êthos mystéthikos - Chapter 5 (From the work in progress: The Poetized Critique) By M. Santos

 

5. THE TWO WAYS OF KNOWLEDGE (1)

The ultra-sophisticated metaphysics of Buddhism tells us of pratītyasamutpāda, the interdependent origination, where all phenomena are the result of mutually dependent existences. Now, this is something that we can use here as a metaphor to mainly elucidate our metaquantum fifth dimension as well.

But when we think of ouroboros, it would serve to illustrate the old wheel of Newtonian mechanics, the same wheel that was broken by Einstein's theory of relativity.

By this we mean that if our mystéthika is not limited to a linear cosmological view, where things are limited to merely mechanical and apparent movement in ordinary chronology in general.

So what would we say about the metaquantum?

That's why we start from the metaphysics of the beautiful and, in this case, the best thing to do is to start with a direct exposition of the two paths of knowledge in focus.

Thus, let us consider initially that the principle of reason conditions experience as a law of causality and motivation, and that thought, by the law of foundation of judgments in time, is the line without extension and without content that limits past and future.

On the other hand, the adequate objectivity of the Idea, through intuitive aesthetic knowledge, presupposes that a natural object expresses its idea, free from the forms of the principle of reason, and that the subject is a pure subject of knowledge, emancipated from all individuality and subservience to the world of Negativity in life.

We already know that representations can be intuitive or abstract, and that the latter class includes concepts that are formulated by rational capacity, while, in the case of intuitive representations, they are those that encompass the entire world of experience, even being the condition of possibility of all experience and meaning.

Now, it should be noted here that in order for a human body to enter the scene, human consciousness must first proceed in a dialogical-dialectical-epistemic manner. In short, before that, even a human body in ordinary nature has no relevant epistemic value, unless such a body is grounded, that is, it has intuited the Idea of ​​Humanity.

The general forms of understanding can be described both by concepts and also can be intuited a priori from the sensibility, that is, the body as the primary object of any possible experience, and whose properties can be abstracted and also intuited.

Thus, space and time are the most general forms of perception and, consequently, of experience, being also the condition of possibility of all this.

Both forms have the value of laws of all possible experience, but time and space, however, must be considered as pure forms, empty of content, and as a special class of representations with an existence of their own. Despite this, mystetically, we can suggest that ideas are the indispensable properties for the development of the notions of time, space and causality in the human mind.

As time is the form of the principle of reason, where the unique property and the essence itself is succession, so the principle of reason is the domain of the content of forms in space and time, and the perceptibility of these forms is given by matter. which underlies the law of causality.

This law is nothing more than the material essence given as force, in the sense of activity, movement and action.

But in mysthesis this is what might be called Cosmic Energy, at least in a simplified way. Because the variation according to the rules of action of one object on another, determining the actuality of an arrangement of objects in time and space, all this is what constitutes matter, and for that, and in accordance with the principle of reason. , we call variation occurring in the domains of space and time, or the principle of the reason of becoming and the law of causality.

Obviously, therefore, science considers the phenomena of the world, following the guiding thread of the principle of reason, while (in the metaphysics of the beautiful) the creative genius completely sets aside the principle of reason, independently of it, so that an idea comes into play. scene.

However, if empiricism cannot epistemically support the idea as the main actress in the opera of knowledge, on the other hand, such consideration is decisive in mysthetics.

Therefore, our representation of space and time necessarily depends on matter, and its form presupposes its own activity in space and space itself, always interacting with every change and with every new temporal representation. This leads us to see that time and space cannot be assumed separately from matter, whose essence constitutes the union of both, as causality and in action as well, from which the essence, that is, the dynamic energy of humanity for the works of love.

But, observe here the Idea of ​​Humanity, on the basis of all these unfoldings of the material world, that is, by the dialogical-dialectical-epistemic procedure of ideas, what stands out as truth is the subtle Cosmic Energy, therefore, only after That is why we should give some epistemic value to dense matter, aspiring to metaquantum fifth-dimensionality.

Now we can understand why aesthetic intuition is never utilitarian and why immediate knowledge is not merely materialistic and instrumental knowledge. In this way, we say that the mystéthiko subject 'en-forms' the object, something that the empirical subject also does, but not in full essentiality.

Therefore, mystetically, the thing in itself can be thought and known as the Consciousness of Humanity, and can also be understood through the entry into the scene of the creative genius, the pure subject of knowledge and the necessary correlate of each and every idea.

