Greg Pavlik

Below I quote at length DB Hart on intentionality and the horizon of rational agency. If you take a moment to think about this point, it really ought to be obvious that it is almost certainly correct. And the fact that we can share a meaning and interest in "correctness" as an end - ie, we care about that which is true - underscores the point directly. The only reason this may seem abstruse is the unconscious prejudices we carry from living in a late modern culture founded on reductive models of consciousness that are almost certainly irrational - meaning, wrong. 

"Neither doctrine nor metaphysics need be immediately invoked to see the impossibility of rational agency within a sphere of pure nature; a simple phenomenology of what it is we do when we act intentionally should suffice. The rational will, when freely moved, is always purposive; it acts always toward an end: conceived, perceived, imagined, hoped for, resolved upon. Its every act is already, necessarily, an act of recognition, judgment, evaluation, and decision, and is therefore also a tacit or explicit reference to a larger, more transcendent realm of values, meanings, and rational longings. Desire and knowledge are always, in a single impulse, directed to some purpose present to the mind, even if only vaguely. Any act lacking such purposiveness is by definition not an act of rational freedom. There are, moreover, only two possible ways of pursuing a purpose: either as an end in itself or for the sake of an end beyond itself. But no finite object or purpose can wholly attract the rational will in the latter way; no finite thing is desirable simply in itself as an ultimate end. It may, in relative terms, constitute a more compelling end that makes a less compelling end nonetheless instrumentally desirable, but it can never constitute an end in itself. It too requires an end beyond itself to be compelling in any measure; it too can evoke desire only on account of some yet higher, more primordial, more general disposition of reason’s appetites. Even what pleases us most immediately can be intentionally desired only within the context of a rational longing for the Good itself. If not for some always more original orientation toward an always more final end, the will would never act in regard to finite objects at all. Immanent desires are always in a sense deferred toward some more remote, more transcendent purpose. All concretely limited aspirations of the will are sustained within formally limitless aspirations of the will. In the end, then, the only objects of desire that are not reducible to other, more general objects of desire, and that are thus desirable entirely in and of themselves, are those universal, unconditional, and exalted ideals, those transcendentals, that constitute being’s abstract perfections. One may not be, in any given instant, immediately conscious that one’s rational appetites have been excited by these transcendental ends; I am not talking about a psychological state of the empirical ego; but those ends are the constant and pervasive preoccupation of the rational will in the deepest springs of its nature, the source of that “delectable perturbation” that grants us a conceptual grasp of finite things precisely by constantly carrying us restlessly beyond them and thereby denying them even a provisional ultimacy.

In fact, we cannot even possess the barest rational cognizance of the world we inhabit except insofar as we have always already, in our rational intentions, exceeded the world. Intentional recognition is always already interpretation, and interpretation is always already judgment. The intellect is not a passive mirror reflecting a reality that simply composes itself for us within our experience; rather, intellect is itself an agency that converts the storm of sense-intuitions into a comprehensible order through a constant process of interpretation. And it is able to do this by virtue of its always more original, tacit recognition of an object of rational longing—say, Truth itself—that appears nowhere within the natural order, but toward which the mind nevertheless naturally reaches out, as to its only possible place of final rest. All proximate objects are known to us, and so desired or disregarded or rejected, in light of that anticipated finality. Even to seek to know, to organize experience into reflection, is a venture of the reasoning will toward that absolute horizon of intelligibility. And since truly rational desire can never be a purely spontaneous eruption of the will without purpose, it must exhibit its final cause in the transcendental structure of its operation. Rational experience, from the first, is a movement of rapture, of ecstasy toward ends that must be understood as—because they must necessarily be desired as—nothing less than the perfections of being, ultimately convertible with one another in the fullness of reality’s one source and end. Thus the world as something available to our intentionality comes to us in the interval that lies between the mind’s indivisible unity of apprehension and the irreducibly transcendental horizon of its intention—between, that is, the first cause of movement in the mind and the mind’s natural telos, both of which lie outside the composite totality of nature."

