739
To speak of love in a cynical age is to unabashedly assert the verifiable quotients
comprising a hypokeimenon, a quiddity, or haecceity, as varied metaphysicians—
from Duns Scotus and John Locke to Gilles Deleuze—have described it. A subjective,
unique essence that metamorphoses from however meager an opportunism or approbation, the slightest hunch, the anti-meme, to some other noble calling altogether.
Rejecting authorship, it reclaims autonomy without communicating such. No trace of
solidarity that would suggest the least affiliation with a population. The cenobitic
compromise expresses that population paradox, as spatially confined (in an idiorrhythmic monastic setting) between the willful constraint to be oneself, and the pressure of vacillation with and among others, mornings in the refectory. It is a strange
ambiguity that has arisen at the same rate and pace as cell division, the invention of
sexuality, and the full range of behavioral psychologies that skew with the evolution
of community structure, hierarchies, justice issues, politics, international treaties, and
the breakdown of the commons: this waffling from one’s mind to that of other minds.
81.2 A Continuing Strife
Can one claim optimism about circumstances concerning oneself, when others in
the world are suffering? Buddha suggested that the world’s suffering is inadvertently felt by the one at every cusp of that individual’s happiness.
The study of Plato’s Theory of Forms, and the tension between monism and
pluralism, in terms of consciousness and self-identity, laid out in eight hypotheses
or deductions within his most obtuse Dialogue, “The Parmenides”
5
, will lead inevitably to that famed declaration by Parmenides sparring partner, Socrates. The
admission of absolutely no knowledge.
Nothing, or nothingness—like emptiness, vagueness, and obscurity—hovers at
the cosmogonic conclusion of Plato’s Republic, containing the story of the Myth of
Er (10.614–10.621), as well as the gripping details of an afterlife that stirred within
the Sixth Book (“Somnium Scipionis”) of statesman/philosopher Cicero’s De re
publica (54–51 BC) the celebrated fictional vision of one Roman general, Scipio
Aemilianus, who dreamt of a colossal firmament dwarfing the earth and all her
ecological progeny, two years prior to his character masterminding the destruction
of Carthage in 146 BC. This larger-than-life dream held up for successive centuries,
forming the vast cosmic backdrops in Dante and Chaucer, as well as in John Milton
(particularly Milton and later illustrator, John Martin), such was the strength of a
conceptual foundation upon which Plato, and to an even greater extent, Aristotle,
forecast one profound version of the nature of reality, and the difficulties any one
person will encounter in attempting to change course, let alone affect the backdrop.
Humanity, by most claims, has always been at the mercy of the gods, of clashing
armies in the night, of one’s personal ancestry, immediate family, and now, genes.
5 See Brisson, L., 2002, ‘“Is the World One?” A New Interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides’, Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 22: 1–20.
81.2 A Continuing Strife
To speak of love in a cynical age is to unabashedly assert the verifiable quotients
comprising a hypokeimenon, a quiddity, or haecceity, as varied metaphysicians—
from Duns Scotus and John Locke to Gilles Deleuze—have described it. A subjective,
unique essence that metamorphoses from however meager an opportunism or approbation, the slightest hunch, the anti-meme, to some other noble calling altogether.
Rejecting authorship, it reclaims autonomy without communicating such. No trace of
solidarity that would suggest the least affiliation with a population. The cenobitic
compromise expresses that population paradox, as spatially confined (in an idiorrhythmic monastic setting) between the willful constraint to be oneself, and the pressure of vacillation with and among others, mornings in the refectory. It is a strange
ambiguity that has arisen at the same rate and pace as cell division, the invention of
sexuality, and the full range of behavioral psychologies that skew with the evolution
of community structure, hierarchies, justice issues, politics, international treaties, and
the breakdown of the commons: this waffling from one’s mind to that of other minds.
81.2 A Continuing Strife
Can one claim optimism about circumstances concerning oneself, when others in
the world are suffering? Buddha suggested that the world’s suffering is inadvertently felt by the one at every cusp of that individual’s happiness.
The study of Plato’s Theory of Forms, and the tension between monism and
pluralism, in terms of consciousness and self-identity, laid out in eight hypotheses
or deductions within his most obtuse Dialogue, “The Parmenides”
5
, will lead inevitably to that famed declaration by Parmenides sparring partner, Socrates. The
admission of absolutely no knowledge.
Nothing, or nothingness—like emptiness, vagueness, and obscurity—hovers at
the cosmogonic conclusion of Plato’s Republic, containing the story of the Myth of
Er (10.614–10.621), as well as the gripping details of an afterlife that stirred within
the Sixth Book (“Somnium Scipionis”) of statesman/philosopher Cicero’s De re
publica (54–51 BC) the celebrated fictional vision of one Roman general, Scipio
Aemilianus, who dreamt of a colossal firmament dwarfing the earth and all her
ecological progeny, two years prior to his character masterminding the destruction
of Carthage in 146 BC. This larger-than-life dream held up for successive centuries,
forming the vast cosmic backdrops in Dante and Chaucer, as well as in John Milton
(particularly Milton and later illustrator, John Martin), such was the strength of a
conceptual foundation upon which Plato, and to an even greater extent, Aristotle,
forecast one profound version of the nature of reality, and the difficulties any one
person will encounter in attempting to change course, let alone affect the backdrop.
Humanity, by most claims, has always been at the mercy of the gods, of clashing
armies in the night, of one’s personal ancestry, immediate family, and now, genes.
5 See Brisson, L., 2002, ‘“Is the World One?” A New Interpretation of Plato’s Parmenides’, Oxford
Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 22: 1–20.
81.2 A Continuing Strife