Tólma, a year in review

& looking ahead

As the year is ending, some words are warranted. I want to go over what has been published under the name of Tólma, and take a look at the future.

Quite a few things have been written in the past year, including a collection of essays in print. Most notable are the various series on Diogenes, Plotinus, Descartes, and Michel Henry. The latter’s philosophy of Life has influenced me deeply, and his diagnosis of modernity as ‘life turning against life’ has served as a lens through which I look at this world.

In truth, Henry has been most interesting to me in that he has shown me that his model of ‘life turning against life’, is present from the very beginning of the history of Western philosophy.  Not that philosophy = life turning against life, although a case for this can be made too. When man starts thinking about the world, he has perhaps already renounced himself. 

Most notably we see this framework in the platonism of Plotinus. If anything is wrong with Henry, it is his downplaying of Greek philosophy, seeing it as the moment in which life starts to be occluded. This couldn’t be further from the truth. And it all rests on Henry mis-comprehending what seeing means for the Greeks.

For Henry, all culture is a culture of life, in that culture is nothing but the auto-expression of life itself, the way in which life cultures itself, the way in which life lives. But not all culture is equal. Bach is worth more than Kanye. And Tarkovsky is worth more than the news. But why is not all culture equal? Because not all life is equal. Henry would agree, but he is hesitant to express it. He said himself that he was never interested in the world, only in life. Let other philosophers think about the world, I think about Life. So he said. But there is a difference between the unity of all life, and the difference that rules the world. There is a difference between the unity of Life, and the differences between lives. Henry is hesitant to express himself as a Greek. Which is what he is, in the end.

“For the best men choose one thing above all—immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.”

To unite the reality of God’s power and the reality of power on earth in one philosophy, such is the merit of Heraclitus. Such was the merit of Plato, and such was the merit of Plotinus. And such, is the task laid before us. These ideas are not of the past. And neither has a philosophy of life ever been written. None of these things are events from the past, they are programs laid out for the future, Ideals.

The cultural drift is one of life turning against life. Henry is useful for the diagnosis, for the framework, but for the solution we must go back further. To the Greeks. And a little less far back, to Descartes. 

It has become increasingly clear to me. To be against the cultural drift today, but to be against the naive ‘retvrn’ drift too, one must be a little bit of a Cartesian. 

Modern science starts with Descartes, but so does science-fiction. And to imagine a future, to imagine a world, where techno-science is present, but in the service of life, is this not most imperative? And is this not precisely what Descartes sought to do? To advance humanity by way of the imaginative scientific intellect, to fabulate a world. But, a world which remains in the service of life, the knowledge of which has nothing to do with science. 

Against time, or with one’s time. Such is the question we ask. But it is perhaps a false question. The only way to create a different time is to move with one’s time. ‘The only way out is through.’ 

But what of the alternative, to place oneself ‘outside of time’? To seek “journey’s end”?  Perhaps, but the divine Plato knew, that as much as contemplation is an end in itself, it must eventually lead to creative action. Contemplation is production. 

“The lover is turned to the great sea of beauty, and, gazing upon this, he gives birth to many gloriously beautiful ideas and theories, in unstinting love of wisdom.” (Plato, Symposium, 210 c-d)

There are ways to think this, and for me this way is through Descartes. 

I repeat once more, the problems to which Descartes’ philosophy was an answer, these are our problems. Weaponized questions, the horror of reason unchained, a life coming to question even its own reality, questioning itself into misery, into death even. Descartes is perceived as the man who gave birth to modern science, understood as the manipulation of matter. And perhaps it is precisely because of this, that he knew of the dangers of not first cultivating common sense. Of not first attaining that surest of truths which resides in the Cogito, that surest knowledge that will make us go through this life with confidence, through whatever deceptions we might be faced with. That most indubitable of truths, the realization of which will eventually lead to God.

For what does the manipulation of matter through science lead to, when it is practiced by ‘lives which have turned against life’? By the learned idiots from The Search for Truth, who are so smart that they have started questioning even themselves, and their own capacity to arrive at truth? Perhaps it ends in children so unsure about themselves, that they ask techno-science for a mastectomy? Such is one of the options. The life which no longer believes in its own powers, this is the life that vaccinates itself to death. 

History moves forward, and technology cannot be resisted. You can’t execute the nerds. What you can do is make sure that technology is in the hands of those who love life. In the hands of those who strive to have technology be in the service of life. 

