of the world as it is, and the utopia that they envisage. Why are human beings able to imagine another world, and realize that this world "ought" to be like the ideal (in Plato's sense) world they imagine?
It is because the human soul partakes of a Divine essence in a way that the animal soul does not. (Now of course the animals were created by the same Transcendent Source that created the human being, and we can be certain, from Perek Shira that the animals are all engaged in worship of the Divine, and we know that human souls can transmigrate into animal forms, and that souls that have been animals can be (re)incarnated as human beings. The simple explanation is that the animals do have a living soul, a "nefesh chaya" [Genesis 1:24], which is of the same order as the "nefesh chaya" of human beings; only human beings, however, have the "neshomoh" [Genesis 2:7] which the Transcendent Source breathed into their nostrils, and it is the "neshomoh" that accounts for the existential alienation that humans often experience in a world that they experience as beautiful but not quite "right.")
To tie this back into the discussion of the Transcendent Source's commandment that we love our neighbors as ourselves, recall that the Transcendent Source has addressed Himself to the human soul in a direct confrontation. The Bible records several such episodes of the Transcendent becoming Immanent, and confronting the human soul directly. The first such was in the Garden, and as we are all descendents of Adam, it was an episode that involved all of us.
The ability to receive the commandment, to participate in the confrontation, derives from the "neshomoh" that was planted, if you will, within the human being and which provides a sort of receiver for the Divine communication. (It's actually a transceiver, but the art and science of prayer are more about tuning the transceiver to the Divine frequency that the Transcendent Source is continually and continuously sending, than about transmitting back to the Transcendent Source what that Source already knows.) I must leave for another posting, and for further consideration, the question as to why the Creator created the human being with a "neshomoh" that requires a further confrontation and the communication of further instructions, in order to transcend its animal nature and become truly human, although I think it is evident that the involvement of the Creator in that communication, confrontation, and commandment is evidence of great kindness and mercy.
posted by Gandalin at 10:05 PM
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