But, let us emphasize that the dialogical-dialectical-epistemic procedure is more than indispensable for that.

We know that doxa is the Greek term that means belief, opinion, what is said. Plato was one of the first philosophers to pose, in the Theaetetus dialogue, the problem of distinguishing between doxa and episteme, that is, between opinion, vulgar belief and undying knowledge.

Therefore, episteme, the Greek term that means knowledge, and from which the word epistemology derives, was also the same term that Aristotle used, in the sense of systematic and rational knowledge, what we now call science, but which, for him, implied in first philosophy, that is, metaphysics as the science of the first causes and a priori principles of nature.

To this Kant claimed that a priori principles must be grounded in the apparatus of mathematics and transcendental philosophy. Therefore, this way of seeing the world, which is governed by the principle of reason, is also teleological, that is, utilitarian. And that keeps it at the level of knowledge as opinion (doxa). At least in terms of our focus here, namely, knowledge as Conscience and the Idea of ​​Humanity.

Now, what is subjective is incapable of the Idea, due to the will to know, so it cannot be definitively epistemic. Even in the sciences in general, the idea of ​​an object is never reached, because the scientific subject acts on given objects in space and time.

This is our focus here, the propaedeutic core of myshtesis, if you will. That is to say, instead of the doxa way, we will preferentially follow the ingenious mode of the mystic cosmic intuitive.

In short, we must not neglect the dialectical-dialogical-epistemic procedure inherent in the work of creative geniuses in the fifth-dimensionality of Humanity's Consciousness.

In this, knowledge occurs as a genuine episteme, that is, as the 'science' that knows without needing the mediation of understanding, and where the human spirit re-opens itself to nature that, together with the world, is contemplated in a non-relational and purely empty way. of causality.

Such more than objective knowledge always appeals to the qualitative and essential of things, without ever sticking to the merely quantitative and apparent aspect, since the notion of quantity only characterizes the multiplicity of phenomenal objects and, therefore, does not reach the truth of Ideas, given its dependence on the law of causality that governs the principle of reason.

We realize here that epistemic knowledge is what is not regulated only by phenomenal objects, and also that all conceptual attempts to establish some synthetic a priori judgment about them, through which our knowledge would be expanded, all failed, as it is a procedure given under a merely empiricist presupposition.

Therefore, the metaphysics of the beautiful proposed something for us to progress better in metaphysical tasks, admitting to an epistemic that must be regulated by our intuitive knowledge, which best agrees with the possibility of a priori knowledge, that is, knowledge that is independently justified of, and even before any experience, for it does not depend on experience; having to establish something about the objects of experience, even before they are given to us in the raw materiality of the world.

Let us remember that, in Plato, the idea as a supreme good could only be contemplated transcendentally, but, for Aristotle, that idea would be teleological. Here, in our contemporary mystéthika, even the purest concept must still differ from an idea, and that is because it is only a representation of an extra representation. 

Therefore, all merely conceptual knowledge will always assume a secondary character in relation to ideas.

Therefore, causal science cannot give us epistemic knowledge of the whole, because the Idea is the object of creative genius and the arts in general, and works of art are the only objectifications capable of raising us directly to the epistemic of the Idea. In this sense, music, for example, is art without mediation because it has no external representation, and is the most metaphysical thing in the physical world.

As we have seen, the knowledge of the observable and the quantitative, that of the Aristotelian way of thinking, is opposed to that of the Platonic way, the representative of qualitative knowledge, and, in this direction, the arts repeat the same, but in a different way and always with the in order to communicate ideas, which, especially in the case of music, are directly apprehended by the pure subject of knowledge.

From the metaphysics of the beautiful, therefore, it is said that it is possible to know immediately, through art. Now, the mediation of art remains as an immediacy, since there is no longer that barrier of understanding.

But, in Kantian aesthetics, art is not accepted as objective knowledge, but as abstract knowledge, which comes from the space-time dimension, differing,  from the intuitive knowledge that we are dealing with here, since to relate representations is still to abstract, and this cannot occur outside the principle of reason, nor can it propose epistemic reality, in accordance with what makes the creative genius as we are conceiving it. 

That is, as the immediate in-itself of aesthetic intuition which, even in a fleeting flash, discerns the 'discourse' of the idea, starting from natural things and through a disinterested contemplation and immensely more objective.