But Descartes did not speak about politics, he did not speak about what ‘we’ should do. Descartes did not believe in ‘we’, he believed in I. When stupidity rules the world, there is no sense in believing in people. However, it becomes imperative to start believing in yourself. The world wants to be deceived, I is certain.

In 2023, I will first continue the reading of Descartes’ Search For Truth. And in general, I want to refine further the things I have spoken about above. I also hope to write more about Nietzsche, I mean to do a reading of The Genealogy of Morality, but we will see. This basic framework of ‘life turning against life’, the Genealogy is in many senses a precise exposition of how this takes place and what it looks like. 

There will also be a second volume of essays in print, but it is still very much unsure when precisely this will happen. There is one longer-form text I want to include, laying out a more complete ‘philosophy’ of ‘life turning against life’, going in detail over how this framework is present in a variety of philosophers, Ancient and Modern. The research is going well, but there are some conditions in my personal life that I want to assure first before I start writing this text. I want to be able to give it the seriousness and attention it requires. 

Tólma was conceived in the midst of the pandemic, when I became increasingly uncertain about what ‘doing philosophy’ could mean today, and what it could mean for me. Becoming an academic was no longer as enticing, and so I went online. Much of my early essays were concerned with these questions, the role of the university today, how the idiocy concerning covid was held in place by academia, and so on. 

And what it could mean to think about ‘covid’ in a heterodox manner, philosophically. And also, what conditions of life would be required to do so? It became clear that the life of the university philosopher is not the life that could truly think. 

What is the alternative? How to do philosophy in this world? How to think, ‘philosophie comme manière de vivre’, today? True philosophy is always against time, it knows no place in the world.

Hence, why universities existed in the first place. To give resources so people could devote themselves to a life of study. Places to keep thought safe from the world. Places within time, where eternity could be practiced.

But we know about the idiocy that has crept into all levels of academic bureaucracy. And with this, the question arises; can the academic do his research, in an environment so opposed to thought? And even if there is no censorship, will the environment itself not put an unconscious blockage on the philosopher’s thoughts? And even if there were no such problems, why would a philosopher want to be supported by this system? Why would the man of wisdom associate himself with the palace of stupidity? As much as wisdom is contagious, so is stupidity.

The alternative would be to go by oneself. But with the freedom gained, comes the need to create a palace for oneself. An inner citadel, and a network of free spirits. One is thrown into the world. And except for this thrownness itself, nothing is given.

Quite the journey it has been. In truth, the past year and a half have felt like five.  

One of the topics that has concerned my writing is deception. Both in a political and social sense, and in a more metaphysical sense. To live in the world, is to be exposed to deception. Nature generates its own mode of deceit, says Plotinus.

“For everything that pays attention to something else is liable to be bewitched by that something; the thing that it pays attention to bewitches it and exerts a pull on it.” (IV. 4.43)

Intentionality itself is the consciousness of being deceived. 

Everything fights for influence, everything fights to exert a pull on everything else. So it is. Will to power. And the only question becomes: who is bewitching who, and for what ends? 

And, of course, who is that I that is deceiving and being deceived, but in its deepest essence is free from deception? 

“Only that which is focused on itself is immune to sorcery.” (IV.4.43) 

Only self-thinking thought, only contemplation, is free from deception. This brings us, again, to Descartes. For no one has thought this thought that thinks itself more deeply. In fact, it was Descartes’ consciousness of the reality of deception, that led him to the Cogito. He realized that the world wants to be deceived. So let it be deceived. The world is this game of sorcery as Plotinus says, and there is no sense in trying to remedy it. What can be done, is to find that fortress within oneself that is immune to deception. What can be done, is to strengthen oneself, to build oneself. 

I return once again to the painting from which I have drawn much, ‘The Conjurer’, by Hieronymus Bosch.

What is wrong here? It is not the deceiver, carrying wisdom in his basket. It is the deceived; bent back, attention focussed fully outside of himself. Caring more about the pearl, than about himself. One could say he had it coming.

"Les illusions viennent du ciel, et les erreurs viennent de nous." - Joseph Joubert

What can be done, is to make sure that the sorcery deceives oneself and others into living in line with the Good. The world is a fable, said Descartes. Might as well make it a good one. 

Have a great New Year friends.