Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
I like Wretchard because he is, in the terms of classical philosophy, an Idealist. And not an Hegelian one either. He knows an absolute/The Absolute is present, and he knows human nature and faculties, especially reason, correlate with the essence of an absolute/The Absolute — thus we are able to think, act and communicate coherently at all — but he does not presume to grasp — or worse, understand — an absolute/The Absolute or know its self-concretizations.
Hegel’s fall was imagining he knew that the Absolute’s apotheosis was Germany of his era. Great though Germany then was, Hegel got above his hat in estimating Germany’s historical worth and also in imagining the dialectics of history and humanity peaked thereat. That is why Kierkegaard and Marx, both Hegel’s students, attacked Hegel, albeit from different directions, both existential but with different specifics. Hegel’s own epistemology should have restrained him from this lapse, but it did not. Ditto Kant, BTW.
Wretchard is more the Pythagorean/Stoic Idealist, which is where Christianity went with the Fourth Gospel, St. Paul, Nicaea and Chalcedon. Wretchard has intellectual humility, sometimes lapsing into self-doubt, and that makes his labors savory and often sweet. It is not often one reads a wrap-up such as this: The ultimate blockchain was always in the mind of God, beyond the power of the Narrative to corrupt. That is purest possible direct experience Augustinian-line Christianity — e.g., Francis and Clare of Assisi — as contrasted to senses based Aquinian-line Christianity — e.g., later and modern Jesuits.
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and inbreathed that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world; we bring impurity much rather; that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by that which is contrary.
John Milton
In other words, Heraclitus: War [struggle] is the father of all things. No Christian brings peace except to the trans-mundane. Here, it is the sword and the plow. Reason: man takes himself and especially his handiworks as important to history, for history. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Update 1: This ends weakly, but before that, it provides salient data points in re the Democratic-Republican Uniparty: by The Conservative Treehouse: Presidential Politics And The Current Status Of The UniParty …
Update 2: The Battle Over Al-Azhar
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