In this way, there can be no relational procedure in the knowledge of the Idea. But, in all process analytics, the subject's relationship with the object is what makes the most secure knowledge possible. Now, mystéthika will not be able to admit such a cerebral pretension. At the very least, it is necessary to consider at least two more anatomical pillars of the human, namely, the pineal and the heart. Without this, we will not have the minimum necessary to conceive how genius knowledge can occur in the human organism.

Now, the human organism emerges from DNA, something that is much better than any other complex organism, although it is immensely smaller. We say this because we are inaugurating mystéthika as dialogic-dialectic-epistemic, and, in this sense, we will invite quantum biology to declaim something of its most advanced knowledge here in our 'soiree'. However, this will only happen later on.

In this way, poetry and art in general are, here, linked to the sensitive of the genius intuitive, that is, based on the Idea of ​​Huanity and on creative genius, as the necessary correlate to everything that is in the sphere of the Ideal. 

However, trying to transcend the sensitivity of the material world, by virtue of the pure ideality of the idea seems to have been the great mistake of Platonism.

As we can see, unlike science, art finds its end everywhere. In it, the particular, contemplated apart from time, represents universal knowledge. This implies saying that art stops at the object of its contemplation, but outside the rational course of causal connections, turning it from a mere part into an authentic representative of the whole, and an equivalent in space and time of the very infinite.  

Art stops at this point, the wheel of time ceases and relationships disappear for it, leaving only the essential, the Idea as its object.

Therefore, the proper mode of consideration, aligned with the principle of reason, is peripatetic and rational. This mode determines the development of science and is fundamental to practical and utilitarian life. On the contrary, however, the way of considering things, related to Platonism, we call genius. And, this is the way that underlies creative development in all areas of human activity.

Thus, the course of the world is the object of science, as in History, for example, but the object of art is the very Idea of ​​Humanity. 

History repeats itself and its characters are always the same, because such an Idea is an indissoluble whole that, in the sciences is presented only in a fragmented form and, therefore, not essential.

Here, there is no way to accept the historical-teleological notion because History, like time, makes subsist only the eternal return of the same, that is, a mere phenomenal manifestation in the intermittent flow of life. 

Therefore, a Philosophy of History must also be discarded, since the Idea is what gives expression to the phenomenon of material reality as a whole, as something one and indivisible. In view of this, the very expectation of progress of consciousness deriving it from history, expires, as well as the very concept of History.

Even the notion of liberation of the human being, even this one, will only be made viable by the intuitive ideal. Therefore, in this sense, what can survive will only be the discipline of historical science, but it will only matter to us as an aid in the knowledge of the Idea of ​​Humanity.

Thus, except in the Idea of ​​Humanity, nothing else can have genuine epistemic value in mysthesis, where the present time of human life, as a representation, only ceases to be empty and meaningless through the thing itself, which is the only real, understood here as the condition of possibility of the manifestation of diversity Now, the Consciousness of Humanity appears as if pulverized in the phenomena.

Laws, connections and relationships resulting from the analysis of phenomena also derive from the scientific way of knowing. But the aesthetic mode of knowledge is composed of the knowledge of the Idea, the consciousness that knows as a pure intuitive subject.

Such knowledge, however, cannot occur within the sphere of influence of the principle of reason, because it is never characterized as empirical knowledge. 

Therefore, everyone who achieves such a way of knowing loses, even if momentarily, their own individual consciousness of themselves, in order to immediately secure themselves in the Idea of ​​Humanity.

All this only happens in a disinterested way, because, as is already known, as individuals, we all have only knowledge governed by the principle of reason, and, through this category of knowledge, we cannot know ideas. For that, we will have to rise from the knowledge of particular things to the aesthetic intuition of the world; and a change similar and corresponding to that great change that takes place in the total nature of the object must occur in us, through which the subject, as the cognizer of an idea, is no longer an individual, but only the pure subject. intuitive.

Knowledge in general, as objectification in degrees lower than that of the Idea, and even the whole system corresponding to the sensitivity of the body in empiricism, are all mere expressions of the Idea itself in these degrees.

Even the representations engendered by sensitivity are at the service of the Idea as well, and as a means for the realization of its complex 'ends', and also for the conservation of a being with multiple needs, the human being.

