For all the different conflicts that take place on the face of the earth, there is always a root in the essential conflict which resides in the soul; between the desire to depart from oneself, and the desire to become oneself. Between the call to know one’s Self, and the call to know what is Other. Plotinus says beautifully, that one will never know God, if one values what is before one’s eyes, over oneself.
“If one supposes oneself inferior to things that come to be and perish and assumes oneself to be the most dishonoured and mortal of the things one does honour, neither the nature nor the power of god could ever be impressed in one's heart.”
-Plotinus, V.1.1.
Self-love amounts not to egoism, but our times will not listen. Self-love is indeed most high, and any culture that renounces this most essential calling to love oneself, will destroy itself, and the power of god will never be impressed in its heart. This is the most Ancient of teachings. ‘Know thyself’, which is related to ‘love thyself.’ For all knowing is a loving. In putting our attention towards a thing we want to gain knowledge of, we desire the thing, we greet it with our love, we deem it most worthy of investigation, most worthy of our time, most worthy of the force of life that we are. As Heidegger reminds, thinking is related to thanking. In thinking about something, we focus our attention on it, and thus thank it for its presence. And what is more worthy of thanking, than your self, without which nothing whatsoever could be thanked?
Philosophy is never a disinterested search for truth, it is always a love of wisdom. It is essentially interested, it is imbued with love, and the desire to have our thoughts be directed to that which is most worth loving. And what is more worthy of our love, than that without which nothing whatsoever could be loved? What is more worthy of love, than the self doing the loving?
This most Ancient of truths, is a teaching of direction; before you attempt to know the world, know yourself. And as all knowing is a desiring, love yourself, before you love the world. For how could the reverse ever lead to anything good? How could one every be capable of true generosity, how could one ever give anything of value, if one has nothing to give? If one is nothing? In knowing oneself, one knows what belongs to oneself, and what does not. One knows what one should be praised for, and what one should be blamed for. One knows one’s power, and one knows what life it is that belongs to oneself. In knowing oneself, one comes to know who one is. And in knowing this, we are able to see which actions we must undertake, to become more of what we are, to become more alive. This is the basis of all ethics, for how could what is void of life, ever give life?
This is the image of the ‘gift’, common to Egypt, Greece, India, all Indo-European derived systems of thought, and many more; the person becoming so full of himself, that he is able to give what he has in excess. Like the Sun, so full of itself, that it naturally outflows to give life to everything else. So in love with oneself, that one’s love eventually stretches outward, and is able to enlighten the lives of others. This is the model of ethics common to Descartes and Spinoza; to recognize oneself as an essence, and become like God in the recognition of one’s creative nature as an individual fully responsible for himself. This is the model, common to all great systems of thought, for it is the model given to us by nature.
Much through the scars left by the horrors of the past century, and its interpretations by the philosophers of ‘difference’ and ‘the Other’, this model has been replaced by the model of sacrifice. What the gift becomes, is not the fruit of a life well lived, but the sacrifice of oneself for the other. It is having the other person be more important than oneself. It becomes giving one’s own energy away, to aid the other. You do not help the other by helping him become strong in his own right, but in giving him your strength. You are not responsible for the well-being of your self, which when strengthened, can aid others. Rather, you become responsible for the other. Becoming like God comes to sound like the desire of tyrants, and ethics comes to reside in the commandment, to become as impoverished as possible. Become not full of life, but give life away.
The adoption of this alternative model, shows itself in many contemporary phenomena; the other’s disease is not treated by strengthening him against disease, but by every one in society sacrificing a little bit of his own health. Society becomes not the domain of individuals growing, and helping each other grow. Rather, society becomes the domain in which we renounce individual growth, and are involved in a never ending sacrifice for each other. We see it in our one-sided models of immigration; the only manner to help the other, is to impoverish ourselves.
We no longer help each one become who he is, rather, we help all become what is other. We sacrifice our own personal manner of relating to nature, with its natural dynamic of taking and giving, in order to save ‘the climate.’ We think a sick human, is the way towards a healthy ‘climate.’ But only a healthy tree bears fruit.
Why does one sacrifice? Because one feels oneself in debt, because one feels oneself not worthy of what one has, and one has to ‘give back’. The underlying idea being that everything one has, had first to be taken from someone else. From who? This person is never pointed out; from what nature have you or I stolen? From what foreign land have you or I stolen? You cannot put a finger on it, except by concocting absurdly exaggerated schemes of global interconnection. There is no one to point to, for there never is a concrete other. Rather, the other is always the Other, in general. He is no one, yet can become anyone. As Levinas, the principal philosopher of an ethics of ‘the Other’, writes:
“It [the I] is under the accusation of the other, even though it be faultless. It is a hostage for the other, obeying a command before having heard it, faithful to a commitment that it never made, to a past that has never been present.”
(Levinas, God and Philosophy, 179. In ‘the Levinas Reader.’)
The fact for which one makes oneself indebted to sacrifice, is never present. You never did anything wrong, but it doesn’t matter, for your mere existence is marked by debt, fault, and the command to sacrifice yourself. For whom? ‘The Other’, a person never seen by anyone, but with many faces. Debt is infinite, only to be paid off in the commitment to pay forever.
