The Theory of Desire

Suddenly whilst walking down the streets of Jerusalem a day-dream occured to me, a day-dream far les mesmerizing than Rahel's but one all too rich in the imagery of Golden Calves. I suddenly thought that one should say two blessings at the sight of a crippled man: "Blessed are Thou King of the Universe that has in his universe such" and "Blessed be the True Judge". It all came down to time in a green summer tile when thinking that the world can only be a monism when a plurality of forms is admitted to measure itself upon the "res" (an epi-phenomenal thing), and the only acceptable plurality is the one that can flow so manifold within an only channel.

One must bless for the good and for the bad. Because there's a Chassidic teaching explaining that one should never indulge himself in anger, for only after the initial test has been passed the real test come upon us, and so on and on we're tested even in the hour of the ailments. We should strive to come out of that typically modern attitude of thinking alone, therefore blessing for the good and for the bad is the simplest form of recognition. Recognition in the Greek-most amazement before the world, a "turning aside" that wasn't particularly foreign to both Homer and Moses.

And this amazement is the only possible cure for madness, because it is a silent agreement with both justice and war, with both hatred and love. I've been speaking about the world too much lately, perhaps only because I've become so alienated from it that all my thinking is directed towards the un-concealmente of the world in a truth that is in itself existing. But in order to enter the world of this darkmost times one feels ought to make a commitment for this wordly enterprise. The commitment for the genius comes with a natural drive, because he's forced onto the world on account not of his achievements but his naturalmost ability to convey in his thinking anything that is particularly universal about being human.

I drive myself into the world because the alienation product of a "childhood in my times" hurts to the very last bone and bestows upon me an obligation to drive my desire inwardly so that they can burst out externally and instead of being true or false to myself or anybody I'm simply attempting to enter the realm of public discourse. Philosophy itself isn't a form of public discourse, it is only the natural outcome of such. To the same extent that the Biblical accouts (in particular those that involve timeless journeying) are not philosophy itself nor doctrine, but become the foundational source from which man can enter the tradition of thought. This such being no more than the "action" of the wisemen in the world whose heritage to the posterity of the human world (if it's going to have one). Even when by making this statement I'm trapping myself in two reverse courses of metaphysics: Nietzsche and the Social Sciences. Yet being a political man of a highly apolitical nature, and therefore a denier of the worth of all metaphysics in contemporary discourse.

But in order to be driven instinctively into the world I must withdraw from it, risking entering the anti-world instead of the pre-rational world in which all thinking deemed original has taken place. I can't entirely drive myself to this world for there's a risk of losing authenticity and selfness along the way, that's why for so long I've refused to convey my thoughts in these pages. Because denying the human freedom quite cheaply granted to me by technology I'm able to join the ranks of history. Writing down my travails and works from my very own pen in the patience of paper... Because words written by man himself have more weight than statements, and a lot less value than action. In hand-writing I'm (in a modern sense) both acting and thinking. It is my heritage to the posterity... my confussion and vexation.

Every so often though, I feel compelled to face the mighty waters in which my ficititious selfhood spaceness vanishes. I'm become property of the world from within the realm of my foreignness to it as though in the dream of Pharaoh. My dual stance before the nature of freedom isn't in any essentiality original but rather inherited... Not inherited from thinkers and philosophers but from the core of livelihood, namely from a canonic text. For it's in no way unsimilar to the epic of Bilam and Korach. A blessing that curses, a curse that blesses... hence my sudden thought about the two-fold blessing before the crippled man in the street. Without Halacha this such embrace wouldn't be possible, therefore I enter Heschel's flight and light... in which the main destiny of Judaism isn't that of being a civilization, but of rising beyond the civilizing proces once we're either overcome history or obliterated it; not unlike we did with metaphysics.

Korach's role in a tragic sense was that of reminding us that equality is a value as opposed to the nature of being as truth is to opinions and negation to objective reality. Vivre la petit difference!
A kind of thought that strikes me as a form of awe, because for those of us for whom fear is no longer anything but a point in the map of synthesis the only possible access to theodicy and ethics is guilt. In a world for which humanity no longer means much guilt is the only way to do philosophy, is the only way to think in the way necessary in order to overcome those old-school notions of naturalistic spirituality and scientism, that are by no means biblical. Shame and guilt are the channels of despair, "a silent despair" is what Heschel describes being the only tools available to the thinker today. I felt tempted to write "religious thinker", but those of us (without being anything of agnostics and mystics) are well aware that if we want to overcome our fondest foe (ontology) those rational categories to divide the realm of knowledge and experience no longer hold valid. Our "fragmentary" notions of worldness, thingness, whatness and the like are rooted only in existential paths, not in categories of experience and cognition.

"Not having is the beginning of desire". For only in abscence of "thereness" one can exploit his potential to its fullest. In Augustinian terms we must strive to make the will of God our own will, and therefore two-fold bless a world essentially incomplete and un-had. This is the only possible attitude in a world where God the artist is in search of man, who has become so thoroughly alienated. A break-away from ontology is the only possible future of the civilized world, having reached its own crossroad at the threshold of violence and carelessness (Heidegger defined this as "a-temporality", perhaps a form of immortality?). That's why the education of our generation must immediately hearken to the call of anti-humanism, which is certainly not un-humanism and darkness. We must desire again, just as when the Rabbis in the Talmud asked "What can I do?", standing right beyond Halacha and Midrash. This is a call for ANTI-HUMANISM.