However, it is the electrochemical processes of the brain that generate a reality, in an empirical sense, that is, something chemically accessible to the empiricist subject, through the bioelectronics of synaptic processes. 

All this is what maintains knowledge at the service of Negativity in life, since objects are not known more than in mere relationships, that is, we know them only as they occur in time, space and in a certain place and under certain circumstances, as mere products of diverse causes.

But once the relations are completely abolished, the actual objects also disappear, since the understanding cannot recognize anything in the world without first establishing causal relations, that is, without resorting to the most general form of all objects of knowledge. 

Therefore, mysthesis takes causal knowledge to be subservient and maintainer of Negativity in life. So such chronological knowledge is the prototype of all other forms of ordinary knowledge. 

Thus, no matter how much is known, nothing is known that can definitively free human beings from individualism and ignorance. Nothing is known to free humanity from the endless suffering, that selfishness and greed represent.

Therefore, to study the mere relations of things under the circumstances of time and space, that is, the causes of their natural variations, this only insofar as the formal differences of things in the reason of phenomena, as well as to do science on the basis of this alone, is of little or even no value for the freedom and well-being of humanity. If this were not the case, all the scientific and technological apparatus in this world would have already provided us with more quality of life and less suffering on a global scale.

Therefore, something better must come into play with the epistemic of aesthetic intuition, where the object is the focus itself, torn from any and all causal nexus, in order to provide an idea, the object of aesthetic consideration, the adequate objectivity in a determined degree of the noumenal that 'strives' to 'reveal itself' in the works of creative geniuses.

Purified knowledge as a motive for compassionate works is what occurs when a human being concentrates all the strength of his spirit on the intuitive vision, completely absorbed in it.

Flooding his consciousness with the contemplation of natural objects, to the point of losing himself in them, doubting himself and his own appearance of truth, converting himself into the pure subject and reflecting clearly to the object, in such a way as to place it isolated from the relationships in the world until it is no longer possible to separate oneself from one's own intuition. This is how aesthetic intuition occurs in creative geniuses.

Finally, the pure subject of knowledge and intuitive perception become one with the aesthetic object, through the flooding and completeness of consciousness in an 'isolated' intuitive image. 

Then, the human being himself becomes emancipated from desire and detached from any and all causality relationships, in this being one with the object in consciousness.

Now, the known that derives from this process ceases to be that of a mere thing in the world, becoming the idea itself, the eternal form of immediate objectity in a degree.

Whoever surrenders to such epistemic intuition loses his own individuality, through immersion in the intuitive act. And, assuming the role of pure subject of knowledge beyond the selfishness of desires and time.

This contemplative mode of knowledge, as we understand it, shows itself as a primacy, in which the particular thing, intuited from the idea of its species, and the individual thing that contemplates it, both dispense with chronological slavery and lose it in a single moment, the nunc stans.

Thus, the image of a work of art cannot stimulate our will, since such an image purely 'speaks' to our most objective and immediate knowledge. 

Therefore, apprehending ideas only occurs from the effective reality of the world in abstracting from our will and personality. So we rise above them. This can only happen through the special rapture faculty of pure intuition, that is, precisely what happens to creative geniuses.

In short, the aesthetic-intuitive element of a work of art is the foundation for overcoming deception, because abstract and rational thinking does not make it possible to reach the real meaning of life, that is, the immediate epistemic knowledge of the Idea of Humanity.

In general, philosophy still seeks to ground the essential meaning of phenomena through exposition in abstracto. However, an idea in itself is intuitive and therefore does not require any thought intermediation as it expresses itself.

So the real sense is this intuitive truth of the idea in its intimate nature. However, the transition from Idea to Concept will always be a downfall, for whenever abstract thought affects consciousness to the detriment of the intuitive element, then an idea will not enter the picture.

Based on all that we have exposed in this topic, we realize that the nature of aesthetic intuition is to transcend the merely rational and empirical, in the sense of being the possibility of contemplating the real object itself, in the consciousness of the creative genius.

Before concluding, we must not forget that it was the philosopher Schopenhauer who suggested music as the art that never expresses or copies the phenomenon, but only the intimate essence, the in-itself of all of them.

Therefore, the supreme end of the works of love is the manifestation of the essence of humanity, that is, of the Unity not given to the particular interests of human phenomena, and what expresses that beauty proper to the Idea of ​​Humanity. This is enough for the complete nullification of Negativity in life.