DB Hart, You are Gods. University of Notre Dame Press, April 2022

I think in the western world, art that invokes sacred spaces is, to put it mildly, less than central to the art industry. But in parts of Europe, this is not entirely the case. One region that has a kind of generational explosion of sacred art is western Ukraine, an area that is culturally at an intersection between central and western Europe (and where part of my own family is from). To the extent there has been attention paid to these artists, it appears to be largely in Catholic journals - in part I suspect because the region is largely "Greek Catholic" in religion (as again were some of my ancestors), a religion which combines elements of Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy: one might say a fusion, or, perhaps a "confusion", depending on ones perspective. But it clearly has generated a creative energy that re-considers traditional concepts of beauty and meaning in art forms that have often been bound to very strict boundaries of received archetypes.

I had a few days of downtime to deal with some medical issues and turned to some short story collections to fill the time. My companions for a bit were Ryūnosuke Akutagawa and Anton Chekhov. I was quite delighted with a new translation of Akutagawa from Pushkin Press, Murder in the Age of Enlightenment. What sparse but sharp imagery - taken from Japanese history, European literature, Mahayana Buddhism, Christianity, Chinese writings - it was a bit of a smorgasbord. Akutagawa can be dark: his preoccupation with suicide in his writing no doubt reflected in his own suicide at age 35; I found his piece Madonna in Black on a peculiarly evil Maria-Kannon to be troubling, not least because I have a kind of devotional fascination with Maria-Kannon as our Lady of Mercy. But still Akutagawa is deeply humanistic and wide-ranging. The Karetnyk translation can be digested in an afternoon, no doubt time well spent.

My Chekhov choice was the recent translation of fifty-two stories by the unsurpassable translator pair Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. These two are artists in their own right... I can't say enough good things about their portfolio of translations. They are so good I've been forced to re-read a number of novels just to digest their interpretative readings over the years.

But back to Akutagawa. Here I post a translation done under Creative Commons license* of the story The Spider's Thread. I don't know if this is a re-telling of Dostoevsky's "Tale of the Onion" in Karamazov for sure, though the story line is so close that I find it impossible to believe otherwise: Lord Buddha Shakyamuni simply replacing the Guardian Angel. Get the Pushkin Press book to read it in a slightly more refined form, but I found this a wonderful read as well:

One day, the Buddha was strolling alone along the edge of a lotus pond in Paradise. The blooming lotus flowers in the pond were each pure white like jewels, and the place was filled with the indescribably wondrous fragrance continually emitted from each flower’s golden center. It was just morning in Paradise.

After a time, the Buddha paused at the edge of the pond and from between the lotus leaves that covered it saw a glimpse of the state of things below. Now this celestial pond just happened to lie directly over Hell, and peering through that crystal-clear water was like looking through a magnifying glass at the River of Death and the Mountain of Needles and such.

The Buddha saw there, in the depths of Hell, a single man writhing along with the other sinners. This man was named Kandata, and he had been a notorious thief who had performed murder and arson and other acts of evil. In his past, however, he had performed just one good deed: one day, when walking through the deep forest, he saw a spider crawling along the road. At first he raised his foot to crush it, but suddenly he changed his mind and stopped, saying, “No, small though it may be, a spider, too, has life. It would be a pity to meaninglessly end it,” and so did not kill it.

Looking down upon the captives in Hell the Buddha recalled this kind act that Kandata had performed, and thought to use his good deed as a way to save him from his fate. Looking aside, there on a jade-colored lotus leaf he saw a single spider, spinning out a web of silver thread. The Buddha carefully took the spider’s thread into his hand, and lowered it straight down between the jewel-like white lotuses into the depths of Hell.




Kandata was floating and sinking along with the other sinners in the Lake of Blood at the bottom of Hell. It was pitch black no matter which way he looked, and the occasional glimpse of light that he would see in the darkness would turn out to be just the glint of the terrible Mountain of Needles. How lonely he must have felt! All about him was the silence of the grave, the only occasional sound being a faint sigh from one of the damned. Those who were so evil as to be sent to this place were tired by its various torments, and left without even the strength to cry out. Even the great thief Kandata could only squirm like a dying frog as he choked in the Lake of Blood.

But one day, raising up his head and glancing at the sky above the lake, in the empty darkness Kandata saw a silver spider’s thread being lowered from the ceiling so far, far away. The thread seemed almost afraid to be seen, emitting a frail, constant light as it came down to just above Kandata’s head. Seeing this, Kandata couldn’t help but clap his hands in joy. If he were to cling to this thread and climb up it, he may be able to climb out of Hell! Perhaps he could even climb all the way to Paradise! Then he would never be chased up the Mountain of Needles, nor drowned in the Lake of Blood again.

