Wednesday, July 23, 2003
(2:28 AM) | Anonymous:
The Truth
Recently I've been reading Hans Urs Von Balthasar's "Theo-Logic: Vol 1. - The Truth Of The World", in which HUV-B develops his picture of truth to the extent it can be known. Basically, to sum it up in as short a way as possible, he sees truth as "Being" revealed, or unveiled. To this extent, it can never be fully grasped, as each new aspect of knowledge we gain is only a further blooming of many new possibilities for truth. He defines the situation necessary for this unveiling of being as a circumincession between the Subject and the Object.
The subject is any self-concious being. Self-concious being the main point because the only way the subject can measure the truth of the object is to be measured by The Measure and then apply this to measure the object. I don't really think I fully grasp what he means by that, but "measure" is said about every other word for a solid 3 pages.
Anyway, the thing is this. The role of the Subject is one of constant receptivity. It isn't trying to find truth, or going on some quest to find "the answers." The Subject merely is completely open in every situation to what truth can be learned from it. If it refuses the sort of selflessness required for such a task, the sort of putting oneself aside entirely and letting absolutely everything have its space within you, than it shall never reveal being, and thus never find "truth". It is nothing without the object as part of it.
The Object can be another person, or a phrase, or a tree, or anything really, that provides The Subject with an image of being stripped of everything but it's essence. One can be both Subject and Object to oneself, or one can be someone else's Object, while also being a Subject and so on.
By that same measure than, The Object is nothing without The Subject. It can only bloom and reveal further possibility for truth within the space provided for it by the Subject's receptivity. Without that it remains just an object.
I have done this in a brief amount of time, and without the benefit of being through the entire book, or even that specific section, so I didn't do HUV-B justice, but all the same, it made me think about something else which has been troubling me of late, namely, the explicit racism so prevalent here in Oklahoma, and, I perhaps incorrectly assume, the rest of the south.
This came to a head recently today when someone brought up the attacks in Liberia, and one person at work said "Damn, now we have to go from fighting sand niggers to fighting ACTUAL DAMN NIGGERS, which are ten times worse at least." (I assure you, I swear in this public forum only to communicate what was actually said.)
At the heart of racism is closure. It is exactly this closure which prevents us from finding truth. HUV-B talks a lot about how each individual object must be received on its own merits, since if one only is open to groupings of objects and then closed to the specific individual Objects, you close yourself off to the truth held in each object, and take away that objects right to grow within your openness. Not to mention, in refusing openness to the Object, one loses the ability to be a Subject, and thus one really loses self-conciousness..we no longer re-evaluate ourselves, we close off from the world and assume we know all. A very dangerous proposition indeed.
This really saddens me, because truth is one of the seemingly few transcendental concepts in the world (goodness and beauty are the only other two that come to mind off hand.) To see so very many people, perfectly good people who I really enjoy interacting with on an everyday basis, so cut off from any receptivity to truth, is painful. Racism is a desperately terrible thing not just because it is one person treating another unfairly. When people stop being receptive to truth, in whatever form it may take, they cut their own lifeline to Truth, and thus, perhaps, to God. In addition, the object they refuse to accept is robbed of it's rightful place of growth that can only be attained in the oppenness of the Subject. The racist person steals whatever potential growth of truth there was inherent in the individual they reject. Both are terrible and drastic losses, all because of some assinine stereotype. It's incredible how much we give up and steal from others with such actions.
And yet, sitting here far too late on a weeknight, I have no clue how to help anyone avoid this, especially myself. The thing about Truth, seemingly, is that it isn't anything you can ever set off to find. The only way to discover Truth is by already being in it. It's something that you come across, and while in it you start to perhaps recognize it, and then gradually recognize that you have Always Already recognized it. It has always already been in your mind, and it has taken you until now to recognize just what exactly it is in observing it in The Object. So I guess all we can really ever do is to encourage complete openness to truth in people, to attempt to help people begin to put themselves aside and be so radically open to the other that they can help the Other to begin to bloom within them, and in turn, for the Other to reveal some new quality of Being to the Subject. If this relationship is closed at any point, all sides become useless and obsolete.
-Robb
I think I capitalized far too many words in this post. Sorry.