The way to help the other is not to sacrifice your privileges, it is to make use of them in such a manner, that you become a light capable of shining on to others, to help each make good use of what they are given. To make good use of what one is given, both evils and good, this is original ethics. What we hear today: renounce what is given, for all that is given is evil.
As a life living Life, joy is no longer your birthright, it is no longer your essence to shine with the fullness of the Sun. Rather, guilt is now your only birthright, commanded to sacrifice yourself for the eternal Other. For a culture that deems itself atheistic and enlightened, we have surely not dropped the fear of God. But He no longer rests in the sky, but has become your very neighbour. It is the other, in all his manifestations; as a minority group, a partner, an ‘at risk patient’, an undefinable ‘climate’, who demands your sacrifice.
It is a faulty image, wholly unfamiliar for anyone who has ever dared to better themselves. There is no true intersubjectivity, without a subject. And in the true depths of intersubjectivity, when individual natures truly ‘fit’ together, the other is no other, but ‘part’ of the self. True generosity is an overflowing, not an emptying.
What is the subject? It is this thing, caught between Life and matter. Either choosing to know itself, or choosing to forget itself. But he who has forgotten himself, what has he to give? It is this subject, so unconcerned for himself, and only caring for the other, that is commanded to sacrifice. And it is precisely a sacrifice, for what he can give, is not what he can miss, it is not something in excess, that he can freely give without having to suffer its absence. He has nothing to give, and all that remains to be sacrificed, is himself. A non-symmetrical relation, in which the receiver grows, and he who gifts diminishes, this is what we call ‘ethics’.
It is a sad affair, when the ethics of the self so full of itself that it radiates outwards, is confronted by the ethics of self-sacrifice. The noble desire to become like the Sun, hijacked by the command to renounce oneself, the command to lose one’s center in radiating outwards. We give, out of self-love radiating outwards, but he who receives the gift, convinces us that our nature consists in giving even more, until there is nothing left to give but ourselves. Paradoxically, it is because we are like this pure desire to radiate our fullness outwards, but unaware of ourselves, that we become such easy victims.
In all philosophies of Life, the individual is marked by a fullness. A substantial being, glowing in its own right with this force of Life; ready to stretch its arms outwards to enlighten the world, like the eternal image of the center stretching outwards to become a circle, or the Sun’s rays shining forth out of its own essential nature. In this gift, one never leaves oneself. And it is precisely the deeper one goes into oneself, the more one becomes oneself, the more one is able to give. It is when this self-knowledge accompanied by self-love is so full of itself, that it naturally emanates outwards.
But we have gone astray. Burdened with the horrors of the past, we have dared to consider, that maybe it is in our love of self that Evil resides? Hence, the great turning takes place in which we heed no longer the call to know ourselves, and in doing so, to know God. Rather, we heed the call to sacrifice ourselves for the other, and in doing so, to know only matter. It is a life in descent, accompanied by vast amounts of knowledge, all in the service of rationalizing this descent. Descent into matter is forgetting, regardless of how much knowledge one gathers in this descent. Understanding, the pure accumulation of knowledge, can be just as much a tool of remembrance, as it can be a tool of forgetting. As Michel Henry says, madness has lost all but reason. Not reason in a higher sense as Logos, but as mere thinking. The most forgetful, are not those who think the least, but those who think ceaselessly, without any awareness of where their thoughts come from, or where they are going. Without any knowledge, of what Life it is that is doing the thinking. And without any knowledge, of what thought truly is. The speed of thought is no measure of truth.
Your self is not something to feel shame for. What is worthy of shame is living in a manner foreign to oneself, and thus, foreign to life. Driven by the false dialectic of the invisible ‘Other’, many seek to reverse this. The self is marked by guilt, and we can only become worthy, if we renounce it in function of what is foreign to ourselves. But the guilt is eternal. The ethics of today: your self and its interests are evil, live in a manner so foreign to yourself, so that the Other might live from your ashes. It is in such a scheme, that deception is easily enacted. As Plotinus teaches, all deception starts by valuing what is other over ourselves. In giving our love away to these things, we allow these things to slowly take away our selves. What we love is what we find worthy of protecting. And without self-love, there remains only the desire to ruin ourselves.
A dubious metaphysics underlies our world. You should be extremely distrustful of everyone who claims you are not worthy, that self-love amounts to egoism, that nature is not to be trusted, that there is such a thing as intersubjectivity with a weak subject, and that the only gift is the one in which you empty yourself.
“If, then, a soul knows itself, it knows also that its motion is not straight, but that, other than when it is deflected, its natural motion is like that in a circle, not around something external but about its own centre. The centre is what the circle originates from, and what it moves round, and which it comes from. And the soul depends on the centre, and carries itself towards it. All souls should move towards it; the souls of the gods always do move towards it. In moving towards it they are gods. God is whatever is common to that centre, while what is far removed is the common human being and beast.”
-Plotinus. VI.9.8. 1-10.