Thinking so, he firmly grasped the spider’s thread with both hands and began to climb the thread, higher and higher. Having once been a great thief, he was used to tasks such as this. But the distance between Hell and Paradise is tens of thousands of miles, and so it would seem that no amount of effort would make this an easy journey. After climbing for some time Kandata tired, and couldn’t climb a bit higher. Having no other recourse, he hung there from the thread, resting, and while doing so looked down below.

He saw that he had made a good deal of progress. The Lake of Blood that he had been trapped in was now hidden in the dark below, and he had even climbed higher than the dimly glowing Mountain of Needles. If he could keep up this pace, perhaps he could escape from Hell after all. Kandata grasped the thread with both hands, and laughingly spoke in a voice that he hadn’t used in the many years since he had come here, “I’ve done it! I’ve done it!”

Looking down, however, what did he see but an endless queue of sinners, intently following him up the thread like a line of ants! Seeing this, surprise and fear kept Kandata hanging there for a time with mouth open and eyes blinking like a fool. How could this slender spider’s web, which should break even under just his weight, support the weight of all these other people? If the thread were to snap, all of his effort would be wasted and he would fall back into Hell with the others! That just would not do. But even as he thought these thoughts, hundreds more, thousands more of the damned came crawling up from the Lake of Blood, forming a line and scurrying up the thread. If he didn’t do something fast, surely the thread would snap in the middle and he would fall back down.

Kandata shouted out, “Hey! You sinners! This thread is mine! Who said you could climb up it? Get off! Get off!”

Though the thread had been fine until just then, with these words it snapped with a twang right where Kandata held it. Poor Kandata fell headfirst through the air, spinning like a top, right down through the darkness. The severed end of the silver thread hung there, suspended from heaven, shining with its pale light in that moonless, starless sky.




The Buddha stood in Paradise at the edge of the lotus pond, silently watching these events. After Kandata sank like a stone to the bottom of the Lake of Blood, he continued his stroll with a sad face. He must have been surprised that even after such severe punishment Kandata’s lack of compassion would lead him right back into Hell.

Yet the lotus blossoms in the lotus ponds of Paradise care nothing about such matters. Their jewel-like white flowers waved about the feet of the Buddha, and each flower’s golden center continuously filled the place with their indescribably wondrous fragrance. It was almost noon in Paradise.


(16 April 1918)

* Translation http://tonygonz.blogspot.com/2006/05/spiders-thread-akutagawa-ryunosuke.html

"What is the relation of [contemplation] to action? Simply this. He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas."
—Thomas Merton"Make stillness your criterion for testing the value of everything, and choose always what contributes to it."

-Evagrius Ponticus



"Silence and Beauty - Eco" (Minerals and gesso on canvas, 2016) by contemporary Japanese American artist Fujimura Makoto (藤村真, born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1960). Abstract expressionist piece done with nihonga techniques. Picture found online.

I read Fujimura's book Silence and Beauty last year, which was inspired by the Endo Shusaku's 20th century novel Silence (itself adapted to film by the great Martin Scorsese). Fujimura reflects on his relationship with Japanese culture in the light of Shusaku's work, the Hiroshima bombing, and his own experience as a Japanese-American: most importantly how it has manifested in his work as an artist. Shusaku's work itself dwells on "silence" as absence. But I think this painting shows absence-as-presence: something is there, something beautiful, but its not clear what or even why - in fact that presence changes over time for the viewer, depending on vantage point or even focus.

Happy New Year and Welcome Year of the Ox! The ox is a profound symbol in many Asian cultures, of course. I have found the Ox herder pictures from sinocized Buddhism to be a profound source of reflection and wisdom over the years. Bicycle, a journal I have found consistently interesting, provides a short and useful reflection on these iconographic paintings that is worth reading.


I also have enjoyed Addison Hart's short "western" - or is it really "eastern Christian"? - reflection on the Ox herder pictures and have returned to it several times over the years.

 

On the end of the revolutionary syntheses: Freud, Marx, Nietzsche, Solovyov (and by extension Dostoevsky), and, improbably later, Girard.

What is guilt? Who is guilty? Is redemption possible? What is sanity? Do persons have a telos, a destiny, both or neither? Ostrov (The Island) asks and answers all these questions and more.

A film that improbably remains one of the best of this century: "reads" like a 19th century Russian novel; the bleakly stunning visual setting is worth the time to watch alone.